Lecture 8

Biological factors: genes, brain, environment, evolution.

Evolution by natural selection: process by which certain adaptive characteristics emerge over generations.

Sir Francis Galton: misunderstood survival of the fittest, supposed that rich white man in England were superior. Began the "euegenics" movement. Said that good birth is the reason of people’s high intelligence and recommended sterilization of the poor.

Social Darwinism: applying evolutionary theory to society; societies and cultures compete in survival of the fittest.

Sociobiology/Evolutionary psychology: scientific study of the influence of evolutionary biology on individual responses regarding social matters. Analysis of human agression, courtship and raising children,.

Evolutionary personality theory: application of Darwin’s theory of evolution, function of a survival characteristic evolves over time. Belief that many of individual characteristics are "in our bones" aka genes.

Biological determination: personality is a matter of genes, brains and hormones. Behavior is determined by biological tendencies.

Examples of genetic personality types: Angelman syndrome (deletion or inactivation of genes on the maternally inherited chromosome 15), Down’s syndrome (third chromosome of 21).

Tourette Syndrome: inherited neuropsychiatric disorder with onset in childhood, characterized by multiple physical tics and at least one vocal tic. Often associated with coprolalia, the exclamation of obscene words or socially inappropriate remarks.

Somatotypology: three body types have influence of personality.

Hans Eysenck: assumed that 3 basic dimensions of personality are related to specific brain functions.

Eysenck’s types: extroversion-introversion, neuroticism-stability, psychoticism-superego functioning.

Introversion vs extroversion Hans Eysenck: ties this to central nervous system, extroverts low level of brain arousal and introverts high level of brain arousal.

Temperament based on work of Pavlov: stable individual differences in emotional reactivity which remain stable as children mature. Different nervous system responses to unpleasant stimuli.

4 basic aspects of temperament: social, emotionality, activity, impulsive-aggressive.

Brain hemispheric hypothesis: left hemisphere- positive emotions, analytic and right hemisphere - negative, intuicję thinking.

Neuroimaging: EEG, PET scans, fMRI.

EEG: reveals neuronal activity in different brain regions.

PET scans: functional neuroimagining technique that demonstrates metabolism of glucose in brain under arousal.

fMRI scans: functional neuroimagining technique that measures brain activity by detecting associated changes in blood flow.

Types of neurotransmitters: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin.