Evolution and Natural Selection

Chapter 8: Evolution and Natural Selection

• Evolution describes how living things change over a long time
• Natural Selection, a part of evolution, enables animals and plants with the best traits to survive and reproduce
• Humans descend from ancestors who lived long enough to mature and reproduce
• Special traits helped the ancestors succeed
• Human nature and personality consist of traits that have evolved

The Biological Domain

• Natural selection facilitates the changes in living things over time, concept pioneered by Charles Darwin
• Adaptations are special changes that help animals and plants survive & reproduce, even under harsh conditions
• More offspring are born than can survive and reproduce on their own
• Beneficial changes increase survival and reproduction rates, leading to more offspring
• Offspring inherit beneficial changes from their parents
• Favorable changes are retained and unfavorable ones disappear

Sexual Selection

• Sexual selection helps animals and plants evolve mechanisms to find mates
• Some traits that attract mates may hinder survival, e.g., peacock feathers, stag antlers
• These traits enhance the chances of finding mates and having babies

Intrasexual Competition

• Involves same-sex animals fighting for a mate
• Lions fighting for leadership of a pride to gain access to mates is an example

Intersexual Competition

• Involves animals choosing mates based on preferences
• Example: peahens choosing peacocks with attractive feathers

Genes And Inclusive Fitness

• Genes are DNA segments passed from parents to offspring, carrying hereditary information
• Natural selection and sexual selection drive genetic changes in animals and plants over time
• Differential gene reproduction happens when some genes lead to more offspring than others
• Inclusive fitness is measured by the number of offspring, plus the help provided to family members to have offspring

Products of The Evolutionary Process

• Adaptations: special changes that enhance survival and reproduction
• Byproducts of Adaptations: extra characteristics that arise from adaptations, but are not directly beneficial
• Noise or Random Variation: changes that do not affect survival

Adaptations

• Adaptations address survival and reproduction challenges
• Adaptations are well-suited for their functions

Byproducts of Adaptations

• Byproducts of adaptations are additional effects that emerge from adaptations, like heat from a light bulb

Noise or Random Variation

• Noise or Random Variation includes changes that do not affect survival, like earlobe shape

Evolutionary Psychology Principles

• Domain-specificity: Adaptations are tailored to solve specific problems
• Numerousness: Many adaptations exist to address different problems
• Functionality: Adaptations serve specific functions

Empirical Testing of Evolutionary Hypotheses

• Empirical testing: Validating theories through experiments and observations

Levels of Analysis

• General evolutionary theory: broad concepts on how life evolves
• Middle-level evolution theories: narrower concepts linked to broader ideas
• Specific, testable predictions: precise concepts for testing

Research Methods

• Deductive reasoning: Testing a broad concept
• Inductive reasoning: forming a broad concept from specific data

Human Nature

• Evolution shapes Human Nature, where helpful traits spread
• Big ideas about personality are based on Human Nature itself
• Human nature has origins from evolution
• Traits that aid survival and reproduction proliferate

Helping and Altruism

• Families help each other due to shared genes

Human Emotions

• Ekman studied facial expressions across cultures
• Facial expressions are similar across many cultures
• Study controlled for cultural influence by looking at a group in New Guinea

Assessing The Face

• Participants were asked to make faces for different situations
• Examples of such situations: "Your friend is here and you are happy" and "You are angry and ready to fight."
• 6 basic emotions: happiness, fear, sadness, surprise, disgust, and anger

Sex Differences

• Evolutionary psychologists believe that men and women are similar when facing the same problems
• Evolutionary psychologists believe that men and women are different when facing different problems

Examples of Differences

• Aggression: Men tend to be more aggressive
  • Chicago, 1965-1980: 86% of murderers and 80% of victims were men
  • Men require finding mates to have babies
• Jealousy: Men become jealous of physical infidelity, women of emotional infidelity
• Desire for Sexual Variety: Men want more partners (18 in lifetime) than women (4-5 in lifetime)
• Mate Preferences:
  • Men prefer physical attractiveness
  • Women prefer earning potential
  • Both prefer kindness and understanding

Individual Differences

• Hard to study through the lens of evolutionary psychology

Three Causes of Variations

• Environmental Triggers: different environments shape individuals
• Heritable Differences: parentally inherited traits vary
• Frequency-Dependent Strategy: traits valuable unless commonly exhibited

