PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Masturbation, Natural Selection, Reverse Engineering

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3100
• Professor: Pat Barclay

Document Summary

Trait or set of traits that evolved because they serve some function. Its not that it"s adaptive its just due to interactions of haemoglobin: reverse engineering. Go from form to function (infer function). -> to eat different foods thus allowing coexistance/reduced competition. Example: arctic hare fur colour change in summer and winter. The phenomenon is only produced under specific circumstances. Example: arctic hare fur colour doesn"t change in response to hunger: efficiency. Are the effects of phenomenon positive and more beneficial than other behaviours: parsimony. Is proposed function the simplest (most parsimonious) explanation. Is there something that would better explain the phenomenon. Function: protection from noxious substances, keep us away and prevent us from consuming things that would make us sick. We can have the same mechanisms being used in other domains: example: we can have physical disgust, sexual disgust, moral disgust, etc, natural selection takes things that were there before and can reuse them in other domains.