1. Evolutionary Psych Core Flashcards

Question

what is it important to remember when considering natural and sexual selection?

Answer 1

sometimes natural and sexual selection are in conflict things that help you survive might not help you reproduce and vice versa. When you get this in a situ is important to remember these two things are happening. Can think of sexual selection as a component of natural selection or something that can act in conflict and can be independent.

Answer 2

• In a given ecological niche, certain characteristics will enhance an organism’s ability to survive and/or reproduce within that population/ niche. • Where a characteristic does enhance survival and reproduction, the genes ‘coding’ for that characteristics will be more likely to be passed on to.. o Children o Grandchildren o Great-grandchildren o Until most of the population have it … or something else gets in the way o Or until the niche changes and that trait is no longer of use.

Answer 3

1. Group selection 2. Evolution of complex traits is impossible 3. All evolution is gradual 4. Explaining an immediate cause negates the need for evolution 5. Evolutionary approaches are biologically determinist

Answer 4

gene is a unit of selection gene frequency is what’s important doesn’t matter what is happening to individual/ group/ species as long as the gene is going into the next generation.

Answer 5

Wilson and Sober (1994) • Have to go quite a long way to come up with an idea about how group selection may work- one one island a genetic mutation produces increased feeding efficiency. Individuals with the gene have higher survival and reproductive success, and over time replace those without the gene. However, the group on the island then outstrips its resources, and goes extinct. In this case, group level characteristics are useful for thinking about natural selection: although selection occurs at the level of genes within individuals, the characteristics of groups can be important determinants of changes in gene frequencies over time (i.e., evolution).”

Answer 6

• Group isolation – so no genetic exchange with other groups • Rapid group extension – so can’t adapt to circumstances • Very strong selection- acting on some groups and not others Hence this is so rare especially in humans where we can see genomes travel huge distances so doesn’t really apply to humans.

Answer 7

* Common accusation from social scientists… * E.g. “Men have better visuospatial skills because they engage in more physical play during childhood. So why do we need evolution to explain that?”- this can be true but other things can also be true.

Answer 8

Tinbergen's four why's Proximate- about what is going on at point of time/ individual’s lifetime 1. Proximate/mechanistic causes. The triggers that elicit the behavior in question. 2. Developmental/ontogenetic causes. The developmental events that contributed to the behavior during the lifetime of the individual. ----------------------- ultimate- what’s gone on across evolutionary time in terms of lineage change and genetic benefit 3. Functional/ultimate causes. How does the behavior advance the individual’s genetic self-interest? How does it increase “survival of the fittest”? 4. Evolutionary/phylogenetic causes. How did the propensity for certain behaviors evolve in the ancestral environment? Change within a lineage.

Answer 9

1. Proximate/mechanistic explanation: Baby is hungry, brain mechanism = crying 2. Developmental/ontogenetic explanation: Baby has learned that crying = food 3. Phylogenetic/historical explanation: All primates vocalise to attract care-giver 4. Functional/ultimate explanation: Crying alerts mother to problems etc. & results in better infant survival

Answer 10

They have learned to sing by imprinting their parents’ song repertoire and behaviour. Ontogenetic proximate explanation They sing to establish their territory and attract mates. Ultimate explanation

Answer 11

– Idea that biology absolutely causes something without flexibility – This is defo not true- All traits are subject to environmental influence – Wrong we still have choice and ability to make own choices. – Not good evolutionary psychology if it does this

Answer 12

– What is, isn’t necessarily what ‘ought’ to be – The way that nature has set something up is the way it ought to be- this isn’t necessarily true. – Many prominent evolutionary psychologist stress that this isn’t about what we ought to do but about the legacy that evolution has left us with.

Answer 13

* Behavioural Ecologists | * Evolutionary Psychologists

Answer 14

Is evolutionary strategy a conscious choice?  according to EP conscious decisions are not part of strategies evolution does not care about decisions only about the outcomes in terms of genes. Are some people who think maybe evolutionary strategy is a conscious choice and this is where behavioural ecology comes in.

Answer 15

anthropological

Answer 16

– Interested in how humans adapt behaviour to produce highest fitness outcomes (“baby counting”) -interested in the what not the how

Answer 17

– Assume we have a generalised ‘fitness maximisation’ ability?- put humans in a given situation and the behaviour that will emerge is the best for that niche.

Answer 18

The phenotypic gambit refers to the simplifying assumption that complex traits, such as behavioural traits, can be modelled as if they were controlled by single distinct alleles, representing alternate strategies. In other words, the phenotypic gambit assumes that "selection will favour traits with high fitness ...irrespective of the particulars of inheritance.

Answer 19

– Modelling and analytic sophistication- this cuts out lots of the crazy things like humans self-reporting- this is key in terms of the statistical attack going on in the rest of psychology.

Answer 20

E.g. cultures where having a big family is desirable. Active choices being made to get the most offspring but this is not always the case e.g. in the west although maybe in the west we have smaller families is because we believe children to be expensive and what we consider to be the minimum per child is very different to those in a different socio-ecological setting.

Answer 21

• Tend to be from Psychology backgrounds (some biologists too)

Answer 22

• Interested in psychological mechanisms which are the result of past adaptations

Answer 23

* Assume we have a number distinct specialist psycho-neural adaptations (‘swiss-army knife’ model of the brain) * Assume current fitness is largely irrelevant

Answer 24

• A key concept of the stereotypical EP view is that the human mind consists of a large number of special purpose decision making mechanisms formed for use during the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaption).

