DAVID BUSS: Physiological Mechanisms
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF PERSONALITY
Three types of Selection:
1. Artificial Selection – (Breeding) occurs when
humans select particular desirable traits in a
breeding species.
2. Natural Selection – a more general form of artificial
selection in which nature rather than people select
traits.
3. Sexual Selection – operates when members of the
opposite sex find certain traits more appealing and
attractive than others and thereby produce offspring
with those traits.
Three distinct outcomes of evolutionary process:
1. Adaptations
– evolved strategies that solve important
survival/reproductive problems.
-Often the products of natural or sexual selection
and must have a genetic or inherited bases to them.
2. By-products
– Traits that happen as a result of adaptations but
are not part of the functional design.
- “Come along for the ride” of natural or sexual
selection. e.g., scientific ability or driving skill
3. Noise – also known as “random effects”, occurs
when evolution produces random changes in design
that do not affect function.
-tends to be produced by chance and not selected
for.
e.g., belly button “innie” or “outie”
Principles of Evolutionary Psychology
-can be identified as the scientific study of human thought
and behavior from an evolutionary perspective and focuses
on four big questions:
1. Why is the human mind designed the way it is and how
did it come to take its current form?
2. How is the human mind designed; that is, what are its
parts and current structure?
3. What function do the parts of the mind have? And what is
it designed to do?
4. How do the evolved mind and current environment
interact to shape human behavior?
The Nature and Nurture of Personality
Fundamental Situational Error - the tendency to assume that
the environment alone can produce behavior void of a stable
internal mechanism.
*”without internal mechanisms, there can be no behavior”
Fundamental Attribution error - describes our tendency to
ignore situational and environmental forces when explaining
the behavior of other people and instead focus on internal
dispositions.
*The two must be involved and interact with each other
Adaptive Problems and their Solutions:
Mechanisms – the process of evolution by natural selection
which produced two basic problems of life. They:
- Operate according to principles in different
adaptive domains
- Number in the dozens or hundreds (maybe even
thousands)
- Are complex solutions to specific adaptive
problems (survival, reproduction)
Two Specific classes of mechanisms:
Physical Mechanisms
-Physiological organs and systems that evolved to solve
problems of survival
-Internal and specific cognitive, motivational, and personality
systems that solve specific survival and reproduction
problems.
Evolved Mechanisms
-psychological mechanisms relevant to personality can be
grouped into three categories:
1. Goals/Drives/Motives
2. Emotions
3. Personality Traits
Motivation and Emotion as Evolved Mechanisms
Two goals and motives that act as evolved mechanisms:
1. Power
2. Intimacy
Forms of power:
1. Aggression
2. Dominance
3. Achievement status
4. “Negotiation of Hierarchy”
Forms of Intimacy:
1. Love
2. Attachment
3. “Reciprocal Alliance”
*These drives are “adaptations” because they directly affect
the health and well-being of a person.
Personality Traits as Evolved Mechanisms
- Adaptive significance of behavioral dispositions
1. Surgency – involves the disposition to experience positive
emotional states to engage in one’s environment and to be
sociable and confident.
“Hierarchy Proclivities” – how people negotiate and decide
who is dominant and who is submissive.
2. Agreeableness/ Hostility – marked by a person’s
willingness to cooperate and help the group on the one
hand or to be hostile and aggressive to the other.
3. Emotional Stability/ Neuroticism
Emotional Stability - involves one’s ability to handle stress or
not. Some people are calm under stress while others are high
strung much of the time.
Neuroticism – according to Mccrae and Costa, the tendency
to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, guilt, and
sadness.
4. Conscientiousness –people who are careful and detail
oriented as well as focused and reliable.
5. Openness – involves one’s propensity for innovation and
ability to solve problems.
ORIGINS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Environmental Sources
Early Experiential Calibration
- Childhood experiences make some behavioral
strategies more likely than the others.
Alternative Niche Specialization
- Different people find what makes them stand
out from others in order to gain attention from
parents or potential mates.
Heritable/ Genetic Sources
Heritability – the extent to which a trait is under genetic
influence.
e.g., body type, facial morphology, physical attractiveness
NONADAPTIVE SOURCES
-some sources of individual which do not benefit survival or
reproductive success.
Neutral Genetic Variations which often take the form of
genetic mutations.
MALADAPTIVE SOURCES
-those traits that actively harm one’s chance for survival or
decrease one’s sexual attractiveness.
Genetic Defect – mutation harmful to the other person
Environmental Trauma – brain or spinal cord injury, which
can also lead to maladaptive differences.

NEO- BUSSIAN EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

1. MacDonald (1995)
- Tied personality to evolved motivational/
emotional systems.
- Range of personality variations are alternate
strategies for for maximizing future.
- Tied personality to evolved strategies for solving
adaptive problems.
- Had only 4 personality dimensions: dominance,
conscientiousness, nurturance, neuroticism (left
out openness)
2. Nettle (2006)
- Hypothesizes that there are fitness costs and
benefits of the Big 5 dimensions of personality
during ancestral period of evolution.
BENEFIT COSTS

EXTRAVERSION Mating success, Physical risks

Social allies,
Explore environment
NEUROTICISM Vigilance to danger Stress and
Depression
OPENNESS Creativity Unusual beliefs
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
Deliverable social quality
obsess, rigid
AGREEABLENESS
Harmonious relationship Subject to
social cheating

COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN EVOLUTIONARY

THEORY

-Evolution implies GENETIC DETERMINISM

(Behavior as set and void of influence from the environment)
Epigenetics – change in gene function that does not involve
changes in DNA.
-Mechanisms are OPTIMALLY DESIGNED