Module 02 Evolutionary Psychology PDF

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Prof Shelley Brown...

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Module 02: Evolutionary Psychology Shelley Brown: OK, welcome back everyone to Psychology 3402 Criminal Behavior. We're in module two section two. We're focusing on biology and evolutionary theories of crime. In this particular section, however, we're going to focus more on evolutionary psychology. So, in the last section, we talked about natural selection, which is usually what most people think about when we think about evolution in general. We think about the evolution of plants and organisms, geographic areas. Evolutionary psychology, in short, applies the principles of evolution to human behavior. So, the theory essentially argues we are the way we are in large part because our emotions such as fear, anger, being phobic of certain things, behaving, being impulsive, being a risk-taker, perhaps being violent in certain circumstances, those psychological mechanisms evolved because they were successful adaptations, on average, in an ancestral environment. And remember what that ancestral environment is characterized by? Brutish times, hunting and gathering era, times were tough. Risk of death from a predator was very real. Tough to find food, shelter, safe haven. Mate scarcity was also an issue. So, evolutionary psychology. Now, just to help us understand evolutionary psychology a bit more, I think it's quite useful to talk about Genghis Khan. And actually, it's quite useful in terms of introducing evolutionary forensic psychology. So, most of you, historian or not, you've heard or have some idea of who Genghis Khan was. There's been countless, countless historical documents that have been prepared, written about Genghis Khan. He essentially was a savage, savage Mongolian conqueror who used extreme violence and brutality. It's estimated that he killed hundreds of thousands of women, children, men, all in the quest to build his Mongolian empire. He lived approximately from 1162 to 1227. Just to put it in context, this empire that Genghis Khan was able to create, at its peak, it's estimated that his entire empire pretty much spanned from Japan to current-day Afghanistan, which approximately was about a quarter of the Earth's landmass.

It was also estimated that the people that lived within the Mongolian empire accounted for approximately a quarter of the world's population at that time. And this empire is the second largest empire to have ever existed in the world, so hugely successful. He was very powerful, clearly. He was feared and revered. He was quite high status, clearly very wealthy. Also, important to note is that Genghis Khan, historical documents tell us that he kept several, several wives and multiple concubines. And it's hard to know for sure, but it's estimated that he may have fathered more than 1,000 children. But, of course, the historical accounts aren't 100% accurate. Now, this is a really cool study. So, in 2003, some genetic researchers did a study on about 2,000 men in Asia. They examined the Y chromosome for these 2,000-plus men. And what they found is that in this sample of 2,000, about 8% of these men had the exact same chromosome. It was virtually identical. They were able to link that chromosome back to Genghis Khan's grandfather directly. Now, they couldn't conclusively link that chromosome to Genghis Khan himself, but to his paternal grandfather. Now, interesting what they did. They ran some simulation analysis and they estimate that today, or as of 2003, Genghis Khan actually has 16 million direct descendants as of 2003. In contrast, his peers, it's estimated would have only fathered approximately 20, would only have approximately 20 direct descendants. Wow. What a huge difference. Genghis Khan's strategies definitely enhanced his reproductive success. So, what is the message here? I've written about in the case of Khan, using brutish violent methods clearly led to status, accumulated power and wealth. What did that lead to? Access to women and incredible reproductive success. And a key is that natural selection favors any adaptation, could be biological or psychological, that enhances reproductive success, so that's the key. Natural selection will favor any adaptation, biological or psychological, that enhances reproductive success. And again, that adaptation, it could just enhance reproductive success on average by as little as 1%. That is enough for it to be sustained in the gene pool, passed on through generation to the next generation.

So, what is the heart of evolutionary psychology? Essentially, it's this. The way our ancestors in that hunting and gathering environment, the way they behaved and thought, those emotions, anything that they did that happened to increase the odds of survival for themselves, and their offspring and their future offspring, that of eventually became part of the human gene pool in the form of something known as evolved psychological mechanisms. So, evolutionary psychology is saying that evolved psychological mechanisms evolved through the process of natural selection. Now, one point I want to make is that evolutionary psychology, like evolution in general, is a species-level explanation. Sometimes it's referred to as a distal-level theory. It explains behavior for an entire species. Now, in the next module, module 3, we're going to move into theories that are more at the individual level, so more of the psychology, if you will. Why does an individual engage in crime versus another individual? So, this, in contrast, it's more distal theory. It's a species-level explanation of human behavior. And lastly, before we move into our next section, I just want to emphasize that evolutionary psychology, how do you study? How do you actually test evolutionary psychological hypotheses? Well, there are diverse methods. Evolutionary psychology is relatively new in the history of psychology, but it's gaining quite a bit of momentum. There's all kinds of ways researchers study evolutionary psychology, historical accounts, anthropology research, cross-cultural research. If we see similarities across cultures in terms of certain things, the existence of anger, phobias, fear of the dark, if there's cross-cultural consistencies, that's evidence for evolution. Psychologists, what do we do for research? Well, often we'll do interviews with people. We'll administer questionnaires. We might do experiments in a lab, manipulate some variables. We'll still use those methods to understand behavior through an evolutionary lens. It's the same methodology. The difference is that the questions that we're asking and how those results are interpret varies a function of our theoretical orientation, evolution, in this case. Thank you....