Psych 141, Evolution and Human Nature: Tentative Schedule, 2009
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Jan 6 |
Organizational meeting |
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Jan 8 |
Introduction: Wright, Introduction and
Chapters 1-2 (pages 1-54) |
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Jan 13 |
Gender Roles: Wright, Chapter 3 (pages 55-92) |
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Jan
15 |
Marriage:
Wright, Chapters 4-6 (pages 93-154, esp. 93-107) |
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Jan 20 |
Families and friends: Wright, Chapters 7-9 (pages 155-209) |
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Jan 22 |
Darwin and
Social Status: Wright, Chapters 10-12 (pages 210-262) |
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Jan 27 |
Self-Deception: Wright, Chapters 13-14 (pages 263-310) |
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Jan 29 |
Evolutionary Ethics: Wright, Chapters 15-16 (pages 313-344) |
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Feb 3 |
Determinism and Responsibility: Wright, Chapters 17-18 (pages 345-379) (* Don out of town) Take a break?: questions due May 1 |
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Feb 5 |
We’ll finish discussing Wright today. But also please read and send
questions/comments on: Ecological dominance, social competition, and coalitionary arms races:
Why humans evolved extraordinary intelligence The Cartwright and
Barrett chapters below are also recommended: Brain size and language: Cartwright, Evolution and Human Behavior, Chs 6,7 (pages 157-210); excerpts from Barrett et al., Chapter 7. |
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Feb 10 |
Evolutionary perspectives on perception and cognition: How our world view is shaped by statistics of the environment 1. Environments That Make Us Smart:
Ecological Rationality Peter M. Todd and Gerd Gigerenzer Current Directions in Psychological
Science, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 167-171, Jun 2007 Search Journal at Publisher's Site 2. Purves D, Lotto RB, Williams SM, Nundy S, Yang Z. Why we see things the way we do: evidence for a wholly empirical strategy of vision. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2001 Mar 29;356(1407):285-97. |
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Feb 12 |
Sexual selection: attractiveness
(NOTE: The links that follow mostly require a UC proxy server and ID) 1.
Facial attractiveness Randy
Thornhill and Steven W. Gangestad Trends
in Cognitive Sciences–Vol.3,No.12,December1999,,452-460 2.
Putting beauty back in the eye of the beholder 3.
C Wedekind, T Seebeck, F Bettens, AJ Paepke Proceedings:
Biological Sciences, 1995 260(1359):245-9 4.
DeBruine LM. Trustworthy
but not lust-worthy: context-specific effects of facial resemblance. Proc
Biol Sci. 2005 May 7;272(1566):919-22. |
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Feb 17 |
Sexual selection: the rest
of the story 1. Sexual selection for moral virtues. Miller,
G. F. (2007). Quarterly
Review of Biology, 2000, vol 82 issue 2, 97-125. 2.
The evolution of human mating: trade-offs and strategic pluralism. Gangestad,
S W and Simpson, J., Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000 vol:23 iss:4 pg:573
-87; discussion 587-- This
is a paper, intended to provoke debate among expert commentators, that
suggests that sexual selection involves tradeoffs between various desiderata,
with some expected strategic variation in the weights that individuals will
attach to the different criteria. Also
Recommended: Miller, The Mating Mind (book summary) |
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Feb 19 |
Midterm?
(*Don out of town) |
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Feb 24 |
War 1.
Overconfidence in war games: experimental evidence on expectations,
aggression, gender and testosterone. - Johnson DD et.al. 2.
Intergroup atrocities in war: a neuroscientific perspective. - Taylor KE |
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Feb 26 |
Topic A. Family conflict (Daly and Wilson) 1.
Evolutionary social psychology and family homicide Daly,
M. and Wilson, M. 2.
Temrin H, Buchmayer S, Enquist M. Proc Biol Sci. 2000; vol 267,
pp:943-5. Step-parents and
infanticide: new data contradict evolutionary predictions. Topic B.
Sustainability: Greed vs. Foresight 1.Richard
Dawkins Sustainability doesn’t come naturally: a Darwinian Perspective
on Values Download |
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March 3 |
The Capacity for Culture Joseph
Henrich, Natalie Henrich: Culture, evolution and the puzzle of human
cooperation Cognitive
Systems Research 7 (2006) 220–245 Tomasello,
M. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1999, vol. 28:509-29 The
human adaptation for culture |
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March 5 |
Topic A. Disease, fertility
and lifespan
1.
Rudi G. J. Westendorp and Thomas B. L. Kirkwood Human
longevity at the cost of reproductive success. Nature,1998,
vol 396, 743-746 2.
Evolutionary Theories of Aging and Longevity Leonid
A. Gavrilov* and Natalia S. Gavrilova TheScientificWorldJOURNAL
(2002) 2, 339–356 Also
recommended: Linda Partridge Of
worms, mice & men: altering rates of aging Daedalus;
Winter 2006; 135, 40-47 Also
recommended: Eric
Le Bourg and Can
dietary restriction increase longevity in all species, particularly
in human beings? Introduction to a debate among
experts Biogerontology
(2006) 7: 123–125 Topic B. The comparative
perspective on cooperation Alicia P. Melis, Brian Hare, Michael
Tomasello Chimpanzees Recruit the Best Collaborators Science. 2006 Mar 3;311(5765):1297-30 Jessica C. Flack and Frans B.M. de Waal ‘Any Animal Whatever’: Darwinian Building
Blocks of Morality in Monkeys and Apes Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, No.
1–2, 2000, pp. 1–29 Sarah F. Brosnan & Frans B. M. de Waal Monkeys reject unequal pay Nature, 2003, vol 425 , 297-299 |
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March 10 |
Evolutionary Psychiatry (Nesse, Barrett et al
Ch.9) 1. Natural selection and the elusiveness of happiness Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B (2004), 1333-1347 2. Andrew Shaner, Geoffrey Miller, Jim
Mintza Schizophrenia as one extreme of a sexually selected fitness indicator Schizophrenia Research 70 (2003) 101–109 3. The Optimum
Level of Well-Being: Can People Be Too Happy? By: Oishi, Shigehiro; Diener,
Ed; Lucas, Richard E.. Perspectives on Psychological Science, Dec2007, Vol. 2
Issue 4, p346-360 |
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March 12 |
Wrap-up: 1.
Philip Kitcher, The Transformation of Human Sociobiology. PSA: Proceedings of
the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1986, Volume
Two: Symposia and Invited Papers. (1986), pp. 63-74. 2.
Coyne, J. A. 2000. Of Vice and Men. (Review of the A Natural History of Rape,
by R.
Thornhill and C. Palmer and a general discussion of evolutionary psychology). The
New Republic, April 3, 2000, pp. 27-34. Kenan Malik on the “Fallacies of evolutionary psychology”: http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/fallacy.html Also recommended: Sharon Begley Evolutionary Psych May Not Help Explain Our Behavior After All (Review of Adapted Minds, by David Buller) Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2005 http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/files/wall_street_journal_review.pdf |
Presentations on line:
BasalduDarwinian and Freudian Cynicism.ppt
ChangEnvironmentHeuristics.ppt
Also linked above is Eric Levine’s simulation testing the viability of different strategies in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which you might like to try. If your presentation isn’t here, and you want it to be, email it to me and I may add it.