Evolutionary Psychology (PS4529/30)
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Course overview

Evolutionary theory can help us to understand and make predictions about human behaviour. This course aims to teach you to describe, discuss and evaluate major evolutionary theories, how evolutionary theories can inform psychology, and major findings from evolutionary approaches in all areas of psychology, emphasising human social behaviour. The behaviour of other species will also be considered where it sheds comparative light on the human animal.

Podcasts

Lectures will be podcast when possible. However, please do not rely on podcasts instead of coming to lecture. Podcasts may be unavailable for some lectures due to technical difficulties.

Subscribe to the lectures using podcast software or download the lectures below (requires free QuickTime software).

Reading

All reading material can be downloaded as PDFs below. Papers listed as required readings will be fair game for exam questions, even if they are not covered in lecture. Papers listed as additional readings will help you to get top marks in the exam.

78.6 MB Download all readings as a zip file.

Other books useful as introductions to the topic are:

Students who wish to read beyond the papers and chapters suggested on this page should contact Lisa.

Lectures

Lecture 1. What is Evolutionary Psychology?

What is evolutionary psychology? This lecture will introduce how a consideration of evolutionary theory can inform psychology.

Study Questions

  1. Give examples of the three different classes of adaptive behaviours (currently adaptive, formerly adaptive, and by-products of adaptations).
  2. What are the common criticisms of evolutionary psychology and how would you argue against them?

Downloads

Lecture 2. Evolutionary Theory

This lecture will explain the basic evolutionary theories that are used to inform psychology.

Study Questions

  1. Who are the two founders of evolutionary theory?
  2. Explain the logic of natural selection.
  3. What is the difference between genotype and phenotype?
  4. What are the three main categories of adaptive problems?
  5. What is the difference between proximate and ultimate explanations? Are they alternatives or complementary?
  6. Give examples of Tinbergen's four whys.
  7. What are the three types of natural selection?
  8. Explain the difference between adaptive behaviour and behavioural adaptation.
  9. Why is the differential reproduction of organisms more important than their differential survival?
  10. Compare sexual selection and natural selection.

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Lecture 3. Health

Evolution can help us to understand many diseases. For example, some symptoms of disease, such as fever and anemia, are actually evolved defenses against pathogens. Other diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, are a result of a mismatch between our evolved behaviours (eat as much sugar as you can find) and novel environments (sugar is everywhere). This lecture will examine how evolutionary thinking can help us to understand health.

Study Questions

  1. What is an arms race? What sort of adaptations would you expect to be produced by an arms race?
  2. What is senescence and why is it unlikely that we will find a “cure” for aging?
  3. List examples of psychological disorders for the different categories of causes of disease.
  4. What sort of novel environmental conditions have been posited to cause psychological diseases? What empirical evidence exists?

Downloads

Lecture 4. Psychopathology

This lecture will examine how evolutionary thinking can help us to understand psychopathologies, such as anxiety disorders, phobias and depression.

Study Questions

  1. What is the smoke-detector principle?
  2. What evidence would be needed to determine whether depression is an adaptation? Has any of this evidence been collected since Nesse's 2000 paper was published?
  3. How do the evolutionary explanations of phobias, anxiety disorders and depression differ from other perspectives?

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Lecture 5. Cognition and Perception

This lecture will examine the evidence that humans have an evolved cognitive module designed to reason about frequencies. We will also discuss the evidence for Evolved Navigation Theory.

Study Questions

  1. Why would evolution-minded cognitive psychologists think it is more likely that the mind consists of many specialised mechanisms rather than a few general-purpose mechanisms?
  2. Why would we expect sex differences in cognition? In what areas?
  3. Why might it be more adaptive to have inaccurate perception than accurate perception?

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Lecture 6. Altruism

One of the main questions in evolutionary biology is how altruism evolved. We will look at the main theories explaining human altruism.

Study Questions

  1. Why is altruistic behaviour surprising from an evolutionary point of view? How can some behaviours be phenotypically altruistic but not genetically altruistic?
  2. Explain the theories of the evolutionary origins of human altruism and give examples of experimental evidence testing each theory.
  3. What is the “tragedy of the commons” and what theories have been proposed to solve it?

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Lecture 7. Kinship

This lecture will explain inclusive fitness theory (kin selection) and related psychological findings.

Study Questions

  1. Explain why Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness does or does not predict that humans should be more altruistic to chimpanzees than to horses.
  2. How does the study by Lieberman, Oum and Kurzban (2008) demonstrate that kinship is more likely to be a fundamental social category than friendship is?
  3. In addition to inclusive fitness theory, what other biological theories predict sensitivity to kinship?

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Lecture 8. Kin Recognition

This lecture discusses how organisms recognize their kin. Specifically, we will discuss the effect of self-resemblance on face preferences, attributions of other traits and actual behaviour.

