Evolutionary Psychology Test Questions
Course Introduction
Evolutionary Psychology is a course that explores the ways in which evolutionary principles have shaped the human mind and behavior. Drawing from the fields of biology, anthropology, and psychology, students examine how natural selection, sexual selection, and other evolutionary forces have contributed to the development of cognitive processes, emotions, and social behaviors. The course covers topics such as mate selection, cooperation, aggression, kinship, and the evolutionary roots of mental disorders, encouraging students to critically assess both the evidence and controversies within the field. Through analysis of current research and theoretical perspectives, students gain insight into the adaptive functions of psychological traits and their relevance in contemporary society.
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Evolutionary Psychology Neuroscience Perspectives concerning Human Behavior and Experience
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Chapter 1: Introduction to an Evolutionary Perspective
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Q1) Darwin's theory of natural selection
A) began as a rich laboratory research tradition.
B) did not emphasize psychological processes.
C) explained many important psychological processes.
D) viewed humans as the pinnacle of evolution.
Answer: B
Q2) _____ is a measure of how much a behavioral pattern contributes to the survival of the offspring.
Answer: fitness
Q3) When the Wason selection task is framed as a(n) _____ problem, most people answer incorrectly; however, when it is framed as a(n) ______ problem, most people answer correctly.
A) inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism
B) logic, social exchange
C) individual, group
D) trivial, survival
Answer: B
Q4) The question of why individuals would engage in behaviors that benefited others at their own expense is known as _____.
Answer: altruism
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Chapter 2: What Is Evolution
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Q1) Vestigial structures retain previous physiology that is
A) adaptive but not functional.
B) both adaptive and functional.
C) neither adaptive nor functional.
D) not adaptive but is functional.
Answer: C
Q2) The present-day eye evolved from a structure that detected
A) gross changes in light but not specific images and colors.
B) regions of relative warmth or coldness.
C) specific images but not changes in light or color.
D) two-dimensional but not three-dimensional images.
Answer: A
Q3) Prior to 10,000 years ago, there was no agriculture, and all humans lived in _____ societies.
Answer: hunter-gatherer
Q4) What is the name of the ship that Darwin traveled to the Galápagos Islands on?
Answer: The Beagle.
Q5) "Why do peacocks have colorful tails?" is an example of a(n) _____ question.
Answer: ultimate
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Chapter 3: Evolution and Genetics
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Q1) Mendel learned that the inheritance of one trait is not affected by the inheritance of another trait; this is known as Mendel's second law, or the law of _____.
Answer: independent assortment
Q2) The phenotype represents the A) complete set of human genes.
B) environment in which genes are expressed.
C) observed traits of the individual.
D) traits inherited through the sperm and the egg.
Answer: C
Q3) _____ is the process whereby the RNA determines the sequence of amino acids in the building of a protein.
Answer: translation
Q4) The job of a gene is to encode the production of a(n) A) behavior.
B) organism. C) protein.
D) trait.
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Evolution of Brain and Function
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Q1) _____ is the preferred term in referring to the ancestral species related to humans because it is more precise.
A) Hominid
B) Hominin
C) Human
D) Humanoid
Q2) Hughling Jackson proposed that higher-level brain structures, which evolved later than the reflexive ones, serve the purpose of inhibiting and modulating these basic reflexes. This principle is known as ______.
Q3) If a particular characteristic was present in the ancestors of the group under study, it is called a _____ characteristic; if, on the other hand, the characteristic has evolved in the group under study, it is called a _____ characteristic.
A) hierarchical, integrated
B) homologous, analogous
C) inherited, acquired
D) primitive, derived
Q4) Even without an external task to perform, our mind is constantly working. It jumps from one thought to another. William James called this process the _____.
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Chapter 5: Developmental Processes
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Q1) Around the end of the first year of life, the infant becomes aware of what other people are looking at. This aspect of development is referred to as a(n)
A) eye direction detector.
B) intentionality detector.
C) shared attentional mechanism.
D) theory of mind mechanism.
Q2) _____ play is seen across cultures and often reflects tasks that the children observe their parents or elders engaging it; there is some suggest that it is related to theory of mind.
Q3) Environmental factors are able to influence developmental processes from the earliest manifestation of the organism; in fact, all genetic processes in humans, with the exception of _____, can be influenced by environmental factors.
