Justin's lectures

Question 1

evolutionary social psychology:
talk to me about natural selection baby

Answer 1

gene mutations lead to advantageous traits that allow the organism to withstand environmental pressures, survive, reproduce and pass the adaptation down to offspring. increasing the frequency of the gene in the population

Question 2

evolutionary social psychology:
What is an adaptation, and how does it develop through evolution?

Answer 2

adaptations can be behaviorual or physical traits that allow the organism to survive and reproduce successfully

Question 3

evolutionary social psychology:
Give an example of a fixed action pattern in nature.

Answer 3

fixed action patterns is a behavioural sequence that once triggered runs until completion e.g. fight or flight response

Question 4

evolutionary social psychology:
How does evolutionary social psychology explain human group behavior?

Answer 4

evolutionary social pyschology argues that all social behaviour is caused by adaptations e.g. co-operating with tribes

Question 5

evolutionary social psychology:
How do domain-specific mechanisms differ from general cognitive mechanisms?

Answer 5

domain specific mechanisms only use a specific part of the brain adapted to carry out a specific functions. general uses all parts of the brain

Question 6

evolutionary social psychology:
What is the difference between a proximate and an ultimate explanation?

Answer 6

proximate- states mechanism behind behaviour e.g. morning sickness prevents poisoning
ultimate- explains why mechanism exists e.g. to keep mum and baby safe

Question 7

evolutionary social psychology:
Explain how heredity works at the genetic level.

Answer 7

mutated genes ( alleles) are passed down from parents to offspring.

Question 8

evolutionary social psychology:
What is heritability, and how is it measured?

Answer 8

heritability is the degree to which variation in a population can be explained by genetic variation

Question 9

evolutionary social psychology:
How does kin selection theory explain altruistic behavior?

Answer 9

altruistic behaviour towards a kin member can be beneficial

Question 10

evolutionary social psychology:
Describe a real-world example of reciprocal altruism in animals or humans.

Answer 10

i hold a door open for someone- they hold it open for me next time

Question 11

evolutionary social psychology:
How does parental investment differ between males and females in most species?

Answer 11

females invest more resources in reproducing so are more selective in choosing romantic
partners/ men just want to cum

Question 12

evolutionary social psychology:
What is inbreeding avoidance, and why is it evolutionarily significant?

Answer 12

inbreeding avoidance is an evolutionary mechanism that provokes disguts at the idea of shagging a family member. in order to prevent incest and fucked up offspring

Question 13

evolutionary social psychology:
What are maladaptive adaptations, and how can they occur?

Answer 13

maladaptive adaptations are adaptations that don’t increase the likelihood of surviving and reproducing in the current environment. they can occur when environmental pressures change faster than evolution can catch up e.g. anxiety

Question 14

evolutionary social psychology:
How does error management theory explain human decision-making biases?

Answer 14

error management theory is a cogntive bias: preference for not losing/ winning

Question 15

perception of kin:
What are the two main psychological mechanisms humans use to identify kin?

Answer 15

Familiarity: Based on early childhood co-residence or observing maternal perinatal association (e.g., seeing your mother care for your sibling).
Similarity: The perception that those who look, smell, or act like you are likely to be related.

Question 16

perception of kin:
Why is self-resemblance especially important for men in relation to their offspring?

Answer 16

Men use self-resemblance as a cue to paternal certainty since they lack biological confirmation of paternity. Greater resemblance is associated with higher paternal investment and reduced conflict.

Question 17

Perception of kin:
what do kin terms do?

Answer 17

kin terms e.g. brother/ cousin can increase perception of kin and altruism. but can be manipulated by baddies :/

Question 18

Perception of kin:
What about besties? can they have the same kinship altruism benefits

Answer 18

Both involve close emotional bonds and altruism. Friends can be seen as family (e.g., “he’s like a brother”), and some family members can be considered best friends. there is an overlap and the research hasnt come to a conclusion, but friendships can be seen as more transactional than familial relationships

Question 19

Perception of kin:
How do men and women differ in their perception of friendships?

Answer 19

Women are more likely to regard friends as kin, show higher altruism, and experience sexual aversion toward them. Men are pigs. This may be due to evolutionary adaptations related to integrating into male partners’ families and the emotional nature of female friendships.

Question 20

Perception of kin:
What is the positive sexual imprinting theory, and who proposed it?

Answer 20

Proposed by Farley and Marks, this theory suggests people are attracted to those resembling their family because they subconsciously find family attractive but repress these urges due to cultural taboos. this theory is proposed in opposition to the inbreeding avoidance theory and its WEIRDDD and doesnt really have much credibilty. just tryna be freud so bad.

