P1246990958cOrDF

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Personality Psychology
Chapter 5 Evolutionary Perspectives On Personality
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Evolution and Natural Selection

• Natural Selection
• Sexual Satisfaction
• Genes and Inclusive Fitness
• Products of the Evolutionary Process

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Evolution and Natural Selection

• Natural Selection
• The process by which adaptations are created and
  change takes place over time
• Hostile Forces of Nature
• Adaptations

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Evolution and Natural Selection

• Sexual Selection
• The evolution of characteristics because of
  their mating benefits rather than because of
  their survival benefits
• Intrasexual Competition
• Intersexual Selection

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Evolution and Natural Selection

• Genes and Inclusive Fitness
• Differential Gene Reproduction
• Inclusive Fitness Theory

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Evolution and Natural Selection

• Products of the Evolutionary Process
• Adaptations
• Byproducts of Adaptations
• Noise or Random Variations

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Evolutionary Psychology and Human Nature

• Premises of Evolutionary Psychology
• Domain-Specificity
• Numerousness
• Functionality

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Evolutionary Psychology and Human Nature

• Empirically Testing Evolutionary Hypotheses
• Deductive Reasoning Approach
• Inductive Reasoning Approach

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Human Nature

• The Need To Belong
• Helping and Altruism
• Universal Emotions

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Human Nature

• The Need To Belong
• The most basic human motivators are status and
  acceptance
• Social Anxiety

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Human Nature

• Helping and Altruism
• Helping others is a direct function of the
  recipients ability to enhance the inclusive
  fitness of the helper
• The tendency to help is a direct function of
  genetic relatedness

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Human Nature

• Universal Emotions
• Common adaptations across cultures
• Emotions as fitness affordances
• Manipulation hyposthesis

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Sex Differences

• Aggression
• Jealousy
• Desire for Sexual Variety
• Mate Preferences

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Sex Differences

• Aggression
• In all cultures studied to date, men are more
  often the killers and the victims in murders
• Effective Polygyny and Intrasexual Competition

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Sex Differences

• Jealousy
• Men over evolutionary history have risked
  investing in children who were not their own
• Men should be more jealous in response to cues to
  a sexual infidelity
• Women become more distressed over a partners
  emotional infidelity

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Sex Differences

• Desire for Sexual Variety
• Evolutionary theory predicts men are more
  inclined to seek multiple mates to increase their
  reproductive success
• Research
• 0 women consent to sex with stranger
• 75 men consent to sex with stranger

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Sex Differences

• Mate Preferences
• Evolutionary psychology predicts
• Men value womens physical appearance which
  provides cues to her fertility
• Women value mens financial resources which help
  in raising the family

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Individual Differences

• Environmental Effects on Species-Typical Patterns
• Adaptive Self-Assessment of Heritable Qualities
• Frequency-Dependent Alternative Strategies

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Individual Differences

• Environmental Effects on Species-Typical Patterns
• Individual differences are the result of
  environmental differences acting on
  species-typical psychological mechanisms

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Individual Differences

• Adaptive Self-Assessment of Heritable Qualities
• Evaluating ones personal strengths and
  weaknesses allows an individual to pursue
  different social strategies

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Individual Differences

• Frequency-Dependent Alternative Strategies

Individual differences are the result of
environmental differences acting on
species-typical psychological mechanisms
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Limitations of Evolutionary Psychology

• The expanse of time involved
• Just scratching the surface of understanding the
  nature, details, and design features of evolved
  psychological mechanisms
• What was adaptive in the past might not be
  adaptive in the present

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Limitations of Evolutionary Psychology

• There can be different and competing evolutionary
  hypotheses for the same phenomena
• Hypotheses have been accused of being untestable
  and therefore unfalsifiable

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Summary

• Adaptations are presumed to be domain-specific,
  numerous, and functional
• Evolutionary psychological analysis can be
  applied to all three levels of personality
  analysis (human nature, sex and individual
  differences)
• Limitations are present