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.

ppt guidelines

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	20 10	180	4.0
Seminar	30	160	3.5
‘Field Trip’	20	150	3.2
Exam	50 40	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	Haidt Introduction
	Th 04 Apr	Haidt 1 Where Does Morality Come From? DQs Ch1	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 DQs Ch2	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	Brosnan & de Waal (2003) ppt Allen et al (1975)
3	Tu 16 Apr	Tooby & Cosmides – continued ppt EP intro ppt T&C	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 ppt Haidt Chapts 1-9	*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 Angel & Anna **Haidt & Joseph (2011): reply to Shuler & Churchland Emily & Alexandra
	Th 06 Jun	Final Discussion