LIFESCI 15 Study Guide - Final Guide: Dopamine Receptor, Conditioned Taste Aversion, Addiction
Document Summary
Happiness is a tool that our genes use to propel us towards behaviors that benefit these genes. Consequently, the rate and direction of our levels of happiness are more trivial than our absolute levels of happiness because it is progress towards our goals, rather than actually achieving our goals, that makes us happy. This relates to material acquisition in that buying or acquiring material goods will only make us happy for a temporary period. Once our emotions achieve the alternation in our behavior towards which they propelled us, these emotions fade. Culture is defined as the non-genetic, extra-cellular transmission of information or behaviors from generation to generation. Constrained learning in lab rats is an example of the way in which culture and biology interplay. These rats were conditioned to associate some cultural occurrences with biological consequences. For example, the rats were given water to drink, but this water had a weird taste.
