Comm and Evolution- FINAL EXAM

Reid, Zhang & Anderson 2016): Vulnerability Cost Hypopthesis

Laughter must be physiologically intense to release endogenous opiates People who laugh shed tears- "I laughed until I cried" The body convulses, sometimes painfully- Belly laughs, side-splitting laughter Loud repetitive sound that draws attention PREDICTIONS: -Larger more formidable males should be better at eliciting laughter than smaller males with the same material...But this will depend on relative formidability -Larger males will have to laugh more intensely to get the same degree of trust than smaller males -Laughter should compromise: Fight/flight response Ability to track objects in peripheral vision Physical strength test

Costly Signaling Theory: Comparative Evidence

Mating displays in the superb lyre bird Springboks stotting Humans: MMGW: 1:17 - 11:30

Ackerman et al. (2006): They All Look the Same (unless they're angry)

Outgroup homogeneity effect: They all look alike to me Recognition accuracy for outgroup faces lower than ingroup faces But if individuals might incur fitness costs, then memory accuracy should increase 1) 192 white Ss exposed to black and white targets 2) Facial expressions were either neutral or angry -Included a distractor condition (present/absent) -Distractors were abstract paintings -Measured recognition memory accuracy after a 5 minute film clip -1 = definitely did not see; 6 = definitely did see *white people saying I think I've seen this black guy before (homogeneity, false alarm); do pay attention to people in out-groups where there is a potential cost to be mediated

Tyber, Lieberman & Griskevicius (2009): Disgust

Pathogen disgust: "accidentally touching a person's bloody cut" "standing close to a person who has body odor" Sexual disgust: "performing oral sex" "watching a pornographic video" Moral disgust: "stealing from a neighbor" "a student cheating to get good grades"

Coalitions: Comparative Evidence

Ugandan chimps hunting colobus monkeys Hunting killer whales Pigmy marmosets and tree sap farms Capuchins and territorial defense Honeypot ants

The Handicap Principle: Zahavi (1979)

"A signal is reliable when the investment required for its use is greater than the potential gain a cheater would make from using it improperly. The investment should be acceptable to an honest signaler and prohibitive to a cheater"

Ridley (2008): Nature via Nurture

"The big brains that make people capable of rapid cultural progress- of reading, writing, playing the violin, learning about the siege of Troy, driving a car- came into being long before much of culture had accumulated. Progressive, cumulative culture appeared so later in human evolution to have had little chance to shape the way people think, let alone the size of the brain, which has already reached a maximum with little help from culture. The thinking, imagining and reasoning brain evolved at its own pace to solve the practical and sexual problems of a social species rather than to cope with the demands of culture transmitted from others" ---> This is not to say that culture is irrelevant, but it is through the social interaction that enables them to create a shared culture- it is all intertwined. You cannot have one without the other. Without the cultural context, the evolved mechanisms would't work!

Van Schaik et al. (2013): Animals and Future Planning

-Evidence that Orangutang males plan and communicate their travel direction one day in advance -Flanged males (the big guys) are attracted to females. The females want to stay close to them. Calls can deter subordinate males -Time of call and direction faced recorded, and travel directions recorded in 1/2 hour intervals until night rest

Haldane (1949): The Red Queen

"The microscopic and sub-microscopic parasites can evolve so much more rapidly than their hosts that the latter have little chance of evolving complete immunity to them. . . The most that the average species can achieve is to dodge its minute enemies by constantly producing new genotypes" "A non-specific parasite to which partial immunity has been acquired, is a powerful competitive weapon. Europeans have used their genetic resistance to such viruses as that of measles (rubeola) as a weapon against primative peoples as effective as fire-arrms. The latter have responded with a variety of diseases to which they are resistant" "If I am right, under the pressure of disease every species will pursue a more or less random path of biochemical evolution. Antigens originally universal will disappear because a pathogen had become adapted to hosts carrying them, and be replaced by a new set, not intrinsically more valuable, but favoring resistance to that particular pathogen. Once a pair of races is geographically separated they will be exposed to different pathogens. Such races will tend to diverge anti-genically, and some of this divergence may lower the fertility of crosses"

Dunbar (1993): Grooming and Gossip

*Adaptation for complex social relations -Humans (and other primates) live in big social groups -You need to be smart to live in a big group -Mean group size is strongly correlated with neocortical volume (big groups=big brains) -Group cohesion is maintained via grooming: establish and service coalitions; bigger group= more time grooming (establishing a social connection with someone through grooming) -Humans live in even bigger groups than primates, so it's more complex. When a group gets too big, you can't spend all your time figuring out how to arrange social relations with everyone, because then you wouldn't have enough time to do other things (like get food and sleep). So grooming is no longer a possibility when the group gets too big. SO... he believes human language is a grooming mechanism for establishing, regulating and dealing with social relations -Mean Group Size= measured the size of their brains (neocortex ratio), calculate the volume of the cortex to the stuff in the middle and you get a ratio. Find out for that particular species, what the characteristic of the group size is. As the groups get bigger, they have more social problems, and they split and form into new groups- have reached carrying capacity. --> High correlation between size of the brain and a characteristic social complexity. As social group size goes up, time spent grooming goes up too, which must get to a point where you can't groom any longer.

Pinker (2010): The Cognitive Niche Hypothesis

*Concern is with the evolution of intelligence Cognitive Niche= a suite of mutually reinforcing selective pressures: --->Reasoning about causal structure in the world (e.g, weapons, traps, hunting game, detoxifying plants) --->Cooperation with others --->Sharing knowledge and negotiating agreements via language -Language evolved because it enables these functions -BUT... if you can't make predictions that are TESTABLE and FALSIFIABLE, we got nothing! -Pinker is not specific enough, and he also seems to leave out HOW social conversations actually work -If we are going to figure out where language comes from, we need to figure out what the selective pressures were for that specific primate

Kin Selection: Natural Selection Working on Groups of Close Genetic Relatives

-Kin selection may account for the emergence of cooperation -Suppose there are two types of people: one is selfish (will not help someone drowning) and one is altruistic (will jump in to help)--> the altruist will pay a cost (chances of survival decrease) and the recipient will receive a benefit (chances of survival increase) -If altruists dispensed their aid indiscriminately it would be received equally by the selfish and altruistic.. natural selection would therefore favor selfishness and altruists would go extinct

Sosis et al (2007): MOAO Gene Expression?

*Large cultural variability on the costliness of ritual behaviors, particularly males (e.g. repeated sub-incisions, skin hanging, exposure to fire, teeth pullings) *Signals of mate quality? e.g. resistance to pathogens, willingness to endure pain, overall genetic quality *Group Bonding Hypothesis: Irons- group bonding to facilitate cooperation and remove costs of cheating (i.e. free riding) -Database of 60 societies, measured incidence of: Tattooing, Scarification, Cirumcision, Subincision, Teeth pulling, Body painting and Learning "secret knowledge" -Coded for ritual costliness: Eastern Toraja: ---->Boys subincised (cut along bottom of penis) age 6 to 15. --->Circumcised publicly at age 12. --->Manhood initiation involves cuts to arms, hands, legs, burns to torso and arms. --->Pawnee: Men paint their faces -Coded for frequency of warfare *RESULTS: Lots of external warfare: --->Higher percentage of genital mutilation, external warfare not as frequent --->Tattooing a little bit more in external warfare ---->Scarification and piercing significantly higher for external warfare Internal warfare higher for painting, ingestion and isolation -All varying costly things that show some temporary commitment can dispense later on if needed -Underpinning cost mechanism (costly signal)

Mediators and Privisos

*Note: Kin identification mechanisms are not necessary for Hamilton's rule to work. Heuristics could work: -- Limited dispersal (i.e., being surrounded by genetic relatives because you don't stray far from home) -- Familiarity -- Phenotypic similarity (people who look like us) We have probably evolved in circumstances where when we encountered a person who suffered some misfortune, there was a good chance that they were a genetic relative (e.g., we feel discomfort, and sometimes weep-see empathy part)

Using Costly Signaling Theory: Step 2- Receiver-Dependent Costs

*Possible costs because the receiver might mess you up -Receiver-Retaliation Rules: status badges, lowered pitch -Vulnerability Costs (relaxation and threat displays, laughter)

History of Language Evolution: Conclusion from Comparative Evidence

- Animals communicate about their environments, and we have probably only scratched the surface (dolphins) - Animals refer to one another - The ability to understand language is not limited to humans (ex: parrots, dogs, primate, dolphins) - The ability to generate "language" is demonstrated in parrots and primates - Major Differences= relatively little evidence for spontaneous understanding; human language complexity is not reached in other species

Can Animals Understand and Produce Human Language?

