Psychology 369 - EVOLUTION & HUMAN
BEHAVIOR - Winter, 2009
TEXTS:
Evolutionary
Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (3rd Ed., David Buss, 2008)
How
Humans Evolved (4th Ed. Boyd & Silk, 2006)
Multiple
Outside Readings (OR) are on
Reserve in the SMC Library
CONTACT
INFORMATION:
Frank
McAndrew, E-131 SMC, Ext. 7525
e-mail: fmcandre@knox.edu.
Psychology
Department Web Page
Evolution
and
Human Behavior: An Introduction to the Course
This
course will be about "Human
Nature." The primary assumption of the course is that the human mind
and human behavioral predispositions have been shaped by the process of
natural selection throughout our evolutionary past. Thus, we will be
making some different assumptions about human nature than you may have
encountered in most of the other courses in the social sciences that
you have taken at Knox. We will explicitly be taking the position that
people do NOT come into the world as blank slates waiting to be shaped
by their environment and experiences, but rather that we are born with
a relatively well developed arsenal of strategies, preferences, and
passions that enabled our ancestors to survive in our ancestral
environments. This is not to say that experience and environment are
not important, but only that we come into the world more prepared to
deal with some types of experiences and environments than others. This
field has been a strong research interest of mine for quite some time,
and I hope that this course entices you to want to learn more about it
as well. Click on the link to find out more about my research interests in evolutionary
psychology
and to see links to other evolutionary psychology web sites. Also
follow the links to get more background
on human evolution and to see a Timeline
of Human
Evolution. For some fun and interesting books to
read to ease you into this topic, I recommend the following: The
Murderer Next Door, How
the Mind Works, & Mother
Nature.
GOALS OF
THE COURSE
As an
advanced 300 level course in
psychology, Evolution & Human Behavior will expect you to work
at a
very advanced level relative to courses that you may have taken with me
before. This means that there will be a LOT of reading, and
much
of the reading will be from primary sources (i.e., journal
articles). You will also be given the opportunity to
integrate,
practice, and display the research skills you have been working on in
smaller chunks in earlier courses. Thus, by the end of this
term
I hope that you will have
-
Mastered a new theoretical perspective on psychological issues
-
Learned about many of the classic theories and studies in evolutionary
psychology
- Developed & demonstrated the
ability to work in groups
- Located and synthesized material on a research
topic
- Successfully collected data
- Drawn valid conclusions from data
- Done
appropriate statistical analyses and presented results using SPSS
-
Written a professional quality scientific paper in proper APA format
- Prepared a professional looking
research poster
- Made an effective and interesting
oral presentation.
REQUIREMENTS
In this
course, you will take a Mid-term
exam, a final exam, complete a group research project, and take a
series of short quizzes based upon the outside readings you will be
doing in the course. Each test will be an essay
test, and
each test will be worth 25% of your final grade.
The Group
research project will be worth 25% of your final grade, and the quizzes
(collectively) will also be worth 25% of your final grade.
The
final exam will be given during final examination week, but it is not a
comprehensive final exam. No makeup tests will be given
without
prior permission and a very good excuse.
GRADING
SCALE:
93% - 100% = A
90% - 92% = A-
88% - 89% = B+
83% - 87% = B
80% - 82% = B-
78% - 79% = C+
73% - 77% = C
70% - 72% = C-
68% - 69% = D+
63% - 67% = D
60% - 62% = D-
<60% = F
THE GROUP RESEARCH PROJECT:
In
this course, you will be assigned to a research team that will complete
an evolutionary psychology study from start to finish. The
research problem will be assigned to you with more details in class,
and the problems will be different from year to year. Your
team
will be responsible for the following aspects of the project:
-
Going through
the process to gain approval from the Institutional Research Board
-
Finding relevant literature and
writing a literature review
-
Generating
plausible hypotheses based upon the literature you have found
-
Collecting data
-
Analyzing
& displaying data with appropriate statistical tests and
procedures
-
Writing a scientific paper in proper
APA format
-
Preparing a professional quality
poster
- Making an
oral presentation of your project to the class and to the departmental
faculy
- If the project is of sufficient quality, one of you will
present it at the annual ILLOWA Psychology Conference to be held at
Knox in April.
