Psychology 369 - EVOLUTION & HUMAN BEHAVIOR  - Winter, 2009

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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:

1.  Going through the process to gain approval from the Institutional Research Board
2.  Finding relevant literature and writing a literature review
3.  Generating plausible hypotheses based upon the literature you have found
4.  Collecting data
5.  Analyzing & displaying data with appropriate statistical tests and procedures
6.  Writing a scientific paper in proper APA format
7.  Preparing a professional quality poster
8. Making an oral presentation of your project to the class and to the departmental faculy
9. 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.

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UNITS & READING ASSIGNMENTS
[Major Sub-topics are Listed in Brackets Under Each Unit Heading]

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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).

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To see the powerpoint slides for this course, click on the picture of the gorilla below