Week 4 Flashcards
(25 cards)
Natural selection favours traits that enhance an organism’s chances of:
A. Survival and reproduction
B. Popularity and happiness
C. Social harmony alone
D. Short-term pleasure
A. Survival and reproduction ✅
✅ Justification: Darwin’s principle states adaptive variants increase survival and reproductive success.
📚 Week 4 – 4.1 Natural & Sexual Selection
Which form of sexual selection involves members of one sex choosing mates from the other sex?
A. Intrasexual competition
B. Intersexual competition
C. Inclusive fitness
D. Kin selection
B. Intersexual competition ✅
✅ Justification: Intersexual (mate-choice) selection hinges on preferences of the opposite sex.
📚 Week 4 – 4.1 Sexual Selection
An adaptation’s three hallmark properties are domain-specificity, _____, and functionality.
A. Universality
B. Numerousness
C. Plasticity
D. Randomness
B. Numerousness ✅
✅ Justification: Evolutionary premises = domain-specificity, numerousness, functionality.
📚 Week 4 – 4.1 Premises of EP
A bellybutton is best described evolutionarily as a(n):
A. Adaptation
B. By-product
C. Exaptation
D. Noise mutation
B. By-product ✅
✅ Justification: It is incidental to the umbilical cord—useful by-product, not an adaptation.
📚 Week 4 – 4.1 Products of Evolution
According to inclusive fitness theory, individuals should most strongly help:
A. Non-relatives with resources
B. Genetic relatives with high reproductive value
C. Elderly neighbours
D. Anyone in need equally
B. Genetic relatives with high reproductive value ✅
✅ Justification: Helping kin with high RV boosts propagation of shared genes.
📚 Week 4 – Helping Behaviour
Which sex most consistently prefers partners displaying resources and ambition?
A. Men
B. Women
C. Both equally
D. Neither sex
B. Women ✅
✅ Justification: Parental-investment theory predicts female preference for resource-capable mates.
📚 Week 4 – Sex Differences & Mate Preferences
Facial and bodily symmetry is hypothesised to signal:
A. Parental investment
B. Genetic fitness (“good genes”)
C. Cultural conformity
D. Social dominance only
B. Genetic fitness (“good genes”) ✅
✅ Justification: Symmetry indicates developmental stability → attractive in mate choice.
📚 Week 4 – Good Genes Hypothesis
The preparedness hypothesis helps explain why many people fear:
A. Cars more than snakes
B. Snakes more than electrical outlets
C. Guns more than heights
D. All modern dangers equally
B. Snakes more than electrical outlets ✅
✅ Justification: Evolution primed fear of ancestral threats (snakes, spiders, heights).
📚 Week 4 – Fears & Phobias
A “slow” life-history strategy typically features:
A. Early puberty and many offspring
B. Later puberty and high parental investment
C. Short lifespan with rapid reproduction
D. Minimal somatic effort
B. Later puberty and high parental investment ✅
✅ Justification: Slow/K strategies delay reproduction, produce fewer offspring, invest heavily.
📚 Week 4 – Life-History Theory
Children from high SES, high-investment homes tend to reach puberty:
A. Earlier
B. Later
C. At the same time as all peers
D. Only in adulthood
B. Later ✅
✅ Justification: Ellis & Essex showed enriched environments delay pubertal timing.
📚 Week 4 – Pubertal Timing Study
According to evolutionary psychology, male aggression is partly explained by:
A. Equal reproductive variance
B. Effective polygyny
C. Female choice of timid males
D. Genetic drift
B. Effective polygyny ✅
✅ Justification: High male variance in mating success fuels competition and aggression.
📚 Week 4 – Aggression & Competition
Men typically experience greater distress over sexual infidelity whereas women over emotional infidelity. This supports the:
A. Belongingness hypothesis
B. Jealousy sex-difference prediction
C. Cheater-detection mechanism
D. Spandrel explanation
B. Jealousy sex-difference prediction ✅
✅ Justification: Differential adaptive threats (paternity vs resource diversion).
