Deck 3: Combating the Hostile Forces of Nature:

Question 1

The probable function of psychological mechanisms designed to produce disgust is __________.

A) signaling to others dislike of something
B) expelling toxins
C) providing an emotional cue to damaging toxins
D) protecting the body against ingesting or coming into contact with toxins

Answer 1

protecting the body against ingesting or coming into contact with toxins

Question 2

Which of the following was presented as evidence that humans may have evolved the ability to suppress their disgust reaction?

A) Women were willing to eat chocolate when formed in the shape of dog feces.
B) Mothers rated the smell of their own infants' feces as less disgusting than the feces of other infants, even when mislabeled.
C) Children tend to put novel items into their mouths, even those items which are considered disgusting by adults.
D) Humans have never resorted to cannibalism, no matter how dire the circumstances.

Answer 2

Mothers rated the smell of their own infants' feces as less disgusting than the feces of other infants, even when mislabeled.

Question 3

The embryo protection hypothesis predicts that women who failed to protect embryos in ancestral environments would have __________.

A) failed to survive long enough to reproduce
B) failed to become our ancestors
C) had a more difficult time attracting mates than women who could protect embryos
D) invested more in other relatives' offspring

Answer 3

failed to become our ancestors

Question 4

Which of the following lines of evidence does not suggest an evolutionary history of meat eating?

A) human fossil evidence
B) animal fossil evidence
C) the modern psychology of some animals to avoid humans
D) modern vitamin deficiencies

Question 5

Which of the following hypotheses predicts that meat was not a key feature of ancestral diets?

A) gathering
B) provisioning
C) scavenging
D) none of the above

Question 6

Pregnancy sickness is an adaptation for __________.

A) avoiding toxins that could harm the mother
B) avoiding toxins that could harm the developing baby
C) decreasing demands on fathers to test their willingness to invest in offspring
D) increasing the likelihood that a mother will spontaneously abort an unwanted fetus

Question 7

Folk biology is likely to be _________.

A) a byproduct
B) an adaptation
C) a highly variable phenomenon across cultures
D) a tendency to disbelieve in biological properties as having evolved

Question 8

The antimicrobial hypothesis predicts that__________.

A) individuals will spice foods more in colder climates
B) individuals will spice foods more in hotter climates
C) individuals will be more averse to microbes in hotter climates
D) individuals will be more averse to microbes in colder climates

Question 9

Humans begin to show an understanding of folk biology around the age of __________.

A) three
B) five
C) ten
D) fourteen

Question 10

Folk biology is a term used to describe __________.

A) the intuition that living things come in discrete packets that correspond to distinct species
B) the application of popular biological concepts to everyday living
C) the intuition that multiple biological concepts can be integrated into one unifying concept
D) cognitive adaptations that are interpretable from various theoretical frameworks

Question 11

The frugivory-product hypothesis predicts that __________.

A) drinking alcohol is an adaptation designed to reduce parasite loads
B) drinking alcohol is a byproduct of adaptive preferences for decreased inhibition
C) drinking alcohol is an adaptation designed to increase the likelihood of gaining access to attractive mates
D) drinking alcohol is a byproduct of adaptive preferences for ripe fruits

Question 12

The _________ hypothesis predicts the greatest range of human behavior.

A) hunting
B) gathering
C) provisioning
D) scavenging

Question 13

The provisioning hypothesis suggests that __________.

A) humans have been designed by natural selection to provision their offspring
B) males are unique among primates in their relative parental investment in children
C) males supply food to competitors to gain social status among members of their group
D) females maintain closer proximity to males who share meat because they benefit from their hunting skills

Question 14

Hunting can account for the emergence of all but which of the following patterns of human behavior?

A) maternal investment
B) sexual division of labor
C) male coalitions
D) social exchange

Question 15

The showoff hypothesis and hunting hypothesis are competing explanations in that __________.

A) one argues that men provided for their families and the other that men provided food to non-family members to gain social benefits through increased status
B) one argues that men should spend less time hunting and the other, more
C) one argues that the majority of caloric intake is through meat and the other through vegetables
D) one argues that women should be impressed by a male's hunting prowess and the other that women should not be impressed by a male's hunting prowess

Question 16

Which of the following is NOT an adaptation for sharing food?

