week 5- problems of survival

Question 1

what are the 2 main problems of survival discussed in this course?

Answer 1

1. challenges of obtaining sufficient nutrition
2. challenges of avoiding food toxins

Question 2

what kind of adaptive problems does “obtaining nutrition” involve?

Answer 2

adaptive problems related to recognizing, acquiring, handling, consuming, and digesting food

Question 3

do we have innate preferences when it comes to food?

Answer 3

yes, some

Question 4

how do we avoid the adaptive problems of recognizing, acquiring, handling, consuming, digesting food early in life?

Answer 4

by breastfeeding

Question 5

how has our preference for sweet foods adapted/why have they adapted?

Answer 5

an adaptation that efficiently, economically, reliably, and precisely solved the adaptive problem of
helping us identify the greatest sources of calories

Question 6

explain Zverev (2004) study on taste preferences and its results

Answer 6

-showed that participants were more
sensitive to sweet and salty tastes after a temporary period of fasting than after a meal. So, when hungry, things taste better (sweeter and more salty) which encourages you to eat
-Sensitivity to bitterness was not altered by being hungry.

Question 7

how/why has our dispreference for sour tastes evolved?

Answer 7

-dispreference for sour tastes may be an adaptation to help us avoid unripe, but perhaps especially spoiled, foods

Question 8

how/why has our dispreference for bitter tastes evolved?

Answer 8

A dispreference for bitter tastes may be an adaptation to help us avoid foods that naturally contain toxins

Question 9

Although we are all born with a dispreference for bitter tastes, some of us taste bitterness ___________ than others. why?

Answer 9

more intensely
-this is linked to certain genes

Question 10

how are innate dispreferences changed?

Answer 10

flavour-nutrient learning

Question 11

what is flavour nutrient learning (FNL)

Answer 11

humans acquire liking for certain foods by associating the flavour of food with the positive consequences of nutrient ingestion, leading to either acquired liking or learning about satiety

Question 12

what is neophobia

Answer 12

strong aversion to new foods

Question 13

how do people with neophobia act when exposed to new foods and why is this evolutionarily beneficial?

Answer 13

-they only eat new foods in small doses and separately from other foods
-this is beneficial because it gives you an opportunity to learn if a new food is going to make you sick, we may have evolved to easily learn associations between food and illness

Question 14

when does neophobia emerge most often in humans?

Answer 14

preschool years

Question 15

describe Garcia and Koelling’s (1966) study on food aversion and rats and its implications

Answer 15

Garcia and Koelling conducted experiments where rats were exposed to a compound stimulus: a sweet taste (the “tasty water”), along with a bright light and a clicking sound (the “bright-noisy water”). Some rats were then exposed to radiation or lithium chloride, which induced illness, while others were exposed to foot shock. The key finding was that rats developed a stronger aversion to the taste (tasty water) when paired with illness (radiation or lithium chloride) than to the bright-noisy water. Conversely, when paired with foot shock, the rats developed a stronger aversion to the bright-noisy water than the taste. This demonstrated that the strength of learning depended on the correspondence of the cue (taste or bright-noisy) to the consequence (illness or pain). It showed that animals are biologically predisposed to form certain associations, like taste and illness, more readily than others. The rats developed neophobia and refused to drink the water even when the stimulus would come on.

Question 16

what pov did Garcia and Koelling’s study prove wrong

Answer 16

previous behaviourists who said the conditioned stimulus has to be IMMEDIATE, obviously it does not

Question 17

what is prepared learning?

Answer 17

If something makes you sick, learn that quickly and avoid that food in the future.

Question 18

what is the disease avoidance hypothesis?

Answer 18

food disgust evolved because it helped protect people from disease. We may be biologically prepared to readily learn to be disgusted by certain things

Question 19

how does the disgust expression itself relate to evolutionary disgust? give examples

Answer 19

is thought to be relevant to
the function of disgust.
-ex. Narrowing or closure of the
eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Sometimes, tongue protrusion

Question 20

is the disgust expression universal? what is the evidence of that

Answer 20

yes, its produced even in those
blind from birth (so not likely learned)

Question 21

If the hypothesis that disgust protects us from disease is true, then the things that make us (universally) the most disgusted should be the substances most likely to _________

Answer 21

carry disease or make us unwell

Question 22

what are the individual differences in disgust (even though the expression/triggers are universal)

Answer 22

women show more disgust than men

Question 23

when in pregnancy is morning sickness most likely to occur?

