UCLA LS15 Final (Phelan) Exam Questions With Verified Answers

UCLA LS15 Final (Phelan) Exam Questions With Verified Answers Why is the rate and direction of change in circumstances more important than absolute levels? - answerrate/direction of change in circumstances is more important than absolute levels because the progress/process of achieving a goal increases an individual's happiness as opposed to just the outcome. we adjust quickly to both good and bad fortune before returning back to normal levels. (achieving your dreams doesn't make you happy forever). Why are emotions designed to be less permanent than they feel? - answeremotions exist to motivate behavior, not reward it. they are tools built by genes that induce/nudge you to behaviors that benefit the genes. once they've done that, they go away. we believe that permanent happiness or devastation exist, but it doesn't last forever. Describe three lines of evidence supporting the data that emotions are tools used to manipulate our behavior. - answer(1) graph showing lottery winners' intense spike in happiness, then returning to normal levels (2) women report that they have trouble remembering the pain of giving birth later in life (3) going out of my way in the morning to get coffee, changing my behavior to get caffeine drug because i know it will make me awake and happy Using two examples, explain why human culture reduces the usefulness of our instincts. - answera lot of instincts that served us well in a hunter-gatherer environment generate less favorable fitness outcomes today. (1) birth control reduces risk of cuckoldry (males who are unwittingly investing in parental effort in offspring that are not genetically their own) (2) daycare centers reduce the necessity of parental investment in offspring What is the fundamental reproductive equation and what does it reveal about culture and biology? - answersex = pregnancy = babies = maternal child care = loss of female economic opportunity = loss of female political power. culture can reduce the impact of biological constraints and make equality possible. each of those equal signs can be crossed out due to a new cultural innovation. Using two examples explain what constrained learning is and how it illuminates the culture/biology interplay. - answerconstrained learning is the idea that biology hinders our ability to learn certain things, not allowing culture to shape our behavior. it is very easy to learn some things but harder to learn things that were not part of our EEA. (1) rats in flashing lights/electrocution experiment were able to learn the association. other associations, like flashing lights/nausea, could not be learned because they are not really related in real life. (2) we are good at learning languages when we are young. later on, we are not so good at it because that was never a thing in our prior environment, that you were going to encounter a different language. What is the EEA and why is it important for us to be aware of it? - answerEEA = environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. we need to be aware of it because natural selection is good at adapting us to our environment and so we develop adaptations for the environment we evolved in (e.g. hunter-gatherer). if our current environment differs from our EEA, we should expect mismatch. the EEA can help us understand why certain things are... such as obesity. can't trust instincts in alien environment. Why is the EEA sometimes different from our current environment? - answerlots of answers for this. maybe our environment is changing very quickly, so we're getting out of sync with it because we can't keep up with the rate of environmental change. or maybe, we've been transported to some other environment that's different from the one we were in. Describe three examples of a species having a different EEA in a current environment. - answerlots of examples. all pets, lab animals, zoo animals, moths banging against a window trying to get to an artificial light, fat UCLA squirrels falling out of trees because there are so many people and so much food available. What does mismatch mean and what are its implications for our instincts? - answermismatch refers to the situation when a population's current environment and their EEA are not the same. its implications for our instincts, or any organism's instincts, are that they can't be trusted. they may or may not get them to behaviors that optimize fitness. the fact that it is your instincts and therefore is probably directing you to the best outcome—if we were hunter-gatherers, i would say yes, trust your instincts—now, i would say no, don't trust your instincts. now you have to override it with your cerebral cortex and recognize that there may be mismatch. Why is it hard to be a teenager? Be specific. - answerbody says reproduce, culture says wait. there is mismatch between our current environment and EEA. all that evolution does is cause organisms to have the highest relative reproductive rate—whatever those traits are, those persist. but it doesn't mean they're good, or necessary, or valuable. listening to your biology as a teenager will probably lead you to a less satisfying outcome.