Some
thoughts on group work:
You will be assigned to research teams, and you will not have any input
in choosing your colleagues. In real life work and research
teams, you do not get to choose to work with your friends, but rather
you have to work with the people you end up with; this will also be
true this term. Everyone in your group will get exactly the
same
grade on the assignment even though you will undoubtedly find that
there is a range of talent and motivation among the team members just
as there is in any other work group. While this is very much
a
team effort, many of you may perceive unfairness in that it is
inevitable that some of you will think that you have worked a lot
harder than some of your colleagues or that your efforts were of higher
quality. This is an issue for you to work out for
yourselves. Discover what the strengths and weaknesses of
your
colleagues are and divide the labor in a way that plays to an
individual’s strengths. By pooling your efforts
efficiently, you should end up with a project of higher quality than
any one of you could have produced by yourself within the confines of a
term. My primary concern is with the quality of the finished product,
just as it would be if you were a group doing a study in a laboratory
sponsored by my grant or if you were a work group reporting to me in a
corporation or a government agency. Working in teams is the
way
things get done in the real world of work, and I hope that this
experience prepares you in at least a small way for your professional
life after Knox.
UNITS
& READING ASSIGNMENTS
[Major Sub-topics
are Listed in Brackets
Under Each Unit Heading]
Tuesday, January
6: Introduction
to the Course
[The EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness) - Buss, Chap. 1]
[Ethology &the link between evolution & behavior]
Thursday, January 8: Basic Principles of Evolution
& Intro to Evolutionary Psychology
[Adaptation by Natural Selection - Buss, Chap. 3, (OR#1
recommended)]
[Sexual Selection - Boyd & Silk, Chap. 1]
[Speciation & Phylogeny - Boyd & Silk, Chap.
4]
Tuesday, January 13:
[Evolutionary Psych vs. the SSSM - Buss, Chap. 2]
[Primate Ecology & Behavior - Boyd & Silk, Chaps. 5
& 7]
Thursday, January 15: Human Prehistory and Modern
Human Behavior
[Bipedalism &
History of the Human Lineage - Boyd & Silk, Chaps. 11, 12, 13,
14]
QUIZ -
OR #2
Tuesday, January 20: Evolution of the Human Mind
QUIZ
[Evolution of Emotion - OR#3]
[The Modular Mind: Evolved Psychological Mechanisms and Domain-Specific
Cognition - Buss, Chap. 3; Buss, pp. 382-393; OR#4]
[The Development of Cognition in Children: The Importance of a
“Theory of Mind - Buss, pp. 403-405]
Thursday, January 22: Evolution &
Language
Buss, pp. 393-396
[Why Did Language Evolve? Language as an Adaptation - Boyd
& Silk, pp. 440-445]
[Patterns of Language Development in Children]
Tuesday, January 27:
QUIZ:
[Sex Differences in Cognition - OR #5, 6]
Thursday, January 29: MID-TERM EXAM
Tuesday, February 3: Evolution & Human
Development: Children, Parents, & Families
[Life History Theory - Boyd & Silk, Chap. 9; Buss, pp. 405-407]
[Human Development Across the Life Span]
[Attachment]
[Sex Differences in Development - OR #7]
Thursday, February 5:
QUIZ
[Parental Investment - Buss, Chap. 7; Boyd & Silk, pp. 473-484]
[Sibling Relationships & Birth Order]
[Parent-Offspring Conflict - OR #8]
[The Trivers-Willard Effect - OR #9]
Friday,
February 6: DEADLINE FOR COLLECTION OF DATA BY GROUPS
Tuesday, February
10: Catch-Up Day
Thursday, February 12: Human Mate Choice
[Buss, Chaps. 4, 5, 6]
[Sexual Selection Revisited - Boyd & Silk, pp. 436-440]
[Short-term vs. Long-term Mating Strategies - Boyd & Silk, pp.