- Dogs can understand human language: dog with 1000 words - Primate: Gelada proto-proto language? lip smacks! - Chimps and gorillas taught to use sign language *look at videos

Human Language Development Conclusion:

- Strong evidence for language-like abilities in many species - Strong evidence that humans are pre-wired to learn language, even before birth - Developmental processes strongly imply an evolved ability to learn language when given appropriate environmental inputs - Language deficit research suggests that many, specific brain regions are involved in language processing

Primate Alarm Calls: Ververt Monkeys

- Warning calls for different predators: snake, hawk, leopard, smaller cat, baboon - Fellow monkeys' reactions to the calls vary based upon type of predator - Leopard calls- run up into the tree - Eagle- look up into the air, or run into a bush - Snake- monkeys will stand on hind legs and look in grass around them - Cheney and Seyfarth (1990)

Examples of Creole

- dei gon get naif pok you (1896): "They will stab you with a knife." - dei wawk fit go skul (1902): "They went to school on foot." - pipl no laik tekam fo go wok (1902): "People don't want to have him go to work [for them]." - Spontaneous creation of grammar not found in the pidgin

Development Deficit and Evironment

--Curtiss (1981) -Environment input is crucial -Genie: Lived in isolation from 20 months to 13 year of age. When rescued, she has no language skills. Started learning words within 2 months at the hospital. -BUT, she had poor syntactic (grammatical) development -Telegraph Speech: "I like hear music ice cream truck" and "think about mama love Genie" -Past critical period for language acquisition

Signaling Behaviors

-Archaeology suggests rituals around for 100,000 years -Australian Aborigines insert a bone or stone in boys' penises through an incision in the urethra -Jews and Muslims submit sons to circumcision -Nuer of Sudan and Atmel of New Guinea force adolescents to undergo ritual scarification -Apache boys forced to bathe in icy water

Sherif's Boys Camp Studies

-Boys who were former friends became enemies once separated into competing groups -Example of basketball friends from Wrangham -Why do interpersonal ties succumb to coalitions? Loss of status within a coalition is more powerful than the personal friendship across group boundaries (being in a coalition outweights personal connection)

Signaling Badges

-Clothes, hats, beards -Heavy pieced of clothing -Sets of clothing that mark your position in a group

Costly Signals: Some History

-Krebs & Darkinws (1978): Reaction to "classical" ethology: against the view of "good of the species arguments" and against the "cooperative" view of communication between signalers and receivers ---> "Cooperation, if it occurs, should be regarded as something surprising, demanding special explanation, rather than as something automatically expected."

Navarrete et al. (2009): Race Bias Tracks Conception Risk

-Coalition Tracking Hypothesis *Avoidance of sexual coerces: Evidence exists for heightened sensitivity to indications that a man may engage in coercive sexual tactics when at peak fertility Perhaps members of out-group coalitions are more likely than in-group members to use coercive sexual strategies If so, then race bias may track conception risk Female participants—none who used oral contraceptive, pregnant excluded -Measured IVs: Conception risk based on day of cycle and Vulnerability to sexual coercion (VSC) (e.g., "before I go to bed at night I double check to make sure the doors are securely locked"; I am afraid of being sexually assaulted") Measured DVs: -Implicit stereotypes (IAT associations with white and black: math, brainy, athletic, strong) -Implicit evaluation bias (IAT associations: agony, horrible) -Explicit race bias: ns. (e.g., "Generally, Blacks are not as smart as Whites") -Race bias in mate attraction: artificial digital images that varied racial features judged for "attractive", "sexy" etc. -Fear of male targets: digital images rated for scariness RESULTS: as conception risk increases, so does race-bias, but mostly for women who are highest in perceived vulnerability to sexual coercion

Honey Bee Waggle Dances

-Communication about intentions and the future -Discovered by ecologist Karl von Frisch- helps bees locate pollen and nectar -Angle of the Dance: Signals the angle of the flower from the sun - can determine the position of the sun at all times, even if its cloudy -Duration of the Dance: Signals the flowers' distance from the hive - longer dance=farther away -Vigor of the dancing: Signals the bee's "excitement" with the site (i.e. "there's lots of pollen available)

Interpersonal Cues to Pathogen Avoidance: Comparative Evidence

-Cordycepts (a fungus that infects ants) and gall wasps (see videos) -Ostraciszed tadpoles -Insightful lobsters -Xenophobic sparrows -Violent chimps: like humans do with other people who have disease- disease avoidance strategies where you see something that differs in another member of your group, so you want to stay away or you encourage them to leave

Coalitions: Humans

-Costly rituals and coalitions (costly signaling) -Minimal Group Paradigm: Bobby Green is African American, watching CNN live on his TV about a white man who got pulled out of his truck and beaten, goes and helps the white man and convince the guys to leave the trucker alone ----> this is because Bobby is a truck driver himself and has a social identity/emotional connection to him, despite being a different race -Age and Aggression: genocide- coalition behavior in intergroup conflicts where there's an imbalance of power, goes against minority groups to kill, just like the ants who kill them and steal their stuff if they have a larger number than their neighboring group does -Men more aggressive than women: male to male violence is 30% more common than physical violence between two females -Empathy and Trust (Ikea Lamp)

Atkinson and Bourrat (2011): Supernatural Policing

-Cross-cultural world survey from 1981 to 2008 -Supernatural beliefs about reward/punishment in afterlife: people who believe in heaven and hell, belief in personal god, spirit or life force, or none -Religious Participation: religious services outside of wedding and funerals -Statistically control for religious denomination -Measured 14 moral transgressions (justifiable?): Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled Avoiding a fare on public transport Cheating on taxes Married men/women having an affair Driving drunk Buying something you knew was stolen Sex under age of consent . . . FOUND: religious people are really concerned about who's doing what with whom when they're naked. Observations are consistent with the idea that the primary concerns for religious people are concerns about regulating sexual behaviors

Sexual Selection and Language Development

-Darwin's Musical Proto-Language Hypothesis: language would have started as musical sounds to woo mates and deter rivals (Gibbon video) -Is language complex? very much so!---> we use far more words than we need to communicate: mental lexicon 40k to 60k words, yet we only need 1k (video-blackadder "c is for contrafibularity") -Costly? yes: brains are metabolically costly- approximately 20% of metabolic energy consumption. Language takes ages to learn all proper-like -Sexy? maybe.. Burlin, Dessalles, Locke: Anthropological observation that men with many good wives tend to be good orators

Xenophobia and Ethnocentrism: Faulkner et al. (2004):

-Disgust appears to be a dimension of intergroup attitudes BEHAVIORAL IMMUNE SYSTEM: -->avoid unfamiliar out-group members who possess novel pathogens -->perceived vulnerability to disease -->pathogen primes Study 2: There is a country in Central Africa, which we will refer to as Krasnee that has been experiencing a great deal of civil unrest. A number of people are trying to leave - Ss drew a 'typical Krasnean', rated for 'friendliness' by a separate sample of participants PVD: Attitudes towards immigration of Krasneans, r = -.21 The friendliness of drawings, r = -.31 Study 3: If group of people were culturally unfamiliar to them, strong correlation to germaphobia (eastern africa, eastern asia and eastern europe) Study 5: -Nigerian and Scottish immigrants: accidents and diseases (salient threat), endorsements -Prime people with disease and their attitudes towards unfamiliar out-group members changes- they don't want them to immigrate- fear of the other, gets amplified when people have disease-infection concerns

