Topics in biological and cultural evolution

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Topics in biological and cultural evolution

• Lecture one
• Evolutionary Psychology
• A United Field?

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What we will cover in the four lectures

• Evolutionary psychology a united field?
• Cognitive sex differences
• Emotional intelligence
• Conformity from an evolutionary perspective

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Evolutionary theory and human behaviour

• All living species, including humans, arrived at
  their present biological structures and
  mechanisms through a historical process involving
  random inheritable changes. Those changes that
  enhanced an individuals ability to survive and
  reproduce in the environmental conditions in
  which it lived were passed along from generation
  to generation, and those that hindered survival
  and reproduction were lost.

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Evolution and human behaviour

• All the complex biological mechanisms that
  underlie human behaviour and experience the
  mechanisms of motivation, emotion, perception,
  learning, memory, and thought came about
  because they promoted the survival and
  reproduction of our ancestors.

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Environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA)

• Evolutionary psychologists propose that cognitive
  structure, like physiological structure, has been
  designed by natural selection to serve survival
  and reproduction.
• Evolutionary time (the time it takes for
  reproductively efficacious mutations to arise and
  spread in the population) 1,000 to 10,000
  genarations for humans that equals about 20,000
  to 200,000 years

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Environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA)

• John Bowlby first used the term EEA
• We can therefore be fairly sure that none of the
  environments in which civilised, or even
  half-civilised, man lives today conforms to the
  environment in which mans environmentally stable
  behavioural systems were evolved and to which
  they are intrinsically adapted
• (Bowlby, 1969 p 86)

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Environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA)

• The EEA is not a specific time or place. It
  refers to those aspects of past environments to
  which an organism is adapted. Most aspects of the
  modern environment closely resemble the human EEA
  hearts, lungs, eyes, language, pain,
  locomotion, memory, the immune system, pregnancy.
• Definition EEA is a set of selection pressures
  faced by an organisms ancestors over recent
  evolutionary time (1,000 10,000 g).

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Evolutionary approaches to the study of human
behaviour

• Human Sociobiology
• Human Behavioural Ecology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Memetics
• Gene-culture Coevolution
• (Laland and Brown, 2002)

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Common misunderstandings abut evolutionary theory

• Human behaviour is genetically determined
• If its evolutionary we cant change it
• Evolutionary theory requires improbable
  computational abilities of organisms
• Current mechanisms are optimally designed
• Evolutionary theory implies a motivation to
  maximise gene reproduction
• (Buss, 1999)

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Busss hierarchy of level of analysis in
evolutionary psychology

• Theory of parental investment and sexual
  selection (Buss, 1989, 1994)
• Theory of parent-offspring conflict (Trivers,
  1974 Daly and Wilson, 1988, 1990)
• Theory of reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971
  Cosmides and Tooby, 1992)

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Evolution of desire (Buss, 1994)

• Buss developed a unified evolutionary theory of
  human mating strategies that explain gender
  differences and gender conflicts in selecting,
  attracting, keeping and replacing a mate.

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Buss, 1989 summarised in 1994

• This is an ongoing research programme. He
  summarised his empirical findings on mate
  preferences within USA and questionnaire data
  from 10,047 respondents across 33 other countries
  
• Men prefer women showing signs of fertility
  (e.g. youth, attractiveness, healthiness) and
  women prefer men showing signs of paternal
  investment of resources (e.g. willingness to
  commit wealth, status and power to them).

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Homicide 1(Daly Wilson, 1988, 1990

• The theory of parent-offspring conflict predicts
  that each child will generally desire a larger
  portion of the parents resources than the
  parents want to give.
• The Oedipus Complex (Freud) versus
  parent-offspring conflict (Trivers, 1974) Freud
  suggests that the conflict is about sexual access
  to the mother.

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Homicide 2

• Parent-offspring conflict suggests that conflicts
  of interest have little or nothing to do with the
  childs gender. They are driven by disagreements
  over allocation of the parents investment
• Freuds theory same sex conflict should be more
  prevalent than opposite sex conflict
• Trivers theory there should not be this same
  sex conflict

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Homicide 3

• Daly Wilson examined homicides between parents
  and their offspring. They examined sex homicides
  during the Oedipal years (2 5 years). Canadian
  and USA data showed no evidence for same sex
  concentration of homicides during the Oedipal
  years. In a Canadian sample 21 boys were killed
  by their fathers and 21 boys killed by their
  mothers.

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Reciprocal Altruism theory(Trivers, 1971)

• Do unto others as you would have them do to you
• You scratch my back Ill scratch yours
• Cognitive adaptations for social exchange
  (Cosmides and Tooby, 1992)

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Finally some criticism

• The evolution of Jealousy (Buss et al. 1992,
  1999)
• Forced choice questions (e.g. Evans Zarate,
  1999)
• Relationship power and betrayal experience as
  predictors of reactions to infidelity (Berman
  Frazier, 2005)