PSY 544 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Bsc Young Boys, Oedipus Complex, Scientific Method
• Evolutionary Psychology is only one among many psychological approaches
• There are many levels of explanation that can be applied to all human thoughts, feelings,
and behaviour. Evolutionary Psychology is only one of many approaches, and does not
seek to replace, but to complement other approaches.
The correct way to think about this is to think about evolutionary psych as an approach to
psych but just one among many approaches to psych. Partly the prb is caused by people
dividing themselves within the categories of different psychologists and then focusing on
particular questions/analysis that that type of psych does. And you don't often see them
talking about the other factors that play a role in the behvs that they are studying. The prb
is when psychologists think that what they are studying is the only cause of the behv
• Ultimate versus proximate causes
• The evolutionary approach often involves thinking about more ultimate, rather than
proximate causes of thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
A proximate cause of behv is the answer to a question like: Why did this person do this
particular thing at this particular place at this particular time with this particular
person/object. Proximate means close - so why did you do the things close in time
• An ultimate cause of behv is the ans to the question: why do people do that thing at all?
It's not answering why people do something in a certain situtaion or with a certain person -
rather it asks why are they doing it at all, it's the ultimate question
• Every behaviour is multiply determined. And Both ultimate and proximate causes
contribute to our understanding of behaviour. We have to get away from the idea that
thoughts, feelings and behaviours have A (one) cause, they typically have many
causes/contributing factors for why a person why or feels a certain why and identifying
one cause doesn't automatically exclude the other causes
• Think about two diff behvs: sex and eating
• Proximate causes explain when people do things, with whom or what do they do those
things
Ex: why do people have sex? Because they are horny - sex is pleasurable - there may even
be a proximate influence of hormones in the body - all these things are proximate causes
but none of them are the ultimate cause
• The ultimate cause is to reproduce
• This does not deny that proximate causes aren't true, it's just that they ask different
questions
• Why do you eat? Because im hungry, it's pleasurable but why is it pleasurable to eat at all?
This could be answered through evo psychology as a need for survival
•
Behaviour
More proximate cause
More ultimate cause
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Sex
Feelings of lust, pleasure. Hormones.
Passing on genes.
Eating
Feelings of hunger, pleasure. Hormones.
Providing nourishment.
• Misunderstanding #1: Do Evolutionary Psychologists think evolution explains all?
• Evolutionary Psychology often tries to identify the more ultimate causes of behv rather
than the more proximate ones but the issue why we get into a misunderstanding is
because: the ultimate causes act on us through the more proximate ones. So yes ultimately
from an evolutionary perspective, sex is about passing on genes, but that works through
circulating hormones, feelings of pleasure (the proximate reasons). The misunderstanding
arises because what we perceive as reasons for our behv are proximate causes, we don't
directly perceive the ultimate causes of our behv.
• Very few people consciously think of passing down their genes, they may be thinking about
having a baby but that's different from thinking about I need to replicate my genes
because if that was peoples only motive and all they cared about then they would be lining
up to donate sperms
• But the ultimate causes act on us through the more proximate ones.
• So, what we perceive as the reasons for our behaviour are some of the more
proximate causes of our behaviour (lust, hunger, pleasure).
• This can often cause people to deny the ultimate causes (I do’t have se to pass o
gees, I do it for pleasure!)
• Complementary questions
Evolutionay psychologists, the good ones, realize that evo psychology is one of many
approaches and it does not replace rather it compliments other approaches by asking diff
questions and identifies one among many causes of behv. So it is one part of the discipline
of psychology
Example: the impact of media on people through a social psych approach: what happens
when an average person looks at images on the cover of a magazine. One of the ways in
which we compare ourselves with others is on the grounds of attractiveness. The question
asked as a social psychologist is: how do the images effect people and why, whats the
mechanism? If we were to take an evolutionary psych approach the research would not
replace the work done through the social psych perspective, it would compliment it
because we would probably be asking a different question (we wouldn't be seeking to find
a diff ans rather we'd be looking at a diff question ex? We may ask why do men and
women tend to compare themselves through different attributes. Now we're not asking
what the effect is or why, instead we may ask why do we compare ourselves at all does
this have anything to do with evolution?).
• It is, of course, true that people (usually) have sex for pleasure and other proximate
reasons, rather than to consciously pass on their genes.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Evolutionary psychology is only one among many psychological approaches, there are many levels of explanation that can be applied to all human thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Evolutionary psychology is only one of many approaches, and does not seek to replace, but to complement other approaches. The correct way to think about this is to think about evolutionary psych as an approach to psych but just one among many approaches to psych. Partly the prb is caused by people dividing themselves within the categories of different psychologists and then focusing on particular questions/analysis that that type of psych does. And you don"t often see them talking about the other factors that play a role in the behvs that they are studying. A proximate cause of behv is the answer to a question like: why did this person do this particular thing at this particular place at this particular time with this particular person/object.