Question 21

Perception of kin:
What role does disgust play in sexual aversion toward kin?

Answer 21

Disgust is a powerful psychological mechanism that discourages incest by creating a strong aversion to sexual thoughts about close relatives

Question 22

Perception of kin:
Why are males less selective when choosing sexual partners, according to evolutionary theory?
SLAGS SLAGS SLAGS SLAGS

Answer 22

Males invest less in reproduction compared to females, leading to a strategy focused on increasing the quantity of offspring.

Question 23

Perception of other people:
What is social categorization, and what traits do we use to categorize individuals?

Answer 23

Social categorization is the process of judging individuals based on continuous trait dimensions, such as introversion or extroversion. These judgments can often be accurate but are sometimes flawed, especially when based on deceptive social media representations.

Question 24

Perception of other people:
Which social categories are the most salient, and why?

Answer 24

Race and gender are the most salient social categories because they are the most immediately observable. Evolutionarily, recognizing gender and age helped identify potential mates and assess reproductive opportunities

Question 25

Perception of other people: Why is race a salient social category from an evolutionary perspective?

Answer 25

Race is associated with coalition cues that indicate whether an individual is part of your tribe or an allied tribe, which would have been evolutionarily advantageous for survival and cooperation.

Question 26

Perception of other people: What is in-group versus out-group preference, and how does it affect social behavior?

Answer 26

In-group preference is a subconscious mechanism favoring those who share an in-group factor, such as race or gender. This preference varies based on context and can drive biases and group loyalty.

Question 27

Perception of other people: What is essentialism, and how does it relate to social categories?

Answer 27

Essentialism is the belief that social categories are fixed and unchangeable. It is linked to stereotypical and discriminatory thinking, with those who essentialize categories being more likely to hold rigid or prejudiced views.

Question 28

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: What is the cognitive underpinning of stereotyping?

Answer 28

Stereotyping involves categorizing individuals into social groups and predicting their behavior based on those categories. It allows us to infer attributes (e.g., a cat likely scratches), but these inferences are often biased and not always reliable.

Question 29

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: Why might stereotyping have been evolutionarily advantageous?

Answer 29

It helped our ancestors assess the threat level of strangers and facilitated survival by enabling rapid judgments about coalitional alliances.

Question 30

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: How is stereotyping cognitively efficient?

Answer 30

Stereotyping organizes information into schemas, which improve memory and free up cognitive resources. Research by Macrae et al. (1994) showed that stereotyping enhanced both recall of traits and performance on unrelated tasks.

Question 31

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: What factors make someone more likely to be stereotyped?

Answer 31

stimuli with salient traits like race or gender are more likely to be stereotyped. essentialised traits are more likely to be stereotyped e.g. gender. all women are alway like this as well as situational factors such as feelings of vunerability

Question 32

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: talk to me about Katz and Braly's research into the content on stereotypes

Answer 32

they suggested that stereotypes are structured along 2 axis ( competence and warmth) and ideas about social groups can be low competence and high warmth ( pity) e.g. towards disabled people or high competence and low warmth ( envy) e.g jewish people

Question 33

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: What is linguistic intergroup bias?

Answer 33

It refers to the tendency to describe in-group positive behaviors and out-group negative behaviors in more abstract terms, reinforcing positive in-group and negative out-group stereotypes.

Question 34

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: What is stereotype threat?

Answer 34

Stereotype threat occurs when awareness of a negative stereotype about one’s group hinders performance. For example, Steele and Aronson found that Black students performed worse on intelligence tests when primed to think about their race/ women in stem perform worse when primed that women perform worse on these tests.

Question 35

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: How can stereotypes be reduced?

Answer 35

Methods include blind auditions (e.g., for orchestras) and removing names or faces from job applications. However, increasing awareness of stereotyping can sometimes backfire, as it may normalize the behavior. additionally, the role of teachers for young people can shape sterotype behaviours/ presence of stereotype threat

Question 36

Stereotyping and being stereotyped: Should prejudice be viewed as a psychological or structural issue?

Answer 36

While psychology explains some behaviors e.g. priming can increase stereotypes. structural factors like economic inequality and systemic barriers (e.g., poor nutrition or biased hiring practices) are often the root causes of prejudice.

Question 37

Stereotyping and being stereotyped What is the difference between stereotype activation and application?

Answer 37

Stereotype activation refers to the automatic activation of stereotypes, while application involves actively using those stereotypes to make judgments or decisions. a collection of negative stereotypes forms a prejudiced attitude can lead to discrimination, which is the mean behaviours due to membership of a social