Evolutionary Perspective Of Psychology
Although there are five approaches mentioned, there are three approaches in Chapter 3 of the Fuentes textbook that can be seen as being the most viable and useful approaches to studying the evolution of human behavior. These three approached include evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, and dual inheritance. Evolutionary psychology as it suggests applies evolutionary reasoning to psychological phenomena. The goal of this approach, as told by Symons (1992:137), is to uncover the “the psychological mechanisms that underpin human…behavior, and…the selective forces that shaped these mechanisms”. EP embraces several key concepts including modularity, historicity, adaptive specificity, and environmental novelty.
There are multiple subfields when it comes to psychology. The subfields that I will be discussing are biological psychology, developmental psychology, personality psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, cultural psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and clinical psychology. Biological psychology, in simple terms, is when you take in account biological characteristics to understand the behavior of animals and people and how they affect one’s mentality. Biological psychology can be researched in many different ways and for many different reasons. Some ways it can be researched is by debilitating or increasing neural function, evaluating the nervous system’s activity, or by using different genetic manipulation/studying methods.
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology. This allows it to explain the mental and psychological traits of psychology. These traits include; memory, perception or language. In the novel The Robot’ s Rebellion Finding a Meaning in the Age of Darwin, by Keith E. Stanovich explores interesting theories about evolutionary psychology, one being the way evolutionary psychology helps us understand the human mind and how that differs from an animal’s mind. Throughout this essay, we will be exploring the human mind with the use of different lecture topics from the course Mysteries of the Mind taught by Dr. Jim Davis.
Gangestad (1995) states “first distinguish recurrent structure of ancestral environments; then to identify particular adaptive problems that this recurrent structure would have posed for ancestors to have solved; to specify psychological architecture that would have solved those adaptive problems; then to assess the fit of the behaviour that these psychological mechanisms produce across different environments.” Describing evolutionary psychologists to understand adaptations. However, it is difficult to precisely describe ancestral environments and the science of psychology is not equipped to distinguish psychological
According to the article, “Evolution in the Social Brain”, correlation exists between brain size and social interactions and surroundings. A mystery has existed for long about why some primate groups of animals evolved a large brain. Evidence, today, suggests that brain development and size depends on social surroundings and the way of living. The sociality of primate is based on relationship pairbonds in other taxa.
Evolutionary psychology is the research in the social and natural sciences that studies psychological characteristics from a current evolutionary view. It tends to show that evolutionary psychology is in more of a pseudoscientific view because it is more based on the human’s emotions and personality traits the way they are rather than evidence based. Many people believe the type of nature humans are supposed to show and follow that just like people say men are not supposed to be masculine and not sensitive, which is not exactly true. Evolutionary psychology should be considered pseudoscientific because of the logic of forming explanations that can be proven and producing really poor evidence when contrasted to studies of animal behaviour. They assume that humans are the best example of nature and evolution, and that they must explain human behaviour as the natural status of evolution at its best.
Biological psychology deals with studying the mechanisms of the brain and nervous system from the standpoint of how they evolved and effect our behaviors. Naturalist believe that over time as we evolved we adapted to our current environment. An example of a Naturalist’s way of thinking would include the idea that a certain aspect of a species evolved over millions of years because it adapted itself for the survival of the species. A Naturalist’s view leaves no room for the possibility that God devised the whole universe and made everything as He saw fit.
There is only one approach in psychology that studies thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The biological approach believes that the way we are is due to our genetics and physiology. They believe that the activity going on our nervous system’s is what affects the way we think, feel and behave (Sammons, 2009). The physiology in the biological approach looks into how the brain functions. The brain is a very complicated machine as such, the brain is what controls our every move, every feeling and every action.
Behavior is just as much influenced by genetics or environment instead of by heredity. An expert’s basic assumption is at birth the human mind is a blank slate and gradually gets filled in (1). Some characteristics are
Evolutionary psychology is based on Darwinism and is used to explain human nature by making an effort to understand what motivates us to behave the way that we do. It implies that everything we do is either consciously or unconsciously motivated by the intent to either prosper, evolve, or to reproduce. Although we would like to believe we are moral beings, evolutionary psychology suggests that we may be driven solely by the instinct to survive. In doing so, our behavior may sometimes be naturally inclined to be of selfish motives. Evolutionary psychology shows that even when unintentional, our decisions are ultimately driven by self-gain and reproductive success, all in an effort to survive and adapt to our forever expanding world and culture.
Psy20150 Essay. Name: Clodagh Finnerty Student Number: 13362386 ‘It has been argued that two events led to the development of the modern discipline of Psychology: the foundation of Wilhelm Wundt’s Institute of Experimental Psychology, and the introduction of a new theory of evolution, described in Darwin’s Origin of Species. Critically assess the impact of these events on Psychology and society.’
Despite the many beneficial and positive impacts in which the evolution of Homo sapiens causes, there are many difficulties and negatives which it in turn causes. For example, as individuals changes and develop, many new diseases and medicines will need to be formulated in order to keep up with the demand. For example, a disease may be very prevalent within a generation and therefore many new medicines were developed in order to prevent the diseases. However, over time and through the evolutionary changes which take place in human causes the diseases to become less prevalent among Australian society and therefore medicines are no longer necessary as the diseases is only among a small number of populations within Australia. Although, as a result
There are four main perspectives in psychology. These are known as; biological perspective, learning perspective, cognitive perspective, and sociocultural perspective. Each perspective aids in the understanding of human behavior. However, not one perspective can explain all of human behaviors. This is due to each perspective playing different roles in ones behavior.
These include the evolutionary perspective, the bodily-feedback and the cognitive tradition. The evolutionary perspective, focusing on the functions of emotion, originates from Charles Darwin\s theory of evolution. He mentioned that emotion as a function for survival in the matter of an emotion will overrule an action with another in order to ensure the safety of an organism. The bodily-feedback perspective focuses on the emotional experience rather than the functions of emotion.
The truth is you will never understand psychology unless you learn to embrace
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