Ch 13 questions

The entire cognitive system, according to an evolutionary psychology perspective, is

A complex collection of interrelated domain-specific information procession device

Traditional \______ is anchored by several core assumptions challenged by evolutionary psychologists.

Cogntive psychology

Which of the following is a cornerstone of traditional cognitive psychology ?

Functional agnosticsm

A computational theory \___________.

Specifies what a problem is and why there is a device to solve it.

A study of front-pafe newspaper from the past 300 years revealed that \____________.

Across cultures and time periods, the same key themes are repeared again and again

Linda wears tie-dyed shirts and buttons asserting that "men are slime" and frequently tries to organize the women in her workplace. Is it more likely that "Linda is a bank teller'" or that "Linda is a feminist bank teller?" The fact that most people tend to reply that "Linda is a feminist bank teller" is an example of \__________.

The conjunction fallacy

Ecological rationality is a theory that \_________.

States that the human environment has had certain statistical regularities that are utilized to facilitate adaptive problem solving

Ecological structure is \_________.

The set of statistical regularities of the human environment throughout

Tooby and Cosmides argue that errors in processing will result when \_______________.

There is a mismatch between the problem presented and the problem the mechanism was designed to solve

The frequentist hypothesis states that \___________.

Some human reasoning mechanisms are designed to take an input frequency information and produce as output frequency information

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of operating on frequentist representation?

They allow a person to retreive frequency representations more oftern than alternative representations

Tests of the frequentist hypothesis reveal that performance on the above problem—called the medical diagnosis problem—follows which pattern, from worst to best?

medical diagnosis problem, frequency information, visual information

Rather than \___________, humans have \_____________.

A general ability to reason; many specialized abilities to reason

Chomsky and Gould argue that that language is \_________.

A byproduct of the tremendous size of the human brain

Which of the following elements is NOT universal across all languages?

The underlyning sounds used

Which of the following hypothesis proposes that language evolved via sexual selection?

Scheherazade hypothesis

Which hypothesis for the evolution of language has the MOST serious difficulties in explaining available data?

Social contract hypothesis

Once language evolved, \__________.

Selectino would not have limited language to its original function

The ecological dominance/social competition (EDSC) hypothesis states that \___________.

since humans were able to subdue the hostile forces of nature, the only competition left was among themselves, resulting in the evolution of a larger brain

Gottfredson challenges the EDSC hypothesis on the grounds that \__________.

IQ and social intelligence are not correlated

The deadly innovations hypothesis proposes all of the following forces EXCEPT \____________.

founder effects

One study found that each additional IQ point is associated with a 1 percent \___________.

Reduction in relatice risk of death

Which of the following is NOT a bias documented in human social psychology?

Confrontational bias

Self-handicapping is the \_______.

None of the above

The repulsion of incest evolved \___________

To prevent inbreeding

Embarrassment evolved \__________.

To promote appeasement and submission

Group selection is \___________________ but the conditions that make group selection likely are \_________________.

Theoretically possilbe; rarely seen in nature

The resurrection of group selection is sometimes called \___________.

Multilevel selection theory

A key insight gleaned from evolutionary development psychology is \_________.

All the above

According to evolutionary scientists, a theory of mind evolved to \____________.

Aid in the prediction of other peoples behavior

Belsky and colleagues suggest that \_____________ early in a child's life can calibrate the kind of sexual strategy he or she adopts later in life.

Father absence

Chisholm suggests that variations in parental mating strategy and parental investment result in differences in \__________.

Attatchment security

Reactive heritability refers to \_______.

evolved psychological mechanisms designed to take as input one's heritable qualities as a guide to strategic solutions

All of the following are traits that might be maintained by frequency-dependent selection EXCEPT \__________.

Language

. Frequency-dependent selection requires that the payoff of a strategy \_____________ as its frequency \________________.

Increases, decreases

People who are high on the K-factor exhibit \___________.

Early attachment to their biological father

Nettle argues that very high or low levels of various personality traits \________.

Provide high benefits but also high costs

All of the following forces could cause the variation inherent in individual differences except \_________.

Group selection

Dysfunction occurs when \________

mechanism is not performing as it was designed to perform in the contexts in which it was designed to function

Evolved mechanisms can fail in all but which of the following ways?

Deactivation failure

The symptom of sadness \______________, while the symptom of crying \_____________.

Motivates avoidance of future losses; is a signal soliciting help from others

Evoked culture refers to \___________.

phenomena that are triggered in some groups more than in others because of differing environmental conditions

. Gangestad and Buss found that parasite prevalence is \___________ correlated with the importance that people in those cultures placed on physical attractiveness in a mate.