Human Laughter: Bacharowski & Owren (2001)

-Duchenne laughter (or voiced laughter) -Non-Duchenne laughter is non-voiced, nasally, clicking noise in back of the throat -Researchers focus more on Duchenne laughter than non-Duchenne -Voiced laughter (Duchenne) shows more defined ridges and there's more dark lines over the time measurement

Reid et al. (2012): Study 3- Ethnicity of the Source

-Ethnicity of disease sources -Control over prime -Measured PVD instead of pathogen disgust -3 (prime: white/nonwhite/control) x germ aversion individual differences -Measure similarity of two speakers- one white, the other from Sierra Leone *Results: White disease condition: people said their accent is less similar to the Floridian

Chapman (1975): Laughing Children

-Evidence for the bonding hypothesis (H3) -7/8 year old children listened to humorous material via headphones Tested: -Alone/dyads/triads with confederates of the same sex -Measured laughing, smiling, looking as function of how often confederates looked at one another *RESULTS: -Don't laugh as much when making eye contact, but increases when gaze is shared. -Females are producing a stronger response when they laugh, and they also laugh more frequently than males. -Exchanging a certain amount of gaze back and forth, but not too much, has an affect on frequency of laughter

Shariff and Norenzayan (2007): God is Watching You STUDY 1

-Evidence that religion is connected to prosocial behavior, but few experimental tests -Bering (2003,2006): Inhibited 3 year olds from opening a "forbidden box" by telling them an invisible agent was in the room ("Princess Alice"). - Priming god concepts and pro-social behavior STUDY 1: Control: No prime Religious prime: Unscrambled 10 five-word sentences (e.g., "felt she eradicate spirit the" . . . "she felt the spirit". Target sentences contained: spirit, divine, God, sacred, prophet. Other 5 were neutral words -One-shot, anonymous dictator game: Confederate posed as a subject: 10 $1 coins. You are the giver- take or keep as many as you like, any you leave will be given to the receiver Results: no prime condition people gave $1.84 and God Concepts Prime they gave $4.22.. SO, religion may be aiding as an adaptation social exchange

Pinker: Sexual Selection Doesn't Work!

-First problem, sexual selection shouldn't simply select for musical noises with no content and yet language has specific content -BUT, maybe we start off with reasonable cries and build upon it somehow, but what is that? the cognitive niche? -If its sexual selection, it ought to be sexual dimorphic. It is found that women perform better on IQ tests than men, and aren't men the one who's supposed to be selected? ----> however, there are actually plenty of cases where sexual selection goes on, and both males and females have displays (i.e. humans have armaments and ornaments) -Sexual selection could be telling us something about language evolution- maybe the females do need to be able to pay better attention to language to select the right male (i.e. men lie!) -Explosion of complexity looks like sexual selection, but the original selection for syntax and detail could be natural selection

Theoretical Explanations: Requirements for Coalition Formation

-Fitness-enhancing resources that can be more ably captures or defended through collective than solitary behavior -Costs<Benefits for acting as a coalition -The ability to cooperate with coalitional members -The ability to distinguish allies and enemies -A module (cognitive machinery) that accurately estimates costs<benefits for acting (likelihood of winning) -A module for group coordination -A module for group bonding/empathy (to defeat free riding) -A module for resource capture/defense

Requirements of HoneyPot Ants Coalitions

-Fitness-enhancing resources that can be more ably captures or defended through collective than solitary behavior -The ability to distinguish allies and enemies -A module (cognitive machinery) that accurately estimates costs<benefits for acting (likelihood of winning) -A module for group coordination -A module for resource capture/defense

Signals Advertise Honest Information (on average)

-Genetic quality -Fertility -Current health/vitality -Hunger -Knowledge of danger -Fighting ability *signals evolve because they benefit signalers and receivers!

Coyle & Kaschak (2012): Language Evolution and Sexual Selection

-Griskevicius et al. find men are likely to non-conform when in the presence of attractive women -BUT, what about being in the presence of fertile women? -Men performed a picture description task with a female confederate who varied in fertility -Confederate made statements that differed in structure: double object statements: "meghan gave michael a toy" likely to be followed by similar construction: "the captain sent the first mate a messgae"; Prepositional Object Construction *Results: As her conception-risk increases, men become less likely to match the linguistic structure of the girl - more likely to do something else- linguistically diverging in terms of linguistic structure- trying to be impressive, novel, innovative ---> what might explain effect? non-conforming men are demonstrating creativity? dominance? If it is creativity: Prediction: Women will rate non-conforming men as more attractive and as more creative, fun and so on If it is dominance: Prediction: Women will rate non-conforming men as more dominant, and likely to prevail in conflict with other men

Teaching Language to Apes

-Hayes & Hayes (1952): chimp could only learn 2 words in 2 years - Washoe (Gardner & Gardner, 1969): taught her American sign language. Has been replicated with several other chimps! ^didn't explicitly teach her rules of ASL, but she learned signs and applied them to novel situations ("open" for door, window, etc.). Invented new signs for new words ("waterbird" sign) -Did NOT master word order/grammar ("Roger tickle Washoe" vs. "Washoe tickle Roger") *teaching with symbols (Kanzi, Greenfield and Savage) : look online

Resources/Adaptations of HoneyPot Ants Coalitions

-Honey pots in rival nests -Phereomones? -Estimate size of rival group- visual or olfactory? -Evolution of soldier

Problems with Manipulation Hypothesis (H2)

-How can a signal evolve that is purely manipulative? -If non-voiced laughter produces negative social evaluations, why use it? particularly if you are female? -Why are we seeing sex differences?

Costly Signaling and "Altruism"

-If the selfish gene hypothesis is correct, then cooperation and altruism require special explanation -Reciprocal Altruism: many cases where reciprocity is absent (mutual benefits) -Kin Selection: many cases where people are generous to non-kin -Costly signaling (e.g. Arabian babblers: conspicuous helping, force feeds other males when females are watching)- problem can be solved if animals give away something that look altruistic but are doing so because there it an audience

Infants and Language Development- Nativists

-Infants can distinguish all sounds in all languages from birth! -This perceptual ability declines by 1 month of age (Werker & Pegg, Werker & Tees) -Golden-Meadow (1982): Deaf children whose parents did not teach them ASL invented their own gestural language (and deaf infant gestural "babbling") -Poverty of the stimulus arguments... -Berko (1958) study: "this is a dog...now there are two of them...there are two ____" -Mampe et al (2009): Newborns' crying- babies are born with consistent crying sounds consistent with the rhythms of the language that they speak

Cons of Dunbar's Theory

-It doesn't explain the initial impetus for language- why not just happy noises (like a porcupine eating squash for the first time) -It still doesn't precisely state selection pressures ("ecology for big groups?") -Aren't these ecologies shares with other species- why don't baboons speak?

