Quiz 2 - Chapter 2

Question 1

What do hormones do?

Answer 1

Regulate metabolism, growth, development, and behaviour

Question 2

Are hormones impacted by genes?

Answer 2

Yes

Question 3

Testosterone correlation
Relevant for everyone?

Answer 3

Has a relatively small positive correlation with aggression
Only seems to be existent for males –> there is likely societal/environmental factors at play

Question 4

What is testosterone responsible for?

Answer 4

Primary and secondary sex characteristics

Question 5

What is the role of testosterone with aggression?

Answer 5

An indirect role

Question 6

What might testosterone interact with?

Answer 6

May interact with high cortisol levels to influence antisocial behaviour

Question 7

Neurotransmitters

Answer 7

Synthesized by amino acid tryptophan

Question 8

Serotonin

Answer 8

Behavioural inhibition and mood regulation

Question 9

What is low serotonin activity linked to?
Is this true for all individuals?

Answer 9

Impulsivity, irritability, aggression
Women typically have lower levels than men, but no aggression effect
Seems to exist only for men

Question 10

People low in serotonin levels can sometimes have what characteristics

Answer 10

Aggressive and antisocial individuals

Question 11

What happened in studies that artificially manipulated tryptophan levels?

Answer 11

Found a possible causal link between that and aggression

Question 12

Autonomic responses examples

Answer 12

Heart rate, skin conductance

Question 13

What are autonomic responses important for?

Answer 13

Fight or flight response
Helps you feel fear and act appropriately

Question 14

Autonomic responses are associated with?
What is it linked to?

Answer 14

Fear, anger, anxiety, etc.
Antisocial behaviours

Question 15

There is a small to moderate correlation between _______ and __________

Answer 15

low autonomic arousal and antisocial behaviours

Question 16

Explain the fearlessness theory

Answer 16

Lack of fear when stressed
Childhood stressors may habituate someone to life stress = fearlessness

Question 17

Biology behind fearlessness theory

Answer 17

NS becomes habituated
Evolutionary adaptation

Question 18

Stimulation-seeking theory

Answer 18

Need for stimulation
Chronic low arousal is unpleasant; may engage/seek risk to feel arousal

Question 19

What is low self-reported fear related to?

Answer 19

Antisocial behaviour, even after controlling for callous-unemotional traits

Question 20

What is a historical example of neuroimaging findings?

Answer 20

Phineas Gage allowed early researchers to examine links between behaviour and brain structure and functioning
He was very calm before accident, but afterwards, he could still walk and talk but his personality changed a lot and began to engage in risky/antisocial behaviour and swore lots

Question 21

What is antisocial behaviour linked to?
What brain structure is this linked to?

Answer 21

Poor executive functioning (attention, memory, inhibition, problem-solving, moral decision-making)
Prefrontal cortex

Question 22

What does electrode stimulation of the PFC cause?

Answer 22

People to report being less likely to commit physical and sexual offences and judged them as more immoral in comparison to a control group
People can sometimes become more prosocial even than the average person

Question 23

How is diet related to aggression and antisocial behaviour?

Answer 23

Low blood sugar is linked to aggression and antisocial behaviour
Diet affects hormone levels and serotonin levels

Question 24

Explain the Schoenthaler (1983) study

Answer 24

3000 incarcerated juveniles
More healthy diet (e.g., fruit juices, nutritious snacks)
Existing diet (e.g., soft drinks, junk food)
Healthy diet was linked to 48% reduction in antisocial behaviour

Question 25

Explain the Schoenthaler (2021) study

Answer 25

449 youth were given either a placebo/vitamin pill Vitamin was linked to 39% fewer rule violations

Question 26

Lead (Pb) link

Answer 26

Neurotoxin that affects brain (probably prefrontal lobe) development Children with elevated lead levels exhibited more antisocial behaviour

Question 27

Evolutionary theory

Answer 27

Species and their genes have evolved/transformed in response to environmental pressures through natural selection Gradual change of genetic code over time

Question 28

Psychological mechanisms and evolution

Answer 28

Psychological mechanisms have been designed and maintained because they offer an advantage for survival and reproduction (e.g., antisociality)

Question 29

Selection pressures

Answer 29

Finding a mate, hunting, gathering, protecting children, avoiding predators, finding shelter

Question 30

How long do selection pressures take to show up in a species' genome?

Answer 30

A few thousand generations

Question 31

What do our current psychological mechanisms reflect?

Answer 31

Selection pressures of prehistoric hunter-gatherers

Question 32

Life history theory and antisocial behaviour

Answer 32

Survival and reproduction depended on trade-offs between hunting/gathering, finding/attracting a mate, protecting/nourishing children

Question 33

Give example of life history theory and antisocial behaviour

Answer 33

Women favour protecting/nurturing children to pass on genes Cannot reproduce with as many partners; less need to aggressive and violent Women have an increased degree of parental investment (fixed # of children in lifetime)

Question 34

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity

Answer 34

Psychological mechanisms are highly flexible

Question 35

Impact of unpredictable/chaotic environment

Answer 35

People engage in riskier survival and mating activity

Question 36

Give example of evolutionarily, why men tend to be more aggressive

Answer 36

In an unpredictable/chaotic environment, they may fight competing male suitors rather than protecting/nurturing existing offspring

Question 37

Children who grow up in unpredictable homes are more likely to _____ Compare this to a stable environment

Answer 37

engage in antisocial behaviours, earlier sex, short-term sex strategies Supportive childhood; growing up with abundance of resources --> people prioritize long-term strategies like parental investment

Question 38

What do psychopaths possess? Explain

Answer 38

Cheater strategies Superficial charm, manipulation, deceit, lack of remorse or conscience, parasitic lifestyle, impulsivity, grandiosity

Question 39

Cheater strategies and frequency dependent selection

Answer 39

Enhances reproductive success if found in only a small minority of people alongside which most people are honest, cooperative, and unassuming

Question 40

Homicide and evolutionary theories

Answer 40

Usually results from arguments, insults, rivalries between male acquaintances who are unmarried and unemployed Violence/aggression is an adaptive response to status or reputational threats in order to prevent future explanation of resources and/or lack of mates

Question 41

Ghengis Khan

Answer 41

Social selection Has an estimated 16M direct male descendants (as opposed to average 20)

Question 42

Female-perpetrated crime

Answer 42

Relative lack is due to lower fear threshold in face of danger Evolutionary need for maternal survival and reproductive success

Question 43

Resource scarcity/poverty drives...

Answer 43

Attempts to provide for oneself directly (e.g., property offending) and indirectly through competition for mates (e.g., violent offending)