PSYC 472 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Shyness, Decision Rule, Inclusive Fitness
Document Summary
Two selection pressures that would have led to the evolution of emotion programs. Decisional opacity of the environment: nothing inherent to stimuli that tells organism what behavior should be (e. g. sensory perception of a piece of lettuce doesn"t inherently tell you that you should eat it) Organisms interact with many aspects of their environment. There are many behaviors that an organism could potentially engage in. Key: the subset of behaviors that would have been adaptively successful will cause selection for mechanisms (emotions) that systematically cause the successful pattern of behavior. Decision rules are possibly/probably complex because many behaviors are complex. Categorization of the environment: into potential food, potential mates, etc. (e. g. predators tend to have two forward facing eyes) All events and circumstances can be categorized as a novel or as a repetition of an earlier event. Natural selection build decision rules about only those situations.
