UCLA ANTHRO 1 ACTUAL EXAM SCRIPT 2025/2026
QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔Are genes recipes or blueprints? - ✔✔Recipes!
They are like instruction that can be altered by the environment.
✔✔Behavior is more ___ than morphology. - ✔✔Plastic!
Morphological traits are canalized (Number of fingers, eyes in front)
✔✔Myth or Real:
Most human behavior is the product of learning and culture and so it can't be adaptive. -
✔✔MYTH!
Natural selection shapes learning mechanisms so that organisms can adjust their
behavior to local conditions in an adaptive way.
✔✔Is all behavior adaptive? - ✔✔No!
We call behaviors that do not seem adaptive, maladaptation.
✔✔Reasons for maladaptation... - ✔✔1. Culture evolves more quickly than genes so
selection may not have caught up.
2. Byproduct of another trial that is adaptive.
✔✔The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA) - ✔✔The social, technological
and ecological conditions under which human mental abilities evolved.
Our brains are well-attuned to deal with problems that we have been dealing with for a
long time.
✔✔Problems with the EEA - ✔✔When was it?
Where was it?
How did human foragers live during this time?
-How do we account foe centuries of trade, migration, marginalization, colonialism?
✔✔One of the most adaptive problems humans face is... - ✔✔Who is a good mate?
✔✔Choosing a good mate is closely linked to... - ✔✔Fitness.
✔✔Mechanisms that enhance human fitness - ✔✔1. Avoiding mating with kin.
2. Preferring mates likely to reproduce successfully
✔✔When mating, primates show... - ✔✔avoidance to mating with kin through dispersal
strategies and aversion to age-mates who could be paternal half siblings.
✔✔Inbreeding - ✔✔Offspring born of two genetically related parents. (Biological)
, ✔✔Incest - ✔✔Sexual intercourse between two individuals so closely related that it is
illegal or forbidden. (Social)
✔✔Freud's view on incest... - ✔✔That we need social customs to prevent inbreeding
because humans a predisposed to be attracted to close relatives. (Discredited by
animals)
✔✔Westermarck Effect - ✔✔Humans tend not to mate with people they grew up with.
✔✔The Kibbutz Age-Mates - ✔✔Israeli children raised in communal nurseries spent
large amounts of time with unrelated age-mates and out of 2,769 marriages only 14
were between member of the same peer group.
✔✔Sim-Pua Marriages - ✔✔A type of Taiwanese adoption were child-brides are raised
in the same home as their future husbands.
✔✔Issues with Sim-Pua Marriages - ✔✔1. high incidences of adultery
2. low birth rates
3. high divorce rates
✔✔Psychology of Human Mate Preferences: Female Limiting Factor - ✔✔Resources!
Favors mates who can provide.
✔✔Psychology of Human Mate Preferences: Male Limiting Factor - ✔✔Females! Favor
healthy, fertile mates.
✔✔Psychology of Human Mate Preferences: Desirable Traits - ✔✔Men and women
both rank mutual attractiveness as number one.
✔✔Age preferences are... - ✔✔more similar across cultures.
✔✔Female Reproductive Success - ✔✔LIMITED VARIANCE IN REPRODUCTIVE
SUCCESS.
Limited by awn egg production, not by how many mates she can have.
✔✔Male Reproductive Success - ✔✔GREATER VARIANCE IN REPRODUCTIVE
SUCCESS.
Men gain success by acquiring multiple mates, RS is limited by women.
✔✔Buss Study, 1994 - ✔✔Women typically want less sexual partners than men. (this
may have changed in the last 30 years)
Month?
QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔Are genes recipes or blueprints? - ✔✔Recipes!
They are like instruction that can be altered by the environment.
✔✔Behavior is more ___ than morphology. - ✔✔Plastic!
Morphological traits are canalized (Number of fingers, eyes in front)
✔✔Myth or Real:
Most human behavior is the product of learning and culture and so it can't be adaptive. -
✔✔MYTH!
Natural selection shapes learning mechanisms so that organisms can adjust their
behavior to local conditions in an adaptive way.
✔✔Is all behavior adaptive? - ✔✔No!
We call behaviors that do not seem adaptive, maladaptation.
✔✔Reasons for maladaptation... - ✔✔1. Culture evolves more quickly than genes so
selection may not have caught up.
2. Byproduct of another trial that is adaptive.
✔✔The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA) - ✔✔The social, technological
and ecological conditions under which human mental abilities evolved.
Our brains are well-attuned to deal with problems that we have been dealing with for a
long time.
✔✔Problems with the EEA - ✔✔When was it?
Where was it?
How did human foragers live during this time?
-How do we account foe centuries of trade, migration, marginalization, colonialism?
✔✔One of the most adaptive problems humans face is... - ✔✔Who is a good mate?
✔✔Choosing a good mate is closely linked to... - ✔✔Fitness.
✔✔Mechanisms that enhance human fitness - ✔✔1. Avoiding mating with kin.
2. Preferring mates likely to reproduce successfully
✔✔When mating, primates show... - ✔✔avoidance to mating with kin through dispersal
strategies and aversion to age-mates who could be paternal half siblings.
✔✔Inbreeding - ✔✔Offspring born of two genetically related parents. (Biological)
, ✔✔Incest - ✔✔Sexual intercourse between two individuals so closely related that it is
illegal or forbidden. (Social)
✔✔Freud's view on incest... - ✔✔That we need social customs to prevent inbreeding
because humans a predisposed to be attracted to close relatives. (Discredited by
animals)
✔✔Westermarck Effect - ✔✔Humans tend not to mate with people they grew up with.
✔✔The Kibbutz Age-Mates - ✔✔Israeli children raised in communal nurseries spent
large amounts of time with unrelated age-mates and out of 2,769 marriages only 14
were between member of the same peer group.
✔✔Sim-Pua Marriages - ✔✔A type of Taiwanese adoption were child-brides are raised
in the same home as their future husbands.
✔✔Issues with Sim-Pua Marriages - ✔✔1. high incidences of adultery
2. low birth rates
3. high divorce rates
✔✔Psychology of Human Mate Preferences: Female Limiting Factor - ✔✔Resources!
Favors mates who can provide.
✔✔Psychology of Human Mate Preferences: Male Limiting Factor - ✔✔Females! Favor
healthy, fertile mates.
✔✔Psychology of Human Mate Preferences: Desirable Traits - ✔✔Men and women
both rank mutual attractiveness as number one.
✔✔Age preferences are... - ✔✔more similar across cultures.
✔✔Female Reproductive Success - ✔✔LIMITED VARIANCE IN REPRODUCTIVE
SUCCESS.
Limited by awn egg production, not by how many mates she can have.
✔✔Male Reproductive Success - ✔✔GREATER VARIANCE IN REPRODUCTIVE
SUCCESS.
Men gain success by acquiring multiple mates, RS is limited by women.
✔✔Buss Study, 1994 - ✔✔Women typically want less sexual partners than men. (this
may have changed in the last 30 years)
Month?