Bachorowski and Owren (2001): Laughter Study

-Laughs recorded from mixed-sex dyads (strangers waiting for experiment to begin) -From original study, the more voiced laughs that females made, the more male partners were romantically interested in them New Ss judged samples across 5 evaluations: 1) Interest in Meeting: more for female and voiced 2) Emotion: more for female and voiced 3) Laugh-track: even for women and men, higher for voiced 4) Friendliness: higher for women and voiced 5) Sexiness: higher for women and voiced -Maybe this is because males are attracted to women's high-pitched voice, which can be displayed through laughter? - consistent with manipulation hypothesis

Provine (1993): Laughter Punctuates Speech

-Laughter is not typically caused by jokes or clever remarks: "most pre-laugh dialogue is like that of an interminable television situation comedy scripted by an extremely ungifted writer" Typical statements preceding laughter: i'll see you guys later, it was nice meeting you too, i see your point, i know, must be nice, look it's andrew Questions: it wasn't you? can i join you? how are you? are you sure? what can i say? what is that supposed to mean? ---> people are kind of primed to laugh- the thing that precedes this laughter is not funny, but why does someone laugh? maybe making someone comfortable, tension release, making yourself seem more approachable and like-able (manipulate), reciprocal (if we're laughing we are sending info to the receiver and vise-versa), testing some info about social connection (barometer-ebb and flow), eliciting some type of laughter back and forth may be testing social relations, seeing where we fall along this spectrum

McCullough et al. (2012): Religious Cognition and Male Sexual Competition EXPERIMENT 3

-Male and female Ss again Scrambled sentence tasks: -Religious condition: 10/20 contained words related to religion (e.g., "divine", "sacred") -Control: 20 scrambled sentences with no concept prime Hand grip strength on dynamometer: How long they could maintain 70% of their maximum grip FOUND: women always 3 seconds. Men in control 3.4 seconds, but in religious condition they're significantly worse (same as women 3 seconds)--> religious prime makes men physically weaker

Paradoxes

-Many of the attributes that are communicated in speech are beneficial to signalers Pitch--->Anger/Aggressive Intentions--->Resources Accents--->In-group Membership--->Altruism Laugher--->Trust/Friendly Intentions--->Resources -Human communication appears to contain any such paradoxes, suggesting the existence of cost signaling mechanisms

Guns vs. Germs and Religion

-N = 120 -Exposed to guns or disease prime 3 minutes -Respond to measures for SDT study -Disgust measures -Similarity measures & Religion: -Pathogen Disgust x Prime: repeated measure for similarity to familiar and unfamiliar religious out-goups -Control for religious belief, religiosity, attitudes towards atheists, sexual and moral disgust Results: Violence Primed- no correlation between pathogen disgust and judgement of similarity between religious groups Pathogen Primed- there is a correlation between pathogen disgust and judgement of similarity between religious groups

Shariff and Norenzayan (2007): God is Watching You STUDY 2

-Non-student sample -No prime condition changed to neutral word condition -Added a secular prime: Civic, jury, court, police, contract -Religious prime: Same as Study 1 **Neutral prime gave $2.60, secular prime $4.40 and God Concepts Prime $4.60 -So, priming some kind of god concept promotes some cooperation, but you don't need it, you just need people to pay attention to other people (like in the secular prime)

Laughter as a Barometer of Trust

-Not bonding per se, but a check on bonds: Darwin and German Soldiers During Seige of Paris and Davila Ross et al. (2011)-Orphaned Chimps in New Groups; Function of Non-Duchenne laughter? -Women laugh more than men- physical size/strength? Men are more formidable (respect through being strong and capable), more frequent in women and people are responding to it more favorably -Laughter should promote fair social-exchange: people who laugh together ought to also be fair to each other ----->mixed-motive economic games- if we both choose to cooperate we will both pay a cost, but it's not too bad. If we both defect, we both go to jail- if only one defects, only one of the two will go to jail- in this scenario self-interest compels you to choose defection, but if you both defect both of you are screwed.. so, this game requires trust, which is why people in this game who laugh more together will reveal more social exchange with one another -Laughter is more likely when a test on bonds is desirable: laughter after experiencing a shared threatening situation- if you've already established some degree of a bond with your group/person, then after a big threat you could imagine some degree of laughing Costs: receiver independent costs and receiver dependent costs -if laughter is designed to test bonds, then there must be a cost that keeps the signal honest (hopefully its the vulnerability cost)

Reid et al. (2012): Religious Groups

-Ns = 58 (UCSB) and 27 (Samford) -UCSB removed two Buddhists -Samford removed one outlier -All participants exposed to pathogen prime (signal detection judgments for another study) -Measures of pathogen disgust (Tybur et al.) -Measures of similarity to religious groups Familiar Cluster: Catholics, Protestant, Jews Unfamiliar Cluster: Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus- in-group beliefs

Could Alarm Calls Turn into Language?

-Once the Machiavellian IQ problem is set up, then there is the possibility of an arms race -Or, sexual selection might take hold of this ability (e.g. females selecting males who are the best mimics- this requires the ability to decode) -A selection pressure is capable of making this possible

Error Management Theory + Pathogen Avoidance

-Over-react to potential cues to infection risk: we sometimes think a stick is a snake, but not that snake is a stick.. do we treat obese people as sick, but not sick people as obese? -Some people should be more "germaphobic" than others and react more strongly to cues: perceived vulnerability to disease scale, Tyber et al.- disgust scale (pathogens, sex, morality) -These reactions should be greatest after exposure to disease

Griskevicius et al. (2007): Blatant Benevolence and Conspicuous Consumption STUDY 4

-Participant sex by mating prime *BENEVOLENCE: Prestigious helping: a) work with Lance Armstrong to raise money for cancer awareness b) work with professional athletes to rebuild homes in new orleans, etc. *DOMINANCE: a) give a speech for a good cause to large/hostile crowd b) lead public protest and risk arrest c) personally negotiate with state officials to get funding for non-profit d) speak out publicly against something morally wrong Results: -Women higher overall on prestigious helping, higher with mating motive -Men higher on dominance signaling but only when with mating motive- non-mating motive, women are higher

Griskevicius et al. (2007): Blatant Benevolence and Conspicuous Consumption STUDY 3

-Participant sex by mating prime: *BENEVOLENCE MEASURE: a) helpful: volunteering at homeless shelter, etc. (as before) b) Heroic: dive into icy water to save a stranger, distract a grizzly bear attacking a stranger, confront armed burglars *CONSUMPTION MEASURE: a) wealth, new car, vacation, etc. b) Generosity: donate to natural disaster booth on campus, bid at a charity auction for kids, buy dinner for homeless family when leaving restaurant with friends Results: - Men are big on wealth signaling purchases, because women care about wealth and parental investment (high on neutral, higher on mating motive) - Women high on neutral and mating for generosity signaling purchases (higher on mating motive) - Women higher on heroic helping overall, both highest when there's a mating motive

Park, Schaller & Crandall (2007): Stigmatization of Obese People

-People with a sweaty appearance evoke disgust- what about other "morphological anomalies"? STUDY 1: Attitudes towards obese people- supplementary to previous studies 1) Viewed pictures of obese people, then gave attitudes 2) Give attitudes before pictures of obese people 3) Anti-fat attitude scale: "if i were an employee looking to higher, I might avoid hiring a fat person" r = .12 if you didn't see pictures of obese people r = .40 if you DID see pictures of obese people

Griskevicius et al. (2007): Blatant Benevolence and Conspicuous Consumption STUDY 2

-Philanthropy: e.g. Bill Gates, Ted Turner -What is being signaled? they don't trouble themselves with this question... -Mating Motives and Benevolence: --->men and women and a mating motive vs. none --->DVS= consumption and benevolence *MATING: - Pictures of attractive opposite sex individuals, select most attractive for a date, write about perfect first date -Control: pictures of an ordinary street and imagining being there, write about pleasant weather *CONSUMPTION: you have 5k to spend on each of: a) New car b) New watch c) Taking friends to dinner d) New cell phone e) Trip to Europe *BENEVOLENCE: 60 hours free time/month: a) help homeless shelter; b) building housing for poor; c) teach under privileged youth; d) big brother or sister; e) help at a children's hospital (DV: time on each) Results: Men higher on consumption than women (highest for mating motive); Women higher on benevolence than men (highest for mating motive)

The Future: From a Short Spoken Message, Listeners can Infer:

-Physical Attributes: sex, age, health, physical attractiveness, strength and sexual orientation -Psychological Characteristics: IQ, personality, emotional states, psychiatric status -Social Category Memberships: social class, education, nationality *Sosis was focused on signal cost, Griskevicius focused on signal content*

Using Costly Signaling Theory: Step 2- Receiver Independent Costs

-Production Costs (intensity of song, reckless teens) -Maintenance Costs (long tails in birds, testosterone) -Developmental costs (song diversity, lexical diversity)

Disciplines Studying Language Evolution

-Psychology -Linguistics -Neuroscience -Philosophy -Anthropology -Primatology -Biologists who study animal communication -(human) communication

Religion: Adaptation or Byproduct?

