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How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Genes, Evolution, and Behavior
 Natural selection

Process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to
survive and reproduce in particular environments are passed
to ensuing generations
 Evolutionary psychology

Study of the evolution of cognition and behavior using
principles of natural selection
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Natural Selection
 In our ancestry, we competed for survival
 Certain biological and behavioral traits increased the
chance of reproduction and survival
 Those who survived in a given environment were more
likely to live longer, to have children, and to pass on
their genes to their children
 The concept of natural selection implies that certain
genes, those that predisposed adaptive (survival) traits
become more widely-spread.
Human Nature
 All over the world, we share common biology and
common behavioral tendencies.
 We all are social animals
 We all share similar developmental sequence and
milestones e.g. in language development, separation
anxiety, fear of strangers
 The universal behaviors arise from our biological
similarity
 A shared human capacity is to adapt to new
circumstances and new environments
Evolutionary Psychology
 Investigates how the principle of natural selection
predisposes not just physical traits suited to particular
context, but also psychological traits and social
behaviors that enabled us to “spread our genes”- that
is, to have children.
 The purpose of life is to continue life
 We carry not only the physical legacy but also the
psychological legacy of our ancestors’ adaptive
preferences that helped them survive and reproduce
 The evolutionary perspective points to our universal
human nature
Our Capacity to Learn and to Adapt
 Evolution prepared us to live successfully in a changing
world and to adapt to different environments
 Our shared human biology enables our cultural
diversity as we want to belong and adjust our behavior
to the culture we are living in; people moving from one
country to another are adapting to the new culture, a
process called acculturation
 The expression of our genes depends on the
environment, as Caspi et al found (2003): a gene
variation that puts people at risk for depression was
activated only when there was an environmental stress
How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Culture and Behavior
 Culture

Enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by
a large group of people and transmitted from one generation
to the next
 Cultural diversity


Our behavior is socially programmed
One in eight Americans is an immigrant
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How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Culture and Behavior
 Norms: Expected behavior

Norms
 Standards for accepted and expected behavior
 Individual Choices
 Expressiveness
 Punctuality
 Rule Breaking
 Personal Space
• Buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies
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How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Culture and Behavior
 Cultural similarity





Universal friendship norms
Universal trait dimensions
Universal social belief dimensions
Universal status norms
Incest taboo
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How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Gender
 Characteristics, whether biological or socially
influenced, by which people define male and female
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How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Independence Versus Connectedness
 Play
 Friendship
 Vocations
 Family Relations
 Smiling
 Empathy
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How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
Women
Men
 Describe themselves in more
 Focus on tasks and on
relational terms
 Experience more
relationship-linked emotions
 More empathetic
 Gravitate toward jobs that
reduce inequalities
connections with large
groups
 Respond to stress with “fight
or flight” response
 Gravitate toward jobs that
enhance inequalities
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How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Social Dominance
 Men are socially dominant
 Women’s wages in industrial countries average 77
percent of men’s
 Men tend to be more autocratic; women more
democratic
 Men take more risks
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How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Aggression
 Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone
 In the U.S., the arrest ratio of male to female is 9 to 1

When provocation occurs the gender gap shrinks
 Women are slightly more likely to commit indirect
aggressive acts

Spreading malicious gossip
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How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Sexuality
 Men:

More often think about and initiate sex
 Women:

Are more inspired by emotional passion
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Evolution and Gender: Doing What
Comes Naturally?
 Gender and Mating Preferences
 Men seek out quantity

Spreading genes widely
 Women seek out quality

Protecting and nurturing of offspring
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Evolution and Gender: Doing What
Comes Naturally?
 Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology
 Evolutionary psychologists sometimes start with an
effect and work backward to construct an explanation

Way to overcome the “hindsight bias” is to imagine things
turning out otherwise
 Evolutionary psychologists disagree with this theory
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Sample Predictions Derived from
Evolutionary Psychology
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Evolution and Gender: Doing What
Comes Naturally?
 Gender and Hormones
 Gender gap in aggression seems influenced by
testosterone
 As humans age they become more androgynous

Mixing both masculine and feminine characteristics
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Culture and Gender: Doing as the
Culture Says?
 Gender Role
 Set of behavior expectations (norms) for males and
females
 Gender roles vary over culture
 Gender roles vary over time
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Culture and Gender: Doing as the
Culture Says?
 Peer-Transmitted Culture
 50 percent of individual variations in personality traits is
by parental nurturing
 The other 50 percent is peer influence
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What Can We Conclude about
Genes, Culture, and Gender?
 Biology and Culture
 Biology and experience
interact when biological
traits influence how the
environment reacts
A Social-Role Theory of Gender Differences in Social Behavior
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