Course Outline Psychology 602 Evolutionary Psychology (Advanced General Psychology from an Evolutionary Perspective) Sample Syllabus

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1 Course Outline Psychology 602 Evolutionary Psychology (Advanced General Psychology from an Evolutionary Perspective) Assigned Readings: Sample Syllabus (Each of these books is available at UNC Student Stores) Gaulin, S. J. C. and McBurney, D. H. (2004). Evolutionary Psychology, 2 nd ed.. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. ($90 new, $67 used) Miller, G. (2000). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Selection Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. London: Heinemann. (Or U.S. Anchor Publication) ($16 new, $12 used) (Each of these chapters is available on our class Blackboard Site) Atran, Scott (2002). In God s We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford Univ Press. Chapter 1, pp Baker, Robin( 2005). Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles. Thunder's Mouth Press Chapter 1-3: The Generation Game (1-57) Chagnon, N. (1997) The Yanomamo: Prologue and Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomamo, 2-43 De Waal, Frans, (2005). Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are. New York: Riverhead Books. Chapter 1, pp. 39. Dawkins, Richard (2006). The God Delusion. Chapter 5: The Roots of Religion Chapter 6: The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good? Levitin, Daniel (2006). This is Your Brain on Music. New York: Dutton. Chapter 9, The Music Instinct. Pinker, Steven (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking. Chapter 3: The Last Wall to fall, pp Chapter 15: Sanctimonious animal, pp Chapter 17: Violence, pp Chapter 18: Gender, pp Pinker, Steven (2007) The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York: Viking. Chapter 7: The Seven Words You Can t Say on Television Segel, Peter (2007). The Book of Vice. Chapter 2: Eating, pp Thomas, Elizabeth (2006). The Old Way: A History of the First Humans Chapter 7: Hunting

2 Chapter 8: Gathering Chapter 13: Social Fabric Note: If you wish to have your own copy of some of these other books you can probably find an inexpensive hard or softcover copy at Some students have begun to buy most all their text books at this used book site or at Amazon s used book site. Miller s book is also available on this site in hard and soft cover. If try to buy Gaulin and McBurney s book via a used book site BEWARE: Be sure you get the 2004 second edition, which costs about $55 on abebooks.com, versus less than $10 for most of their other books. You might compare that price with what UNC Student Stores charges. Rarely does one get to live in a time of either political or intellectual revolution. I can t say I d really want to live during a political revolution. (My reading of history concludes that contrary to the notions of most romantic revolutionaries, major political uprisings are always bloody, disruptive affairs that never live up to the ideals of those who began them). But I can say it s exciting to live through intellectual revolutions in the form of major paradigm shifts in a scientific discipline. I ve seen at least one major shift in psychology in my 38 years on the UNC faculty (the shift from Freudian or psychodynamic models through operant behavioral thinking to cognitive-behavioral ways of viewing human behavior, psychological problems, and psychotherapeutic techniques). More recently, I have seen the beginnings of a shift from strongly environmental thinking (whether Freudian, behavioral, or cognitive) to an integrated biological-environmental or computational model which, like all of biology, is heavily based on evolutionary thinking and complex developmental genetic mechanisms. These new ways of thinking firmly anchor psychology within biology and emphasize that our discipline s apt home is in the natural as opposed to the social sciences. This course concerns new evolutionary ways of thinking about human and animal behavior. In effect, Psyc 602 (formally 163) is a preview of how Psyc 101 (formally 10) is likely to be taught in a few years for beginning students of psychology. For now, though, it is a refresher course in advanced general psychology for advanced undergraduates, a revisiting of most of the topics students studied earlier in the introductory course but that are now viewed through the lens of a new intellectual perspective. As you ll see our primary text disagrees with very few of the What questions and answers covered in traditional introductory psychology courses. What are added are new Why questions that were rarely if ever asked under the previous perspective, something we ll call the SSSM, or the Standard Social Science Model. Given most of your experience with additional coursework after Psych 101 you will probably find yourselves much better prepared to examine the old questions and research findings from this different point of view than when you took general psychology the first time. In fact, given how quickly this evolutionary model has been incorporated into our various undergraduate courses, I expect that all of you have already encountered it. As the list of Assigned Readings shows the reading in this course will be from several diverse sources, including most of the chapters from the 2004 second edition of

