PSYC14H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Fecundity
Document Summary
Sexual selection: survival of our offspring, survival of our genes. If the idea is popular it gets to reproduce just like a gene. Ideas can have a lot more mutations" and less accuracy than genes because people can put their own spin on things. Useful ideas spread: you are seen as valuable. Emotional ideas spread: we embellish our stories with emotion to make our stories seem more captivating, other people can relate to them and we can connect to other people. Minimally counterintuitive ideas spread: just enough to make a poignant story, you can almost relate to all of it except some small detail. The story about kidney harvest in las vegas is all of these points. They were usually nomadic so they could move if they needed to move. Conflicts that weren"t resolved could lead to homicide. This is the environment to which we were adapting to. We are not all that different from homosapiens 150,000 years ago.
