evolution

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evolution

• How it relates to the study of behavior and
  experience

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Natural selection

• Species have changed, by adapting to their ever
  changing environments, through a process known as
  natural selection.
• It has three components.

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• 1) Individual animals compete for limited
  resources so that they can reproduce and ensure
  that their children (and the genes they carry)
  will have an opportunity to live and reproduce.

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• 2) Individual animals differ from each other
  because of their unique genetic heritage,
  usually through crossing over and occasionally
  through genetic mutation random errors in gene
  replication.

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• 3) If these differences give individual animals
  an advantage in reproducing and raising their
  young, they will become more and more common in
  succeeding generations.
• Darwin called this process anagenesis the
  transformation of a species.

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More simply,

• Its hard to raise young.
• Some traits/abilities help.
• If they do, they will be more and more common in
  future generations.

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Recent evidence of human evolution

• In September of 2005 new evidence emerged
  concerning two particular genes role in brain
  size
• The findings suggest that these genes have
  changed within the last 6,000 years and may
  continue to do so today
• Greg Wray, director of Dukes Center for
  Evolutionary Genomics, its almost impossible
  for evolution to not happen.

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Applications for human behavior

• Some psychologists argue that certain behavioral
  tendencies and thinking and learning capacities
  helped humans raise more young and send more of
  their genes into the future.

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Darwins prediction

• While mainly concerned with biology, Darwin
  prophesized, in 1859, natural selections future
  influence on psychology.
• It would, open fields for far more important
  researches. Psychology will be based on a new
  foundation.

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applications

• Why do men strive so hard for status, dominance,
  and ?
• Because that is what women look for in a mate.
• Why do women care so much about looking young and
  healthy?
• Because those are the traits men select in
  picking a wife.

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more

• Why are men more likely to play around?
• Or are they?
• Why do some animals, even humans, sacrifice their
  own reproductive prospects to help raise their
  siblings or even nieces and nephews?

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Other points

• Evolution is a battle fought by individuals not
  by species.
• Its not really, The survival of the fittest.
• More accurately, it is, You must breed to
  succeed.

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Back to Charles

• Today, in 2006, the ideas of Karl Marx are dead,
  Sigmund Freuds are on life support, but Charles
  Darwin's grow stronger every day.