Answer 23

The condition co-occurs with the period of greatest vulnerability
of the embryo

Question 24

how would an evolutionary psychologist explain morning sickness in pregnancy

Answer 24

as an adaptation for embryo protection

Question 25

is the morning sickness adaptation hypothesis have support? what is it

Answer 25

women who experience morning sickness are way less likely to experience a miscarriage than women who do not experience morning sickness

Question 26

why do one's eyes go wide when they have fear? (adaptively)

Answer 26

facilitating a greater field of view

Question 27

why does one scream when they have fear? (adaptively)

Answer 27

to alert others your distress and transmit fear

Question 28

what is special about the acoustics of screaming vocalizations that distinguishes them from other vocalizations?

Answer 28

Roughness, or an especially rapid modulation of volume, from high to low and back again

Question 29

what part of the brain does hearing screaming activate

Answer 29

amygdala

Question 30

what are some behavioural reactions of fear

Answer 30

fight, flight, freeze, submit, play dead, faint

Question 31

what are some physiological reactions of fear

Answer 31

glucose release in muscles, increase in respiratory rate, heart rate increase, blood diverted to muscles from digestion

Question 32

what fear situation would one freeze in

Answer 32

If you are not sure you’ve been seen, or don’t know where the threat is, freeze and remain alert (you might avoid being detected)

Question 33

what fear situation would one flight in

Answer 33

If you know you’ve been spotted, try to flee!

Question 34

what fear situation would one fight in

Answer 34

If you can’t get away, and you stand a chance, then try to fight!

Question 35

what fear situation would one submit, faint, or play dead in?

Answer 35

if you don’t stand a chance, then signal non- aggression: submit to (try to appease) a conspecific or perhaps faint, or play dead with a predator

Question 36

where do the most common fears/phobias come from?

Answer 36

the commonest fears are not always the things that perhaps pose the greatest dangers to us in our current environments Instead, the commonest fears appear to be the things that were likely the greatest dangers in ancestral/traditional environments (e.g., snakes, spiders, other animals, heights, social rejection)

Question 37

Developing these fears is not automatic, but may be a form of ______________

Answer 37

prepared learning

Question 38

explain Mineka and Cook's (1993) biologically prepared fear learning study

Answer 38

Rhesus monkeys who watched other Rhesus monkeys display fear of snakes, then became afraid of snakes themselves. But Rhesus monkeys who watched other Rhesus monkeys display fear of other stimuli (flowers or bunny rabbits), did not become afraid of those things

Question 39

explain Ohman, Flykt, and Esteves (2001) about spider and snake detecting and what it means

Answer 39

Our biological preparedness might extend to having evolved perceptual processes that scan and analyze the perceptual field for certain stimuli that capture attention. – People faster to detect spiders and snakes among mushrooms and flowers than vice versa

Question 40

explain some snake and spider "pop out" replication studies

Answer 40

- Sulikowski (2012) Ps are faster to detect spiders and snakes versus similarly-shaped benign animals (beetles and caterpillars). – Although spider and snake phobics are even faster to spot them, the effect applies to non-phobics too – The same effects were found in 3- to 5-year- old children, cross-culturally

Question 41

what is a hypothesis as to why people can detect spiders so fast

Answer 41

It may even be that young infants have a “spider template” active as early as 5 months, that means the objects resembling spiders draw and hold attention for longer

Question 42

what did Lazarevic's (2020) replication spider pop out study show

Answer 42

Lazarević et al. (2020) recently conducted a close replication of LoBue and DeLoache (2008) that included: – the same pictures LoBue and DeLoache used – pre-registration – a bigger sample size (N = 545 vs. N = 144, 48, 48) * ...and they did not find significant differences between searches for snakes among frogs or caterpillars versus for frogs/caterpillars among snakes.

Question 43

how has height evolved to be a fear?

Answer 43

perceptual mechanisms that exaggerates the perceived distance down from (but not up to) a particular height to help us avoid being harmed by falling from a height

Question 44

what is the descent illusion?

Answer 44

people judge vertical distances as greater from the top, looking- down, than from the bottom, looking-up

Question 45

Why should we physically be more cautious coming down than going up?

Answer 45

-Climbing straight up means leading with the more dexterous hands. -Climbing down means leading with the less dexterous feet as well as angling your body out from the surface (to see where to put your feet)

Question 46

Why should we (riskily) be more cautious coming down than going up?

Answer 46

The risks of coming down are greater than of climbing up

Question 47

what is error management theory? give 2 examples of things that fit into this framework

Answer 47

No perceptual process is ever going to be perfect, never making a mistake. – Given this, our perceptual systems seemed to have evolved with a bias so that errors will be more in the direction of the less costly mistake. – We “manage” the errors, by having perceptual systems that are biased towards making “false alarms” rather than “misses” -ex. the descent illusion and spider/snake detection skills

Question 48

describe the error management theory chart

Answer 48

*see docs*