Notes Evolution & Universal Motivation SP608 SPR Notes PDF

Preview

Summary

Evolution & Universal Motivation SP608 SPR MCQ -two-hour examination of 40 multiple choice questions. (Around 5 questions per topic).  Reading includedWeek 13: Introduction: Psychology & Ideology Week 14: Evolution - Mankind Week 15: Evolution - Mating Strategies 1 Week 16: Evoluti...

Description

Evolution & Universal Motivation SP608 SPR  

MCQ -two-hour examination of 40 multiple choice questions. (Around 5 questions per topic). Reading included

Week 13: Introduction: Psychology & Ideology Week 14: Evolution - Mankind Week 15: Evolution - Mating Strategies 1 Week 16: Evolution - Mating Strategies 2 Week 17: The Awareness of Mortality Week 19: Religion & Illusion Week 21: The Body Week 22: Emotions

Week 13 Universal Motivation Components of Motivation “Evolution provides the themes - Culture writes the story”   

Biological component (presymbolic) Learned component (symbolic) Cognitive component (conscious or unconscious)

Behavior is caused by an interaction of biological, learned, and cognitive processes. Throughout this course, we will look at human motivation using these three components and take a functional (Darwinian) evolutionary approach Levels of theories: Micro level – Micro-level theories are limited to explanations of specific observations and are not intended to be universal SITUATION  

In Canterbury there is no ‘’market’’ for anchovies’ ice cream. How can I motivate myself?

Meso Level (SDT) Middle-range theories are explanations of human behavior that go beyond one particular observation but are limited in scope and do not attempt to explain all of human behaviour TOPIC  

On average people eat more ice cream when temperatures are high compared to low How can one motivate students?

•SP608 - Macro level (Grand theories such as evolutionary psychology TMT) Grand (or Universal) Theory attempts to explain the inter-relationships among numerous concepts and intends to be independent of time and space. In other words, it intends to be universally applicable BEYOND SITUATION AND TOPIC  

Eg. children like sweets Explanation - evolutionary explained. people evolved to like calories for survical (store fat).

SP608 bird’s eye perspective on human behaviour Why are some men single?     

Personality (e.g., the big five) Interaction with women? Sense of fashion? Not to fit the stereotypes for attractiveness Are there any universals (bird’s eye) - compare to other countries, perhaps universal symmetry

“Evolution provides the themes - Culture writes the story”

 

Interaction Variation - takes into account of culture

Cultural themes we have in common:     

Conflict Mating desire The Self Meaning Religion

Example on cultural views:    

2001, George W. Bush decided not to fund embryonic stem cell research Reason: By extracting embryos, scientists must destroy them Dilemma: Argument that the soul develops at conception By extracting embryos, considered to be a form of murder

Theory of Human Nature (inspired by Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate) We base our thoughts of human nature on     

Generalizations Assumptions that everyone is like ourselves What experts tell us to believe What our brain can handle The limitations of our brain (home) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmMt7fFaIF0

Origins of the Theories of Human Nature Religion: Judeo-Christian theory 

Based on events that occurred in the Bible

Free will - Think of Adam and Eve  

Mind is an immaterial substance Mind continues to exist after the body dies

No evidence Believe in the Blank Slate The three ‘doctrines’ of human nature   

The blank slate The noble savage The ghost in the machine

Official Theories The Blank Slate—John Locke (1632-1704)   

The mind is clear of ideas and beliefs Molded by the environment and experiences Each experience shapes who an individual becomes (so no special rights for aristocrats !)

Example:   

Against aristocracy Equal rights Slavery

By changing one’s environment and experience an individual can be shaped into a different person How ‘The Blank Slate’’ affect our daily lives    

Child raising We have no instincts The world is ‘makeable’ Justice, blame the parents

Against blank slate:  

Twin studies Influence of the environment and lesson genetics

Official Theories The Noble Savage—Rousseau (1712-1778)   

Humans are basically good Evil is the result of civilization Opposing views

Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679)  

Humans have a tendency to create war with each other. Avoid it by surrendering to a sovereign person

How ‘’The Noble Savage’’ doctrine affect our lives:    

How we arrange society Respect natural things Question things that are man-made How we raise our children

