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evolution

evolution. How it relates to the study of behavior and experience. Natural selection. Species have changed, by adapting to their ever changing environments, through a process known as natural selection. It has three components.

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evolution

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  1. evolution How it relates to the study of behavior and experience

  2. Natural selection • Species have changed, by adapting to their ever changing environments, through a process known as natural selection. • It has three components.

  3. 1) Individual animals compete for limited resources so that they can reproduce and ensure that their children (and the genes they carry) will have an opportunity to live and reproduce.

  4. 2) Individual animals differ from each other because of their unique genetic heritage, usually through crossing over and occasionally through genetic mutation – random errors in gene replication.

  5. 3) If these differences give individual animals an advantage in reproducing and raising their young, they will become more and more common in succeeding generations. • Darwin called this process anagenesis the transformation of a species.

  6. More simply, • It’s hard to raise young. • Some traits/abilities help. • If they do, they will be more and more common in future generations.

  7. Recent evidence of human evolution • In September of 2005 new evidence emerged concerning two particular genes’ role in brain size • The findings suggest that these genes have changed within the last 6,000 years and may continue to do so today • Greg Wray, director of Duke’s Center for Evolutionary Genomics, “… it’s almost impossible for evolution to not happen.”

  8. Applications for human behavior • Some psychologists argue that certain behavioral tendencies and thinking and learning capacities helped humans raise more young and send more of their genes into the future.

  9. Darwin’s prediction • While mainly concerned with biology, Darwin prophesized, in 1859, natural selection’s future influence on psychology. • It would, “… open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation.”

  10. applications • Why do men strive so hard for status, dominance, and $$$? • Because that is what women look for in a mate. • Why do women care so much about looking young and healthy? • Because those are the traits men select in picking a wife.

  11. more • Why are men more likely to play around? • Or are they? • Why do some animals, even humans, sacrifice their own reproductive prospects to help raise their siblings or even nieces and nephews?

  12. Other points • Evolution is a battle fought by individuals not by species. • It’s not really, “The survival of the fittest.” • More accurately, it is, “You must breedto succeed.”

  13. Back to Charles • “Today, in 2006, the ideas of Karl Marx are dead, Sigmund Freud’s are on life support, but Charles Darwin's grow stronger every day.”

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