PSYC 3350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Bulimia Nervosa, Social Anxiety Disorder, Visual Acuity
10 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Despite the notion that physical health is a biological issue, it is still strongly related to many psychological variables. Human biology varies across cultures, and such variability has two different explanations/mechanisms: Innate biological differences = result of selection pressures. Acquired biological differences = cultural effects on one"s biology, independent of genes. Humans, like all organisms, evolve due to selective pressures in their environments. Different environments have different selection pressures, leading different populations to evolve different traits the most salient example of genetic variability of humans across different populations is skin colour. Some biological variation is due to differences in inherited genes (ex. skin colour) Skin colour strongly correlates with ultraviolet radiation (uvr) that reaches different parts of the globe. Light skin allows sufficient uvr to synthesize vitamin d. Dark skin prevents over-absorption of uvr, and prevents breakdown of folic acid. Much evidence shows that uvr levels across the globe correlate strongly with skin colour.