Positively

The display hypothesis proposes that culture is \_________.

An emergent phenomenon arising from sexual cimpetition

According to Nairne's work on memory systems, which of the following should be best recalled?

Items evaluated for revelence to surviving hypthetical plane crash

The commitment skepticism bias, decent illusion, and auditory looming bias imply that humans \___________.

Are adaptive rational

In the first empirical test of the ecological dominance/social competition (EDSC) hypothesis, research discovered that \___________.

Population density throughout human evolution was positively correlated with cranial capacity

Navarette's studies on fear learning and extinction based on group membership revealed that \_____________.

Fear of out-group men was the most difficult to distinguish

Which of the following is a finding that supports the hypothesis that morality may be sexually selected?

Humans prefer virtuous traits in their mates

Natural selection appears to be \_____________ early in life

Especially strong

Development evolutionary psychology stress which of the following

All the above

Which of the following describes what we know about the development of theory of mind ?

It grows more and more sophisticated with age

Skills at theory of mind are positively correlated with which personality trait?

Agreeableness

Which of the following is a documented example of reactive heritability?

The positive correlation between extraversion and physical strength

Psychopaths display "predatory memory" for potential victims who display which of the following traits?

Helpfulness

Cross-cultural variability in pathogen prevalence has provided support for the hypothesis that some cultural differences are adaptive patterns of \__________.

Evoked culture

Which of the following is true of the effects of prestige on cultural transmission?

Information from individual of high prestige is discounted if the information coincides with their self-interest.

Cognitive psychology

the ways we process information about other people, the entire cognitive system is a complex collection of interrelated information processing devices, functionally specialized for solving specific classes of adaptive problems

The entire cognitive system is a complex collection of \___________ \_________ \_____________ devices, specialized for solving specific classes of \_____________ \___________.

interrelated information processing,
adaptive problems.

Difference between evolutionary theory and cognitive theory

cog - mechanisms made up to include the ability to reason, learn, imitate, calculate means-ends relationships, compute similarity, form concepts, and remember things
ev - the mind is likley to consist of a large number of specialized mechanisms, each tailored to solving a different adaptive problem

One main difference of perspective by cognitive psychologists compared to evolutionary psychologists.

They assume the cognitive architecture is general purpose and content free, whereas the evolutionary psychologists think there are specific mechanisms tailored to solve diff adaptive problems.

True or False?
Many cognitive psychologists have intentionally used artificial stimuli precisely because they want to get rid of the messy 'content' with which subjects might have had prior experience (aka nonsense syllables)

True

Two main problems with the assumption of general processing mechanisms.

What is needed to be successful is different for different adaptive problems (food selection vs mate selection),
and if it was general, there are so many behaviors that would be generated, there would be no way to distinguish between successful adaptive solutions.

The use of artificial content-free stimuli makes sense of the mind is ....

indeed a general-purpose information processor. It makes less sense if cognitive mechanisms are specialized to process information about particular tasks

Second core assumption of cognitive psychologists.

functional agnosticism

Functional agnosticism

the view that info-processing mechanisms can be studied without understanding the adaptive problems they were designed to solve.

Evolutionary psychologists replace the core assumptions of mainstream cog psych with a set of assumptions that permits integration with the rest of life science, they are...

1.) the human mind consists of a set of evolved information-processing mechanisms embedded in the *human nervous system*
2.) These mechanisms and the developmental programs that produce them are adaptions produced by *natural selection* over evolutionary time in ancestral environments
3.) Many of these mechanisms are functionally specialized to produce behavior that *solves particular adaptive problems*, such as mate selection, language acquisition, and cooperation
4.) To be functionally specialized, many of these mechanisms must be richly structured in *content-specific ways*

Computational theory (suggested that cog psychologists should focus on this):

info-processing devices designed to solve problems,
solve problems by virtue of their structure,
in order to explain structure, need to know what problem it was designed to solve, and why designed to solve it.

What is/does a computational theory do?

specifies what that problem is and why there is a device to solve it, it specifies the function of an information processing device

Human attention and memory are extremely \____________, designed to notice, store, and retrieve info that has the \__________ importance for solving \_____________ \____________.

selective,
most,
adaptive problems.

A computational theory is based on the following arguments

1.) information processing devices are designed to solve problems
2.) they solve problems by virtue of their structure
3.) hence, to explain the structure of a device, you need to know
a.) what problem it was designed to solve, and
b) why it was designed to solve that problem

Nairne and colleagues did study on memory and survival processing and found...

rating memory in a survival scenario produced better recall than any other well known memory-enhancing technique.