Answer 25

o How do we identify an adaptation? o Is the brain that modular? o Does the EEA work as a concept?

Answer 26

environment of evolutionary adaption – Hypothetical environment in which it is argued human behaviour and cognition was shaped following our separation from other primate lineages. – The environment to which our behavioural mechanisms were adapted to, at some point in our evolutionary past.

Answer 27

reliably developing must be a feature of the species and must facilitate reproduction

Answer 28

a spandrel (Gould, 1991)

Answer 29

in construction a space between functional things e. Gould argued that we think many things have evolved but really they are just the way they are e.g. bones are made of calcium them being white is just a side efect. g. Argued the female orgasm was a spandrel. Selection of male orgasm across many species as essential component of reproduction argued that female orgasm is non-functional and has evolved because the structure is needed to make a male orgasm happen (don’t agree lots of work on benefits of female orgasm)

Answer 30

• Basic assumption that we shouldn’t assume everything is adaptive is valid. Can get behaviours that look adaptive and useful that still aren’t adaptations

Answer 31

if you put live and dead ants in a petri dish- then live ants move dead ants into piles called “corpse aggregation”- clears out nest supprosdly but.... Pfeiffer, 1996- can create the same outcome in a very different way- robot with two sensors front left and front right telling it where things are like an ant cant see well straight ahead of them- rule is to avoid obsticles- means that anything in middle gets pushed around- set them going and the same outcome happens as ants where blocks are moved into piles. Can get exactly the same behavioural outcome using a very simple set of decision rules that have no direct link to the supposed outcome that has been put forward as to why we see the pattern in ants.

Answer 32

Fodor (1983)

Answer 33

FIND My Cute Bird ``` F- Fast I- has Information encapsulation N- specific Neural architecture D- Domain specific M- Mandatory/automatic C-Cognitively impenetrable B- Breaks down in specific ways ```

Answer 34

applied to far more sophisticated behaviours. Have had modules posited as the meanings- known as massive modularity. Fodor was proposing modularity for basic perception as opposed to these sophisticated behaviours.

Answer 35

'modularity gone mad'

Answer 36

need modules and need particular adaptations to stop you behaving in random and unsuccessful ways.

Answer 37

dont have to embrace massive modularity to be an evolutionary psychologist It is not necessary to commit to one of these models of mind in order to formulate hypotheses based on evolutionary predictions. The core idea is that evolution has changed the view and process the world – i.e. don’t have to go full swiss army knife model to effectively pursue that research agenda.

Answer 38

– It is generally considered to be found in late Pleistocene, typified by hunter/gatherer societies (African savannah)

Answer 39

Maynard Smith

Answer 40

the changes in gene frequency across generations that are driven at least in part by interactions between related individuals, and

Answer 41

he sum of an individual's own reproductive success, (natural and sexual selection), plus the effects the individual's actions have on the reproductive success of that individual's kin, (kin selection).

Answer 42

• Symons emphasised the concept in his 1979 treatise “The Evolution of Human Sexuality.”

Answer 43

Tooby and Cosmides

Answer 44

The EEA is a statistical composite of the adaptation relevant properties of the ancestral environments encountered by members of ancestral populations.” – Assume EEA is roughly about 250,000 to 10,000 years ago, sometime in the Pleistocene. Their definition is almost useless in how vague it is but when people use specific examples use the African savannah.

Answer 45

1)False idea of statis since Pleistocene 2) Unwarranted reliance on hunter-gathered models

Answer 46

Homo erectus lived from the south of Africa to the north, southern Europe, southern Asia- a huge global expanse. Clearly we are missing something- homo erectus – know they cared for people who were injured so they were engaging in complex human like behaviours and living in a wide area of ecological conditions. Homo-erectus interbred with homo-sapiens so their evolutionary adaptations would have influenced ours.

Answer 47

* Modern HG are not in a time capsule- can’t say that Hazda for example are the same as early homo-sapiens because they are not. * What’s so strange about HG groups now…? In most cases to be a HG you have to be isolated to begin with or would have been pulled into historical transformations. Also some have gone back to hunter-gathering so haven’t always been hunter gatherers. * They are not homogenous

Answer 48

diet where don’t eat processed/ dairy (new invention) / wheat and grains (new inventions) basically idea that we should be eating what our ancestors ‘used’ to eat and what our bodies are designed to eat. Based on an idea about how we live that is no longer true and that to a huge extent wasn’t true.

Answer 49

Looking at different HG groups- there is a huge amount of variance between what people eat e.g. inuits live almost exclusively on fish, Hadza eat looks of meat, roots and fruit and veg- the point is we cant simplify HG lifestyles and diet and assume that how HG groups now give any specific insight into the environments and social ecology our ancestors evolved in. Cant make assumptions about human ancestral evolution

Answer 50

• Remember that human behaviour doesn’t have to be optimal in the environment that is currently happening as this is not the environment under which it evolved. Things may seem maladaptive now that weren’t in the past.

Answer 51

Has advantage over other areas of psychology as doing work with groups of people who are not normally represented in psychology research.

Answer 52

quantified who was being used in research in two leading journals for psychology- in both the vast majority of people are WEIRD More so for social than evolutionary- in evolutionary see a lot more research on non-WEIRD samples He is forgetting that lots of work published in evolutionary behavioural ecology- so if want to take behavioural evolutionary sciences as a whole there is lots of work but a lot of this is being carried by the anthropologists a lot of the time. So cant be too complacent.

Answer 53

western educated rich industrialised democratic societies

1. Evolutionary Psych Core Flashcards

(79 cards)