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Evolutionary explanations for behaviour - Coggle Diagram

- - - - This may be linked to principles of natural selection because in limited time and dangerous situations it adds survival value to react quickly rather than deeply assess the situation.
- - - - The brain is a computer designed by natural selection to extract information from the environment.
      - Individual human behavior is generated by this evolved computer in response to information it extracts from the environment. Understanding behavior requires articulating the cognitive programs that generate the behavior.
      - The cognitive programs of the human brain are adaptations. They exist because they produced behavior in our ancestors that enabled them to survive and reproduce.
      - The cognitive programs of the human brain may not be adaptive now; they were adaptive in ancestral environments.
      - Natural selection ensures that the brain is composed of many different special purpose programs and not a domain general architecture.
      - Describing the evolved computational architecture of our brains “allows a systematic understanding of cultural and social phenomena” (16–18).
- - - - First, respondents were asked a set of demographic questions on their age, sex, country, and so on. Then they were asked to rate 20 photographs for disgust on a scale from 1 (not disgusting) to 5 (very disgusting). Of these photographs, 14 comprised 7 pairs of disease-salient versus less salient stimuli.
        
        Results supported all 5 hypotheses
        
        First, disease-salient stimuli were rated as more disgusting than less salient ones. For example, the plate of organic-looking fluid was rated as 61% more disgusting than the plate of
        blue fluid that looked chemnical (ratings were 1.6 versus 2.6). For the towel pictures, the organic-looking substance produced much higher ratings of disgust than the blue chemical (1.6 versus 3.9).
        
        Second, the results were consistent across cultures.
        
        Third, females rated the disease-salient pictures as more disgusting than men. This was true for all the disease-salient pictures used in the study.
        
        Finally, there was one question in the survey that asked participants to choose with whom they would be less likely to share a toothbrush. The average responses were ranged in the following order: postman (least likely), the boss, the weatherman, a sibling, a best friend, the spouse or partner. This shows that disgust is felt more strongly in contact with strangers than with relatives.
        
        Fourth, as predicted, there was an age-based decline in the sensitivity to disease-salient stimuli.