Chapter 9: Sigmund Freud

• Freud was born in 1856
• Freud received a medical degree and learned hypnosis from Jean-Martin Charcot
• The unconscious mind reveals itself in dreams

Psychoanalytic Theory

• Human actions are explained through psychic energy
• Personality shifts as psychic energy is channelled

Assumptions

• The human mind is a hydraulic system with internal pressure
• Personality changes when psychic energy is redirected

Basic Instincts

• Instincts entail strong natural urges providing energy
• Freud's concept of instincts was informed by Darwin's evolution theory
• There are two types of instincts:
  • Self-preservation instincts: aid survival
  • Sexual instincts: aid finding mates
• Life instincts = Libido Death instincts = Thanatos

Unconscious Motivation

• Motivations are not always clear

Unconscious

• Unconscious holds thoughts and memories beyond awareness
• The unconscious contains hidden sexual and aggressive feelings

Human Mind Parts

• The conscious mind: current thoughts and feelings
• The preconscious mind: easily recalled information
• The unconscious mind: largest part, containing hidden thoughts and feelings

Freud's Ideas

• Events are not accidental, every action stems from an underlying cause
• Mental illness frequently arises from concealed motivations
• Resolution relies on uncovering these concealed motivations

Structure of Personality

• Psychoanalytic personality theory explains how individuals manage strong emotions and impulses in civilization
• The mind includes:
  • A part that generates urges
  • A part that recognizes social expectations
  • A part that reconciles urges with reality.

Mind As Plumbing

• The mind operates like a plumbing system with water pressure
• Pressure is the energy from instincts needing discharge
• There are three ways to handle pressure
  • ID: Immediate release
  • EGO: Redirect to relieve pressure without chaos
  • SUPEREGO: Keeping valves closed

ID

• The ID, is the most basic core of the mind, full of urges and drives
• Governed by the pleasure principle, is aiming for immediate satisfaction
• Utilizes primary process thinking which is, illogical and detached from reality
• Uses wish fulfillment to imagines satisfaction

EGO

• The EGO deals with fact
• EGO develops early in life
• Governed by the reality principle, understanding urges need fitting with reality
• Uses secondary process thinking to problem-solve for satisfaction

SUPEREGO

• The SUPEREGO internalizes societal morals
• The SUPEREGO acts as conscience
• The SUPEREGO employs guilt to guide right and wrong
• The SUPEREGO is detached from reality

Types of Anxiety

• Anxiety is a signal of a problem requiring fixing
• The feeling from a sense of the minds threat
• Three types of anxiety:
  • Objective: Real danger
  • Neurotic: ID vs. EGO
  • Moral: EGO vs. SUPEREGO

Managing Threats

• In anxiety, the EGO keeps us safe

Types of Anxiety

• Repression
• Denial
• Displacement
• Rationalization
• Defense Mechanism
• Reaction formation
• Projection
• Sublimation

Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development

• Freud's Psychosexual Stages: a series each with a conflict
• Unresolved conflicts may cause fixation

Stage 1: Oral (Birth to 18 months)

• Pleasure comes from mouth, lips, and tongue
• The conflict happens from stopping breastfeeding

Stage 2: Anal (18 months to 3 years)

• The pleasure comes from bowel movements
• The conflict lies in toilet training

Stage 3: Phallic (3 to 5 years)

• The focus is the presence/absence of a penis
• The conflict arises from wanting opposite-sex parents

Stage 4: Latency (6 years to puberty)

• This stage is uneventful
• The focus is acquiring skills for adulthood

Stage 5: Genital (Puberty to adult life)

• Focuses genitals, but maturely
• This stage is only reached for those who have solved previous conflicts

Psychoanalysis Goals

• Making the unconsciousness, consciousness

Psychoanalysis Methods

• Discovering hidden thoughts including Free association, dream analysis, and projective techniques

Psychoanalysis Process

• Therapists assist insight

Why Psychoanalysis Matters

• Freud's concepts are still impactful now

Chapter 10: The Neo-Analytic Movement

• Psychoanalysis still uses some of Freud's insights
• Psychoanalysts now emphasize adult conflicts and childhood relationships

Drew Westen's Revised Psychoanalytic Thinking

• Unconscious matters, but less than Freud thought
• Compromises between processes causes behavior
• Childhood shapes personality especially for relationships
• Mental images affect interaction
• Growing from dependent to independent affect personality development