Moral & emotional appeal

  

Utopian society – heaven on earth No need for government Child rearing –develop your potential

Donald Brown and the ‘Universal People’  

Hundreds of traits are cross-cultural Attack of the Noble Savage  False stories about tribes that had never heard of war, violence, or conflict  South American and New Guinean tribes  10-60% of males killed in warfare  Brown includes conflict, rape, revenge, jealousy, dominance, and male coalitional violence as universal traits  Conflict resolution is also universal

Universals       

age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organization, Cooking

Official Theories The Ghost in the Machine—Rene Descartes        

Mind and body are different Body is divisible Mind is indivisible Mind and body are combined until death At death the mind continues to live Cannot question the existence of our mind because by doing so, our minds exist No separate parts/ all feels one Can question the existence of our body because we can imagine ourselves as a spirit

Appeal of the ghost in the machine:     

We do not like the be machines (why?) Humans precious Machines purpose functional - humans higher purpose Choice > responsibility Immortality

Against the ghost in the machine: 

Can not correlate with neuroscience evidence, dementia can make you a different person.

These theories of human nature > influence: Daily life    

Religion pseudo religion Spirituality Ethical issues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRtlkcQ6brE Afterlife

Modern Day Social Sciences and Enlightenment Philosophy Social sciences  

Locke’s “Blank Slate” theory/Tabula Rasa Society impressed ideas on blank slate

Learning by association   

Process inscribing ideas/sensations on blank slate Appearing in succession, become associated with each other Blank Slate = Standard Social Science Model

Psychology and the Social Sciences    

Discount instinct and evolution Focus = society Differing opinions on study of mental entities (desires, feelings, ideas) Banned in behavioral psychology!

Behavioral Psychology •Developed by John B. Watson> John Locke’s associationism into conditioning  

Stimulus/Response Punishment/ reward associations

    

Affect future behavior characteristics (ease, frequency, cessation) Mental entities= subjective, immeasurable Independent of biology Utopian Mentality Little Albert

The Other Social Sciences Culture and society create individuals  

Humans endowed with equal mental faculties/ functions Differences are a result of culture social environment or learning.

Arguments against these three doctrines:

  

Cognitive science (causation, number sense spatial representation, theory of mind, language instinct etc.) Neuroscience (brain –soul, twin research etc.) Evolutionary psychology (gender, food preferences, universals etc)

The blank slate - The mind is clear of ideas and beliefs, molded by the environment and experiences     

Example of savage children - children don't have an innate ability to speak unless they are taught. However, Primitive society - they don't talk to the child until the child talks to them. So child picks up the language skills. Correlational design, no information about causality. Reductionist on biology. If we are not blank slates “the fear of inequality “ If we are not blank slates "the fear of imperfectability “- people cannot learn and change

The noble savage  

Humans are basically good, evil is the result of civilization "the fear of determinism“an action is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences

The ghost in the machine - Mind and body are combined until death

Week 14 : Standard Explanations for Human Behaviour Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) 1. Animals are rigidly controlled by their biology, human behaviour determined by culture. 2. Human infants born with nothing apart from a few reflexes and an ability to learn (remember the blank slate) 3. Learning is a general-purpose process used in all domains of knowledge 4. Children learn how to behave in their culture through imitation, reward, and punishment. Evolutionary Psychology   





● Takes a perspective of evolutionary biology + (Cognitive, neuroscience) Psychology ● Goal is to understand the humans (behavior brain etc) from an evolutionary perspective ● The design of the mind must have been shaped by natural selection (including sexual selection) ● Our mental lives and behavior reflect the evolutionary history (Sherlock Holmes of the past) of our species, particularly the adaptive problems that had to be solved ● The Pleistocene period: the “environment of evolutionary adaptedness” or EEA (at least 10,000 (200,000) years ago) Evolution by Natural Selection

Evolutionary theory consists of several simple assumptions: 1. Within a species there is heritable variability ( sex, mutations, genetic flow. 2. Inheritance 3. Some variations result in more offspring (natural selection), who will themselves possess these beneficial differences. will have survival advantages. Evolution of the Peppered Moth ● By nature, light coloured and few black coloured ● Pollution caused light coloured moths to die off ● Eventually dark coloured moths became the norm 1. 'Principle of Variation': Individuals within a species show variation in their physical and behavioural traits. 2. 'Principle of Inheritance': Some of this variation is heritable. 3. 'Principle of Adaptation': Individuals are in competition with one another for scarce resources and some inherited variations 4. 'Principle of Evolution': as a consequence of being better adapted to an environment, some individuals will produce more offspring, who will inherit the same advantages. This is called 'fitness'.

