Social Science… Psychology 3196

Introduction Let’s look at social psychology and the study of culture Big traditions in psychology Mostly ignoring evolution (though not always)

Social Psych A good question is why be social in the first place? Many species are not social Well it makes sense if there is predation risk (the selfish herd phenomenon) Makes sense if food is patchily distributed and patches are large

Costs and benefits Of course, the benefits of being social must outweigh the costs. So say there is little predation, then there is little reason to hang out with others Or if the patches you encounter are quite small Our closest living relatives are social

EEA What was life like then? There would have been some predation yes Food was patchy, but patches were probably large Might have made good sense to be social to prevent others of our species from screwing us over

EEA We probably lived in small bands Perhaps 30 or fewer people per band Varying degrees of relatedness (which is the key probably) When hunter gatherers of today are looked it they tend to live like this, and they tend to be more social with people that are more related to them

Kinship Kinship and association Kinship and cooperation Kinship, aggression and homicide Proximate mechanisms?

Reciprocal Altruism We are more likely to help if –We will get help in return –Cost is low –Payoff is high Public helping, all other things being equal, is more likely Though the singular hero effect is important here too

Ingroup bias and racism As you probably know we favour our own group, no matter what that group is, over other groups We must understand this stuff, it may have deadly consequences Bias becomes bigger when membership is more obvious We look for ‘badges’

Race Today not very useful as a ‘badge’ But people of course still seem to care about the colour of another’s skin, the language they speak etc When people are given a cue that is reliable about group membership, it changes Educational ideas here, universal people

Culture We started out with a discussion of culture and the folly of using it as an explanation The social world does of course influence us greatly Can we reconcile the SSSM and EP? YES EP is an explanation of how society influences us

Culture EP does NOT deny cultural differences But it does not play them up It does not see them as the end of the explanation Attractiveness and contrast effects

So what is the domain of EP? We can only go after stuff that affects fitness Some stuff probably has no fitness effect However, some stuff is universal but seems on the surface to have no fitness effect Music

Are we pessimistic? If you believe in the naturalistic fallacy yes EP is an environmental theory! We can get new understanding of things like education, homicide and racism This is an optimistic view!