-Religion is a cultural parasite: Dawking, Dennett, Blackmore -Religion is a byproduct of other adaptive processes - very widely accepted- social exchange, what is fair what's unfair -Religion is adaptive because it promotes cooperation and guards against free riding (hazing rituals)- Sosis, Dunbar, Richerson -Religion in the U.S. is a strategy to rein-in male ST sexual strategies - people committed to LT strategies face a problem with people pursuing ST strategies (competition).. investing all your resources in someone else's offspring is a huge cost.. because of that cost, religion is based on controlling sexuality

Wernicke's Aphasia

-Results from damage to left temporal lobe (near auditory cortex) -Resulting speech is very fluent, but doesn't provide much meaningful information - "Well this is...mother is away here working her work out o' here to get her better, but when she's looking, the two boys looking in the other part. One their small tile into her time here. She's working another time because she's getting, too" (Goodglass & Geschwind, 1976, p.410). - Comprehension is also impaired.

Rosenburg & Tunney (2008): Language Evolution and Sexual Selection

-Sexual selection accounts for gratuitous display: human vocabulary seems to be one such display -If that is true, then the display should occur when a mating motive is activated Ss: Male and Female undergrads looked at photos of either young (sex primed) or old (not sex primed) people, then wrote autobiography and word 'rarity' was measured *Results: if you prime men with more models, mean word frequency of males is lower for younger and higher for older males. Females mean word frequency is higher overall.

McCullough et al. (2012): Religious Cognition and Male Sexual Competition EXPERIMENT 1

-Sexual selection leads men to: Impulsivity, risk taking, competition with other men -Men and women both can pursue ST or LT sexual strategies -But, if you are pursuing a LT strategy, then ST strategists can confer costs in paternity certainty and so on -Perhaps religious belief is a strategy for staying close to those who share your sexual strategy? Religious believers condemn promiscuity and people who pursue that strategy ...And support strong forms of social policing of sex: Family values Abortion Casual sex Divorce Birth control Sexual infidelity Homosexuality Much evidence that viewing pictures of attractive opposite sex people: - Increases men's but not women's impulsivity - Increased risk taking for men but not women - Increases men's but not women's conspicuous consumption So, perhaps priming thoughts about religions, God, and the afterlife would: - Reduce men's impulsivity or willingness to choose immediate rewards - Reduce men's physical endurance on hand grip strength -180 participants completed a religious commitment questionnaire several weeks before study Three conditions: 1) Religious: Wrote essay on feelings about God and their religion 2) Secular: Described feelings about countries or cultures 3) Control: Described belongings in their homes -DV: Future discounting task: Small reward now (e.g., $69 today) or larger reward later (e.g., $85 in 91 days) FOUND: Women tend to be more economically rational- take the money later. Men in the religious condition act the same as the women do, invest in the future (like a LT strategy). Men in the secular prime and control are more likely to say give me the reward now. So, priming religious beliefs in men leads them to think more of the future than here and now

Bickerton (1984): Language Bio-program Hypothesis-*Video

-She was language ready, but she did not develop it in the critical window, which is open until age 7 and closes when you advance puberty -Children in Nicauragra didn't want to learn a language that was being forced upon them, so they developed their own sign language to communicate with each other -Part of being a community is wanting to share information with each other -Language doesn't need a voice- it is inevitable of being a human -But, every language depends on strict rules, all of them familiar -Only human languages are driven by complex rules, which we call syntax -Syntax (constraints of language) is something all humans share- it allows us to hierarch and organize info and allows us to tell a story, to prophecy, to lie, etc.

Costly Signaling Theory

-Signals are Adaptations -Maynard, Smith and Harper (2003): A signal is "an act or structure that alters the behavior of another organism, which evolved because of that effect, and which is effective because the receiver's response is also conveyed" -Looking for an evolutionarily stable strategy: exists in the population and cannot be out-competed by alternative solutions -->ex: driving on the right side of the road-Natch Equilibrium- won't work because they cannot be invaded by alternative strategies

Error Management Theory: Haselton et al.

-Social Cognition Research in the 1980s-2000s: heuristics, biases -What might an evolutionary perspective say about cognitive bias? -Weighting errors by fitness costs and benefits: error management develops a psychology that more heavily weights costly errors

DUNBAR (and others- 2011): Laughter and Bonding Hypothesis

-Social bonding and affective reaction, ok,... but what is the biological mechanism that enhances affect? -Research shows an analgesic affect of laughter BUT, these studies didn't measure occurrence of laughter! -Proposes that laughter triggers the release of endorphins, which generates positive affect (why we feel good when we laugh) METHODS-Experiments 1 to 3: -Tested Ss in groups of 2-6 people -Watched comedy video or dull documentary -Pain tolerance measured using a wine cooler sleeve (-16 degrees C) or a blood pressure cuff (E3) -Measured before and after video -In E4, people watched a video alone or in a group (remove group interaction as a confound) -In E5, people watched a video that produced positive affect -In E6, natural observations at Edinburgh Fringe Festival RESULTS: IT WORKS- the pain tolerance does go up following laughter (for men in E1; Men and Women in E2; and men in E3) -Alone watching comedy goes up a little and a group watching comedy goes up even more -E5: comedy, pain tolerance goes up -E6: audiences in drama get a little bit of a bump, actors do not; comedy for both audience and actors goes up a lot

Event 1: Population of Slave and Master Equal in Size -> Creole Created in One Generation!

-Some group of people come along with all the power, run the place, and all the people working there need to communicate to get their jobs done, and get along with other people. -This comes about when the proportion of people on the island exceed the number of dominant language speakers by a certain language factor, then creole is created by children (syntax created in one generation by children)

Prejudice and Discrimination in Humans: Coalition Tracking

-Standard assumption in social-cognition- Automatic Categorization of wrt (race sex and age) -Naturally selected modules develop to track invariant but important features of the environment: Sex would have always been around Age differences would have always been around We would rarely encountered people who looked different (so race doesn't make sense here to produce an effect) But: Social groups surely contained fluid political coalitions- because we humans have lived for a long time in large groups that break up into little groups/cliques

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

-Strokes, accidents and developmental disorders -Localization of function strongly demonstrated: apraxia of speech- when you cant speak well but can understand; aphasia- receptive, difficulty with verbal comprehension and expressive, difficulty articulating sounds; pure aphasias- can read not but not write, very selective - Orofacial myofunctional disorders: disorders of motor control of tongue make certain pronunciations difficult -Localization of Function and Language Deficits= broca aphasia- when you know what the word is but you can't say it- damage to broca (frontal part of left hemisphere)

Features of Religion: Beliefs and Behaviors

-Supernatural belief -Costly rituals- examples of proto-religion?- Glossolalia (speaking in tongues), medicine men go wild -Regulation of sexuality and reproduction: sex before marriage, homosexuality, abortion, promiscuity, adultery, guilt, control of traditional sex roles

Behavioral Immune System

-System is triggered by disease-relevant stimuli -This activates emotions and cognitions -This compels behavior avoidance of infection (e.g. social exclusion, avoidance) THUS: --->Stigmatization: avoidance of sick people, obese, disabled --->Xenophobic reactions to unfamiliar foreigners --->Ethnocentric reactions to in-group

Deception and Alarm Calls: Language and Machiavellian Intelligence

-The African Drongo makes alarm calls which are understood across species AND mimics alarm calls of other species! ability to mimic doesn't require a theory of mind... -Defeating the mimic! now we have a selection pressure- a connection between sounds and meaning (the scat problem addressed?)

Dunbar's Number: How big are Human Groups?

-The number 150 keeps coming up: "the number of people that you should probably ask a favor" -Interpersonal group size, the kind of group where people have a social connection -Theory is consistent with the observation that the vast majority of human conversation is dedicated to gossip! -Females more conversation about personal relationships, a little more about personal experiences and more conversation about future social activity than males. -Males more conversation about sport/leisure than females.

