Summary
Summary SLK 220 test 2 notes
- Course
- Institution
summary on chapter 2, 5 and 6. I am part of golden key and received a distinction for SLK
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
NerdLG101
Content preview
Chapter 2Nature, nurture and social behaviour:
Explaining the psyche:
➢ One approach to understand how people think, feel and act is to try to understand
what the human psyche or human mind is designed for
Psyche= A broader term for the mind, encompassing emotions, desires, perceptions and all
other psychological processes.
✓ To understand something, you need to understand what it was designed to do
✓ We turn to nature and culture because those are what made the psyche the way it is
✓ If the psyche was designed to do something in particular, then nature and culture
designed it for a purpose
Nature:
• The nature explanations say that people are born a certain way: Their genes,
hormones, brain structure and other processes dictate how they will choose and
act.
Culture:
• The cultural explanations focus on what people learn from their parents, from society
and from their own experiences.
Nature and culture have shaped each other.
▪ Nature has prepared human beings specifically for culture.
▪ Characteristics that set humans apart from other animals include:
➢ Language
➢ A flexible self that can hold multiple roles
➢ An advanced ability to understand each other’s mental states
▪ These characteristics are mainly there to enable people to create
and sustain culture.
▪ This interaction between nature and culture is the key to
understanding how people think.
, Nature defined:
Nature: The physical world around us, including its laws and processes. (includes
the entire world that would be there even if no human beings existed)
Nature includes:
✓ Trees and grass
✓ Insects and animals (elephants)
✓ Gravity, The weather
✓ Hunger and thirst
✓ Birth and death, People
✓ Atoms and molecules
✓ Laws of physics and chemistry
Evolution, and doing what’s natural:
➢ Over the past two decades, many social psychologists have begun
to help explain social behaviour
Theory of evolution: A theory proposed by Charles Darwin to explain
how change occurs in nature.
➢ Over thousands of years, a plant or animal may evolve into a
somewhat different kind of creature.
➢ Human beings and the great apes evolved as part of the same family tree.
➢ Human beings may be different from all other animals, but we are animals,
nonetheless.
➢ We have the same wants, needs and problems that most other animals have.
▪ We need food and water on a regular basis.
▪ We need sleep.
▪ We need shelter and warmth.
▪ We need air.
▪ We suffer illnesses and injuries and must find ways to recover from them.
➢ Our interactions with others are sometimes characterised
by sexual desire, competition, aggressive impulses, family
ties or friendly companionship.
➢ An important feature of most loving things, including animals and thus
humans, is the drive to prolong life.
Two ways to do this:
1. Go on living
• Death has always been a disturbing threat.
2. Reproduction
• Life makes new life.
, Change is another common trait of living things:
➢ Each living thing changes as it grows older.
➢ Generation changes: baby has both parents’ genes and creates a totally
new person.
• Powerful forces react to these random changes: As a result, some random
changes will disappear, whereas others will endure
NATURAL SELECTION =The process whereby those members
of a species that survive and reproduce most effectively are the
ones that pass along their genes to future generations. (decides
which traits will disappear and which will continue)
Two criteria:
1. Survival
2. Reproduction
• A trait that improves survival or reproduction will tend to last for many
generations and become more common.
• A trait that reduces one’s chances for survival or reproduction will
probably not become common.
- Biological success of any trait is measured in these terms.
SURVIVAL = Living longer.
✓ Depends in part on the circumstances in your environment.
• Herbert Spencer = ‘survival of the fittest’ – A phrase to describe natural
selection.
➢ Biologists have shifter their emphasis from survival
to reproduction as the single most important factor in
natural selection.
REPRODUCTION =Producing babies that survive long enough to also reproduce.
✓ Reproductive success consists of creating many
offspring who will in turn create many offspring.
MUTATION= A new gene or combination of genes.
How does biological evolution produce changes?
➢ The causal processes depend entirely on random changes to
physical elements, such as genes. The person is programmed to
respond in a certain way.
➢ Molecules, chemicals, electrical impulses in the body and other
physical mechanisms produce the results.
➢ Behaviour changes because the physical makeup of the new-
born individual is different.
, Social Animals:
➢ Being social provides benefits.
➢ Being social is a strategy that enables some species to survive and reproduce
effectively.
➢ That is the biological starting point of social psychology: being
social improves survival and reproduction.
➢ The disadvantage of being social is that it is more difficult to achieve than
solitary life.
➢ Social animals must have something inside them that makes them
recognise each other and want to be together.
▪ They must have something that prompts them to work together,
such as automatic impulses to copy what the others are doing.
▪ They must have ways to resolve the conflicts that always arise in social
life.
▪ They need something similar to self-control to enable them to adjust to group life.
▪ They need complex powerful brains.
The social brain:
➢ What is inside enables the creature to satisfy its needs, and ultimately, to
survive and reproduce.
➢ Social animals accomplish those things by means of social interaction. Much
of what goes on inside the human mind is designed to help the person relate
to others.
➢ Social psychologists spend much time studying people’s inner processes,
including their thoughts and feelings and how their brains work. =Inner
processes serve interpersonal functions.
➢ Social animals require brains with additional, flexible capabilities.
Robin Dunbar compared brain sizes of many different species to see what
behavioural differences went with bigger brains.
✓ Bigger brains were mainly linked to having larger and more complex social
groups.
✓ Small-brained animals tend to live alone or in small, simple groups, whereas
bigger-brained, presumably smarter animals have more relationships with each
other and more complicated groups.
✓ People with bigger social networks have been found to be bigger in some key
brain parts, notably the orbital prefrontal cortex.
✓ The human brain evolved mainly to enable human beings to have rich, complex
social lives.
✓ For understanding each other.
✓ Social brain
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller NerdLG101. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $10.20. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
67866 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now