Anthro 4481/6481: Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is a new inter-disciplinary field that studies how our preferences, emotions, and ways of thinking and behaving have been shaped by natural selection. In this course we will learn how human nature has evolved to cope with problems of survival, mating, parenting, cooperation, and competition.

Download the Final Exam Essay Questions

General Class Resources

• Syllabus   (Amended 2-16-09)
• Studyguides
• Be sure to forward your umail to an email account you check regularly.
• Sample Midterms for question #1 are available here and here. Use for general guidance only.
• Sample term paper topics

Term Paper Guidelines

• Finding a term paper topic
• Finding sources
• Writing the term paper

Additional readings and resources

• Can selfishness save the environment? (required)
• The Moral Instinct (recommended)

Fun and Games

• blindspot experiments (follow the links through all 5 screens - more blind spots, switching colors, lines, final blindspot)
• an adaptation to noisy environments (an auditory version of the blindspot exercise; the brain fills in missing speech sounds if gaps are replaced by loud white noise. Play original.wav and some of the no.wav, high.wav, and low.wav files)
• intentionality bias (1) (click the red arrow to cycle through the sequence)
• intentionality bias (2) see Bloom's "We've evolved to be creationists"
• Is this a black headline on a white page? (from Livingstone's book "Vision and art: The biology of seeing")
• Consciousness: blindsight (explore your "what" and "where" visual pathways)
• Warneken and Tomasello videoclips (helping in children and chimps; view a few from each category)