UCLA ANTHRO 1 EXAM 2025/2026 QUESTIONS WITH
ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔What is the human mating system? - ✔✔-most societies are polygynous but most
individuals are monogamous
✔✔Why is polygyny more common than polyandry? - ✔✔-men have more to gain from
having multiple partners
-males sharing a wife lease to reduced mating opportunities and obscured paternity
✔✔The Human Anomaly - ✔✔Humans:
-have colonized almost every terrestrial habitat on the planet
-have more complex technology and have altered the planet in innumerable ways
-are exceptionally specialized and diverse
✔✔What makes us human? - ✔✔-language
-tools
-cognitive complexity
-cooperation and warfare
✔✔Two fundamental traits that set humans apart: - ✔✔1) extensive reliance on social
learning, resulting in CUMULATIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION
2) extraordinary COOPERATION between nonkin, including specialization, trade, and
complex alliance networks
✔✔The Ratchet Effect - ✔✔-The concept that humans continually improve on
improvements, that they do not go backward or revert to a previous state. Progress
occurs because improvements move themselves upward, much like a ratchet.
-the ability to display increasingly complex behaviors built on prior socially transmitted
information
✔✔Principal factors in cultural evolution: - ✔✔-effects of cultural info on individual
fitness
-effects of cultural info on group fitness (cultural group selection)
-'fit' between cultural info and individual psychology ('attractor')
✔✔Cultural group selection - ✔✔-larger, healthier, and better organized groups will
outcompete their rivals
-how: displace or kill members of rival groups, conquer and assimilate members of rival
groups, attract immigrants from rival groups
✔✔Social Learning in Primates (in wild): - ✔✔-stimulus enhancement (social
facilitation): common
-emulation: lots of trial and error learning in chimps with nut-cracking, termite fishing
-imitation (observational learning): probably underlies some capuchin social traditions
, -teaching: ??
✔✔Social Learning in Primates (in the lab): - ✔✔-Box experiment with chimps
-opaque condition --> more imitation
-transparent condition --> more emulation
✔✔Humans tendency with social learning - ✔✔over imitators
✔✔Psychological adaptations for culture acquisition: - ✔✔- the mind consists of
specialized mechanisms, addresses a problem our ancestors faced
-humans possess a suite of mechanisms for acquisition, use, and transmission on
cultural info
✔✔Why is overimitation not necessarily damaging to human behavior? - ✔✔-
overimitation is sensitive to cues of teaching
-allows people to learn what is actually important to do
✔✔Adaptations for culture acquisition
PROBLEM: the functional components of cultural practices are often opaque to
learners, or even wholly unknown by anyone - ✔✔Solution:
-learners must therefore be credulous if they are to take advantage of the adaptive
information that culture provides
✔✔Adaptations for culture acquisition
PROBLEM: credulity invites both acquisition of sincere false information and
exploitation - ✔✔Solution:
-need to balance benefits of culture acquisition against costs of potential false beliefs
and exploitation
-trial and error testing of cultural info can be an alternative to credulous culture
acquisition
✔✔smoke detector principle - ✔✔-ratio of cost of false positives vs cost of false
negatives is generally more asymmetrical for info about hazards
-evolved culture-acquisition mechanism should make people more credulous toward
info about hazards than info about benefits
✔✔Compared to info regarding benefits, info regarding hazards should be: - ✔✔-more
salient
-better recalled
-more readily believed
-relatedly: more avidly transmitted
ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔What is the human mating system? - ✔✔-most societies are polygynous but most
individuals are monogamous
✔✔Why is polygyny more common than polyandry? - ✔✔-men have more to gain from
having multiple partners
-males sharing a wife lease to reduced mating opportunities and obscured paternity
✔✔The Human Anomaly - ✔✔Humans:
-have colonized almost every terrestrial habitat on the planet
-have more complex technology and have altered the planet in innumerable ways
-are exceptionally specialized and diverse
✔✔What makes us human? - ✔✔-language
-tools
-cognitive complexity
-cooperation and warfare
✔✔Two fundamental traits that set humans apart: - ✔✔1) extensive reliance on social
learning, resulting in CUMULATIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION
2) extraordinary COOPERATION between nonkin, including specialization, trade, and
complex alliance networks
✔✔The Ratchet Effect - ✔✔-The concept that humans continually improve on
improvements, that they do not go backward or revert to a previous state. Progress
occurs because improvements move themselves upward, much like a ratchet.
-the ability to display increasingly complex behaviors built on prior socially transmitted
information
✔✔Principal factors in cultural evolution: - ✔✔-effects of cultural info on individual
fitness
-effects of cultural info on group fitness (cultural group selection)
-'fit' between cultural info and individual psychology ('attractor')
✔✔Cultural group selection - ✔✔-larger, healthier, and better organized groups will
outcompete their rivals
-how: displace or kill members of rival groups, conquer and assimilate members of rival
groups, attract immigrants from rival groups
✔✔Social Learning in Primates (in wild): - ✔✔-stimulus enhancement (social
facilitation): common
-emulation: lots of trial and error learning in chimps with nut-cracking, termite fishing
-imitation (observational learning): probably underlies some capuchin social traditions
, -teaching: ??
✔✔Social Learning in Primates (in the lab): - ✔✔-Box experiment with chimps
-opaque condition --> more imitation
-transparent condition --> more emulation
✔✔Humans tendency with social learning - ✔✔over imitators
✔✔Psychological adaptations for culture acquisition: - ✔✔- the mind consists of
specialized mechanisms, addresses a problem our ancestors faced
-humans possess a suite of mechanisms for acquisition, use, and transmission on
cultural info
✔✔Why is overimitation not necessarily damaging to human behavior? - ✔✔-
overimitation is sensitive to cues of teaching
-allows people to learn what is actually important to do
✔✔Adaptations for culture acquisition
PROBLEM: the functional components of cultural practices are often opaque to
learners, or even wholly unknown by anyone - ✔✔Solution:
-learners must therefore be credulous if they are to take advantage of the adaptive
information that culture provides
✔✔Adaptations for culture acquisition
PROBLEM: credulity invites both acquisition of sincere false information and
exploitation - ✔✔Solution:
-need to balance benefits of culture acquisition against costs of potential false beliefs
and exploitation
-trial and error testing of cultural info can be an alternative to credulous culture
acquisition
✔✔smoke detector principle - ✔✔-ratio of cost of false positives vs cost of false
negatives is generally more asymmetrical for info about hazards
-evolved culture-acquisition mechanism should make people more credulous toward
info about hazards than info about benefits
✔✔Compared to info regarding benefits, info regarding hazards should be: - ✔✔-more
salient
-better recalled
-more readily believed
-relatedly: more avidly transmitted
