Chapter 13

Question 1

Evolutionary Cognitive Psychology

Answer 1

The entire cognitive system, according to an evolutionary psychological perspective, is a complex collection of interrelated information-processing devices, functionally specialized for solving specific classes of adaptive problems.

Question 2

There are at least two major problems with the assumption of general processing mechanisms:

Answer 2

(1) What constitutes a successful adaptive solution differs from domain to domain—the qualities needed for successful food selection, for example, differ from those needed for successful mate selection
(2) the number of possible behaviors generated by unconstrained general mechanisms approaches infinity, so the organism would have no way of distinguishing successful adaptive solutions from the blizzard of unsuccessful ones

Question 3

In sum, evolutionary psychologists replace the core assumptions of mainstream cognitive psychology—general-purpose and content-free mechanisms along with functional agnosticism— with a different set of assumptions that permits integration with the rest of life science

Answer 3

1. The human mind consists of a set of evolved information-processing mechanisms embedded in the human nervous system.
2. These mechanisms and the developmental programs that produce them are adaptations produced by natural selection over evolutionary time in ancestral environments.
3. Many of these mechanisms are functionally specialized to produce behavior that solves particular adaptive problems, such as mate selection, language acquisition, and cooperation.
4. To be functionally specialized, many of these mechanisms must be richly structured in content-specific ways.

Question 4

Computational theory is based on the following
arguments:

Answer 4

1. Information-processing devices are designed to solve problems.
2. They solve problems by virtue of their structure.
3. Hence, to explain the structure of a device, you need to know
   a. what problem it was designed to solve, and
   b. why it was designed to solve that problem.

Question 5

Base-rate fallacy

Answer 5

People tend to ignore base-rate information when presented with compelling individuating information. Base rates refer to the overall proportion of something in a sample or population.

Question 6

The conjunction fallacy

Answer 6

If I tell you that Linda wears tie-dyed shirts and buttons asserting
that “men are slime” and frequently tries to organize the women in her workplace, is it more likely that (A) Linda is a bank teller or (B) Linda is a feminist bank teller? A majority of people believe that (B) is more likely, despite the fact that this violates the canons of logic

Question 7

Human adaptive problem solving—which our ancestors must have done reasonably well or else they would have failed to become our ancestors—always depends on three ingredients:

Answer 7

(1) the specific goal being sought (the problem that must be solved)
(2) the materials at hand
(3) the context in which the problem is embedded.

Question 8

frequentist hypothesis

Answer 8

the proposition that some human reasoning mechanisms are designed to take as input frequency information and produce as output frequency information.

Question 9

Some advantages of operating on frequentist representations are that:

Answer 9

(1) they allow a person to preserve the number of events on which the judgment was based
(2) they allow a person to update his or her database when new events and information are encountered
(3) they allow a person to construct new reference classes afer the events have been encountered and remembered and to reorganize the database as needed

Question 10

social gossip hypothesis

Answer 10

According to this hypothesis, language evolved to facilitate bonding among large groups of humans.

Question 11

social contract hypothesis

Answer 11

According to this hypothesis, problems of mating became more problematic when large-game hunting emerged. Men had to leave their mates alone while out on the hunt, risking infdelity and vulnerability to exploitation. Language evolved, according to this idea, to facilitate explicit marriage contracts.

Question 12

Scheherazade hypothesis

Answer 12

Named after the main character in The Arabian Nights, the argument is that the large human brain is essentially like the peacock’s tail—a sexually selected organ that evolved to signal superior fitness to potential mates. By dazzling potential mates with humor, wit, exotic tales, and word magic, those with superior language skills had a mating advantage over their mumbling, fumbling competitors.

Question 13

ecological dominance/social competition (EDSC) hypothesis

Answer 13

According to the EDSC hypothesis, human dominance over the ecology (starvation, warfare, pestilence, and extreme weather) opened the door to a new set of selective forces—competition from other humans.

Question 14

deadly innovations hypothesis

Answer 14

proposes that human innovation has created and even amplifed the relative risk of injury and premature death, creating selection pressure for the evolution of general intelligence.

Question 15

According to the deadly innovations hypothesis, several forces occurring over the past half million years would have widened the survival differences between individuals of higher and lower general intelligence:

Answer 15

(1) double jeopardy
(2) spiraling complexity
(3) migration ratchet

Question 16

the correspondence bias

Answer 16

the tendency to explain a person’s behavior by invoking enduring dispositions, even when it can be shown that situational causes are responsible

Question 17

the social loafng effect

Answer 17

the tendency for individuals to perform less work toward a joint outcome as group size increases

Question 18

self-handicapping

Answer 18

the tendency to present publicly a purported weakness about oneself to provide an excuse if one fails at a task

Question 19

the self-serving bias

Answer 19

the tendency to make attributions that make oneself look better
than others in the group

Question 20

the confrmation bias

Answer 20

the tendency to selectively seek out information that affirms (rather than falsifes) an already-held hypothesis

Question 21

sexual selection

Answer 21

the theory that evolution can occur through mating advantage accrued through
(1) besting intrasexual competitors
(2) being preferentially chosen as a mate by members of the opposite sex

Question 22

Human intuitions dovetail with evolutionary theory in telling us that our standards of morality are likely to be biased in favor of _________ ________.

Answer 22

genetic relatives

Question 23

Evolutionary developmental psychologists tend to stress the importance of these key conceptual points:

Answer 23

(1) Natural selection occurs throughout the life span, but selection tends to be especially strong early in life
(2) adaptations in infancy and childhood can solve adaptive problems at a particular time during development
(3) the extended childhood of humans prepares them for the complexities of social living later in life
(4) children have conditional adaptations, which allow them to respond fexibly to features of the childhood environment with strategies that are effective in coping with environments that those
features statistically predict
(5) gene–environment interactions occur throughout development.

Question 24

One key insight currently missing from mainstream developmental psychology is this:

Answer 24

Human beings face predictably different adaptive problems at various points in their lives.

Question 25

Avoidant attachment

Answer 25

the child shows indifference to the parent

Question 26

Anxious/ambivalent attachment

Answer 26

the child shows nervousness, fearfulness, and insecurity

Question 27

theory of mind, life-history theory, parental socialization, and attachment styles represent:

Answer 27

a few of the ways evolutionary developmental psychologists approach changes over time in the human life course.