\_____ an inherently limited capacity

Attention

Base-rate fallacy:

people tend to ignore base-rate info when presented with compelling individuating info.

True or False?
If we remembered everything we experienced we would have a tremendous difficulty in retrieving such information quickly

T

The conjunction fallacy:

people tend to categorize other people to a specific category even when the other category is more likely. The specific category is related or in conjunction to the overall category, making the overall category more likely. (Bank teller vs Feminist bank teller)

What are the two main arguments for the emergence of language?

language is a by-product of the large brain guided by particular selective pressures (Chomsky),
and language is an adaptation produced by natural selection for the communication of information (Pinker).

A reasonable evolution-based prediction of memory and attention is that...

human attention and memory are extremely selective, designed to notice, store, and retrieve information that has the most importance for solving adaptive problems

In a study of 736 front page newspapers, what 'story themes' did participants remember most?

death (accidental or natural), murder, or physical assault, robbery, reputation, heroism or altruism, suicide, marital problems such as in infidelity, harm, or injury to offspring, abandoned or destitute family, taking a stand or fighting back, and rape or sexual assault

Social gossip hypothesis

language evolved to facilitate bonding among large groups of humans.

Chomsky and Gould argued that language is not an adaptation but rather instead a *by-product*, how

language simply materializes over development; more dentrite connections and more neurons being developed in the first few years of life - resulted from natural selection

Social contract hypothesis

language evolved in order to communicate and facilitate marriage contracts signaling who was off limits.

Steven Pinker argues that language is an *adaption* par excellence, meaning that

it is produced by natural selection for the communication of information

Scheherazade hypothesis

language evolved because the brain is a sexually selected organ that evolved to signal superior fitness to potential mates.

Language is linked to which two specific regions in the brain?

the Wernicke's and Broca's area

Ecological Dominance Social competition hypothesis (EDSC)

ancestors were able to solve many problems with survival in nature, so humans now have other selective forces to focus on, competition from other humans (social).

Deadly innovations hypothesis (Gottfredson)

Individual differences in survival is due to the higher level of intelligence that has emerged from selection pressure for the evolution of intelligence.

Why did language develop?

- to facilitate communication, the exchange of information between individuals
-social group hypoth (language evolved to facilitate bonding among large groups of humans)
-social contract hypoth (vow publicly, mating commitments
- scheherazade hypoth (by dazzling potential mates with humor one may gain sexual access

How could/did the social gossip hypoth promote bonding?

told others who is having sex with whom, who cheated on whom with whom, who can be trusted with a secret, who will make a good friend or a coalitional partner, which alliances show signs of rupture, and who has a reputation for doing what to whom
\---language evolved to promote social cohesion among large groups through gossip in the broadest sense

What are six evolutionary theories that are beneficial to Social psychology?

inclusive fitness theory,
sexual selection,
parental investment theory,
reciprocal altruism,
parent-offspring conflict, and
sexual conflict.

True or False?
The brain is not a metabolically expensive organ to operate

False

Adaptive problems that moral emotions solve can be grouped into these three categories:

Respect for authority,
a thirst for justice,
the evolution of care.

The brain makes up about __% of the human body weight and it consumes about \____% of the body's calories

2-3; 20-25

Strategic Niche Specialization

Selection favors mechanisms that cause individuals to seek niches where the competition is less intense.

ecological dominance/social competition hypoth (EDSC)

human ancestors were able to subdue many of the traditional hostile forces of nature that previously impeded survival (starvation, warfare, pestilence, and extreme weather). We can now grow abundant food so rarely starve; we've adopted shelters, clothing and fire, so rarely die from extremes of weather \-- according to this hypoth human dominance over the ecology opened the door to a new set of selective forces \-- competition from other humans

Cultural phenomena can be divided into two types:

evoked culture and transmitted culture

deadly weapons innovations hypoth

human innovation has created and even amplified to relative risk of injury and premature death, creating selection pressure for the evolution of general intelligence

Display hypothesis

culture has emerged from sexual competition among people pursuing different mating strategies in diff mating arenas.

Evolutionary psychology has made approaches to understand these main areas of psychology:

cognitive,
social,
developmental,
personality,
clinical, and
cultural.

Double jeopardy

not only do less intelligent people become injured and die at higher rates, their children suffer greater mortality as a consequence of the parents not being able to protect and provide for them