PSY 155 Lecture Notes - Natural Selection, Adaptationism, Convergent Evolution
Document Summary
Genotype (the genes) vs. phenotype (what the genes code for) Genes = factories that build and regulator organisms. You can"t divide phenotype into parts coded for by genes versus parts coded for by environment. All aspects at all levels of an organism are joint product of genes and environment. Certain parts are there because they solve a problem. There are also simply by-products (side effects of an adaptation) Phylogenetic perspective: all organisms and species are all related to one another, and to all other species, by common descent. How are we similar to our closest relatives? (ex: chimpanzees) Adaptationist perspective: this is the most useful approach for psychologists because it emphasizes natural selection as the process that designs organisms. This emphasizes that natural selection can make species similar to one another or different from one another. Convergent evolution (ex: dogs and wolves are convergent in the sense that they both evolved to bark to protect their own territory)
