Discuss evolutionary explanations of intelligence Essay Example for Free

Discuss evolutionary explanations of intelligence Essay Intelligence has been considered a unique feature of human beings as it gives us the ability to devise elaborate strategies for solving problems. There are three key evolutionary explanations of intelligence, which are, foraging/ecological, social and sexual selection.  Foraging is when animals learn food preferences from others. This ability has clear survival advantages because the animal can learn from others rather than using trial and error process to identify which foods are harmful. The larger the range of food required, the larger the foraging area must be and the greater the requirement for more complex abilities. Many primates have to balance their diet by selective eating through successful hunting, which requires forethought, planning, cunning and the ability to coordinate the actions of a number of individuals. Finding food over a particular area may require a cognitive map (memorized spatial knowledge).Obtaining the food requires tool use and hunting techniques, which is another indication of intelligence in both human and non-human species. Visalberghi and Trinca (1987) did a study to look at the effects of tool use. Capuchin monkeys were given task of pushing peanut butter out of a tube. They found that the monkeys were quick at finding a suitable stick but tried out many unsuitable ones first. This suggests no understanding of causal relationships and that many animals develop the skill through trial and error rather than insight. Only the great apes show the sophisticated understanding of cause and effect so this supports the link between tool use and intelligence. The association between the growth of hunting and intelligence shows that more intelligent individuals are more intelligent than less intelligent. However many species with very successful hunting techniques are not very intelligent and therefore it is unlikely that the benefits of hunting would account for human levels of intelligence. The efficiency in foraging of a particular animal has been shown by various psychologists. Galef (1988) did a study in which a rat was allowed to eat food with a distinctive flavour, with cocoa or cinnamon. A test rat was then put in with the demonstrator for 30 minutes, but with no food present. This test rat then had to choose between cocoa-flavoured and cinnamon-flavoured food. It was found that the test rats preferred food of the same flavour as that eaten by the demonstrator. This was still the case 4 hours after the demonstrator had eaten and when 12 hours had elapsed before the test rat made its choice. Therefore it can be concluded that interacting with a rat after it has eaten creates a particular preference for that food. These results could be interpreted in a number of ways, in terms of the rats been neophobic, meaning unwilling to try anything new. The test rat could have picked up on the smell of the particular food on the breath of the demonstrator and will have been choosing between what was familiar and unfamiliar rather than been influenced directly by the demonstrator actually eating the food. However despite this Galef also found similar results even when the test rats were familiar with both cocoa and cinnamon flavoured food. The social theory says that interactions with other members of a social group present an intellectual challenge and primate intelligence has been evolved in response to this challenge. It has been suggested that intelligence is an evolutionary adaptation for solving social problems. The most intelligent species are the social animals, which are bees, parrots, dolphins, elephants, wolves, monkeys, etc. The group living could have set the stage for the evolution of intelligence in two ways; sociality which increases the value of having better information, because information is one commodity that that can be given away and kept at the same time. For example a more intelligent animal within a group has the benefit of knowledge and what it can get in exchange for the knowledge. Secondly group living itself has new cognitive challenges. Social animals send and receive signals to coordinate predation, defence, and foraging and sexual behaviour. They exchange favours, repay and enforce debts, punish cheaters and join coalitions. Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis came from various related hypotheses, which Bryne and Whiten (1988) brought together. This suggests that deceiving and detecting deception are the primary reason for the evolution of intelligence. Evidence supports this, as Bryne and Whiten (1992) have shown that there is a strong positive correlation between neocortex ratio and the prevalence of tactical deception in various primates and this implies that there is a clear relationship between social manipulation and intelligence.

Group Norm Development and Leasership Essay -- Personality and leaders

Group Formation and Structure Group Development Norm Development Group communication networks Leadership Personality qualities relevant to leadership Task vs. Relationship Leadership Leadership Styles The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the members of group 1 (The Fantastics) in terms of behavior by looking at personal experience and connecting them to academic research and theory. The Fantastics consist of five members: team member A, 24-year-old female student in human resources Studies, team member B, 24-year-old male in psychology studies, team member C, 21-year-old female in psychology studies, team member D, 25-year-old female in psychology studies and team member E, 21-year-old female in psychology studies who dropped the course during the third week. She was an aggressive leader who everyone feared; team member A decided to replace her role and as a result the group adopted a more fluid structure. The findings of this experiment were that the teams’ roles became more obvious, norm developed and the group became more interactive, cohesive, efficient and productive in managing conflicts as well as completing tasks. Group Formation and Structure Group Development In the beginning, it was conspicuous that the team members felt low levels of intimacy. The team building activities on the first day were helping them become more familiar with each other and build rapport. Team member E took the leadership role and aggressively led the team while others remained polite and compliant. She took the liberty of choosing a name and a slogan for the group without considering their suggestions. With her presence there was no sense of cohesion due to her authoritarian style: therefore, upon team member... ...ambel, M. J., Curral, L., & Arana, J. M. (2009). The role of task-oriented versus relationship-oriented leadership on normative contract and group performance. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal,37(10), 1391-1404. Tjosvold, D., & Chia, L. C. (1989). Conflict between managers and workers: The role of cooperation and competition. The Journal of social psychology,129(2), 235-247. Wang Dan, , & Xu Shi-jie, . (2013). Impacts of leadership styles on new venture performance. 2013 International Conference on Management Science and Engineering 20th Annual Conference Proceedings, , 1410-1415. doi:10.1109/ICMSE.2013.6586455 Zhang, X., Stafford, T. F., Dhaliwal, J. S., Gillenson, M. L., & Moeller, G. (2014). Sources of conflict between developers and testers in software development. Information & Management, 51(1), 13-26. doi:10.1016/j.im.2013.09.006

