Psyc 3315 - Ch.5

• There are several hundred universal behavior and language patterns

  True or False?

  True
• Humans prefer living with others to living alone

  True or False?

  True
• The idea that Natural selection enables evolution

  • Organisms have many varied offspring
  • Offspring compete for survival in the environment
  • Biological and behavioral variations increase chances of survival and reproduction
  • The offspring that survived and reproduced are more likely to pass their genes to the next generation
  • Over time, population characteristics may change
• Evolutionary psychology – the study of the evolution of cognition and behavior using principles of natural selection
• Culture – the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
• Evolutionary psychology incorporates environmental influences and recognizes that nature and nurture interact in forming us
• Epigenetic – a field of research exploring the expression of genes across different environments
• Nature influences us to learn whatever culture we are born into
• Our emotional and behavioral answers to social questions are the same answers that worked for our ancestors

  True or False?

  True
• Behavior is socially programmed, not hardwired.

  True or False?

  True
• Norms – standards for accepted and expected behavior. These prescribe proper behavior in a culture
• Cultural Norms Vary

  • Individual choices – Cultures vary in how much they emphasize the individual self versus others and the society

  
  

  • Expressiveness – to someone from are relatively formal culture, a person whose roots are in an expressive culture may seem “warm, charming , inefficient, and time wasting”

  
  

  • Punctuality – there are some cultures that tend to be more obsessed with time than others do

  
  

  • Personal space – the buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies. Its size depends on our familiarity with whomever is near us
• Cultural norms similarity

  • Universal Friendship norms - people everywhere have some common norms for friendship
  • Universal trait dimensions – around the world, people describe others with between two and five universal personality dimensions.
  • Universal social belief dimensions
  • Universal status norms – wherever people form status hierarchies, they also talk to higher-status people in the respectful way than they talk to lower-status people in the more familiar, first-name way they speak to friends
  • Incest taboo
• Transgender – people whose sense of being male or female differs from their birth sex
• Gender – the characteristics, whether biological or socially influenced, by which people define male and female
• Girls talk more intimately and play less aggressively. Girls also play in smaller groups, often talking with one friend.
• Men have stronger sex drive, sex is a cheap investment for men

  • The average male produces many trillions of sperm in his lifetime, making sperm cheap compared with eggs
• Sex is a big commitment for women

  • Females invest their reproductive opportunities carefully, by looking for signs of resources and commitment
• Men are more aggressive toward other men when they are thinking about dating and mating

  True or False?

  True
• For females to attract men, they may want to appear youthful and have a healthy appearance which represents fertility.

  True or False?

  True
• Monthly fertility also affects how females interact with the males around them

  True or False?

  True
• Genghis Khan is a ancestor to 1 in 200 men worldwide

  True or False?

  True
• Men will strive to offer what women desire

  Ex: Women prefer men that to raise a child into adulthood, therefore the man will strive to be what she desires

  Ex: Male peacock strut their feathers
• Men seem to be attracted to women whose age suggest peak fertility. For teen boys it is women many years older than them, for men in their mid-20s, it's women their own age. For older men, it younger women, the older the man the greater the age difference when selecting a significant other.
• Testosterone: a hormone, more prevalent in males than females, that is linked to dominance and aggression
• As people mature to middle age and beyond, they become more androgynous — capable of both assertiveness and nurturance
• The gender difference in aggression appears in childhood, and wanes as testerone levels decline during adulthood
• Girls tend to have a more tomboyish behavior, resembles males in their career preferences, and have a greater interest in things than people have been exposed to the y-gene during fetal development
• Personal space: the buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies
• Genetic influences explain roughly 40% of individual variationsin personality traits
• Testis-determining factor – a single gene that directs the formation of the testicles, which begin to secrete testosterone.

  • Girls exposed to excess testosterone during fetal development tend to exhibit more tomboyish play behavior than other girls, and resemble males in their career preferences
• One study of New Zealand young adults revealed a gene variation that put people at risk for depression, but only if they had also experienced major life stresses such as their parents' divorce. Neither the stress nor the gene alone produced depression, but the two interacting did. This is an example of?

  epigenetics
• Collectivist cultures are more likely to stigmatize people seen as different - Gay, Immigrants, Contracting a disease

  True or False?


  True
• The Nurture Assumption is termed by Judith rich harris
• The nurture assumption – parental nurture, the way parents bring their children up, governs who their children become
• Children do acquire many of their values, including their political affiliation and religious faith at home. However:

  • Two children in the same family are different from one another as are pairs of children selected randomly from the population
  • Genetic influences explain roughly 40% of individual variations in personality traits.
  • Shared environmental influences only account for 0 - 1. % of their personality differences
  • Children and youth learn their culture mostly from peers
• There are 5 universal social beliefs

  • cynicism
  • social complexity
  • application
  • spirituality
  • fate control
• Cynics express lower life satisfaction and favor assertive influence tactics and right-wing politics
• Those who believe in reward for application are inclined to invest themselves in study, planning, and competing, and believe that it will lead to positive results
• Social complexity: beliefs that there are no rigid rules bu rather multiple ways of achieving a given outcome and inconsistency in human behavior is common