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of junk foods and often inactive lifestyles. The stress response that helped our ancestors
®
AP Exam Tip
escape temporary, mortal threats (That’s a tiger in the grass!) now threatens our health, as
we experience the long-term stressors of modern living (That exam is tomorrow! The traffic is
Memory research reveals a testing making me late!).
effect: We retain information much
better if we actively retrieve it by
self-testing and rehearsing. To Evolutionary Psychology Today
bolster your learning and memory,
take advantage of the self-testing Darwin’s theory of evolution has become one of biology’s fundamental organizing princi-
opportunities you will find through- ples and lives on in the second Darwinian revolution: the application of evolutionary princi-
out this text. These Check Your ples to psychology. In concluding On the Origin of Species, Darwin (1859, p. 346) anticipated
Understanding sections will appear this development, foreseeing “open fields for far more important researches. Psychology
periodically throughout each mod-
ule. You can check your answers will be based on a new foundation.”
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
to the Examine the Concept review In modules to come, we address questions that intrigue evolutionary psychologists:
questions in Appendix C.
Why do infants start to fear strangers about the time they become mobile? Why do more
people develop a specific phobia in response to spiders, snakes, and heights than to modern
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
threats, such as guns? And why do women tend to be choosier than men when selecting
sexual partners?

®
AP Science Practice Check Your Understanding
Examine the Concept Apply the Concept
▶ ▶Explain the principle of natural selection. ▶ ▶Imagine that a futuristic scientist wanted to breed humans
to favor particular behavioral traits. How would the scientist go
about it? Why might this prove a greater challenge than breeding
less complex mammals?
Answers to the Examine the Concept questions can be found in Appendix C at the end of the book.

Behavior Genetics: Predicting Individual Differences

1.1-2 How do behavior geneticists explain our individual differences?

While evolutionary psychologists tend to focus on human similarities, behavior genet-
A Thousand Words Photography by Erica Comer brain architecture predisposes all of us humans to some common behavioral tendencies.
icists explore the genetic and environmental roots of human differences. Our shared

Whether we live in the Arctic or in the tropics, we sense the world, develop language,
and feel hunger through identical mechanisms. We prefer sweet tastes to sour. We divide
the color spectrum into similar colors. And we feel drawn to behaviors that produce and
protect offspring.
Our human family shares not only a common biological heritage — cut us and we

The nurture of nature Parents bleed — but also common social behaviors. Whether we’re named Gonzales, Nkomo,
Smith, or Wong, we start fearing strangers at about 8 months, and as adults we prefer
everywhere wonder: Will my baby grow the company of people with attitudes and attributes similar to our own. As members of
up to be agreeable or aggressive?
Cautious or courageous? Successful one species, we affiliate, conform, return favors, punish offenses, organize hierarchies
or struggling? What comes built of status, and grieve a child’s death. A visitor from outer space could drop in anywhere
in, and what is nurtured — and and find humans dancing and feasting, singing and worshiping, playing sports and
how? Research reveals that nature
and nurture together shape our games, laughing and crying, living in families and forming groups. We are the leaves of
development — every step of the way. one tree.

8 Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior

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