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Evolutionary Psychology Final Exam

Terms in this set (28)

Why conflict between the sexes exists
men and women come into conflict not because they are competing for the same resources, but rather because the strategy of the individual of one sex can interfere with the strategy of an individual of another.
The sexual over-perception bias
men are likely to infer sexual interest on part of a women when it does not exist.
The commitment skepticism bias
women have evolved an inferential bias designed to underestimate men's actual level of romantic commitment to them early in courtship.
How status affects reactions to sexual harassment
women find acts of sexual harassment more harassing from a low-status man who has power over them.
Mate deprivation hypothesis and results of research testing it
men who have experienced deprivation of sexual access to women will be more likely to use sexually aggressive tactics.
the results of the research testing it contradicted the hypothesis. Men who scored high on self-perceived mating success tended to score high on the measures of sexual aggression.
Sex differences in jealousy and reactions to infidelity
Men and women do not differ in the frequency or the magnitude of the jealousy they experience, they differ in the weight they give to the cues that trigger jealousy.
Men care more about cues to sexual infidelity.
Women care more about cues to a long-term diversion of resources and investment, such as emotional involvement with another person.
Sex differences in mate-retention tactics
Men are more likely to conceal a partner, resort to threats and violence (especially against rivals), use resource display, use acts of submission and self-abasement (groveling).
Women are more likely to enhance appearance and induce jealousy on partners to increase closeness.
Factors that increase the likelihood of using violence as a mate retention tactic
Men use violence and threats as a strategy to limit their partners autonomy, decreasing the odds that the partner will commit infidelity or defect from the relationship.
Strong predictors are their partner's attractiveness, youth, their perceptions of their partners interest in other/older men, monopolization of time, emotional manipulation, unemployment/poverty in men, male short-term mating orientation, poor impulse control, and men's own infidelity.
How mate value affects the type of mate retention tactics one is likely to use
Men might have started controlling resources to attract women, and women's preferences may have followed.
Women's preferences for successful, ambitious, and resourceful mates might have selected men for competitive strategies of risk taking, status driving, and derogation of competitors along with the dimensions of status and resources.
What is meant by dominance hierarchy?
refers to the fact that some individuals within a group reliably gain greater access than others to key resources- resources that can contribute to survival or reproduction. Those ranked high in the hierarchy have grater access to resources.
Stability of dominance hierarchies
hierarchies are not static. individuals continually compete for elevated positions. Individuals continually fight for positions in the hierarchy, rendering it an ever-changing rather than a static form of social organization.
What is meant by prestige?
a freely conferred deference or the attainment of status due to special skills, knowledge, or social connections.
Sex differences in types of dominant acts preferred
Women prefer prosocial dominant acts as desirable.
Men prefer egoistic dominant acts as desirable.
The difference between deontic rules and indicative rules
Deontic: Reasoning about what a person is permitted, obligated, or forbidden to do. This pertains to the early emergence in a child's life about rules and obligations. "Am I old enough to drink this alcoholic beverage?"
Indicative: reasoning about what is true and false. "Is there really a tiger hiding behind that tree?"
The results of Linda Mealy's research on cheaters
Cheaters were remembered far more frequently than non-cheaters. Memory for cheaters was enhanced if they were low in status. Memory bias for cheaters was stronger for men than women.
Human social reasoning is strongly affected by rank and status.
The function of self-esteem from the perspective of the sociometer theory
Sociometer theory: self-esteem functions as a subjective indicator or gauge of other people's evaluations. An increase in self-esteem indicated an increase in the degree to which one is socially included and accepted by others. A loss in self-esteem follows from a downward shift in inclusion and acceptance by others.
Humans have evolved in groups and need others to survive and reproduce. This prompted the evolution of motivations to seek the company of others, form social bonds, and curry the favor of others in a group. Failure to be accepted by others would have resulted in isolation and death if one were to live without protection from the group. Social acceptance is critical to survival and selection favored self-esteem as a mechanism for individuals to track their acceptance by others.
The relationship between testosterone and cortisol in dominance
"Mismatch hypothesis" placing a high-T level individual in a low-status condition or a low-T level individual in a high-status condition will create stress (cortisol) and impair cognitive performance.
Physical attributes that people assign to leaders
size and strength appear to remain important in terms of leaders. People believe that physically formidable individuals are better at policing within-group conflict and representing the organizations interests to other groups.
Effects of winning a competition
winners show a rise in T for up to 2 hours after a match or game. Mood changes accompany T changes- increasing in mood =increase in T.
Higher levels of T in winners may function to elevate self-confidence, fostering the assumption of a greater status role, perhaps even motivating sexual encounters.
How the entire cognitive system is viewed from the evolutionary perspective
the entire cognitive system is a complex collection of interrelated information-processing devices, functionally organized for solving classes of adaptive problems.
The theory of ecological rationality
consists of evolved mechanisms containing design features that utilize ecological structure to facilitate adaptive problem solving.
The shape and form of cognitive mechanisms coordinate with the recurring statistical regularities of the ancestral environment in which humans evolved.
Group selection and problems trying to successfully apply it
Group selection: there are group-level adaptations that evolved through the differential reproduction and extinction of groups. Groups within self-sacrificing individuals are more likely to survive than groups without altruists, leading to the evolution of group-benefitting altruism.
The conditions that make group selection a powerful force are rarely met, especially in humans.
The display hypothesis
culture is an emergent phenomenon arising from sexual competition among vast members of individuals pursuing different mating strategies in different mating arenas.
The display hypothesis appears to account for the age and sex distribution of culture production.
What is meant by evoked culture?
Evoked culture: refers to phenomena that are triggered in some groups more than others because of differing environmental conditions.
Such cultural differences are explained by evoking a universal shared evolved mechanism combined with local between-group differences in input into that mechanism.
Central tents of evolutionary developmental psychology
1. Natural selection occurs throughout the life span, but tends to be strongest early in life.
2. Adaptations in infancy and childhood can solve adaptive problems at a particular time during development or prepare the individual for an adaptive problem later in life.
3. The extended childhood of humans prepares them for the complexities of social living later in life.
4. Children have conditional adaptations which allow them to respond flexibly to features of childhood environment with strategies that are effective in coping with environments that those features statistically predict.
5. Gene-environment interactions occur throughout development.
What culture-gene co-evolution is
Refers to when a culture creates a form of selection that influences genetic evolution and hence our evolved psychology.
Fire and cooking and the consequent effect on the evolution of the human digestive system and eating behavior.
What is meant by reactive heritability?
Evolved psychological mechanisms designed to take as input heritable qualities as a guide to strategic solutions.
Selection favors the evolution of assessment of mechanisms if they help a person choose adaptive strategies.
Evolved mechanisms are not only attuned to the recurrent features of the external world, but can also be attuned to the evaluation of self.
The ecological dominance/social competition hypothesis
Human ancestors were able to subdue many of the "hostile forces of nature" that previously impeded survival. Ex: starvation, warfare, pestilence, extreme weather.
Human dominance over the ecology opened the door to a new set of selected forces/competition from other humans.
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