Schaller: Behavioral Immune System

-The physiological immune system designed for fighting infection -Would be helpful to have psychological ("behavioral") immune system that aids in disease avoidance -Pathogen avoidance in non-humans -Avoid or attack diseased co-specifics

Pinker & Bloom (1990): Syntax and Grammar

-This is what is unique to humans and it needs to be explained RECURSION: S1: Dorothy met the Wicked Witch of the West in Munchkin Land S2: The Wicked Witch's sister was killed in Munchkin Land S3: Dorothy liquidated the Wicked Witch with a pale of water --> S1 + S2 is embed in S3: S4: Dorothy, who met the Wicked Witch of the West in Munchkin Land where her sister was killed, liquidated her with a pail of water -Communicating an infinite number of ideas with recursion -Language lacks syntax if it is developed as a result of a bunch of people together who don't share the same language (i.e. pidgin language)

Hamilton's Rule: rb>c

-To evolve, altruism must be preferentially directed towards other altruists -If altruists only help other altruists: when the recipients benefit> the altruist's costs, then altruism can evolve but if it is too costly it cannot evolve -In practice, we can only know with probability that we are directing benefits to other altruists.. but, if the chance of us sharing a gene for altruism is significantly high, then altruism can evolve Natural selection favors the evolution of altruism among relatives when: rb > c Mendel: Direct behavior to genetic relatives, r 50% of genes are shared with offspring, r = .5 12.5% of genes are shared with a first cousin, r = .125 Kin selection appears to account for many examples of non-human coalitional behaviors

Costly Signaling in Human Communication

-Veblen: conspicuous consumption -Hunting -Religious rituals -Potlatch feasting -Costly rituals: scarification, genital mutation, tattooing -Costly subsistence (maintaining oneself) -Public generosity (conspicuous generosity) -Reckless acts of male teenagers -Hazing rituals -Wikipedia contributions

Miller & Maner (2012): Disease Over-Perception Bias

-When high in (perceived vulnerability to disease) PVD, or exposed to disease, people see disease cues in: the obese, facial birthmarks, disabilities and the aged -But what about the basic cognitive processes? -Error Management Theory again: Categorization bias, memory bias STUDY 1: -Time 1: Encoding Phase- slideshow of images of 7 obese and 7 average weight people -Time 2: Distractor- independent task for 3 minutes -Time 3: Target Recognition Memory- see same 21 pictures from before, plus 21 foils- via key press, indicate whether seen previously or not -Time 4: Speeded Categorization Task- pictures of individuals and categorized as "fat" or "thin" via key press as fast and as accurately as possible *RESULTS: Memory Phase: people high in PVD over-estimate the likelihood that they've seen that person before, even if they hadn't. Over-perceiving people who are showing cues to disease making lots of false alarms Categorization Task: the people who are germaphobic are really accurate at it, also make false alarms, but are also better at rapidly saying "fat" or "thin" about people

Yoder & Reid (2016): Wikipedia

-Why do people contribute so much time and energy to distributing information on the internet? -CST: there's no altruism here...there must be a signal, and the signal must be an advertisement: identification with a group? personality attributes? intelligence? -Smarter people write better entries, only when they are identifiable, not when they are not identifiable -People's contributions predict judgements of how smart these people are -If you actually look into these things, people who do work in a certain area generally know who is doing work in those same areas

Dawkins and Krebs Can't Be Right! Why?

-Why would receivers evolve to pay attention to communications that are fitness costs? -If communications did not provide fitness benefits to receivers, then receivers would stop paying attention and the communication system would disappear -If Dawkins and Krebs are right, it's not clear how communication could take place at all...

Basic Cognition of Disease Avoidance

-contact with human out-groups represents a dynamic problem -unlike bodily products out-groups can have redeeming features- this suggests that there should be a cognitive process for tracking groups -cues that reliably indicate group membership: accents, languages, religions and perhaps ethnic phenotypes -perceptual magnification of intergroup differences enables group tracking -individual differences and environmental factors: opportunity costs; behavioral immune system activates physiological immune system

Human Laughter

-laughter found in all human groups -laughter observed in people born deaf and blinde -laughter observed in very young babies -homologous forms in primates -but, different forms and intensities of laughter

Scientific Method

1) Make a guess about a phenomenon 2) Compute the consequences of the guess 3) Test the prediction- hypothesis confirmed or no?

Fincher & Thornhill (2012): Parasite Stress Theory of Sociality

1) Red Queen Hypothesis 2) Natural Selection for Pathogen Avoidance- stay close to the in-group, avoid out-groups 3) This requires psychological adaptations for associating with in-groups and avoiding out-groups 4) Self-Organization of cultural divergence from lack of gene flow and cultural contact

Costly Signaling Theory: Grafen (1990)

1) signaling is costly 2) the receiver's assessment of the signaler's quality increases as the signaler's signaling level increases 3) the signaler benefits from higher assessment than rivals 4) signaling at a higher intensity is proportionately more costly for poor quality signalers than high quality signalers: --->if assumption 4 was not in place, then we cannot have individual differences- some things need to be more costly for some individuals than others, and that makes the signal honest SO, everyone is motivated to signal! *For example: human males buy cars because it allowed you to get food easily, but also to get girls. Car buying is conspicuous consumption because we have such shiny cars that do things you can't even use on the public road (known as conspicuous signals). --->Signal intensity (cost of a car) and fitness cost/benefit: Costs paid for a more expensive car is more because of his amount of wealth. Pay off structure is the same for both males, but when should they decide to signal? If you're rational, which you are, you will choose the thing that best advertises your status of wealth!- you optimize the ratio of benefit to costs- prefect place to signal... this will produce individual differences

Religion: Conclusions

1)The costliness of religious ritual behaviors requires explanation and costly signaling theory does a good job 2) The outcomes should be increased cooperative behavior and research that prime god concepts suggest that BUT: god concept priming should be religion specific, those who are most highly committed should show the most cooperation and gain the greatest benefits 3) We have said nothing about religious belief: why believe creation stories, fables, etc?

Examples of Pidgin (note: no syntax)

1. kote, motete, awl frend giv, no? (Japanese, 1918). buy, take-back, all friend give, INTERROGATIVE. "[They] buy [presents], take [them] back, and give [them] to all their friends, don't they?" 2. mi onli chachi-chachi go palei, tarin gonon naega bisanis ani (Korean, 1916). I only church go pray, other things I business is-not "I just went to church to pray; other things were not my business."

Davila Ross, Owren and Zimmermann (2009): Homologies

Arguing that there is a common ancestor from about 12-16M years ago and that must be where laughter comes from. If rats have it, it is a very old evolutionary mechanism

Signal Detection Theory

A statistical theory about the detection of stimuli: Pepsi challenge (coke or pepsi?); Hearing test (what is the lowest pitch you can hear) DETECTION PARADIGM: can you play a stimulus and ask if they can perceive it- varying intensity of light- power functions, the intensity goes up exponentially, must go up by 2.5 unites to get a 1 unit change of difference MEMORY PARADIGM: can get a list of things and then get them again with a bunch of distractions

Animals' Communication About/To Co-specifics, or Other Members of Your Species:

Alarm calls regarding specific threats *ex: Emperor penguins and mate identification *ex: parrots and dolphins have personal names

Sosis, Kress, Boster (2007): SCARS FOR WAR

Among the Ilahita Arapesh, boys as young as three years old are pinned down by adult males dressed as frightening boars and their genitals are forcefully rubbed with stinging nettles. Having just watched slightly older boys attacked by these boars and suffer lacerations to their penises, these toddlers have something to look forward to in a few years. After these molestations all the youth are tossed into a pool filled with stinging nettles. Later in childhood their penises are abused again with bamboo razors and pig incisors, this time in a wooden structure built over a stream. Following the assault, the boys insert their penises through the floor boards to let the blood drip into the water below. Marriage brings little relief to the abuses of childhood. After their first evening together, the naked couple walk to the stream in the presence of spectators, where the wife builds a dam and the husband lacerates his own penis (see Tuzin 1982). ---The Ilahita Arapesh are not an anthropological oddity. . .

