5 Matching Annotations
- Feb 2023
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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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people’s desire for sweet and fatty tasting foods.
- example
- people’s desire for sweet and fatty tasting foods
- In ancestral times,
- sugar and fat typically signaled positive nutritional value (Ramirez, 1990).
- Consequently, people’s sensory systems are designed
- to detect the presence of sugar or fat in food,
- and the brain’s gustatory centers produce desirable taste sensations
- when those foods are consumed.
- This would have served our ancestors well,
- facilitating the choice of beneficial and nutritious foods.
- in modern times
- Many foods found in post-industrialized societies
- contain processed sugars, hydrogenated oils, and other additives that enhance the taste of the food
- without adding any nutritional benefits.
- Foods laden with corn syrup, for example,
- typically contain high numbers of calories
- and their regular consumption can result in obesity, diabetes, and other problems.
- Thus, the mismatch between
- the features of ancestral versus modern foodstuffs
- can lead adaptive sensory mechanisms
- to produce maladaptive physiological consequences.
- The desire for sweet and fat foods
- promotes health problems,
- even when this desire operates in a perfectly normal manner
- and would produce health benefits
- in the environment for which it was designed
- example
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Some of the challenges people face today, however, diverge quite a bit from those faced by their ancestors. Such divergences can lead adaptive psychological mechanisms to “misfire” – to respond in ways that might have been adaptive in the past, but that no longer produce adaptive consequences today.
- Some of the challenges people face today,
- diverge quite a bit from those
- faced by their ancestors.
- Such divergences can ,- lead adaptive psychological mechanisms to “misfire”
- to respond in ways that might have been adaptive in the past,
- but that no longer produce adaptive consequences today.
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Psychological adaptations have been designed over thousands of generations of human evolution. The adaptations humans possess today, then, were designed to operate in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, a composite of the social and physical challenges as they have existed for hundreds of thousands of years
- Psychological adaptations have been designed over thousands of generations of human evolution.
- The adaptations humans possess today, then,
- were designed to operate in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness,
- a composite of the social and physical challenges as they have existed for hundreds of thousands of years (Bowlby, 1969; Cosmides & Tooby, 1992).
- As such, they may or may not be well-adapted
- for life in contemporary society
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Each reflects the operation of psychological mechanisms that were designed through evolution to serve important adaptive functions, but that nevertheless can produce harmful consequences.
- Each of these 4 problems
- anxiety disorder
- domestic violence
- racial prejudice
- obesity
- reflects the operation of psychological mechanisms
- that were designed through evolution
- to serve important adaptive functions, - but that nevertheless can produce harmful consequences.
- Each of these 4 problems
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news.cornell.edu news.cornell.edu
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- = human being's = altricial nature - is an = evolutionary adaptation
- resulting in exceptional = complex social learning
- tradeoff of helplessness at birth
- is complex social learning
- that enables cumulative cultural evolution
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