1. What is the difference between biological determinism and environmental determinism, and why have psychologists moved away from both extreme positions?
2. How do heredity and environment interact to influence height, and what does this reveal about nature-nurture interactions?
3. What are genetic disorders and congenital disorders, and how do they illustrate the role of heredity in development?
1. What is a sensitive or critical period, and why is it important for understanding gene-environment interactions?
2. How does Konrad Lorenz's imprinting study demonstrate the importance of timing in gene-environment interactions?
3. What are the three temperament types identified in the New York Longitudinal Study, and how do they influence parent-child interactions?
4. What is reciprocal determinism, and how does it explain the bidirectional relationship between individuals and their environments?
1. What is natural selection, and how does it explain why certain traits persist across human populations?
2. What is the difference between adaptive traits and maladaptive traits in the context of evolution?
3. How do genetic mutations contribute to evolution, and what determines whether a mutation becomes prevalent in a population?
1. How does the example of pregnant women's nausea illustrate the concept of natural selection and adaptive responses?
2. What evolutionary explanations do psychologists propose for differences in mate preferences between men and women?
3. How can a behavior that was once adaptive, such as preferring sweets or the fight-flight-or-freeze response, become problematic in modern environments?
4. What is epigenetics, and how does it challenge the idea that genes cannot be influenced by behavior and environment?
1. What is a hindsight explanation, and why is it problematic for testing evolutionary psychology theories scientifically?
2. What is eugenics, and how did it misapply evolutionary principles to justify discrimination and human rights violations?
3. What ethical concerns does the intersection of genetics and psychology raise for modern society?
1. What is heritability, and how does it differ from the concept of inherited traits?
2. Why is heritability a population statistic rather than a measure of how much of a trait is genetic in any individual?
1. What is the key difference between monozygotic and dizygotic twins, and why does this difference make twin studies valuable for studying nature-nurture interactions?
2. What do twin studies reveal about the heritability of schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and Alzheimer's disease?
3. Why is the Jim Twins case study less scientifically reliable than systematic twin studies, and what limitations does anecdotal evidence have?
1. How do family studies differ from twin studies and adoption studies in examining genetic contributions to behavior?
2. What do family studies reveal about the heritability of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders?
3. What do family studies show about the genetic and environmental influences on intelligence, personality traits, and substance abuse?
1. How do adoption studies help researchers separate genetic influences from environmental influences on behavior and mental processes?
2. What do adoption studies reveal about the heritability of intelligence, and how does environment also play a role in IQ development?
3. What do adoption studies demonstrate about personality traits, mental health disorders, and gene-environment interactions?
4. Why is it important to understand that behaviors themselves are not inherited, but genetic predispositions may be?
1. How do educational systems in East Asian cultures, Western cultures, and indigenous cultures differ in their approach to learning and development?
2. How do different educational environments interact with genetic predispositions to shape cognitive abilities and academic achievement?
3. What does the variation in educational systems across cultures demonstrate about the role of nurture in expressing genetic potential?
environment
eugenics
evolutionary psychology
heredity
natural selection