PSYC 208 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Psy, Tabula Rasa, Environmental Determinism
Document Summary
Dr. paul wehr: announcements, chapter 1: principles of evolutionary theory. Mechanism how the behaviour works: ultimate explanations: Function why the behaviour exists: ontological explanations: Development: changes in the individual across the lifespan: phylogenetic explanations: Evolution: changes in the organism across generations. Taste preferences. (good in the past, but lead to physical illness now) Eea is the problem and adaptation is the solution. Evolved psychological mechanisms (epm) = decision-making rules. Is evolved human or animal behavior resulting from evolutionary pressures: epms are mental adaptations that solve specific recurring problem of survival or reproduction that occurred in the eea product of natural selection. Problems of mate acquisition, maintenance or expulsion. Problems of parenting: epm processes narrow band of information input (e. g. , grammatical rules for language acquisition), epm uses decision rules to process input and create output (behavioural flexibility). Epm is not optimal by design, which renders them vulnerable to dysfunction.