Why Do Humans Laugh? Bachorowski and Owren (2001)

H2: Voiced laughter is used strategically (albeit unconsciously) to shape affective responses in listeners- "THE MANIUPLATION EXPLANATION" -but, it can't be all that common

Animals' Communication About the Immediate Environment:

Bacterial quorum sensing: species communicate with each other and understand the quorum (the minimum amount of members present to make meeting valid) of other bacterial species. *ex: Honeybee dance: location of flowers, water and new hives *ex: Ant pheromones: direction and quantity of food sources

Signaling Bans

Behaviors that are constrained: -Consumption of alcohol, coffee, meat, tobacco, other food and beverages -Use and ownership of photos, jewelry, certain technology, other material items -Activities: monogamous marriage, gambling, communication with the outside, living as a nuclear family, maintaining rights to biological children -Religious groups commune duration higher for 65 years- so if we compare secular and religious groups, there is something about religion that makes the costs work

Coalitional Behaviors

Behaviors that involve the coordination of two or more individuals to execute a task for mutual benefits Examples: -African hunting dogs taking down prey -Mobbing behaviors of birds (crows mobbing a hawk) -Schooling fish to avoid predators -Flocking birds to confuse predators "Neighboring honeypot ant colonies frequently forage in overlapping areas, a habit that often leads to massive territorial confrontations lasting for several days and sometimes involving several hundred warriors on either side. When one colony defeats another, the victors drive forward and sack the losers' home. Rival queens are killed or chased away. Larvae, pupae, and young workers are hauled off the ceiling of the vanquished colony's nest, and then slowly shifted over to the winners' nest by workers who may take several days to drag their huge prizes a few feet" (Wrangham, 1996) **Video: Power of numbers in ants!

Why Do Humans Laugh? Dunbar et al.

H3: Most Commonly Proposed- Laugher it used to promote social bonds, and it enables mutually beneficial social exchange "THE BONDING EXPLANATION"- reciprocal altrusim: do favors for each other and have each other's backs

Curtis, Aunger & Rabbie (2004): Human Disgust

Clearly, we have internal mechanisms of disgust- we make noises, configure our faces, and communicate our disgust of other individuals

Signals vs. Cues and Indexes

Cues= Artifact of other adaptations: chemical emissions that attract mosquitoes; the smell of fear; indicators of advanced age? Indexes= Indicators of physical properties that cannot be faked.. like size Efficacy Costs= loudness of calls in a jungle (cheating not physically possible)

Particular Diseases Matter: Hamilton (1980)

Diseases that are acute, persist in chronic form and have prolonged debilitating effects: Leishmanias Trypanosomes (sleeping sickness) Plasmodium (malaria) Schistosomes Filariae (elephantiasis) Spirochetes (syphillis, Lyme disease) Leprosy

Lange et al. (2014): Language Evolution and Sexual Selection

Experiment 1: video actors- 2 (male/female) x 3 (verbal proficiency low/medium/high) --->talked about age, education, career, income, hobbies, attitudes --->proficiency= lexical diversity, grammatical complexity, fluency *Results: -Women became more and more interested in a male as a long-term mate as his linguistic proficiency increases and same for men evaluating women in the long-term -Language proficiency is a selective thing for mates in the long-term (makes sense according to Buss et al. that one thing people care about in other people is intelligent and intelligent people talk good)

Slobodchikoff, et al. (2008): Alarm Content in Prairie Dogs

Experiment: 3 female experimenters wear different colored shirts (blue, yellow or green). They act as predators, walking through the prairie dog colony one at a time. Researchers record the alarm call from the first responding prairie dog *results: Distinct predator calls based on shirt color interspecies alarms and deception video*

Signal Detection: Response Categories

Four Possible Types of Response- Decision (participant's response): Signal Present: Yes (hit), No (miss) Signal Absent: Yes (false alarm FA), No (correct rejection)

History and Language Evolution

French Academy of Science: banned the publication of theories on the evolution of language -Max Muller's speculative theories= Bow Wow: language comes from imitation other animals -PoohPooh: language comes from (vocal) emotional exclamations (shrieks, gasps, etc.) -A century passed before a textbook on language evolution appeared -Arguably one of the hardest problems in science -Multi-disciplinary

Why Do Humans Laugh? Grammer and Eibl-Eibesfelt (1990)

H1: "meaning and fixed action pattern explanation"- laughter is a ritualized (consistent) signal that has a context-dependent function, and indicates "this is play" in socially risky situations

Why Do Humans Laugh? Reid

H4: VULNERABILITY COST HYPOTHESIS: Laughter is a barometer of social bonds and honesty is maintained because laughters pay a vulnerability cost. If it's going to be honest, then costs have to be paid somewhere to keep this signal honest...if no costs are paid- game over! Costs make it possible for the signal to be passed along and be used. --->when we laugh intensely, we tear up, our abs hurt/tighten up: this may mean when you're physically vulnerable, and you wouldn't want to show it to someone scary or intimidating, you do it with people you trust/are comfortable with

Ecological Effects: Fincher et al. (2008)- Individualism/Collectivism

Hofestede's Cultural Value Dimension: --> key components include ethnocentrism and xenophobia --> a strong reliance on staying close to the in-group *If you live where there's lots of disease, chance of it being collectivistic increases Fincher & Thornhill (2008): lots of disease= more indigenous languages Fincher & Thornhill (2008): lots of disease= higher number of religions (different groups) and highly ethnocentric dating Fincher & Thornhill (2010): more parasite-stress= stronger tendencies to maintain strong ties with family and in-group members

Human Language Development: Empiricists

Humans acquire language from linguistic experience/our environment. We learn the language that those around us speak

Human Language Development: Nativists

Humans are born with linguistic capabilities

Religion and Costly Signals of Group Commitment

IRONS: Religion has the adaptive benefit of promoting cooperation within a community SOSIS: "natural selection has universally favored religiously communicated messages" 1. A quality is signaled that benefits signalers and receivers 2. That signal must be proportionately more costly for those who do not possess this quality 3. Signalers benefit from signaling more intensely

Kurzban et al (2001): Memory Confusion Paradigm- who said what?

If I encode two people in the same category, I am more likely to confuse them than if I had placed them in different categories -In each experiment Ss see two photos of individuals -There was a fight, and sentences were uttered within a heated group conversation -Each picture paired with 3 sentences (e.g. you were the ones that started the fight)- surprise recall task afterwards E1: speakers were young men, Euro-American/African American. Only cue to coalition was statements E2: same as E1, but individuals wore yellow or grey jerseys **Jersey color perfectly correlated with statement, but race did not.. SO, if race is not automatically encoded, but reflect coalition tracking then an arbitrary cue in E2 (shirt color) combined with verbal statements should trump race Results: there was lots of error and confusion, which means must be processing categories, but tracking with shirt color.. nothing to do with race in making the mistakes. when repeat the study using sex, people automatically process the sex of people and still make confusions - we have coalition tracking software that keeps track of who said what, in paying attention to cues, and correlating that with normative stuff

Chomsky and the LAD (Language Acquisition Device):

If true then children should create creole languages and creoles should be highly similar *Pidgins: Auxiliary language when speakers of several mutually unintelligible languages are in close contact *Creole: A language that comes into existence when children acquire a pidgin as a native language

Religion: Fitness Benefits for Signalers

Just SOME evidence for adaptive hypothesis: -The more the men are engaged in religious rituals the less money they're claiming for themselves- no effect on women -In this culture, it is the men who are dealing with social exchange, and it is not the domain of women in this religious group because it is only the men who are doing costly rituals

Language Evolution: Pinker & Bloom (1990)

Language as signature of NATURAL SELECTION (not sexually dimorphic): -It is modular in the brain -It is of "obvious" fitness benefit -It must have evolved in gradual steps -It develops rapidly with the right environmental input in all infants -The things to be explained is syntax and recursion

Costly Signaling Theory and a Peacock's Tail: "the secret to life is honesty and fair dealing.. if you can fake that, you've got it made"- Marx

Large, conspicuous, costly because the cost prevents other males who have less quality from producing such a display they cannot afford (decreased abilities, like flying and getting food), would prevent them from cheating. Women can tell which are the better quality males, beneficial for the signalers because the males are motivated to out-compete their rivals (by showing off their tail), and females get to select the male who is honestly the better one. It doesn't guarantee honesty, but it does decrease the likelihood of cheating to a tolerable measure. -->typically, on average, it does not pay to cheat, and therefore it is a dis-incentive

Religion (at least in the U.S) for Regulating Sexual Strategies?

