CH15: David Buss' Evolutionary Psychology

• Rooted in the early works of Darwin on natural selection, sexual selection, and chance, laying the foundation for the modern theory of evolution.
• Humans have been breeding plant and animal species for thousands of years–a concept called artificial selection (“breeding”).
• Natural Selection: A more general form of artificial selection in which nature rather than people select the traits; involves evolved strategies.
• Sexual Selection: Operates when members of the opposite sex find certain traits more appealing and attractive than others and thereby produce offspring with those traits
• The one: accessible (physical, cyber, social proprinquity), appealing (similarity, familiarity), interested (reciprocity)
• Murstein’s Filter Theory - proximity, attraction, homogamy, compatibility, trial, decision filter, marriage
• ADAPTATIONS - volved strategies that solve important survival and/or reproductive problems (e.g., eyes, limbs)
• BY-PRODUCTS - Traits that happen as a result of adaptations but are not part of the functional design (driving)
• NOISE - Also known as “random effects”; occurs when evolution produces random changes in design that do not affect function (e.g., belly button, mole)
• Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest”, later commonly termed social Darwinism.
• Principles of Evolutionary Psychology:

  1. Why is the mind designed the way it is and how?
  2. How is the human mind designed?
  3. What functions?
  4. How does the evolved mind and environment interact?
• • Assumes that the true origin of personality is evolution
  • Personality is nature-nurture
  • Started with the assumption that individual members of any species differ from one another
• FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR - nature ; FUNDAMENTAL SITUATIONAL ERROR - nurture
• Evolutionary theory of personality assumes that adaptive qualities include consistent and unique dispositions to behave in particular ways in particular contexts.
• Survival and reproduction are the two fundamental problems of adaptation (although survival is a precondition for reproduction) and are solved using physical and/or psychological mechanisms.
• Psychological mechanisms relevant to personality can be grouped intothree main categories: (1) Goals/drives/motives, (2) Emotions (3) Personality traits
• Goals - Power (aggression, dominance) and intimacy (love)
• EMOTIONS - Are adaptations that directly alert the individual to situations that are either harmful or beneficial
• Buss believed that the five main dimensions of personality or dispositions signal to other people their ability to solve survival and reproductive problems.
• Surgency ; dominance
• Agreeableness - hostility
• Conscientiousness - commitment to work
• Emotional stability - neuroticism
• Openness - intellect
• Environmental - early experiential calibration, attachment style, alternative niche special.
• Heritable - body type, facial morphology
• Nonadoptive - neutral genetic variations
• Maladaptive - actively harms survival