Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

12 CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Research Methodsevolutionary psychologyThe application of principles of evolution,including natural selection, to explain psychologicalprocesses and phenomena.cultureThe attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviorsshared by a group of people and communicatedfrom one generation to another.cross-cultural psychologyBranch of psychology that studies theeffects of culture on behavior and mentalprocesses.ethnocentrismThe belief that one’s own culture or ethnicgroup is superior to all others, and the relatedtendency to use one’s own culture asa standard by which to judge other cultures.individualistic culturesCultures that emphasize the needs andgoals of the individual over the needs andgoals of the group.collectivistic culturesCultures that emphasize the needs andgoals of the group over the needs and goalsof the individual.The Evolutionary Perspective The evolutionaryperspective analyzes behavior interms of how it increases a species’chances to survive and reproduce. Comparingbehaviors across species can oftenlead to new insights about the adaptivefunction of a particular behavior. For example,humans, monkeys, and apes are allmembers of the primate family. Closebonds with caregivers are essentialto the primate infant’ssurvival—whether thatinfant is a golden monkey ata wildlife preserve in northernChina or a human infantat a family picnic in Norway.As you’ll see in later chapters,the evolutionary perspectivehas been applied tomany different areas of psychology,including human relationships,mate selection,eating behavior, and emotionalresponses (Caporael,2001).For example, one well-established psychological finding was that people exertmore effort on a task when working alone than when working as part of a group, aphenomenon called social loafing. First demonstrated in the 1970s, social loafingwas a consistent finding in several psychological studies conducted with Americanand European subjects. But when similar studies were conducted with Chinese participantsduring the 1980s, the opposite was found to be true (see Moghaddam,2002). Chinese participants worked harder on a task when they were part of a groupthan when they were working alone.Today, psychologists are keenly attuned to the influence of cultural and ethnic factorson behavior (Norenzayan & Heine, 2005). We have included Culture and HumanBehavior boxes throughout this textbook to help sensitize you to the influence of cultureon behavior— including your own. We describe cross-cultural psychology in moredetail in the Culture and Human Behavior box on the next page.The Evolutionary PerspectiveEvolutionary psychology refers to the application of the principles of evolution toexplain psychological processes and phenomena (Buss, 2009). The evolutionary perspectivehas grown out of a renewed interest in the work of English naturalist CharlesDarwin. As noted previously, Darwin’s (1859) first book on evolution, On the Originof Species, played an influential role in the thinking of many early psychologists.The theory of evolution proposes that the individual members of a species competefor survival. Because of inherited differences, some members of a species arebetter adapted to their environment than are others. Organisms that inherit characteristicsthat increase their chances of survival in their particular habitat are morelikely to survive, reproduce, and pass on their characteristics to their offspring.Conversely, individuals that inherit less useful characteristics are less likely to survive,reproduce, and pass on their characteristics. This process reflects the principleof natural selection: The most adaptive characteristics are “selected” and perpetuatedin the next generation.Psychologists who take the evolutionary perspective assume that psychologicalprocesses are also subject to the principle of natural selection. As David Buss (2008)writes, “An evolved psychological mechanism exists in the form that it does becauseit solved a specific problem of survival or reproduction recurrently over evolutionaryhistory.” That is, those psychological processes that helped individuals adapt totheir environments also helped them survive, reproduce, and pass those abilities onto their offspring.As you consider the possible role of evolutionary adaptations in shaping modernpsychological processes, keep the time frame of evolutionary changes in perspective.If evolutionary influences helped shaped psychological processes, those influencesoccurred over hundreds of thousands of years. What we think of as human civilizationhas existed for only about 10,000 years, since the earliest appearance of agriculture.In contrast, our ancient human ancestors spent more than 2 million years asprimitive hunter-gatherers.