Document Type
Syllabus
Publication Date
Fall 9-1-2024
Course Description
The Philosopher Daniel Dennett once called evolution “the single best idea anyone ever had.” If this claim has any merit, then surely evolutionary perspectives can shed light on important questions about human psychological nature in general, and issues like cooperation, aggression, sex and gender, aesthetics, emotion, cognition, moral judgments, and environmental concerns in particular. The course offers an opportunity to explore how the “single best idea anyone ever had” can be applied to understand psychological mechanisms—behavioral, cognitive, and emotional systems. What is our evolved psychology? Has evolution produced a human nature that is fairly narrow? Has it produced a nature that is characterized by infinite flexibility? What are the specific behavioral, cognitive, and emotional adaptive mechanisms that evolutionary psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists think they have demonstrated? Perhaps even more importantly, what is the nature of the evidence for all this? Why are evolutionary approaches, especially to human behavior, so controversial? If there are evolutionary forces underlying human behavior, what implications are there for society (if any)? How can we reconcile the ideas that humans might have evolved predispositions—some of which we won’t like—with the kind of world we would like to make for ourselves? [a preview of my position (which doesn’t have to be yours—to make a better human world, we need to know what humans are like, and what our predispositions are, so that we can take that into account as we work to create our better personal, social, and cultural worlds] The topic is interdisciplinary by its very nature, and we will draw on ideas and information from psychology, biology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, and other fields.
Recommended Citation
Moore, Kevin E., "PSY 350 Evolutionary Psychology Moore Fall 2024" (2024). All Course Syllabi. 652, Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/records_syllabi/652
Student Outcomes
Demonstrate improved scientific inquiry and critical thinking skills, including, but not limited to: Improve ability to use scientific reasoning to interpret scientific literature and phenomena in our topic. Improve ability to engage in critical thinking and problem solving. Improve ability to interpret research in the area of the course. Understand and incorporate psychological, biological, and sociocultural factors in interpreting research and ideas in our course topic. Demonstrate an increased knowledge of the content in the area of our course. Demonstrate increased understanding and appreciation of scientific ideas and achievements, and their limitations.