A) blood type
B) eye color
C)immune response
D)insulin production
Q4) _____ refers to an individual's particular characteristics, especially behaviors that are consistent over time.
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Chapter 6: Emotionality
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Q1) In a number of species, newborns will emit vocalizations when separated from their mother and exhibit a comfort response when reunited; this response appears to be mediated by the molecule ______, which has been associated with bonding in a variety of species.
Q2) The congenitally blind display spontaneous emotional expressions that are _____ those of sighted people.
A) exactly the same as B) generally unlike C) quite different from D) similar to
Q3) Darwin made a number of important observations about emotions. Which of the following is NOT one of them?
A) Emotions are discrete.
B) Emotions are expressed on the face.
C) Emotions are multidimensional.
D) Emotions are not unique to humans.
Q4) Many researchers believe there is a finite number of basic emotions, and most would include anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise among therm. Sometimes _____ is included, although this shows less universality across studies.
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Chapter 7: Language
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Q1) According to the traditional view, speech perception is processed in ____ area and speech production is processed in _____ area.
A) auditory, motor
B) Broca's, Wernicke's
C) subcortical, cortical
D) Wernicke's, Broca's
Q2) Hauser and Fitch (2003) name four particular design features that suggest language is an adaptation. Which of the following is NOT one of those design features?
A) It exhibits a characteristic pattern of development.
B) It is important in sexual selection.
C) It is mediated by dedicated neural circuits.
D) It is present in all humans.
Q3) According to Chomsky, language was not a product of natural selection but rather a(n) _____ property of brain complexity.
A) acquired
B) emergent
C) intrinsic
D) natural
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Chapter 8: Sex and Gender
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Q1) _____ refers to the situation in which one male and one female live together, but each also engages in extra-pair couplings.
Q2) _____ refers to the situation in which one male and female mate only with each other.
Q3) Bonobos live in central Africa. Unlike other mammals that show sexual activity only during a few days of the female's cycle, female bonobos are almost continuously sexually active, and it has been suggested that the bonobo uses sexuality in place of aggression. Their social structure is best described as which of the following?
A) They live in fairly stable groups composed of one male and several females with their young.
B) They live in joint male-female territories and remain socially monogamous for decades.
C) They live in social groups of around 50 animals; males establish a dominance hierarchy.
D) They live in small fission-fusion groups; females band together to ward off aggressive males.
Q4) What is the Red Queen hypothesis? In what way is sex like a lottery?
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Chapter 9: Sexual Selection
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Q1) Animal research has shown that infants born at the same time from a number of mothers _____ compared with one infant born alone.
A) are healthier and more likely to survive
B) cannot get as much nutrition and care
C) face competition and so are less likely to survive
D) have richer environments for development
Q2) The theory of _____ states that the sex that provides more to the offspring in terms of time, energy and effort will be more discriminating in selecting its mating partner.
Q3) Compared with other primates, human male penises are quite large; this is due to A) female choice.
B) same-sex competition.
C) sexual swelling.
D) sperm competition.
Q4) The concept of _____ suggests that if a female is more willing to mate with a male with a certain trait, then that trait will be favored and passed on to the next generation; the outcome of such a process could eventually be an exaggeration, as in the case of the peacock's tail.
Q5) Discuss the features that characterize attractiveness in males and females.
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Chapter 10: Kin and Family Relationships
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Q1) Based on Hamilton's kin selection theory, it is hypothesized that conflict will increase and cooperation decrease with _____ relatedness.
A) decreasing
B) family
C) generational
D) increasing
Q2) All cultures extend kinship terms to non-kin, using them figuratively rather than literally, for evocative and propagandistic purposes. In such cases, the people in those cultures
A) can easily distinguish what is expected of that person.
B) do this to take advantage of others.
C) then feel obliged to offer aid and support to them.
D) treat such people as if they were kin.
Q3) In humans, there are data to suggest that genetic factors that influence _____ characteristics may be important markers for indexing relationships.
A) body
B) cognitive
C) facial
D) personality
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Chapter 11: Social Relations
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Q1) Across nonhuman primate species, brain size is related to the size of the _____ each individual interacts with.
