Transcript Chapter One - Webcourses

David Myers
11e
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
Chapter Five
 Genes, Culture, and Gender
How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Genes, Evolution, and Behavior
 Natural selection

Process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to
survive and reproduce in particular environments are passed
to ensuing generations
 Evolutionary psychology

Study of the evolution of cognition and behavior using
principles of natural selection
How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Culture and Behavior
 Culture

Enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by
a large group of people and transmitted from one generation
to the next
 Cultural diversity


Our behavior is socially programmed
One in eight Americans is an immigrant
How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Culture and Behavior
 Norms: Expected behavior

Norms
 Standards for accepted and expected behavior
 Expressiveness
 Punctuality
 Rule Breaking
 Personal Space
• Buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies
How Are We Influenced by Human
Nature and Cultural Diversity?
 Culture and Behavior
 Cultural similarity





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Universal friendship norms
Universal trait dimensions
Universal social belief dimensions
Universal status norms
Incest taboo
Norms of war
How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Gender
 Characteristics, whether biological or socially
influenced, by which people define male and female
How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
Women
Men
 Describe themselves in more
 Focus on tasks and on
relational terms
 Experience more
relationship-linked emotions
 More empathetic
 Gravitate toward jobs that
reduce inequalities
connections with large
groups
 Respond to stress with “fight
or flight” response
 Gravitate toward jobs that
enhance inequalities
How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Social Dominance
 Men are socially dominant
 Women’s wages in industrial countries average 77
percent of men’s
 Men tend to be more autocratic; women more
democratic
 Men take more risks
How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Aggression
 Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone
 In the U.S., the arrest ratio of male to female is 9 to 1

When provocation occurs the gender gap shrinks
 Women are slightly more likely to commit indirect
aggressive acts

Spreading malicious gossip
How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
 Sexuality
 Men:

More often think about and initiate sex
 Women:

Are more inspired by emotional passion
Evolution and Gender: Doing What
Comes Naturally?
 Gender and Mating Preferences
 Men seek out quantity

Spreading genes widely
 Women seek out quality

Protecting and nurturing of offspring
Evolution and Gender: Doing What
Comes Naturally?
 Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology
 Evolutionary psychologists sometimes start with an
effect and work backward to construct an explanation

Way to overcome the “hindsight bias” is to imagine things
turning out otherwise
 Evolutionary psychologists disagree with this theory
Sample Predictions Derived from
Evolutionary Psychology
Evolution and Gender: Doing What
Comes Naturally?
 Gender and Hormones
 Gender gap in aggression seems influenced by
testosterone
 As humans age they become more androgynous

Mixing both masculine and feminine characteristics
Culture and Gender: Doing as the
Culture Says?
 Gender Role
 Set of behavior expectations (norms) for males and
females
 Gender roles vary over culture
 Gender roles vary over time
Culture and Gender: Doing as the
Culture Says?
 Peer-Transmitted Culture
 50 percent of individual variations in personality traits is
by parental nurturing
 The other 50 percent is peer influence
What Can We Conclude about
Genes, Culture, and Gender?
 Biology and Culture
 Biology and experience
interact when biological
traits influence how the
environment reacts
A Social-Role Theory of Gender Differences in Social Behavior