[PSYC 2840] - Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam (99 pages long!)
Document Summary
Proximate explanations focus on the immediate causes for a behavior or a psychological pattern. (1) mechanistic: something that triggers the behavior to exist or become manifested, genetic, hormonal, neurobiological, physiological, biomechanics, cognitive, social. The group in a room can influence your behaviour. Someone in specific can influence your behaviour, removing an alpha male, etc. can make you act differently. (2) development: why does a behaviour exist, because there is a precursor to this, speech exists because babies babble which then develops into speech. There are two types of ultimate (evolutionary) explanations: (1) historical (phylogenic) Focus on reconstructing the origin and step-by-step changes in a trait over time. Origin, and then how the behaviour changed step- by-step over time. Monkeys walked on four limbs, and they eventually become biped (two feet only: (2) functional (adaptive) Focus on identifying if and how a particular trait helps an individual survive to reproduce.
