PSY100H1 Chapter 16: CHAPTER 16.docx

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY100H1
• Professor: Dan Dolderman

Document Summary

Beliefs, values, rules and customs of a group of people who share the same language or environment. This is all transmitted from one generation to another. Psychologists have a broader sense: any kind of info acquired by individuals through imitative or social learning. Dolphins and primate imitate to learn, but humans do this much better. Evolutionary perspective: relation between the average group size in which various primate species live and the proportion of the cerebral cortex in their brains. Large average group size= larger the cerebral cortex ratio: benefits to group living: opportunities for social learning, pooled resources, protection against predators, study: children and adult chimpanzees. Humans therefore more adept at learning from others: sophisticated communication skills to convey beliefs, intentions and thoughts, theory of mind: imagine intentions of others, accumulation of cultural information: improvise and add to the behavior. All culture evolves over time: other primates cannot perform these sophisticated cultural learning.