Evolutionary psychology
College 1 Foundations of evolutionary psychology
Sciences of the mind → new way of looking at behaviour from an evolutionary perspective.
Human skeleton
- What can we learn from it ?
- We can learn a lot about human behaviour → where is it found? How old is it ? etc.
- The person lived 400.000 years ago in Spain
- He is an adult male
- Died because of another human being → looking at the injuries of the skeleton
- A right handed person injured him
➔ EP entail many different disciplines → for example archelogy, pathology
Learning objectives
• What is evolutionary psychology?
• Identify the three essential ingredients of evolution through natural selection
• Natural vs. sexual selection
• Identify why Neanderthals went extinct
• Know the history of evolutionary psychology
• List procedures for identifying adaptive problems
• List common misunderstandings about evolutionary theory
Learning goals
• Students can understand the most important theories, concepts, studies and the findings
used in the field of Evolutionary Psychology.
• Students can explain a diversity of different human behaviors, emotions, and cognitions from
an evolutionary perspective (such as love, cooperation, warfare, gossip).
• Students are able to assess the evolutionary costs and benefits associated with different
kinds of human activities.
• Students can formulate a research hypothesis, grounded in evolutionary psychology, and
develop a proposal for testing it.
What you learn
- You need to make to make the familiar look strange
- A lot of behaviour is common so we don’t think about it, that’s why you need to make it
strange, so you can look at it.
Why do we look particular food ? How do we raise children? Why do we spend much time on
meaningless activities? Why do we have language? → we are the talking ape. How and when did
language evolve? Why does religion exist? Why do we work? What is the function of dancing and
singing (common across cultures)? Why do men take more physical risks then women?
WHY?
• Why do people do these things?
• Can we explain them with existing theories in psychology?
1
, • Could we gain insights by thinking about humans as a biological species, subject to the same
environmental pressures as other animals?
EP Short overview
• Evolutionary psychology is the study of human behaviour, affect and cognition from an
evolutionary perspective
• Using evolutionary theory to understand why the human mind works this way and how it has
been designed.
• In effect, it means viewing humans as part of the animal kingdom, subject to the same laws
of evolution, natural selection, etc.
o This might seem contentious! (but there is really no alternative)
- Why is the human mind working
- We are interested in the brain and how it has evolved
- Humans as part of the animal world → reproductive success
- We are exactly like other animals
- As human being to think about behaviour is hard because they are normal, that makes it
difficult to explain
- Sometimes we have to look at it at the lens of other species
- Afbeelding → garden with fences, is a way to mark your territory → we also show behaviour
of characteristics that other species also has
Every species has its own nature
- We are also animals like cat and dogs
- Cats and dogs have a very distinct nature
- Dogs if you give them food they will attack the food → cat will take a nibble and will come
back later
- Dogs is a social animal → live in a group always have to compete with other animals it is in
their nature
- Cat is a solitary animal → they don’t have to compete with other cats for food, most stressful
thing to do is take another cat because you will stress them out
- Both house pets
History of evolution
- Greek philosophers (600-400 BC)
- Aristoteles (300 BC)
- Medieval Christianity
- Lamarck (18th century)
o The inheritance of acquired characteristics
o Use and disuse of traits (e.g., muscles)
- Darwin (19th century)
- Mendel (19th century)
- DNA discovery
2
,First people where put there by a god , 17th and 18th century enlightening, Lamarck → was a French
scientist, Mendel → discovered genetics , 20th century → theories about evolution and natural
selection.
Evolution of Pre-Darwin
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
1. The inheritance of acquired characteristics
2. Use and disuse of traits (e.g., muscles)
- He argued that species do change overtime → evidence of different fossils
- In the picture you see the process of how one species changes
- Giraffe uses neck more in order to get to the leaves → as they stretch their neck their
offspring will be born with a longer neck etc.
- Stretching long neck is an acquired characteristics → when you train it your children will bron
with it
➔ We now know it doesn’t work that way
➔ But it may work but in a different way
Darwin (1809-1882)
• The voyage of the Beagle (1831- 1836)
• Book “On the Origin of Species” (1859)
• http://www.aboutdarwin.com
- He started to think about the patterns that he had seen
- He went on these islands to collect these animals → he killed them and shipped them to
England
- In common they are all finches they have a common ancestor but they are involved in
different ways because of there snavels
- On all the islands they have different food
- Example of evolution through natural selection
Natural selection according to Darwin
“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently,
there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however
slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of
life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle
of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”
- Because it is able to survive it can reproduce
- This is how subspecies emerge
3
, The tree of life
DNA-studies reveal that humans share a common ancestor with the Bacteria, some 4 billion years
ago
- When he introduced it religion was the common way of thinking
- Looking at the DNA we can see that we have a common ancestor
The primate tree
- Our DNA shows we have a lot in common with other primates
- Our DNA is 99% the same a gorillas
- Human evolved from chimpansees that is not true but we have a common ancestor
- Chimpansees have taken their own evolutionary steps
4
College 1 Foundations of evolutionary psychology
Sciences of the mind → new way of looking at behaviour from an evolutionary perspective.
