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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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?

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 breed to succeed.”

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.”