● (Classical fitness = a measure of an individual’s direct reproductive success Inclusive fitness = a measure of an individual’s indirect reproductive success (Hamilton 1964)) Evolution of the owl butterfly? What about evolution today? Beauty is sexy  

  

   

● Example of birds ● Three types of beauty o ○ Natural selection - design o ○ Sexual Selection - visible & invisible Sexual Selection ● Evolution can be driven by mate preferences ● Imagine some females prefer longer than average tails. ● Their offspring will have larger than average tails and their female offspring will fancy long tails. ● The sons can have more than average offspring; and the daughters will have sons similarly blessed. ● Positive feedback leading to runaway growth in tail length. ● BUT WHY prefer any particular trait (like long tails)? ● Traits can be genetic fitness (“internal beauty”) indicators – o ○ Costly signalling o ○ Good genes

Sexual Selection Produces 1. 2. 3. 3.

Rapid evolutionary change Excessive and extravagant adaptations Individual differences that are not eliminated by selection Traits that make one a desirable partner

Adaptations  

● Williams (1966) defined adaptation as ● “a characteristic that has arisen through and been shaped by natural and/or sexual selection. It regularly develops in members of the same species because it helped to solve problems of survival and reproduction in the evolutionary ancestry of the organism. Consequently it can be expected to have a genetic basis ensuring that the adaptation is passed through the generations” .

Products of natural selection ● Adaptations ○ Inherited ○ Develop reliably ○ Solve problems of survival or reproduction○ Most are species-typical ● By products of adaptations—no functional design ○ Not everything that we have has a direct function like belly buttons (just a byproduct of being attached to mother in the womb) 

● Noise—random effects, independent of adaptations (e.g., “iny” vs. “outy”)



● Exaptation – ‘functional’ by products (E.g. feathers)

The Beginnings of Human Evolution Characteristics of the EEA  

        

● What was the environment like? What challenges did we face? How did we adapt? Why did we develop big brains? ● 200.000 but at least 10.000 years ago ? 'evolutionary time' for any species is roughly 1000-10,000 generations ● The EEA probably consisted of: ● Hunter/gatherer/scavenging subsistence ● Nomadic or semi-nomadic ● Low population density ● Small kin-based groupings ● Simple technology ● High infant mortality and low life expectancy ● Vulnerability (e.g. predators, disease) ● Few lifestyle options Adaptive Problems

● Our minds were designed by (this is never on purpose!) natural and sexual selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors ○ avoiding predators ○ eating the right food ○ attracting mates ○ forming alliances ○ “reading others people’s minds” ● All of these things are crucial for passing on your genes. We therefore expect selection to have designed mental mechanisms to solve these problems ● Evolution produces adaptations that on average increase inclusive fitness. ● (What we observe) PROXIMATE CAUSE – the immediate psychological, physiological, biochemical, and environmental reasons  

● (What is behind it all) ULTIMATE CAUSE – the reason why it increased fitness in the evolutionary past ● E.g. we eat because we are hungry, have sex because we desire it, help people because we feel compassion, withdraw because we feel sad – we do not calculate the effect of our behaviour on inclusive fitness! (We do not need to be aware of ultimate reasons to behave adaptively

Are all behaviours adaptive? Evolutionary psychologists habitually look first to adaptive explanations. E.g. Jealousy - most social scientists (SSSM) try to explain this behaviour is “maladaptive” but evolutionary psychologists indicate possible adaptive benefits. What would they be? Most social scientists (SSSM) try to explain away certain behaviours as ‘maladaptive’ (eg. psychopathy, aggression, jealousy, rape) but evolutionary psychologists try to explain them in terms of their possible adaptive benefits. (note: Of course adaptive does not imply morally good or just)