Human skeleton
- What can we learn from it ?
- We can learn a lot about human behaviour → where is it found? How old is it ? etc.
- The person lived 400.000 years ago in Spain
- He is an adult male
- Died because of another human being → looking at the injuries of the skeleton
- A right handed person injured him
➔ EP entail many different disciplines → for example archelogy, pathology
Learning objectives
• What is evolutionary psychology?
• Identify the three essential ingredients of evolution through natural selection
• Natural vs. sexual selection
• Identify why Neanderthals went extinct
• Know the history of evolutionary psychology
• List procedures for identifying adaptive problems
• List common misunderstandings about evolutionary theory
Learning goals
• Students can understand the most important theories, concepts, studies and the findings
used in the field of Evolutionary Psychology.
• Students can explain a diversity of different human behaviors, emotions, and cognitions from
an evolutionary perspective (such as love, cooperation, warfare, gossip).
• Students are able to assess the evolutionary costs and benefits associated with different
kinds of human activities.
• Students can formulate a research hypothesis, grounded in evolutionary psychology, and
develop a proposal for testing it.
What you learn
- You need to make to make the familiar look strange
- A lot of behaviour is common so we don’t think about it, that’s why you need to make it
strange, so you can look at it.
Why do we look particular food ? How do we raise children? Why do we spend much time on
meaningless activities? Why do we have language? → we are the talking ape. How and when did
language evolve? Why does religion exist? Why do we work? What is the function of dancing and
singing (common across cultures)? Why do men take more physical risks then women?
WHY?
• Why do people do these things?
• Can we explain them with existing theories in psychology?
1
, • Could we gain insights by thinking about humans as a biological species, subject to the same
environmental pressures as other animals?
EP Short overview
• Evolutionary psychology is the study of human behaviour, affect and cognition from an
evolutionary perspective
• Using evolutionary theory to understand why the human mind works this way and how it has
been designed.
• In effect, it means viewing humans as part of the animal kingdom, subject to the same laws
of evolution, natural selection, etc.
o This might seem contentious! (but there is really no alternative)
- Why is the human mind working
- We are interested in the brain and how it has evolved
- Humans as part of the animal world → reproductive success
- We are exactly like other animals
- As human being to think about behaviour is hard because they are normal, that makes it
difficult to explain
- Sometimes we have to look at it at the lens of other species
- Afbeelding → garden with fences, is a way to mark your territory → we also show behaviour
of characteristics that other species also has
Every species has its own nature
- We are also animals like cat and dogs
- Cats and dogs have a very distinct nature
- Dogs if you give them food they will attack the food → cat will take a nibble and will come
back later
- Dogs is a social animal → live in a group always have to compete with other animals it is in
their nature
- Cat is a solitary animal → they don’t have to compete with other cats for food, most stressful
thing to do is take another cat because you will stress them out
- Both house pets
History of evolution
- Greek philosophers (600-400 BC)
- Aristoteles (300 BC)
- Medieval Christianity
- Lamarck (18th century)
o The inheritance of acquired characteristics
o Use and disuse of traits (e.g., muscles)
- Darwin (19th century)
- Mendel (19th century)
- DNA discovery
2
,First people where put there by a god , 17th and 18th century enlightening, Lamarck → was a French
scientist, Mendel → discovered genetics , 20th century → theories about evolution and natural
selection.
Evolution of Pre-Darwin
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
1. The inheritance of acquired characteristics
2. Use and disuse of traits (e.g., muscles)
- He argued that species do change overtime → evidence of different fossils
- In the picture you see the process of how one species changes
- Giraffe uses neck more in order to get to the leaves → as they stretch their neck their
offspring will be born with a longer neck etc.
- Stretching long neck is an acquired characteristics → when you train it your children will bron
with it
➔ We now know it doesn’t work that way
➔ But it may work but in a different way
Darwin (1809-1882)
• The voyage of the Beagle (1831- 1836)
• Book “On the Origin of Species” (1859)
• http://www.aboutdarwin.com
- He started to think about the patterns that he had seen
- He went on these islands to collect these animals → he killed them and shipped them to
England
- In common they are all finches they have a common ancestor but they are involved in
different ways because of there snavels
- On all the islands they have different food
- Example of evolution through natural selection
Natural selection according to Darwin
“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently,
there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however
slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of
life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle
of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”
- Because it is able to survive it can reproduce
- This is how subspecies emerge
3
, The tree of life
DNA-studies reveal that humans share a common ancestor with the Bacteria, some 4 billion years
ago
- When he introduced it religion was the common way of thinking
- Looking at the DNA we can see that we have a common ancestor
The primate tree
- Our DNA shows we have a lot in common with other primates
- Our DNA is 99% the same a gorillas
- Human evolved from chimpansees that is not true but we have a common ancestor
- Chimpansees have taken their own evolutionary steps
4
