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Week 7: Evolutionary and

Cultural Psychology
Foundation Year Introduction into
Psychology
Dora Simunovic
Name The Human Races
Name The Human Races
• There is only one human race left alive, the
Homo sapiens (sapiens)
– But there were many…
Homo

Pleistocene

Pliocene
Homo

Pleistocene

Pliocene
Homo
Homo
Invasion of the Humans
Invasion of the Humans
What happened to the Neanderthals?
What happened to the Neanderthals?
• Stronger, more robust
• Larger brain
• Lived in social units
compatible to those of
Homo sapiens
• More successful hunter
• Possibly had language
• All around “Better
hardware”
What happened to the Neanderthals?
• Interbreeding: Neanderthals were assimilated
genetically into the larger Homo sapiens
population
• Climate change: fluctuating European weather
• Pathogens caused local population extinction
• The first (of many) genocides committed by
modern man
• Unlike the Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals
had one way of doing it which barely changed
– They had art, but not culture!
Homo sapiens
• Origin of human
culture
– Living in complex social
groups?
– Cooperative hunting
and scavenging?
– Advanced ToM?
– Imagination (required for
non-trial-and-error learning)?
What is culture?
What is culture?
What is culture?
• Matsumoto & Juang, 2013

• Unique meaning system


• Shared by a group
• Transmitted across generations
• Which allows the group to meet basic needs
of survival, pursuit of happiness, and well-
being, as well as derive meaning from life
Who has culture?
• Nationalities, ethnicities
• Genders, sexual orientations
• People with disabilities
• Age groups
• “Subculture”,
“Counter-culture”
Culture as adaptation
• Cultures are dynamic!
– Changes occur as adaptations to social and physical
environments
– Meanings associated with social networks

• What adapts?
– Behavioural strategies, attitudes, perception of
interpersonal relationships…
– Psychological tendencies, self-construal…
– Patterns of cognition, attention, systems of thought,
memory…
Describe yourself
• Complete at least five sentences beginning
with:

I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
Describe yourself
• Complete at least five sentences beginning
with:
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
Self-construal
• The Self v. Jibun
• Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010
Culture and attention/perception
• Masuda & Nisbett, 2001
• “Please describe what
you have just seen.”
East v West
• Cross-cultural psychology tests cultural
parameters of psychological knowledge
– Seeks to find which psychological mechanisms
function across culture
– Often based on the comparison of two groups
who are theoretically different along a certain
dimension

• WEIRD v East Asians


– What about the rest of us?
Culture or Evolution?
Human Uniqueness on Behavioural
Grounds
• Almost all animal • Almost all human
behaviour is genetically behaviour involves
pre-programmed to fit cultural learning
an ecological niche (Tomasello & Razoksky, 2003;
(Darwin, 1859; Tinbergen, 1951; Tomasello et al., 2005)
Manoli & Baker, 2004)

• ETICS: universal psychological • EMICS: Culture-specific processes


processes
• Which is which, and how much of each?
– Answering these two questions is the holy grail of
evolutionary psychology

• Study of human brain, mind, and behaviour


from the evolutionary perspective
Evolution
• …the usual question… what is it?
Evolution is NOT…
• A theory of the origins of life
on the planet
• A slow and gradual process
• Beyond the scope of human
influence
• A process which leads to
progress
• A process which has a final
goal or end result
Evolution
• Change in the frequency of genetic material
within a population over time
Descent with modification
This is the point…
Principles of Evolution
• It is not directional • The situation has to
• It is not linear – there include high cost of
are periods of more failure
change, and periods of • The adaptation has to
less change be able to win against
• In order for something or coexist with other
to be an adaptational strategies
trait, it has to reliably
solve a situation which
the living organism is
likely to face
Some history…
• Heraclitus (6-5th century BC)
talked about the ever
changing nature of life
– πάντα ῥεῖ – everything flows
• Applied to the idea of
changing species in the 19th
century
– Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
introduced an early theory of
the change of species over
time
Tree of Life
• Lamarck believed in the
inheritance of acquired
characteristics (Lamarckism)

• Teleology – a doctrine that


there is a final shape or
purpose
Charles Robert Darwin
• Darwin boarded the HMS
Beagle and travelled
aboard as the ship’s
naturalist from 1831 -
1836
Charles Robert Darwin
• Conceptualized a rival theory of
evolution and published it in On
the Origins of Species (1859),
and later in The Descent of Man,
and Selection in Relation to Sex
(1871), The Expression of
Emotions in Man and Animals
(1872), and The Formation of
Vegetable Mould, thought the
Actions of Worms (1881)
Natural and Sexual Selection
• Comes from the ideas of Thomas Malthus

