Chapter 1

Question 1

Evolutionary psychology focuses on four key questions:

Answer 1

(1) Why is the mind designed the way it is—that is, what causal processes created, fashioned, or shaped the human mind into its current form?
(2) How is the human mind designed—what are its mechanisms or component parts, and how are they organized?
(3) What are the functions of the component parts and their organized structure—that is, what is the mind designed to do?
(4) How does input from the current environment interact with the design of the human mind to produce observable behavior?

Question 2

Jean Baptiste Lamarck

Answer 2

one of the first scientists to use the word biologie, which recognized the study of life as a distinct science

Question 3

catastrophism

Answer 3

species are extinguished periodically by sudden catastrophes, such as meteorites, and then replaced by different species.

Question 4

What could account for why species change?

Answer 4

Darwin struggled with several different theories of the origins of change but rejected all of them because they failed to explain a critical fact: the existence of adaptations. Darwin wanted to account for change, of course, but he also wanted to account for why organisms appeared so well designed for their local environments.

Question 5

The three essential ingredients of the theory of natural selection:

Answer 5

variation, inheritance, and differential reproductive success.

Question 6

Variation

Answer 6

organisms vary in all sorts of ways, such as in wing length, trunk strength, bone mass, cell structure, fighting ability, defensive ability, and social cunning.

Question 7

selection

Answer 7

Organisms with some heritable variants leave more offspring because those attributes help with the tasks of survival or reproduction.

Question 8

differential reproductive success

Answer 8

brought about by the possession of heritable variants
that increase or decrease an individual’s chances of surviving and reproducing

Question 9

sexual selection

Answer 9

In contrast to the theory of natural selection, which focused on adaptations that have arisen as a consequence of successful survival, the theory of sexual selection focused on adaptations that arose as a consequence of successful mating

Question 10

two primary means by which sexual selection could operate.

Answer 10

intrasexual competition, intersexual selection

Question 11

intrasexual competition

Answer 11

competition between members of one sex, the outcomes of which contributed to mating access to the other sex.

Question 12

intersexual selection (female choice)

Answer 12

preferential mate choice.

Question 13

genetic drift

Answer 13

defined as random changes in the genetic makeup of a population

Question 14

Founder effects

Answer 14

occur when a small portion of a population establishes a new colony and the founders of the new colony are not genetically representative of the original population.

Question 15

Another critical feature of selection is that it is ______

Answer 15

gradual

Question 16

punctuated equilibrium

Answer 16

there can be long periods of no change, followed by a relatively sudden change

Question 17

Objections of natural selection

Answer 17

1. Darwinian evolution lacked a coherent theory of inheritance.
2. some biologists could not imagine how the early stages of the evolution of an adaptation could be useful to an organism.
3. religious creationists viewed species as immutable (unchanging) and created by a deity rather than by the gradual process of evolution by selection.

Question 18

Gregor Mendel

Answer 18

An Austrian monk who showed that inheritance was “particulate” and not blended. That is, the qualities of the parents are not blended with each other but rather are passed on intact to their offspring in distinct packets called genes. Furthermore, parents must be born with the genes they pass on; genes cannot be acquired by experience.

Question 19

gene

Answer 19

the smallest discrete unit that is inherited by offspring intact, without being broken up or blended

Question 20

Genotypes

Answer 20

the entire collection of genes within an individual

Question 21

Ethology movement

Answer 21

in part a reaction to the extreme environmentalism in U.S. psychology.

Question 22

Four “whys” of behavior

Answer 22

(1) the immediate influences on behavior
(2) the developmental influences on behavior
(3) the function of behavior, or the “adaptive purpose” it fulfills
(4) the evolutionary or phylogenetic origins of behavior

Question 23

Fixed action patterns

Answer 23

the stereotypic behavioral sequences an animal follows after being triggered by a well-defined stimulus

Question 24

classical fitness

Answer 24

the measure of an individual’s direct reproductive success in passing on genes through the production of offspring

Question 25

Inclusive fitness

Answer 25

the sum of an individual’s own reproductive success (classical fitness) plus the effects the individual’s actions have on the reproductive success of his or her genetic relatives.

Question 26

group selection

Answer 26

the notion that adaptations evolved for the benefit of the group through the differential survival and reproduction of groups

Question 27

Adaptations

Answer 27

evolved solutions to specific problems that contribute either directly or indirectly to successful reproduction.

Question 28

improbable usefulness

Answer 28

too precisely functional to have arisen by chance alone

Question 29

Genetic determinism

Answer 29

the doctrine that argues that behavior is controlled exclusively by genes, with little or no role for environmental influence.

Question 30

Human behavior cannot occur without two ingredients:

Answer 30

(1) evolved adaptations (2) environmental input that triggers the development and activation of these adaptations.

Question 31

bipedal locomotion

Answer 31

the ability to walk, stride, and run on two feet rather than on four.

Question 32

Two classes of instincts in Freud’s instinctual system

Answer 32

(1) Life-preservative instincts (2) sexual instincts

Question 33

instincts

Answer 33

the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance

Question 34

radical behaviorism

Answer 34

the reinforcing consequences of behavior were the critical causes of subsequent behavior. Behavior followed by reinforcement would be repeated in the future. Behavior not followed by reinforcement (or followed by punishment) would not be repeated in the future. All behavior except random behavior could be explained by the “contingencies of reinforcement.”

Question 35

Forces that led to the cognitive revolution

Answer 35

(1) came from the violations of the fundamental “laws” of learning. (2) came from the study of language (Noam Chomsky) (3) came with the rise of computers and the “information-processing metaphor.”