136-287/387 Evolutionary Psychology and Cross-Cultural Explanations of Social Behaviour

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Objectives:

Students who complete this subject should:

• have a general familiarity with current research on the modular mind;

• have knowledge of relevant written and filmed ethnographic material;

• be able to critically assess evolutionary explanations of human social behaviour;

• be able to critically assess competing cultural explanations of social behaviour;

• be able to give testable explanations of what people do and why they do it.

Content:

This subject examines whether the model of a multimodular mind proposed by evolutionary psychologists can explain what people in different societies around the world do, and why they do it. Evolutionary psychologists argue that mind modules (neural circuits) solved recurrent problems that affected reproductive fitness in ancestral societies. The subject will briefly review the work of evolutionary psychologists, mentioning the main modules proposed to date but concentrating on mate preference and cooperation modules. Using written and filmed examples of social behaviour from societies around the world (primarily small-scale societies in the Asia-Pacific region), the subject will discuss how, and if, an understanding of mind modules can be helpful in explaining social behaviour, and how anthropologists can apply the work of evolutionary psychologists to help solve ethnological questions in culturally diverse societies.

Assessment:

Prescribed Texts:

• Axelrod R. 1990, The Evolution of Cooperation
• Buss D. 1994, Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
• Daly & Wilson 1988, Homicide