PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Inclusive Fitness, Parental Investment, Bluegill

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jill L Atkinson

Document Summary

Adaptation- the evolution of traits in terms of their survival value. Note that the theory does not assert that people consciously or unconsciously attempt to maximize their reproductive success or to increase the proportion of their genes in subsequent generations. Species-typical: the genes for the tree preference would decrease in frequency over generations compared to genes that encouraged reproductive behaviour with human females. This difference in relative reproductive success would cause the evolution of a male psychology involving sexual preferences for correlates of female fertility. Parental investment- the energy, time, resources, and opportunity cost associated with producing offspring. Ex- female sexual preferences are, of course, different from male sexual preferences. Parental investment theory also explains these sex differences in mating preferences and behaviour. Mating opportunity cost- missed additional mating opportunities as a result of investing in offspring. Males are physically much larger than females and contribute no parental investment after copulation.