PSY 544 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Pseudorandom Binary Sequence, Random Effects Model, Knuckle-Walking
• (3) Logic and Methods
• Outline
• The three products of evolution
• Adaptations, by-products, and noise
• Testing theories in Evolutionary Psychology
• Top-down and bottom-up approaches
• Current issues in Evolutionary Psychology
• Domain-specific vs. domain-general adaptations?
• The role of culture and learning
• Gathering data in Evolutionary Psychology
• Methods, sources of data, and ways of identifying adaptive problems faced by our
ancestors
• The three products of evolution
• Adaptations: things that we are primarily interested in when we are applying evolutionary
lens to human psychology
What we're primarily interested in evo psych is what are:
• Heritable characteristics, that efficiently, economically, precisely, and reliably help
an organism to survive and/or reproduce.
• By-products: is some kind of:
• Characteristics that comes along as part of the package with adaptations, but does
not play any function to assist in our survival or reproduction. - so its just a
byproduct of our adaptation
good example of an adaption is an umbilical cord, it's shaped by evolution to transfer
nutrients from the mom to the baby while in the womb - well what's a:
• - umbilical cord is a good ex of a by-product that comes along with the cord but
does’t assist i our surial or reprodutio ad that’s our ell utto, the reaso
we have it is not because the belly button by itself helps us survive or reproduce by
effectively. The reason we have it is because it comes along as a by-product of an
adaptation that did help you survive in those 9 months while we were in the womb
• Noise:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Characteristics produced either genetically (by mutations) or environmentally (by
something that happened to you), that either hinder survival and reproduction, or
are neutral in effect. So noise is not beneficial, it's either neutral like by-product or it
can actually sometimes be detrimental
• A good ex of noise is the particular shape of the belly button, they're not all the
same shape some are deep some arent, some big some small, and that's just noise
the button itself is a by-product the shape it takes is either cause by your genes or
your env (perhaps the way the cord was cut) - harateristis do’t hae a
particular advantages and sometimes can have disadvantages
• Adaptations
• Heritable characteristics, that efficiently, economically, precisely, and reliably help an
organism to survive and/or reproduce.
• Heritable part: This means that for adaptations, given that they are heritable, there is a
role of the genes - this does not necessarily mean that there's a gene that inevitably
produces this characteristic because characteristics are developed with injunction to the
env
• Genes that create the characteristic (which develops and becomes activated in
environments)
• Some characteristics are sex linked and can be more advantageous in males or females -
ex: tusks are advantageous for all members of elephant species but there's more
important for tusks of males as it helps them with access to female elephants - so:
• With some exceptions (sex-linked characteristics), adaptations are present in all or
most members of a species and function in all or most environments. - but there are
some adaptations that may be selected for males and not females and vice versa
• Finally these adaptatios do’t hae to e preset fro irth so e a hae
adaptations that wait for some trigger in the env to come up ex. Puberty: pre-
programmed into us, there's a genetic contribution - at some point in life you will go
through, ita an inherent characteristics it but the timing of it, when it happens, is
determined partly env (evidence that levels of nutrition can determine how early or
late someone hits puberty) - ens where nutrition is provided it happens early and in
envs where theres a struggle to get nutrition theres a delay in puberty
• So even though uits an adaptation and is expressed through the genes, the evn can
determine when it happens
• May be triggered by events in the environment (e.g. timing of puberty and nutrition).
• Adaptations
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
So its just a byproduct of our adaptation good example of an adaption is an umbilical cord, it"s shaped by evolution to transfer nutrients from the mom to the baby while in the womb - well what"s a: Particularly those that hinder our survival/reproduction because if they hinder it then we"re less likely to survive or reproduce and have offspring"s and our characteristics are less likely to be passed on to the next generation (wisdom teeth) This form of walking (knuckle walking) uses up a lot of energy (energy costing), walking on 2 legs is energy efficient esp if you have long legs. Common mistake that people make is that just because we have some kind of way of thinking that is typical of humans so its automatically an adaptation of something ex. Humans have a lot of adaptations beneficial for running ex.