It is not always possible to explain behaviours as “adaptive” and we must take into account the following: In some (many) cases the environment may change more rapidly than the organism can evolve. An adaptation is not always adaptive in every circumstance. (Costs! Schizophrenia? Height) Insights from Evolutionary Psychology     



● Our mind consists of a set of domain specific information processing modules (language, theory of mind) ● What about general intelligence?Food Preferences ● Strong desire for fat calories was once very adaptive, no longer the case ● Does that mean it no longer exists? ● ‘Speculation’: An environment in which food is only periodically available - e.g. by dieting - means it is adaptive to switch on more fat storage ● Food selection: The most general problem in food selection is how to obtain adequate amounts of calories and essential vitamins

○ However, we must also avoid poisoning ourselves  

● Hypothesis: humans have evolved taste preferences to avoid toxic materials ● How do we test this

Taste Aversions ● Evidence suggests that the materials that smell and taste bad to humans are also the materials that are potentially harmful to us. ○ Broccoli and brussel sprouts contain isothiocyanate which can be toxic in children (Nesse & Williams 1994)       

● We have adaptive mechanisms for removing harmful materials from our body.○ Vomiting. ● Example: Pregnancy sickness as an adaptation ● Might there be some adaptive value to pregnancy sickness? (Flaxman & Sherman, 2000) ● Corresponds to the time in prenatal development when embryo is most susceptible to the effects of teratogens ● Modern women acquire aversions to foods that are high in toxins (meat, coffee, alcohol) ● Despite variability pregnancy sickness is universal ● Crucially - women who experience pregnancy sickness show reduced spontaneous abortions

Reasoning ● We are good at reasoning about problems relevant to the EEA ○ Cheater detection (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992) and this detection is automatic (van Lier et al, 2013) Perception

● We perceive changes in loudness more than equivalent falling intensity, and we perceive approaching sounds as starting and stopping closer than equidistant receding sounds (Neuhoff et al., 2010). ● Our colour vision is adapted to seeing ripe/unripe fruits against background foliage.   

 

        



      

● We are able to discriminate between ‘frightened’ and ‘neutral’ sweat (de Groot et al., 2013) ; ‘sexual’ and ‘neutral’ sweat (Wisman & Shrira, 2019) ● We respond to threatening scents with escape behavior (Wisman & Shrira, 2015)Memory ● We perceive changes in loudness more than equivalent falling intensity, and we perceive approaching sounds as starting and stopping closer than equidistant receding sounds (Neuhoff et al., 2010). ● Our colour vision is adapted to seeing ripe/unripe fruits against background foliage. ● We are able to discriminate between ‘frightened’ and ‘neutral’ sweat (de Groot et al., 2013) ; ‘sexual’ and ‘neutral’ sweat (Wisman & Shrira, 2019) ● We respond to threatening scents with escape behavior (Wisman & Shrira, 2015) Mood (remembering bad stronger than good) ● Evolution has no interest in maximizing happiness! ● Anxiety: Makes us cautious about actions we should be cautious about ● Sadness: Makes us withdraw from situations in which we might suffer further loss ● Anger and kindness: Produce the effective tit for tat style of negotiation Mental Disorders: Fears and phobias ● Phobias: fear of snakes vs. fear of guns ● Depression: Should withdraw from a major life endeavor and start a new one? ● Common fears and phobias: ● The majority of reported fears and phobias involve: o ○ Spatial stimuli: heights, confined spaces o ○ Specific animals: snakes, bats, spiders o ○ The dark o ○ Public speaking ● There have been very few reported phobias of electricity, cars, busses, power tools, wood stoves, lawn mowers, mountain bikes, X-ray machines, cell phones etc... Summary ● Natural selection ● Sexual selection ● Adaptations (EEA - environment of evolutionary adaptedness) ● Ultimate cause vs. proximate cause ● General versus domain specific ● ‘Nature shapes the themes – culture writes the story’ ● Videos about misunderstanding evolutionary psychology ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPLCr4ouSNU ● https://evolution-institute.org/article/on-common-criticisms-of-evolutionary-p sychology/ ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mPCqYxB4d4

1. Criticism caused by various misunderstandings ● “we humans don’t do things because we want to raise our inclu...