 Learning experience : How someone could become afraid of the dentist Essay

There are many reasons someone could become afraid of going to the dentist. Majority of people become afraid of the dentist due to a bad experience they have encountered. Just to name a few: the dentist was a painful experience, the dentist made your teeth worse, etc. In my own experience, I was afraid of the dentist because of a horror film. At nine years old, my sister let me watch a horror movie called the dentist. It was about a mentally unstable dentist who tortures some of his patients. A year or so after I had seen this movie my mother surprisingly brings me to the dentist for the first time. As we were walking into the dental office I cannot help but to tremble and burst into tears because I could not stop thinking of the dentist from the movie. That day I only had my teeth cleaned and x-rays. My mother scheduled me to have cavities filled in the next month. My brother and sister taunted me by telling me scary stories about trips to the dental so the day I was scheduled to ge t my cavities filled. I decided to run away to the library and stayed there until closing. My mother had to reschedule my appointment for the following week. That time she made sure I went. Conditioning My conditioned stimuli were triggered by walking into the dental office my condition response was crying and trembling because I was afraid that the dentist would torture me, therefore, my unconditional stimuli were watching the dentist torture and kill his patients. My unconditional response was to be scared of all dentists and run away for a few hours so I would miss my appointment. Operant Learning My training experience could have occurred through operant conditioning since I did not quite understand that what you watch on television might not be real. If my mother had not forced me to go inside the dental office would still be petrified and I would have never gone to the dentist; my teeth would be in bad shape. Observational Learning The learned experience could occur through observational learning if my mom or anyone else I knew were scared of the dentist that would have also made  me afraid of the dentist because I would be observing their response to the dental. Another reason I might have been scared of going to the dentist was hearing my brother and sister tell me scary stories about how the dentist pulls your teeth out and you can feel every slight of pain. Reinforcement My mother dragging me into the dental office is where reinforcement was experienced. When my mother gave me no other choice except to get my teeth clean I then realize that the dentist was not so bad.

The Very First Mickey Mouse Cartoons

In April 1928, cartoonist/animator Walt Disney had just had his heart broken when his distributor stole his popular character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, from him. On the long, depressing train ride home from getting this news, Disney drew a new character—a mouse with round ears and a big smile. A few months later, the new, talking Mickey Mouse was first shown to the world in the cartoon Steamboat Willie. Since that first appearance, Mickey Mouse has become the most recognizable cartoon character in the world. It All Started With an Unlucky Rabbit During the silent film era of the 1920s, Charles Mintz, Walt Disney’s cartoon distributor, asked Disney to come up with a cartoon that would rival the popular Felix the Cat cartoon series that played before silent motion pictures in movie theaters. Mintz came up with the name â€Å"Oswald the Lucky Rabbit† and Disney created the mischievous black and white character with straight, long ears. Disney and his artist employee Ubbe Iwerks made 26 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons in 1927. With the series now a hit, costs rose increasingly higher as Disney wanted to make the cartoons better. Disney and his wife, Lillian, took a train trip to New York in 1928 to renegotiate a higher budget from Mintz. Mintz, however, informed Disney that he owned the character and that he had lured most of Disney’s animators to come draw for him. Learning a depressing lesson, Disney boarded the train back to California. On the long trip home, Disney sketched a black and white mouse character with big round ears and a long skinny tail and named him Mortimer Mouse. Lillian suggested the livelier name of Mickey Mouse. As soon as he reached Los Angeles, Disney immediately copyrighted Mickey Mouse (as he would all the characters he would later create). Disney and his loyal artist employee, Ubbe Iwerks, created new cartoons with Mickey Mouse as the adventurous star, including Plane Crazy (1928) and The Gallopin’ Gaucho (1928). But Disney had trouble finding a distributor. First Sound Cartoon When sound became the latest in film technology in 1928, Walt Disney researched several New York film companies in the hopes of recording his cartoons with sound to make them stand out. He struck a deal with Pat Powers of Powers Cinephone System, a company that offered the novelty of sound with film. While Powers added sound effects and music to the cartoon, Walt Disney was the voice of Mickey Mouse. Pat Powers became Disney’s distributor and on November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie (the world’s first sound cartoon) opened at the Colony Theater in New York. Disney himself did all the character voices in the seven-minute-long film. Receiving rave reviews, audiences everywhere adored Mickey Mouse along with his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, who also made her first appearance in Steamboat Willie. (By the way, November 18, 1928 is considered the official birthday of Mickey Mouse.) The first two cartoons, Plane Crazy (1928) and The Gallopin’Gaucho (1928), were then released with sound, with more cartoons on the way with additional characters, including Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy. On January 13, 1930, the first Mickey Mouse comic strip appeared in newspapers around the country. Mickey Mouse Legacy While Mickey Mouse gained the popularity of fan clubs, toys, and worldwide fame, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit faded into obscurity after 1943. As the Walt Disney Company grew over the decades into a mega-entertainment empire, including feature-length motion pictures, television stations, resorts and theme parks, Mickey Mouse remains the icon of the company as well as the most recognizable trademark in the world. In 2006, the Walt Disney Company acquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.