PSYC 1115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Twin, Falsifiability, Evolutionary Psychology
2 Nov 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Evolutionary psychology: an approach to studying psychological processes by understanding why they would have emerged through evolution. The central idea behind evolutionary psychology (ep) is that some aspects of our cognition are so advantageous for spreading genes that they would be genetically selected for. Just-so stories: an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behaviour of humans or other animals. To solve the problem of just so stories, we need more than a plausible explanation for why a trait evolved. Correlations in the big five: correlation between 2 random people is 0, extraversion: identical/monozygotic twins (0. 51) vs. fraternal/dizygotic twins (0. 21, neuroticism: 0. 50 vs. 0. 17, values are near identical if twins are reared apart. Manipulating genes: silver fox experiment: influential experiment in which wild foxes were domesticated within eight generations by only those with a calm personality to have cubs.
