PSY-1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Natural Selection, Psych, Selfishness
Document Summary
Evolutionary psychology the psychological perspective that assumes our current behavior exists because it provided survival and reproductive advantaged to our ancestors. Beneficial or harmful? (cooperation, selfishness, altruism, spite) Altruism sacrifice of one"s self for the benefit of another individual. Example: honey bees dying in order to protect their hive. Inclusive fitness theory: natural selection favors characteristics that cause an organism genes to be passed on. Regardless if it is to their direct offspring. (hamilton, w. ) H1: helping others would be direct function of the recipient"s ability to. Helping would be greater for those closer related siblings and enhance the inclusive fitness of the helper. children. Helping would be decreased for those less related cousins. H2: helping should decrease as a function of the age of the recipient. As one"s ability to reproduce decreases so should likelihood of helping. (less likely to help someone who"s older because they have a higher probability to have less reproductive success to pass along genes)
