Question

Write a paragraph long comment you currently have after learning a bit about the evolution of behavior (about evolution, natural selction). In particular, think about the implications of the idea that behavior is heritable, and has emerged from the behavior of ancestral species.

Answer 1

Evolutionary psychology uses evolutionary theory to explain similarities in psychological characteristics.According to evolutionary psychologists ,patterns of behaviour have evolved through natural selection,in the same way that physical characteristics have evolved.Because of natural selection,adaptive behaviours or behaviour that increase reproductive success,are kept and passed on from one generation to the next.

Because reproductive success is such a hot topic in evolutionary theory,evolutionary psychologists often choose to study mating behaviour.Mating strategies depend on the amount of parental investment made by males and females of a species.Parental investment refers to all the resources spent to produce and raise offspring.In many species,males and females dont make equal parental investments.

usually,the females of the species invests more in parenting.Females of many species choose their mates based on certain characteristics,which in turn means that those traits will be passed on to their male offspring.Biologists call this process sexual selection,which is related to natural selection.

A situation called polygeny arises when a single male mates with many different females.polygeny tends to occur in certain animal sepcies.In a polygonous mating system,males compete with other males in order to get access to females.Femlaes tend to pick winners of such competition.Picking winners helps to ensure that their offspring will have good genes.

Scientists have used evolutioary theory to explain human behaviour patterns,such as female tendency towards monogamy and male tendency towards promiscuity.But human behave in complex and variable ways,and factors such as culture strongly influence this behaviour.

Environment influences can be shared and nonshared.Shared environment is the environment shared by the siblings reared in the same family.This includes such variables as socioeconomic status and parent education.Nonshared environment is the environment unique to the individual.There is no single genes for intelligence,persoality traits,behaviour,or even height.Such complex characteristics are polygenic i.e they are influenced by multiple genes.