Study Questions

  1. Discuss the theories that predict context-sensitivity to responses to cues of kinship and provide experimental evidence.
  2. Explain Lieberman's model of kin recognition. Why are some cues more important in some circumstances?

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Lecture 9. Parent-Offspring Relationships

This lecture will explain parent-offspring conflict theory, Trivers-Willard theory and related psychological findings.

Study Questions

  1. What is the Trivers-Willard hypothesis and what evidence is there for it in human and non-human animals?
  2. How can studying homicide inform us about normal human social behaviour?
  3. What is the allocation of parental investment sensitive to and what is the evidence?

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Lecture 10. Individual Differences

This lecture will present an evolutionary framework for understanding sex differences, personality, and other individual variation in behaviour.

Study Questions

  1. How do life history theory, costly signaling theory, balancing selection, and contingent shifts according to the environment predict individual differences? Give an example of each.
  2. What aspects of our evolutionary past were likley to select for sex differences?

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Lecture 11. Culture

This lecture will cover cultural transmission and biological contributions to cultural differences in kinship structure, beauty, and violence.

Study Questions

  1. Compare and contrast cultural evolution and biological evolution.
  2. Compare and contrast the various models of cultural transmission discussed by Mesoudi and Whiten (2008).
  3. Describe Caldwell and Millen's (2008) experimental paradigm for testing cumulative cultural evolution.

Downloads

Lecture 12. Review

This lecture will review concepts learned in the previous lectures, such as natural selection, sexual selection, Darwinian approaches to health, inclusive fitness theory, parent-offspring conflict theory, and Trivers-Willard theory. We will also discuss how concepts from different lectures relate. Finally, I will give advice on how to answer exam questions.

There are no specific notes for this lecture. Bring your old notes from previous lectures.

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Assessment

Assessment will be in the form of a 90 minute exam where you will have to answer 2 from a choice of 6 questions. Sample essay questions will be added later in the term.

A good answer (e.g., 15-17) will be well organised and include relevant information from the lectures and required readings. An excellent answer (e.g., 18-20) will also include information from other relevant readings, such as the papers listed as additional readings or other papers cited by the required readings. An excellent answer might also look at information from the lectures or required readings in a new way that was not discussed in class or the required readings. Poor answers (< 15) will be disorganised, include irrelevant information (even if factually correct), or fail to address the topic of the essay. Make sure you read the essay questions carefully; it is not a good strategy to simply write down everything you know about key words in the essay question.

Organisation of essays is very important for allowing the marker to determine that you understand the topic. A well-organised essay might have a short paragraph explaining the topic of the essay (restating the question) and summarising what the essay will cover (e.g., a mini-outline). You should focus on 3-4 main sections of evidence, each about half a page to a full page long. For example, if a question asks you to discuss the pros and cons of a particular approach, you could have two sections explaining two different pros and two sections explaining two different cons. Each section should make a discrete point that is clearly related to the essay question and should give at least one example from the readings or lecture. The fewer examples you give, the more detailed they should be. The essay should have a clear concluding paragraph where you summarise the evidence you presented in the main sections and tie them together. For example, you could say that, based on the findings you just discussed, evidence for a particular theory is very strong (or very weak, or mixed). If the essay asked a question, the conculding paragraph should answer that question.

Although we are not marking based on your handwriting, your essay cannot be marked if it cannot be read. If you have a particular problem with handwriting, please contact the Disabilities Office to arrange accommodation.

2010 Exam Questions (Past Paper)

  1. Explain the difference between domain-general and domain-specific adaptations. Give two examples of domain-specific behaviours and explain the evidence supporting domain specificity.
  2. Explain how psychopathology can be understood in an evolutionary framework. Explain the evolutionary hypotheses and evidence for one psychopathology (e.g., depression, anxiety disorders, phobias) in detail.
  3. Describe cultural transmission experiments that attempt to address each of the four questions of (1) what is copied; (2) who is copied; (3) when do individuals copy; and (4) how do individuals copy.
  4. Should natural selection always favour accurate perception? Why or why not? Explain the evidence for one instance where inaccurate perception is argued to be more adaptive than accurate perception?
  5. Explain Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness. What types of behaviour are predicted by this theory? Explain the evidence for two examples of such behaviours.
  6. Daly and Wilson use homicide as a “reverse assay” of cooperation. Explain this concept and discuss two examples (in two different domains) where studies of homicide have informed evolutionary hypotheses.

To give you an idea of the type of answers I am looking for, below are the criteria I used for marking Question 2 on last year's exam (Q2 is very unlikely to show up on this year's exam):

Explain how psychopathology can be understood in an evolutionary framework. Explain the evolutionary hypotheses and evidence for one psychopathology (e.g., depression, anxiety disorders, phobias) in detail.

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