or everything you’ve ever wanted to know about sexual selection but were afraid to ask
Post on 15-Jan-2016
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TRANSCRIPT
Or
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about sexual selection but were afraid to
ask
Definitions of interactions:
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
The relationship between the variables is multiplicative instead of additive
The effectiveness of one intervention is contingent upon another intervention
Yes
Yes
No
No
0
5
3
-20
Yes
Yes
No
No
0
5
10
100
Valium
Alcohol
Ya Ya Sisterhood
Female
Scorpion King
Male
10
-10
-10
10
Gender
Movie
Survival of the fittest
Finding/Harvesting Resources
Avoiding Predators
Avoiding Illness
REPRODUCING!!!
If other organs such as the stomach and spleen were evolutionarily advantageous, why not the brain?
Mate Selection
Men – Looking to “spread their seed”
Women – Looking for a mate who will care for children
Post Hoc Theorizing Game
He who hesitates is lost
Look before you leap
Birds of a feather flock together
Opposites attract
Nature NurtureVs.
Identical Twins100%
Fraternal Twins50%
Adopted Child
Adopted Family
Genetic Family
Shared environment
Shared Genetics
Heritability Estimates – The proportion of the total variance in a trait that is attributable to genetic variation within a group.
Heritability Estimates
Intelligence: .70Neuroticism: .55Depression: .44Doing Crosswords: .55Liking Sweets: .65Playing Chess: .62
Assertiveness: .72Smoking: .48Ambition: .54Humility: .42Leadership: .59Time Reading: .43
However, it is generally accepted that behavior is determined by a nature x nurture interaction
e.g. A person with a genetic predisposition towards alcoholism won’t become an alcoholic if he never takes a sip of liquor
Heart RateBlood Pressure
Skin ConductanceElectromyography
Cortisol LevelsBreathing RatesTone of Voice
Polygraphs
Liars feel:
1) Nervous that they’ll get caught
2) Guilty about lying
Polygraphs
How it works:
1) Tell the truth, get a baseline measure
2) Tell a lie, get a measure of deception
3) Compute the difference between the two
4) Ask real questions, if subject looks more like a liar than a truth-teller, then the subject is lying
Polygraphs
Problems:1) Questions may be anxiety provoking2) Knowing that if the machine says that
you’re lying you’ll go to jail causes anxiety
3) Not all liars exhibit psychophysiological responses.
How to trick a polygraph:
Time
Arou sal
Difference
How to trick a polygraph:
Time
Arou sal Difference
How polygraphs REALLY work
Criminals get scared by the prospect of being detected, and they confess their crimes!
Other areas that psychophys can study
EmotionAttitudes
Unconscious Processes
The Sleep-Wake CycleFree of all time cues, the human day
averages about 25 hoursBody temperature, and hormone levels
follow this cycleRegulated by the hormone melatoninSince we have a ~24 hour cycle, the longer
we stay awake, the less we sleep!
Giant Sloth: 20 hoursBrown Bat: 19 hoursHouse Cat: 14 hoursJaguar: 10 hoursHuman: 8 hoursElephant: 3 hoursHorse: 2 hours
Average Hours Sleeping per Day
The Randy Gardner CaseMood Disturbance commonComplex Cognitive tasks unaffectedDull cognitive tasks are difficultLongitudinal partial sleep deprivation
causes more difficulty than short term total sleep deprivation
Microsleeps
Experimental rats die after several days. Yoked Rats not affected.
Increasing sleep efficiency after deprivation
Da Vinci’s sleep strategy15 minute nap every 4 hours
Total of 1.5 hours of sleep per dayReplicated by Stampi, (1992) in a lab.
Takes 2 weeks to adjust, during which time...
1) Evolution may have impacted our behavior, but be wary of post-hoc analysis
2) The nature vs. nurture debate should be viewed as an interaction
3) Psychophysiology can tell us a great deal, but polygraphs are useless.
4) Sleep is good.
Example for class:
Spanking Children