Recovered Memories

• Past events may be inaccurately remembered
• "Imagination inflation" leads people to think imagined events as real
• Confirmatory bias causes people to seek out supporting evidence, ignoring the rest

Elizabeth Loftus

• Recovered memories aren't fake, but aren't all true
• It's important that people understand how memories are altered

Hypnosis

• Hypnosis should be avoided to improve memory
• Hypnosis can negatively change memory

Memory

• Spreading activation makes memories linked
• Constructive memory means thoughts and feelings change memories

Ego Psychology

• The ego is considered a key component of personality
• The ego allows people to handle the world and achieve goals
• A lack of identity causes "identity crisis"

Erik Erikson

• Social challenges, change personality throughout life

Erikson's 8 Stages of Development

• Trust vs Mistrust (year one): Learning trust
• Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt (toddler): Learning independence
• Initiative vs Guilt (3-5 years): Learning action
• Industry vs Inferiority (elementary): Learning to be good
• Identity vs Role Confusion (adolescence): Identity finding
• Intimacy vs Isolation (young adult): Close relationship forming
• Generativity vs Stagnation (adulthood): Meaning and being useful
• Integrity vs Despair (old age): satisfaction of the life lived

Identity Crisis

• The state of feeling lost, plus not knowing who you are
• Common in teenagers

Penis Envy

• Freud sees penises as symbols of strength, not wished for by women

Fear of Success

• It explains female and male behavior in competition

Self and Narcissism

• Ego Psychology is how humans view ourselves
• Narcissism causes people to be self-absorbed
• The Narcissistic Paradox is acting sure of yourself but having inner uncertainties

Types of Narcissism

• Grandiose: The feeling of being dominant
• Vulnerable: The feeling of being insecure and sensitive

Object Relationship Theory

• Early relationships focus with family
• Relationships affect people, instead of the wishes and impulses

Early Childhood Attachment

• Harlow studied attachment using baby monkeys
• Attachment is feeling connected
• Separation Anxiety is feeling upset once someone is separated
• Attachment has different patterns: secure, avoidant, and ambivalent

Chapter 11: Motives and Personality

• Motives drive actions
• Motives arise if something is lacking
• Motives are consistent strengths and weaknesses

Motives

• People get tension from the lack of getting what's needed
• Once acquired, tension goes out

How Motives Play a Role

• Motives affect behaviors

Motivational Psychologists

• Urges makes people act a type of way
• Some motives happen unconsciously
• They use methods such as fantasies, word associations, and imagery

Five Ideas

• All people have difference motives
• Lifelong outcome impact
• Motives stabilizes with age
• Motives will explain behaviors

Henry Murray's Theory of Need

• Needs causes to people act
• Aids awareness of wants/needs
• Lowers tension once a need is satisfied

Types of Needs

• Alpha press: Realistic situation
• Beta Press: Perception of a situation

Apperception

• Apperception is being aware and mindful of situations

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• This involves people telling stories in pictures
• This helps find hidden needs

Implicit Motives

• Impulses/demands hidden known as implicit motives

Explicit Motives

• What people recognize in the motives

Three Big Motives

• Achievement: succeeding
• Power: commanding
• Intimacy: closeness

The Need for Achievement

• Wanting responsibility and feedback

Sex Differences

• Outcome and childhood differs

Chapter 13: Key Concepts

• Components of Emotions include the affect, bodily changes, and probable behaviors

Emotional States vs. Traits

• States: momentary feelings
• Traits: reliable types of reactions

Categorical vs. Dimensional Approaches

• Categorical: core base emotions
• Dimensional: stats is emotions

Content vs. Style

• Content: what is felt
• Style: how emotions are felt

Happiness Definitions

• Life fulfillment and hedonic balance
• Influence such as social relations and positive delusion

Personality and Well-being

• Extraversion and weak Neuroticism equals well-being
• Relationship is well-being can come in direct and indirect

Negative Affect

• Neurotic feelings causes vulnerability
• Cognitive distortions results to sadness

Critical Arguments

• Debates the need for dimensional and categorical approach
• Personality shapes outlooks

Important Details

• Stress can cause vulnerable ones to depress
• Cognitive shapes mind
• Type A causes cardio problems