• “Survival of the Fittest”


– Does not mean “the strongest” or “the best”, just
the “most adapted”
Birth of Genetics
• Gregor Mendel
– Observed and experimented with
small scale change of genetic
material, coming up with the first
Laws of Inheritance
Discovery of DNA
• Isolated by Friedrich Miescher in 1869
• Molecular structure was described by James
Watson and Francis Crick in 1953
– Since, we have begun understanding
the molecular level of evolution, as
well as Darwin’s macro-level
Evolutionary Process
• Change in the frequency of genetic material
within a population over time
– Mutation
– Genetic drift
– Migration (gene flow)
– Natural selection
– Sexual selection
Evolution
• Mutation: random change in genetic
material

• Genetic drift: chance changed in


genetic material of the entire population

• Migration (gene flow): influx of


new genetic material into the population
as individuals migrate
Evolution
• Natural selection: differential
survival and reproduction due to
differences in phenotype

• Sexual selection: differential


reproductive success due to accessibility
to mating partners
– Inter/Intrasexual selection
How does psychology fit into that?
• The main assumption of evolutionary
psychology is that human psychology can be
described as the result of evolutionary
pressures
– Not contested as far as brain is concerned, but
much more controversial when it comes to mind
and behaviour
What is abnormal?
• Rocking back and forth?
• Screaming at nobody in particular?

• Gambling?
• Suicide bombing?

• Sexualisation of feet?
• Paedophilia?
What is adaptational?
• Rocking back and forth?
• Screaming at nobody in particular?

• Gambling?
• Suicide bombing?

• Sexualisation of feet?
• Paedophilia?
Fallacy of Evolutionary Psychology
• Reducing a psychological
phenomenon to
a) genetic complex,
b) neural circuits, or
c) a response to hypothetical
historical situations (Just-so
stories)
Fallacy of Evolutionary Psychology
• Reducing a psychological
phenomenon to
a) genetic complex,
b) neural circuits, or
c) a response to hypothetical
historical situations (Just-so
stories)
In my opinion, evolutionary psychology is a framework for asking questions rather
than the ultimate tool for answering them. Human behaviour cannot be reduced to
the “simplicity” of today’s genetics. However, the situational forces which drive
genetic and other types of change, can only be accessed by asking evolutionary
questions. Evo.Psych. is a study of those forces.
What is sexy?
• Think about it as a strategy. What do we do to
be sexy?
Sexual Strategies
FEMALE MALE
• Beauty • Strength
• Hip-to-waist ratio • Wealth
• Youthfulness • Social position
• Care-giving • Resource-generating

• Fertility • Security
We signal these desirable characteristics to the potential
partners; the costlier the signal, the more value it has.
Sexual Strategies
• The cost of having offspring is different for
men and for women
– Much more risk for women: loss of autonomy
during pregnancy, death at childbirth, children
directly dependant on mothers for the first few
months of their lives…
– Not so for men
Sexual Strategies
• Simplified:
– On average, men want a lot of no-strings-attached
sex, and behave accordingly
– On average, women want long-term committed
relationships, and behave accordingly
• Does that explain SOME of the psychological
differences between men and women?
• Where does culture of “male” and “female”
come in?
Why do we even religion?
• Again, think about religion (as a social
phenomenon), and religious belief (as an
individual characteristic), as strategies
individuals employ to increase their fitness.
Religion as an Adaptation
• By-product of other mechanisms
– Theory of Mind ascribed to (super)natural agents
– Etiology (causal narratives for natural events)
– Agent detection (detecting presence of other
actors)
– Terror Management Theory (dealing with the
knowledge that we will die)
Religion as an Adaptation
• Adaptation in and of itself
– Costly signalling theory (hard-to-fake religious
rituals signal an individual’s commitment to the
group)
– Big Gods as a supernatural
monitoring presence, making
sure big groups behave
– Religion as a meme
Memes
Memetics
• Meme: μῖμος, to
imitate
• Richard Dawkins, 1976
• “An idea,
behaviour, or style
that spreads from
person to person
within a culture”
• “Mind virus”
Methods in Evolutionary Psychology
• Evolutionary psychology investigates how and
why certain characteristics of the human
mind, brain and behaviour persist
• Methods:
– Cross-cultural comparison
– Cross-species comparison
– Behavioural experiments
– Simulations (Evolutionary game theory)
Game theory
• The study of mathematical models of conflict
and cooperation between intelligent rational
decision-makers
– You can describe society as an incentive structure
• E.g., each individual has an incentive to be treated well
by other members of society. What do they have to do
in order to achieve that?
Axelrod’s computer simulation
• Had experts from all around the world come
up with strategies to increase fitness in the
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Axelrod’s computer simulation
Axelrod’s computer simulation
Evolutionary Game Theory
• Strategies are evaluated based on how they
contribute to the individual’s long-term fitness
• Under which circumstances are which
strategies:
– Evolvable?
– Stabile?
Evolutionary Game Theory
• Strategies are evaluated based on how they
contribute to the individual’s long-term fitness
• Under which circumstances are which
strategies:
– Evolvable?
– Stabile?