3 a short, basic text, Evolutionary Psychology by Steven Gaulin and Donald McBurney. Plus, I ve assigned most of a more general book (Geoffrey Millers, The Mating Mind) that I m sure you ll find interesting. Miller uses Darwin s concept of sexual selection to explain much of higher order human thinking and behavior. I ve also assigned four chapters from one of my favorite general books on the subject, Steven Pinker s The Blank Slate, 2002 and a chapter from his most recent book on language, The Stuff of Thought (2007). I ve also included chapters from two interesting and provocative current books with a 2006 publication date: Elizabeth Thomas s study of huntergatherers in southern Africa, Richard Dawkin s theory of why evolution selected people with a predisposition to believe in God and Dawkin s presentation of Marc Hauser s parallel theory of the origins of human s sense of right and wrong. In addition, I ve assigned the first chapter of a recent and very readable book on primates, Our Inner Ape (2005), by Frans De Waal that nicely contrasts Chimpanzees and Bonobos and makes the case that Homo sapiens shares ample features of each species characteristic behaviors. A chapter each from two recent books on Music and Vice round out our evolutionary treatment of art. Finally, I included a chapter from Robin Baker s controversial 2006 republication of an earlier book on competition among men s sperm in women with multiple sexual partners that is guaranteed to be interesting. I hope these readings will whet your appetite to read more and to think about what you already know about psychological research findings and human behavior from an alternative point of view. I ll also post occasional articles on Blackboard from magazine or news reports that illustrate how the reading public at large is being presented with the ideas we are studying in the class. Check out the Blackboard Documents section for some I ve already posted. Admitedly, there is a lot of reading in this course but most students report it to be quite interesting, not too technical, and the kind of ideas you are likely to share with your friends and even (some of it anyway) with your parents. Sit back and relax -- well, don t relax too much as this will be a fifteen-week sprint through a lot of readings covering new concepts -- as we revisit the basic phenomena of human and animal behavior (perception, problem solving, learning, consciousness, development, personality, abnormality, social behavior, and health) and examine them from a new integrated computational-evolutionary perspective. As we ll see, ideas about the environment--even culture--will still play a major role in our explanations, but environment will never be thought of as acting alone on a tabula rasa or without a complex substratum of biological predispositions and genetically controlled developmental processes, which are the legacy of our ancestors previous successful adaptations. Nor will we take uncritically the idea of humans as noble savages who would live peaceably with one another and nature were it not for the negative effects of civilization or capitalistic social systems. Instead, we ll look for biological origins of altruism and cooperation that accompany our propensity for violence under certain understandable and potentially modifiable conditions. We ll have three major exams, two during the term and one during the final examination period. Exam format will involve five (out of seven) short essays. I am also asking you to write a paper in which you will design a testable research study of any psychological problem you wish viewed from this new evolutionary perspective. I ll want you to propose specific procedures, to make specific predictions, and to argue

4 how various outcomes might or might not support the evolutionary psychology theories we have studied. Most of the papers in the past are between 10 and 15 pages in length. I ll have much more to say about this assignment later on. Brandon Irvin, a graduate student in UNC s Ph. D. clinical psychology program, will be working as a Research Consultant (thanks to the UNC Office of Undergraduate Research) in this class and is available to help you design your studies. He has done this before and students report him to be quite helpful. Again, you don t have to actually run the study but you must plan it in enough detail that someone else could complete it. Grades on the paper will be counted 25% toward final class grade and the three exams combined will account for 75%. I will weight them differentially, however, with the highest score receiving 30%, the lowest 20% and the middle score 25%. This is designed for you keep up your motivation if you do poorly on an early exam.

5 Class Meetings and Assignments Date Topic Assigned Reading August 19 (Tues) Organizational Preview 21 (Thurs) Video: The Yanomamo 26 (Tues) Overview Gaulin & Mcburney Chapter 1 De Waal, 2005 Chapter 1 28 (Thurs) The Last Wall to Fall Pinker, 2002 Chapter 3 September 2 (Tues) Evolution by Natural Selection Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 2 4 (Thurs) Exhibition Road (or Central Park) Miller, 2000 Chapter 1 Darwin s Prodigy Miller, 2000 Chapter 2 9 (Tues) Case Studies of the Yanomamo from Amazonia and the Basarwa from Southern Africa Chagnon, 1997 pp 2-43 Thomas, 2006 Chaps 7 & 8 11 (Thurs) The Runaway Brain Miller, 2000 Chapter 3 A Mind Fit for Mating Miller, 2000 Chapter 4 16 (Tues) Sensation and Perception Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 4 18 (Thurs) Consciousness Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 5 23 (Tues) Exam #1 25 (Thurs) Motivation & Emotion Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 6 The Sanctimonious Animal Pinker, 2002 Chapter (Tues) The Virtues of Good Breeding Miller, 2000 Chapter 9 October 2 (Thurs) Cognition Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 7 7 (Tues) Learning Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 8 9 (Thurs) Individuality: Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 9 14 (Tues) Courtship in the Pleistocene Miller, 2000 Chapter 6 16 (Thurs) Fall Recess 21 (Tues) Health Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 10 Abnormal Psychology Gaulin & McBurney Chapter (Thurs) Human Mating Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 12 Baker (2005) Chaps 1-3

6 28 (Tues) Bodies of Evidence Miller, 2000 Chapter 7 30 (Thurs) EXAM #2 November 4 (Tues) Arts of Seduction Miller, 2000 Chapter 8 Levitin, 2006 Chapter 9 Segel, 2007 Chapter 2 6 (Thurs) Social Behavior Gaulin & McBurney Chapter 14 Thomas, 2006 Chapter (Tues) Cyrano and Scheherezade Miller, 2000 Chapter 10 Pinker on Language Pinker, 2007 Chapter 7 13 (Thurs) Term Papers Due Culture Gaulin & McBurney Chapter (Tues) Violence Pinker, 2002 Chapter (Thurs) Gender Pinker, 2002 Chapter (Tues) Religion and the Belief in God Dawkins, 2007 Chaps 5 & 6 Atran, 2002, pp (Thurs) Thanksgiving Recess December 2 (Tues) Last Day of Classes 5 (Fri) Final Exam: 12:00 noon 3:00 p.m.