PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Parental Investment, Breastfeeding, Margaret Mead

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3100
• Professor: Pat Barclay

Document Summary

Important: many criticisms of evolutionary psychology stem from a misunderstanding of the levels of analysis/different ways to ask questions. To let things in, or because sensors detect motion: this is a false dichotomy: both are explanations, one is a function, the other is a mechanism, neither is incorrect; neither is complete. What is the mechanism vs why we have that mechanism. Once the function is understood, substitutes can be found: we cannot have a complete understanding of one without the other. To circulate blood (function); an electrical current causing muscles to contract (mechanism) Because we are hungry (mechanism); to provide nutrients to our bodies (function) When people do things they are not necessarily consciously considering the function or recognizing the feeling/yearning/etc. as a mechanism to increase our fitness. Developmental processes (ontogeny: the processes that cause a mechanism to develop within an individual"s (actor"s) lifetime. These levels of analysis are complementary, not mutually exclusive.