Instead of looking at which individuals are more likely to survive,


you are looking at which strategies are more likely to survive.
Hawks and Doves
• Hawks: fight until they
either win, or are
wounded
• Doves: avoid conflict, and
share

• How would it be to be a
single hawk in a
population of doves?
What about the reverse?
Evolutionary stabile strategy
• A strategy is evolutionarily stabile if,
– It cannot be invaded easily by an opposing
strategy
– It could itself invade a population of other
strategies
Altruism
• Selflessness, other-regarding preferences

• Remember Kitty Genovese?


– While the rest of us was wondering why nobody
helped her, a group of scientists started
wondering, “Why does anybody ever help?”
Altruism
• If we are all concerned with the fitness of
ourselves, and our genetic relatives alone,
why do we put ourselves in danger for others?
Altruism
• Reputation management
• Expectation of direct reciprocity
• Expectation of indirect reciprocity
• Dependence on access to common resources
• Signalling one’s willingness to cooperate with
conspecifics
• …
Altruism
• Altruism only makes sense if there is a third
type of selection functioning:

• Social selection: differential reproductive


success due to outcomes of interaction with
conspecifics
– How is it different from natural selection?
– How is it different from sexual selection?
Evolution of “mind” processes
• Why do we even…
– Have introverts / extroverts?
– Have different phobias?
– Have Theory of Mind?
– See the whole as more than the sum of its parts?

• …and HOW did it contribute to our survival?


Evolution of “mind” processes
• Why do we even…
– Have introverts / extroverts?
– Have different phobias?
– Have Theory of Mind?
– See the whole as more than the sum of its parts?

• …and HOW did it contribute to our survival?


FITNESS
Fitness
• An individual’s reproductive success
– Live as long as possible
– Have as many descendants as possible
– Make sure they survive (Inclusive fitness; Hamilton,
1964)

• Fitness is how we evaluate whether a strategy


(psychological characteristic) is successful or
not
Cognition is Domain-Specific
• Cosmides & Tooby, 1992
• Human cognition cannot consist of domain-
general mechanisms alone
• If this were true, everything would have to be learned
from scratch, through potentially lethal trial-and-error
• Instead, we also have domain-specific
mechanisms
– Ex., social exchange behaviour
Cosmides (1989)
• Wason 4-card test
• Suppose that each card has a number on one
side, and a letter on the other. Which cards
would you have to turn over in order to test
whether the following statement is true:
“If a card has a vowel on one side, then it
has an even number on the other side.”
“If a card has a vowel on one side, then it
has an even number on the other side.”
“If a card has a vowel on one side, then it
has an even number on the other side.”
“If a card has a vowel on one side, then it
has an even number on the other side.”

If P then Q is only violated by P & ~Q


A. If you travel by bus, then you have to have a
bus pass
• Which people would you have to “test” in
order to see if this statement is true?
A. If you travel by bus, then you have to have a
bus pass
• Which people would you have to “test” in
order to see if this statement is true?

• If P then Q is only violated by P & ~Q


• I.e., if somebody travels by bus, but does not
have a bus pass, than the statement is not
true
Cheater Detection
• Ability to predict whether a partner in a social
exchange is likely to cheat you
– We find it relatively easy to think of ways to check
for cheaters
• From previous encounters with this individual
• From reputation
• From facial expressions
• …

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