Evolutionary Psychology
Exam 1 KEY
Spring 2014
Open-book and open-resource except consult no one else. Return your answers to me in the course
dropbox (Catalyst link on webpage) by 8:00 AM Monday 5 May. At the top of your exam put the following:
The answers to these questions are mine alone; I consulted no one else in writing my answers.
____________________________ (type your name)
1. Imagine yourself back in the EEA. Go through Haidt’s six moral foundations, and describe how they
would have functioned in that, the original context.
2. Throughout his book, Haidt brings in psychology lab experiments to support his arguments. Most of
them are short-term, pretty artificial experiments. This doesn’t mean they are no good, but the
experimental context has to be realistic enough that we feel comfortable generalizing to real world
situations. Question: critique the 7 research papers* we have read so far in this respect. Identify any
limitations of the experimental context you think may impede their generalizability. Suggest a modification
(or alternative version) of the experimental context that you think would have been better.
3. Evolutionary psychologists (EP) and human behavioral ecologists (HBE) take different approaches to
measuring adaptation.
(a) Explain this difference.
(b) Is there a good example of the EP approach in the 7 research papers* we have read so far? Pick one and
explain why it is a good example, or explain why none of them are.
(c) ) Is there a good example of the HBE approach in the 7 research papers? Pick one and explain why it is a
good example, or explain why none of them are.
4. “Hamilton vs. Kant: pitting adaptations for altruism against adaptations for moral judgment”. The
‘versus’ in the title of this paper is catchy but misleading. The hypothesis that the authors are actually
testing is that Kant’s absolute rules (e.g., “Thou shalt not kill”) are heuristics for Hamilton’s rules re altruism
and reciprocity. (a) Explain what the authors mean when they say Kant’s rules are heuristics for Hamilton’s
rules? (b) What do they find? (c) Haidt doesn’t actually cite this paper (for one thing it was too recent) – do
you think the paper’s conclusions are consistent or inconsistent with Haidt’s views? Explain.
5. In the last election, Todd Akin, Missouri’s Republican Senate candidate, claimed that victims of
“legitimate rape” very rarely get pregnant because their bodies “have a way of shutting the whole thing
down”: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79864.html
Question: (a) What is the evidence that conception following rape is less (or more) likely? (You will need to
do some research, or at least googling, on this one!). (b) How would Haidt describe Akin’s statements about
rape?
*These are the 7 research papers we’ve read so far:
1. Schmidt & Sommerville (2011) Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human
Infants.
2. Silverman et al (2007) on gender differences in spatial abilities.
3. New et al (2007) on gender differences in spatial abilities.
4. Greene et al (2001) An fMRI study of emotional engagement in moral judgment.
5. Westen et al (2006) Neural bases of motivated reasoning: An fMRI study of emotional constraints
on partisan political judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election.
6. Kurzban et al (2012): Hamilton vs Kant: Adaptations for altruism vs adaptations for moral judgment.
7. van Vugt et al (2007): Gender differences in cooperation and competition : The Male-Warrior
Hypothesis.