HDFS 2113 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Phenotype, Mitosis, Twin
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19 Mar 2017
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Biological Beginnings
Chapter 2
Natural Selection and Adaptive Behavior
• Natural Selection – evolutionary process by which those individuals of a species that
are best adapted are the ones that survive and reproduce
• Adaptive behavior – promotes an organism’s survival in the natural habitat
Evolutionary Psychology
• Emphasizes the importance of adaption, reproduction, and survival of the fittest in
shaping behavior
• Evolutionary developmental psychology
o Interest has grown in using the concepts of evolutionary psychology to
understand human development
o Psychological mechanisms are domain-specific
• Connecting evolution and life-span development
o Benefits conferred by evolutionary selection decrease with age
o Natural selection primarily operates during the first half of life
• Older adults
o Weaken biologically
o Need culture-based resources
▪ Cognitive skills, literacy, medical technology, and social support
• Evaluation
o Evolution gave us biological potentialities but it does not dictate behavior
o People have used their biological capacities to produce diverse cultures
▪ Aggressive and peace-loving, egalitarian and autocratic
o Studying specific genes in humans and other species and their links to traits
and behaviors
▪ Best approach for testing ideas coming out of evolutionary psychology
The collaborative gene (important concept to be familiar with)
• Human life begins as a single cell
• Nucleus of each cell contains chromosomes
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