PSYC 3420 Chapter Notes -Agoraphobia, Hunter-Gatherer, Raw Foodism

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3420
• Professor: Irwin Silverman

Document Summary

Climate, weather, food shortages, toxins, diseases, parasites, predators, conspecifics. Food preferences: people spend most on food, western world: 21% income spent on food. **being omnivores; eating wide food variety poisoning odds. Food part a preoccupation, verbal discourse, social interaction, religious belief. Disgust disease avoidance hypothesis-disgust helps us avoid disease: disgust towards disease carrying substances, universal elicitors: rotten, dirty, foul smelling, moldy , disgust universally recognized, study: w find disease carrying objects more disgusting. ***can be situation dependent, can be shut down/overridden in some situations. Baby poop smelling study: mothers rated their baby"s poop as less disgusting than other infant"s poop. Embryo protection hypothesis (eph) - pregnancy sickness adaptive to prevent mom from consuming teratogens. Evidence: most repugnant foods have highest toxins, meat avoidance during 1st trimester, morning sickness when fetus most vulnerable to toxins (2-4th wk, w without pregnancy sickness more likely spontaneous abortion pregnancy sickness gone @ 8th wk. Cooking hypothesis- fire/cooking key to human"s evolution of large brains.