📚 Week 4 – Jealousy Differences
A personality trait that persists because its fitness depends on how common it is (e.g., psychopathy) illustrates:
A. Environmental triggers
B. Trait-contingent heritability
C. Frequency-dependent selection
D. Exaptation
C. Frequency-dependent selection ✅
✅ Justification: Fitness payoff changes with population frequency.
📚 Week 4 – Individual Differences Explanations
Father absence in childhood triggering an earlier sexual strategy exemplifies:
A. Frequency-dependent selection
B. Environmental triggers of mechanisms
C. Reactive heritability
D. Noise
B. Environmental triggers of mechanisms ✅
✅ Justification: Environmental cue activates alternative developmental pathway.
📚 Week 4 – Environmental Triggers
One limitation of evolutionary psychology frequently noted in the lecture is:
A. Lack of any testable predictions
B. Tendency toward unfalsifiable “just-so” stories
C. Ignoring sex differences
D. Refusal to use comparative data
B. Tendency toward unfalsifiable “just-so” stories ✅
✅ Justification: Critics argue some EP hypotheses are hard to falsify empirically.
📚 Week 4 – Limitations of EP
Sensation seeking is defined as the pursuit of novel, complex, and intense experiences even when they involve:
A. No real emotion
B. Significant risks
C. Purely social approval
D. Maximum safety precautions
B. Significant risks ✅
✅ Justification: Zuckerman emphasised risk tolerance in high sensation seekers.
📚 Week 4 – 4.2 Definition
Which of the four sensation-seeking components involves risky physical activities like BASE jumping?
A. Experience Seeking
B. Disinhibition
C. Thrill & Adventure Seeking
D. Boredom Susceptibility
C. Thrill & Adventure Seeking ✅
✅ Justification: TAS captures desire for high-risk physical thrills.
📚 Week 4 – Four Components
Sensation-seeking scores typically:
A. Rise steadily after age 30
B. Decline sharply in adolescence
C. Increase from childhood to teens then decline in adulthood
D. Remain flat across the lifespan
C. Increase from childhood to teens then decline in adulthood ✅
✅ Justification: Age trajectory shows peak in adolescence, slow decline thereafter.
📚 Week 4 – Age Patterns
On the lemon-juice demonstration, higher sensation seekers are predicted to show a _____ correlation with salivation volume.
A. Positive
B. Negative
C. Zero
D. Curvilinear
B. Negative ✅
✅ Justification: Low-arousability high-SS participants salivate less → negative relation.
📚 Week 4 – Learning Activity 4.1
The largest sex difference on Zuckerman’s Sensation-Seeking Scale is usually found on:
A. Experience Seeking
B. Disinhibition
C. Boredom Susceptibility
D. Thrill & Adventure Seeking
B. Disinhibition ✅
✅ Justification: Males typically score higher on disinhibition across cultures.
📚 Week 4 – Sex Differences
The Sensation-Seeking questionnaire uses forced-choice item pairs primarily to reduce:
A. Central-tendency bias
B. Social-desirability responding
C. Acquiescence
D. Extreme responding
B. Social-desirability responding ✅
✅ Justification: Both options are equally desirable, limiting faking good/bad.
📚 Week 4 – Social Desirability Design
High sensation seeking correlates positively with:
A. Introversion
B. Creativity
C. Neuroticism
D. Conscientiousness
B. Creativity ✅
✅ Justification: Studies link high SS to divergent thinking and creative pursuits.
📚 Week 4 – Other Correlates
Field-independence is commonly assessed with the:
A. Lemon-juice test
B. Embedded Figures Test
C. Zuckerman Sensation-Seeking Scale
D. WAIS Block Design
B. Embedded Figures Test ✅
✅ Justification: Embedded Figures measures ability to disembed items from context.
📚 Week 4 – 4.3 Cognitive Topics (Figure 12.2)
The secular Flynn effect refers to generational increases in:
A. Life-history speed
B. IQ test scores
C. Sensation-seeking levels
D. Emotional intelligence
B. IQ test scores ✅
✅ Justification: Worldwide rise in raw IQ scores over decades; linked to nutrition/modernisation.
📚 Week 4 – Intelligence & Environment