Major component of religious beliefs if morality about sexual behaviors: -Anti-homosexuality -Anti-adultery -Anti-polygamy (unless...) So it's not social exchange but policing a prevailing sexual system- its sexual exchange?

McCullough et al. (2012): Religious Cognition and Male Sexual Competition EXPERIMENT 2

Men in after-life support condition, same as women with future thoughts. Something specific about challenging these beliefs about life after death that produce an effect

Reid et al. (2012): Study 2- Near and Far Accent Clusters

More accent samples: Floridian Near cluster: New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland Far cluster: Romania, Jiangsu, Sierra Leone -Clusters counterbalanced -More pathogen disgusted someone was, primed with guns, more dissimilar familiar group was -Disease primed: the more germaphobic, the more they perceptually magnified the differences of intergroup

Reid et al. (2012): Pathogen Disgust and Accent Dissimilarity

No correlation, BUT if we expose people to disease, the more people disgusted by pathogens, the more they say they are similar to Floridian, Scotland and Sierra Leone more different. In-group member sounds more similar to me, out-group members sound different. But it's a function of resistance to disease and germaphobia

Fincher & Thornhil: Religion as a Pathogen Avoidance Mechanism

No other theories explain why there might be geographic variation in the incidence of religious group membership -Consider religion 100-400 years ago: the most devout in Western countries would now be considered heretics- this change may be explained by the departure of pathogens; Renaissance in Europe? -more religion richness when lower disease richness -Should find that cost of religious practices are aligned with pathogen stress levels: Might find that pathogen primes increase the extent to which people think severe rituals are appropriate/good

Evoked Culture

Pathogen Stress and: -Individualism/collectivism -Number of languages -Religiosity -Number of religions -Personality -Cognitive Ability -Democracy -Wealth -Xenophobia -Ethnocentrism

Theory: The Return of the Red Queen- Haldance, Van Valen, Hamilton

Pathogen-host co-evolutionary races: "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing. "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Haldance (1949): "The microscopic and sub-microscopic parasites can evolve so much more rapidly than their hosts that the latter have little chance of evolving complete immunity to them. . . The most that the average species can achieve is to dodge its minute enemies by constantly producing new genotypes"

Group Tracking

Pay attention to and cognitively accentuate differences between accents and religions as a function of pathogen disgust

Communication: Mind Reading and Manipulation

Selfish Gene Approach: -Evolution for genetic advantage -Signalers evolve to manipulate receivers -Receivers evolve to mind-read signalers to avoid manipulation ". . .a well designed machine [organism] will tend to use objects in its environment to its own best advantage. These objects will include inanimate ones such as the stone used by a song thrush or by a sea otter to smash mollusc shells. We are arguing that there is no fundamental difference between the way a living organism might exploit a stone and the way it might exploit another living organism, between the way a male sea otter, say, uses a stone to smash a shellfish, and the way he uses a female sea otter to rear his young." (Krebs & Dawkins, 1984; p. 383).

Bering, McLeod and Shackelford (2005): Reasoning About Dead Agents

Ss was told that study was about spatial intelligence: -127 Ss from University of Arkansas -Person who scores highest wins $50 -In event of a tie, random drawing -25 multiple choice questions. Mental rotation. -Software new and malfunctioning—it may show the answer BEFORE the problem. Please press spacebar immediately to clear the screen so that you can solve the problem honestly (happens 5 times) -DV: Time taken to press the spacebar when answers given 1. Control: Proceed directly to spatial IQ task 2. "In Memoriam" condition: "This test is dedicated to the memory of Paul J. Kellogg, who died unexpectedly in May 2004. Paul was a graduate student in the department and his contributions to the development of this spatial intelligence test were invaluable. 3. "Ghost story" condition: Same as in memoriam, but: Recently seen the ghost of dead graduate student in the room where the participant was to be tested and that other people had made similarly eerie sighting of "Paul" there as well **RESPONSE LATENCY: control 8 seconds, memoriam 6 seconds and ghost story 4 seconds

Recursion

Taking an idea and connecting it to other ideas; recombination ability; can express an infinite number of ideas because there is always a new way of recombining -Rule 1 somehow evolved (maybe a mutation?) -Then rule n+1 added to the complexity - built upon by natural selection, but do not specify how that happened BUT... what was it that added to the reproductive success of the owners of the n+1 version? this is left unstated!

Schaller et al.: Immune Response and Pictures

The behavioral immune system should aid in the physiological immune system.. but maybe, it activates it? -28 people exposed to pictures of disease or guns -Group 1: pictures of furniture at t1, pictures of disease at t2 -Group 2: pictures of furniture at t1, pictures of disease at t2 -Drew blood at each time-white blood cell counts RESULTS: Looking at those very images (of disease) is enough to activate your immune system- body says "disease... better get ready!"

Using Costly Signaling Theory: Step 1- Reverse Engineering

What is a communicative act for? What is the hidden information that it contains? ^Evolutionary psychology answers this question: 1) Specify that problem to be solved (something to do with mating, avoiding predators?) 2) What must be true if that is the function really happening? 3) Generate testable/falsifiable predictions SO...WHAT is being signaled in costly signaling theory?

Language and the Brain: Modularity?

When you look at brains when they're using language, receiving it, etc. huge amounts of the brain are being activated. Arguably, the idea of simple modularity is not there- there is massive modularity (as seen with sexual selection)

Wrangham (1996): Demonic Male Hypothesis

Why are males demonic? -- coalitional bonds among males -- male dominion over an expandable territory -- variable party size (killing neighboring males pays off) why males and not females? -- because males can form parties to defend territories -- when females can do this, then females are coalitionary and kill rivals (e.g. female lions and hyenas will kill female members of neighboring groups)

Runaway Sexual Selection and/or Costly Signaling

With a link between arbitrary sounds and propositional content, sexual selection is ready to take off Exaptations: feathers (orginially scales); human language (originally fancy alarm calls?) PREDICTIONS: 1) species with frequent alarm call deception will be the best at learning sound/meaning relationships 2) individuals within those species that are best able to be deceptive will also be the best able to learn these sound/meaning combinations 3) humans should be particularly responsive to deception when sexual motives are primed: --->Malapropisms (mistaking word for a similar sounding one) are most easily identified by smart women, and seen as a real turn off when sexual motives are primed more predictions/questions: -Alarming noises with scary animal sounds more threatening? faster response times? "lion!" vs. "antelope!" -Men with the best vocabularies should be more sexually attractive -Would the effect be stronger under a ST or LT sexual prime? -Would a man who took a good sniff of a fertile woman do better on a vocabulary test?

Why Did Language Evolve?

i) The cognitive niche hypothesis ii) Gossip and grooming hypothesis iii) Sexual selection hypothesis iv) Exaptation: A deception/alarm call hypothesis

Evidence of Bonding Hypothesis: Patlow et al. (2005)

in-group audience (your school) vs. out-group audience (members of a disliked political party) -Laugh track present or absent (stand up comedy) -DVS: judgements of material, happiness, laughter, observed in participants from adjacent group **it's hard to laugh when you're around a group of people you don't agree with//like...more inclined to laugh when we are in a context with people who we can potentially share a social bond with