Psych 141, Evolution and Human Nature: Tentative Schedule, Summer
Session 2009
Aug 4
Organizational issues
Introduction: Who are we? Where did we come from?
Aug 6
Wright, Introduction
and Chapters 1-2 (pages 1-54)
Workman and Reader Chapter 1: Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology
Aug 11
Gender Roles:
Wright, Chapter 3 (pages 55-92)
Workman and Reader Chapter 2: Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change
Workman and Reader Chapter 3: Sexual Selection
Aug 13
Marriage: Wright, Chapters 4-6 (pages 93-154, esp. 93-107)
Workman and Reader Chapter 4: Human Mate Choice
Workman and Reader Chapter 7: Kin relationships as a source of altruism (skipping Chapters 5,6)
Families and friends: Wright, Chapters 7-9 (pages 155-209)
Aug 18
Darwin and Social
Status: Wright, Chapters 10-12 (pages 210-262)
Workman and Reader Chapter 7: Reciprocity as a source of altruism
Self-Deception: Wright, Chapters 13-14 (pages 263-310)
Aug 20
Evolutionary Ethics: Wright, Chapters 15-16 (pages 313-344)
Determinism and Responsibility: Wright, Chapters 17-18 (pages 345-379; concludes Wright)
Aug 25
Workman and Reader
Chapter 9: Evolution and cognition (skipping Chapter 8)
Workman and Reader
Chapter 10: Evolution of Language
Aug 27
Workman and Reader
Chapter 11: Evolution of Emotion
Workman and Reader
Chapter 12: Evolutionary Psychiatry
Sept 1
Workman and Reader Chapter 13: Evolution of Individual Differences
Workman and Reader Chapter 14: Evolutionary Psychology and Culture
Sept 3
Critiques of Evolutionary Psychology
Review
Other readings, recommended for everyone and suitable for class presentation/discussion; we can discuss/present these on the days listed or at other times if more convenient. The last few topics/readings are ones that we should try to introduce whenever we can fit them in.
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Aug 25 |
Ecological dominance, social competition, and coalitionary
arms races: Why humans evolved extraordinary intelligence The Cartwright and
Barrett chapters below are also recommended (I have a couple of copies): Brain size and language: Cartwright, Evolution and Human Behavior, Chs 6,7 (pages 157-210); excerpts from Barrett et al., Chapter 7. 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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Aug 27 |
Sexual selection:
attractiveness (NOTE: The links that follow mostly require a UC proxy server
and ID) These
readings revert to the topic of August 11, but give more depth from recent
research 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.
5 Sexual selection for moral
virtues. Miller,
G. F. (2007). Quarterly
Review of Biology, 2000, vol 82 issue 2, 97-125. 6.
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) 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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Sep 1 |
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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Sep 3 |
Some critiques of evolutionary psychology 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 |
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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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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. |
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Sustainability:
Greed vs. Foresight 1.Richard
Dawkins Sustainability doesn’t come naturally: a Darwinian Perspective
on Values Download |
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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 |
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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 |