457-473]
[The Aesthetics of Sexual Attractiveness - OR #10, 11]
[Human Pheromones - OR #12]
QUIZ
Tuesday, February 17: Human Mating Strategies
(cont’d)
Buss, Chap 11
[Jealousy, Mate Guarding, & Sexual Violence - OR #13]
Thursday, February 19: Inclusive Fitness &
Kin Selection
[Hamilton’s Rule - Boyd & Silk, Chap. 8;
Buss, Chap. 8]
Tuesday, February 24: Evolutionary Social
Psychology
Buss, Chap. 9
[Social Cognition, Person Perception, & Prejudice - Buss, pp.
400-402.]
[Altruism & Morality - OR # 14, 15]
QUIZ
Thursday, February 26: Evolutionary Social
Psychology
Buss, Chap. 9
[Aggression - Buss, Chap. 10]
QUIZ:
[Remote Killing & Human Nature - OR #16]
[Status, Prestige, & Social Dominance - Buss, Chap. 12]
Tuesday, March 3: Evolutionary Social Psychology
QUIZ:
[Gender, Culture, & Violence - OR #17, 18]
Thursday, March 5: Evolution & Human
Culture
Boyd & Silk, pp. 445-455.
Friday,
March 6: FINAL DRAFT OF GROUP PAPERS ARE DUE
Tuesday,
March 10: ORAL & POSTER PRESENTATIONS BY RESEARCH TEAMS
FINAL EXAM - During Scheduled Final Exam Period
OUTSIDE
READINGS
ON RESERVE IN THE SMC LIBRARY
1.
Altruism and Organism:
Disentangling the
Themes of Multilevel Selection Theory (D.S. Wilson, 1997)
2.
The People Time Forgot
(Morwood, Sutikna, & Roberts, 2005)
3.
My Baby Doesn't Smell as
Bad as Yours: The Plasticity of Disgust (Case, Repacholi,
& Stevenson, 2006)
4.
Mental Leap: What Apes
can Teach us about the Human Mind (Jaffe, 2006)
5. Preschool Children
Recognize the Utility
of Differently Shaped Trees: A Cross-Cultural Evaluation of Aesthetics
and Risk Perception. (Coss & Moore, 1994)
6. Sex Differences in
Spatial
Abilities:
Evolutionary Theory and Data. (Silverman & Eals, 1992)
7. Sex Differences in
response
to Children's
Toys in Nonhuman Primates (Alexander & Hines, 2002)
8. Parent-Offspring
Conflict. (Trivers, 1974)
9. Variation in Offspring
Sex
Ratio in Women
of Differeing Social Status. (Mealey & Mackey, 1990)
10. Production and
Appreciation of Humor as Sexually Selected Traits (Bressler,
Martin, & Balshine, 2006)
11. Vocal and Visual
Attractiveness are
Related in Women (Collins & Missing, 2003)
12. The Scent of Symmetry: A
Human Sex
Hormone that Signals Fitness? (Thornhill
& Gangestad, 1999)
13. Male Sexual
Proprietariness and Violence
Against Wives (Wilson & Daly, 1996)
14. New
Evolutionary Perspectives on
Altruism: Multilevel-Selection and Costly-Signaling Theories.
(McAndrew, 2002)
15. The Evolution of Reciprocal
Altruism (Trivers, 1972)
16. Human Evolution and Human Hisotry: A
Complete Theory (Bingham, 2000)
17. Competitiveness, Risk Taking, and
Violence: The Young Male Syndrome (Wilson & Daly, 1985)
18. Culture, Social Organization, and
patterns of Violence (Coehn, 1998).
To see the powerpoint slides for
this course, click on the picture of
the gorilla below