PSYCH 459: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
SPRING 2013
Prof.
Michael Beecher (Guthrie 327, 543-6545, beecher@u.washington.edu)
Tues
Thurs 12:30-2:20 ·
MGH 251 (perhaps on occasion Guthrie 315) Evolutionary
Psychology London 1996
Class
website:
http://courses.washington.edu/evpsych/
rev 22 May 13
The new field of evolutionary psychology explores whether
and – if so, how – variation in human behavior can be explained as a result of
biological evolution. This field is growing rapidly, and has attracted
widespread interest from people in many fields, including psychology,
sociology, anthropology, biology and law.
The course will cover core issues that are addressed by evolutionary
psychology, including cooperation, communication, aggression, mating,
reproduction and parental and family interactions. The course will encourage a
critical, skeptical examination of research and theory in evolutionary
psychology. For background, a prior course in animal behavior (e.g., 200 or
300) is strongly recommended.
Reading: The core book for the course is Jonathan
Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good
People are Divided by Politics and Religion. The book is much broader and
more general than the title would suggest and in my opinion is superior to any
of the current textbooks on evolutionary psychology. There will be considerable
additional reading, mostly from the original research literature, of studies
Haidt discusses (or at least footnotes) throughout his book; these readings
will be posted on the course website.
General
Format: The course will be in the ‘seminar’ format. I
will post discussion questions for each chapter in Haidt. Sometimes the
questions will be assigned to students (e.g., you might be expected to lead of
the discussion on Q#6), other times we will leave them open-ended. Each student
will pick one of the additional papers to give a seminar presentation (see next
section). We may read some additional papers that are divided up among students
in ‘jigsaw’ fashion.
Student-led seminars (standard format): The seminar will be led by a student, and
should be given in PowerPoint (ppt) format (see guidelines at bottom of this
paragraph). The presenter should assume that the
audience has read the paper and should therefore concentrate on boiling down
and summarizing the main points of the research. The presenters should leave room for
discussion, both during and after the presentation. A seminar’s effectiveness
can be judged (in part) by the amount of discussion it generates (though the
paper itself of course must get a lot of the credit/blame for this). Hints for
students in the audience on how to make the most of these seminars: First, read
the paper before the class. If you are pressed for time, at least skim it for
its essence. Ask questions about the paper in the seminar. Try and relate it to
what you’ve learned to that point in the class, and to your knowledge of
psychology generally.
Student-led seminars (jigsaw format): This is a general-discussion format
in which the material is split into small parts with 2 to 5 students assigned as
experts on each bit. For example, a research paper can be divided into intro,
methods, results and discussion; sometimes the results can be further divided
(e.g., figure 1, 2, etc., or experiment 1, 2, etc.). Or sometimes a journal
will publish a series of smaller papers commenting on another paper (critiquing
it) or presenting different viewpoints on a topic. In these ‘jigsaw’ format
classes, students read all the material, but are an expert
commentators/reporters only on the particular part of the jigsaw assigned to
them.
‘Field Trip’: Step out of you moral matrix and into
another. Take a field trip to a church if you’re an atheist, or to a church
outside your faith (ideally way outside) if you are a believer, or to a LGBT
meeting if you are socially conservative, or to LaRouche political meeting… You
get the idea. Details are here: Moral
psychology fieldwork
Comments & Suggestions for
Haidt: The idea here is to collect
comments that (with some editing) we will send to Haidt. These would critique
some aspect of his theory or his supporting evidence or the book in general. Or
they can be suggestions for future research or for a revision of the book.
There are roughly four (overlapping) categories:
·
Suggested revisions of the text (corrections,
amplifications, clarifications).
·
Substantive criticisms, e.g., of interpretations of
(or over-extrapolation from) others’ studies; or of the general logic of the
approach and the theory.
·
Possible studies (experiments or field studies) that
would relate to the theory.
·
Significant omissions you find in the theory or in
the book in general.
Submit these to the group as a whole on our new
Discussion Board. Group members can then comment on your comments.
This project will be worth 20 points. Where do these
come from out of our 200 possible points for the class? Well 10 are taken from
the ‘participation’ category (since this is participation), and 10 from the
final exam (since in reality you are just getting a question from the final
take-home early, with the additional plus that we can as a group discuss these
questions). Again, enter your comments on the Discussion Board:
https://catalyst.uw.edu/gopost/board/beecher/33273/
Class Assignments and Grading: Grade weights (as %s): attendance 40%; participation 10%; seminar presentation 15%; ‘field trip’10%, final exam 25%. Attendance scale: figuring 20 class periods, that is 4 weight points (2 % points) per class. Health-related absences are permitted of course, but must be verified. Participation: The way the class is set up, with jigsaw and seminar presentations, everyone automatically participates, so don’t worry too much about this. Seminar grades: 30 points for perfection (requires a really novel presentation that makes the paper much clearer than it was when we read it); 28 points for near-perfection, 26 points for really good but containing a flaw. Unless something really bad happens (e.g., you fail to show up), I expect everyone to get 25 points or more. Average grade for the course grade last year (and the year before) was 3.6.