A) alpha male
B) environment
C) family
D) social group
Q2) Discuss how the prisoner's dilemma is used to study human cooperative behavior. What is the best strategy for the iterative version of the game, and why?
Q3) One strategy for playing the prisoner's dilemma is called _____. It has only two rules: (1) On your first move, you should cooperate; and (2) on every move after that, do what the other person did on the last trial.
Q4) Trivers suggests that _____ is hiding truth from the conscious mind in order to hide subtle facial expressions that could give away the fact we are lying.
Q5) Trivers proposed that helping behavior among non-kin could be explained in terms of _____; the basic idea is that our own fitness, in an evolutionary sense, can be increased if we can expect those we help now to help us sometime in the future.
Q6) Discuss the brain processes involved in social relations.
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Chapter 12: Making Social Decisions
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Q1) Humans and other animals display a non-rational set of rules when entering economic transitions, suggesting that factors other than traditional logic come into play. In fact, both humans and pigeons prefer _____ over _____
A) cooperation, defection
B) heuristics, reason
C)immediate gains, delayed rewards
D) social decisions, logical decisions
Q2) In a variety of studies, patients with ____ lobe lesions perform poorly on social exchange Wason tasks as compared to individuals without brain damage.
A) frontal
B) occiptal
C) parietal
D) temporal
Q3) Similar body movements, including gaze aversion, smiling, head movement, self-touching, and grooming are seen in nonhuman primates in appeasement displays, in which one individual seeks to pacify the other and keep the social bond intact; thus, the social emotion of _____ may have had its origins in appeasement.
Q4) Discuss the evolution and function of social and moral emotions.
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Chapter 13: Health and Disease
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Q1) Nesse (2005) suggests that there are six ways to think about the relationship between health and disease in evolutionary terms. Discuss each.
Q2) McEwen (2002) addressed the paradoxical nature of the stress response, suggesting that the term stress be replaced with the term _____, which refers to the body's ability to achieve stability through change.
Q3) People of Northern European descent do not lose the ability to digest lactose, as do most humans; were an adult from Asia to drink milk, he or she would feel ill and have genetic symptoms of bloating and diarrhea resulting from a _____ between his or her genetic makeup and the food source, whereas those from Northern Europe would not.
Q4) In terms of infection, it is not only humans that are evolving but also bacteria and viruses; this is a problem of infection and
A) coevolution
B) constraint
C) mismatch
D) tradeoff
Q5) Explain the thrifty genotype hypothesis and the thrifty phenotype hypothesis. Discuss the evidence supporting them.
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Chapter 14: Psychopathology
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Q1) Genetic studies suggest that depression is
A) equally influenced by genetic and environmental factors.
B) less influenced by genetic than environmental factors.
C) more influenced by genetic than environmental factors.
D) not due to genes at all, only environmental factors.
Q2) Andrews (2007) rejects the hypothesis that depression results from a novel reaction of the nervous system to the modern environment because depression is
A) an adaptive response to a significant personal loss.
B) connected to other traits that are extremely adaptive.
C) mostly determined by genes and not environment.
D) seen in a variety of animals whose environment has not changed.
Q3) Individuals with _____ display problems in three areas: social functions, communications, and restrictions in behaviors and interests.
A) autism
B) multiple sclerosis
C) schizophrenia
D) Williams syndrome
Q4) Discuss the five reasons why researchers believe sleep has been shaped by natural selection.
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Chapter 15: Culture
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Q1) Discuss the seven characteristics of culture as determined by Flinn (2005).
Q2) Using fear faces of Japanese and Caucasian individuals, Chiao and his colleagues (2008) found participants showed greater amygdala activation when viewing members of
A) their own cultural group.
B) their own gender.
C) the other cultural group.
D) the other gender.
Q3) Ambady and Bharucha (2009) describe three possible mechanisms underlying the differences described in cultural mapping. Which of the following is NOT one of them?
A) Cultural learning and how experience influences brain structure.
B) Role of the environment in shaping culture.
C) Similarities and differences in genetic makeup.
D) Similar patterns and differences in these patterns across cultures.
Q4) A variety of researchers from various fields have begun to study how organisms can modify their environment and how this changes evolutionary selection pressures. This approach has been referred to as the _____ perspective, and it suggests that humans may be more active in sharing their own evolution than traditionally thought.
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