Download Module 6

October 29, 2013
• Objectives: To develop a better
understanding of Nurture, and to develop an
understanding of genes.
• Question: Do you/your parents have
attached or separated ear lobes?
Nature v. Nurture
What do you think so far?
Do Nature and Nurture interact and
grow off of each other?
Lets find out soon by examining Nurture in detail….
Heritability
• The proportion of variation among
individuals that we can attribute to
genes.
• It is a mathematical formula.
• Mark Twain explains it best using the
barrel example.
Heritability
• Just because a trait is heritable does
not mean it will affect an individual or
be a defining trait.
• Heritability demonstrates only the
extent to which a trait is explainable
by genetics, but not the extent to
which the trait will affect behavior in
an individual outside of environmental
influences
Environmental Influences on
Behavior
Types of Environmental
Influences
Parents
Prenatal
Experience
Peer Influence
Culture
Gender
How Much Credit ( or Blame ) Do
Parents Deserve?
•You and your siblings grow
up in the same environment,
are you all the same?
•Parents effect your belief
systems and values much
more than your personality.
•Parents take too much
credit for success and too
much blame for failures.
•Extreme environmentalism
can be VERY dangerous,
why?
Are children clay
to be molded by
their parents?
Lets look at perhaps our first environmental influence….
Prenatal Environment
Two Placental Arrangements in
Identical Twins
Brain cells in an impoverished
environment.
Brain cells in an enriched
environment.
What does this mean for humans?
• If children from impoverished
environments are given stimulating
infant care, they score better on
intelligence tests by age 12 than
counterparts.
Use it or lose it
A Trained Brain
A well-learned finger-tapping task activates more
motor cortex neurons (right) than were active in the
same brain before training (left)
Evolutionary Psychology: Explaining
Universal Behaviors
Evolutionary psychology is the science that seeks to
explain why humans act the way they do.
Evolutionary psychology seeks to reconstruct
problems that our ancestors faced in their primitive
environments, and the problem-solving mechanisms
they created to meet those particular challenges.
From these reconstructed problem-solving
adaptations, the science then attempts to establish
the common roots of our ancestral behavior, and
how those common behavioral roots are manifested
today in the widely scattered cultures of the planet.
The goal is to understand human behavior that is
universally aimed at the passing of one's genes into
the next generation.
Evolutionary Psychology: Explaining
Universal Behaviors
●This discussion of evolutionary
psychology is not about how one
species evolves into another species
over time.
● Rather, this discussion is about how
genetics and environment interact,
leading to changes in genetics to fit
the environment.
● It is also about how traits that lead
to survival are more likely to be
passed down.
Natural Selection at Work
• 1959 Russian Fox
story
• 40 Males, 100
Females- matedthen kept only
tamest of bunch.
• Mated the tames.
• 40 years later
• New Breed of Fox
Look at our Behaviors…
Can you answer these questions using evolutionary
psychology?
• Why do infants fear strangers when
they become mobile?
• Why are most parents devoted to their
children?
• Why do humans share some universal
moral ideas?
• Why do we have more phobias about
spiders and snakes than electricity and
nuclear weapons?
Now, the big one?
How and why do men and women
differ sexually?
Sexuality and the Evolutionary
Psychologist
• Casual sex is more
accepted by men.
• When average men
and women
randomly ask
strangers for sex,
75% of men
agreed, almost no
women agreed.
WHY?
Sperm is Cheap
Eggs are not
What do men and women want?
(According to Evolutionary
Psychology)
Men want:
• Healthy
• Young
• Waist 1/3
narrower than
hips.
Women want:
• Wealth
• Power
• Security
• Which has more influence in your life?
Your nature or nurture?
Perhaps the biggest environmental influence, at
least at your age may be….
Peer Influence
•I can’t get my kids to
clean up their clothes,
but when they see
their friends clean up,
they jump to it.
•“Selection effect” we
seek out people with
similar interests- that
may explain why we
seem to conform to our
peers.
Culture
• Behaviors,
attitudes,
traditions etc…
of a large group
that have been
passed down
from one
generation to
the next.
Greetings exercise
Cultural Variations
• To understand how cultures affect who
we are it is important to recognize our
cultural norms: an understood rule for
acceptable behavior.
• Individual v. Collectivistic Cultures
•Why is it so hard to identify our own cultural norms?
Variations over Time
• Different generations of the same
culture may also have differing
norms.
Gender
• We already know the
nature differences.
• XX v XY
• But that focuses on
SEX:
• We are going to
discuss GENDER:
What is the
difference?
Gender Roles
• A set of
expected
behaviors for
males and
females
• List some of your
gender roles.
What gender role is she breaking?
Changing Attitudes about Gender Roles
Gender Identity
• Our own sense of
male or female.
• Personalized to us
• We realize our
gender identity
through gendertyping: acquiring
our gender
identity.
Two Theories of Gendertyping
Social Learning Theory
Social Learning Theory
Dad plays Baseball.
Son imitates dad’s behavior.
Mom
puts on makeup.
Son copies her.
Dad rewards son.
Dad punishes son.
Gender Schema Theory
• Schema: a concept or framework of
how we organize information.
• Develop schemas for gender.
• See the world through the lens of
your gender schemas.
Boy’s don’t do this,
that’s for girls.
Yeah, that’s cool!!!!
I want to do that.