|
|
Wt pts |
|
Points to Grade Point |
|
|
Attendance |
80 |
|
200 |
Max poss |
|
Participation |
|
|
180 |
4.0 |
|
Seminar |
30 |
|
160 |
3.5 |
|
‘Field Trip’ |
20 |
|
150 |
3.2 |
|
Exam |
|
|
130 |
3.0 |
|
Comments
on Haidt |
20 |
|
100 |
2.0 |
|
SUM |
200 |
|
|
|
Schedule – to be filled
out (and modified) as we go along
|
|
Day |
Reading in Haidt or other general reading |
Additional Reading papers with
* can be presented by single student, those with ** by two or more
students (others will be jigsawed) |
|
1 |
Tu 02 Apr |
|
|
|
Th 04 Apr |
Haidt 1 Where Does Morality Come From? |
Schmidt
& Sommerville 2011 Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing
in 15-Month-Old Human
Infants (Note 7, Ch 1) (guest Jessica Sommerville) |
|
|
2 |
Tu 09 Apr |
Haidt 2 The Intuitive Dog and Its Rational Tail |
De
Waal (2005) Morality and the Social Instincts: Continuity with the Other
Primates. (Note 21, Ch 2)
ppt |
|
Th 11 Apr |
Tooby & Cosmides: Evolutionary Psychology DQs |
||
|
3 |
Tu 16 Apr |
Tooby & Cosmides – continued |
Silverman
et al (2007) and New
et al (2007) on gender differences in spatial abilities mdb |
|
Th 18 Apr |
Haidt 3 Elephants Rule DQs
Ch3 |
*Greene
et al (2001) An fMRI study of emotional engagement in moral
judgment. (Note
41, Ch 3) Billy |
|
|
4 |
Tu 23 Apr |
Haidt 4 Vote for Me (and Here’s Why) |
*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. (Note
40, Ch 4) |
|
Th 25 Apr |
Haidt 5
Beyond WEIRD Morality |
*Kurzban
et al (2012): Hamilton vs Kant: Adaptations for altruism vs adaptations for
moral judgment (jigsaw) ppt |
|
|
5 |
Tu 30 Apr |
DAY OFF (trade for the ‘Field Trip’ day) |
|
|
Th 02 May |
Haidt 6 Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind |
**Baron-Cohen
(2008): Theories of the autistic mind. (Notes 11-15, Ch 6) Katherine |
|
|
6 |
Tu 07 May |
Haidt 7
The Moral Foundations of Politics |
**Decety (2011): The neuroevolution of empathy Jennifer *van
Vugt et al (2007): Gender differences in cooperation and
competition : The Male-Warrior Hypothesis (Note 20, Ch 7) Alex
K |
|
Th 09 May |
Haidt 8 The
Conservative Advantage |
*Graham,
Haidt & Nosek (2009): Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets
of moral foundations Dominic |
|
|
7 |
Tu 14 May |
Haidt chapter 8 – continued |
*Fehr & Gächter (2002): Altruistic punishment (Notes 45-46, Ch 8) Sean *Boehm
(2012): Ancestral hierarchy & conflict (Note 48, Ch 8) Josh |
|
Th 16 May |
Haidt 9 Why
are we so Groupish? |
*Almås et al (2010): Fairness and the development of inequality acceptance. (Note 51, Ch 8) Perryn **Kurzban et al
(2001): Can race be erased? (Note 51 Ch 9) Kate
& MarLa |
|
|
8 |
Tu 21 May |
Haidt
chapter 9 – continued |
*De
Dreu et al (2010): Oxytocin regulates parochial altruism Alex S |
|
Th 23 May |
Haidt 10
The Hive Switch |
*Molnar-Szakacs
(2011): Mirror neurons (Notes 27,35-37 Ch 10) Clove |
|
|
9 |
Tu 28 May |
Haidt
11 Religion is a Team Sport |
*D.
S. Wilson (2004): Testing hypotheses about religion (Notes 39-43 Ch 11) Robert |
|
Th 30 May |
Haidt chapter 11 – continued |
**Harris
et al (2009): fMRI correlates of religious belief Tianran
& Rivers |
|
|
10 |
Tu 04 Jun |
Haidt 12
Can’t We All Disagree More Constructively? |
**Shuler
& Churchland (2011): critique of Haidt & Joseph **Haidt & Joseph (2011): reply to Shuler & Churchland Emily & Alexandra |
|
Th 06 Jun |
Final Discussion |
|
|