A) a strategy of courtship
B) a sign of closeness in relationships
C) a method of unburdening oneself from food preparation
D) a means of reducing conflict with rivals

Question 17

Hostile forces of nature include all of the following except __________.

A) parasites
B) predators
C) kin
D) bad weather

Question 18

Women who do not have pregnancy sickness during the first trimester of their pregnancy are __________ likely to experience a spontaneous abortion.

A) three times more
B) three times less
C) thirty times more
D) thirty times less

Question 19

Plants produce toxins as a(n) __________.

A) byproduct of other nutrients being absorbed into the plant
B) method of storing nutrients that they may need
C) adaptation for reducing the likelihood of getting eaten
D) adaptation for chemical warfare against other plants

Question 20

Rates of bacterial food poisoning are ________ in cultures with fewer spices.

A) higher
B) lower
C) equal
D) not present

Question 21

The adaptive conservatism hypothesis has been used to explain __________.

A) the human tendency to take few risks
B) the human tendency to overgeneralize dangers to unlikely triggers
C) the human tendency to overstate one's social importance
D) the human tendency to overstate the political objectives of allies and foes

Question 22

Which of the following could be presented as evidence for evolved psychological mechanisms designed specifically for gathering that can be found in women today?

A) Children, when presented with both meat and plant products, tend to eat more plant products.
B) Women prefer the taste of plant products more than men.
C) Women locate specific plants within a large complex array more quickly and accurately than men.
D) Women take longer to memorize the scientific names of plants than men, but tend to remember them for an extended period of time.

Question 23

The gathering hypothesis suggests a greater role for__________ in the evolution of human behavior.

A) spatial skills
B) men
C) social exchange
D) women

Question 24

What is the most likely adaptive function that separation anxiety served in young children?

A) maintaining proximity to a caregiver
B) benefiting through the experience of a caregiver
C) increasing food consumption
D) avoiding ingestion of teratogens

Question 25

De Catanzaro argues that suicide will be most likely to occur when __________.

A) an individual is away from home
B) an individual is middle-aged
C) an individual has too many burdens posed by dependent children
D) an individual perceives an inability to contribute to his or her own inclusive fitness

Question 26

De Catanzaro found that the frequency of sex is ____________ correlated with suicidal ideation in young men.

A) positively
B) not
C) negatively
D) falsely

Question 27

Which of the following is not a stage in habitat selection?

A) location
B) selection
C) information gathering
D) exploitation

Question 28

The savanna hypothesis states that selection favored __________.

A) preferences to settle in environments with abundant resources
B) preferences to settle on islands
C) humans who did not prefer to settle in resource-rich environments
D) better spatial skills in resource-rich environments

Question 29

Elevated testosterone early in life can __________ in later life.

A) have beneficial effects
B) have no effects
C) have detrimental effects
D) be higher

Question 30

The !Kung practice of "the owner of the arrow is the owner of the meat" is the type of custom expected by the _____________ hypothesis.

A) handicap
B) gathering
C) showoff
D) provisioning

Question 31

Scavenging ____________ hunting as a major source of food acquisition in ancestral environments.

A) rivaled
B) did not rival
C) replaced
D) was replaced by

Question 32

Selection acts more strongly on men than on women because __________.

A) women have greater variability in reproduction
B) men have greater variability in reproduction
C) men are larger than women
D) men die sooner than women

Question 33

Which of the following fear responses appears to be unique to humans?

A) freeze
B) appease
C) fright
D) faint

Question 34

A key predictor of the amount of time a woman spends foraging is __________.

A) How much food her female kin have collected
B) The amount of food her husband brings back from a hunt
C) How well she scores on spatial tasks including location memory
D) Her interest and enjoyment of foraging for food

Question 35

Which of the following instances of fear and anxiety does NOT afford protection?

A) freezing or becoming immobile
B) aggressive defense
C) submission or appeasement
D) social contact

Question 36

Women show ________ fear of events that could lead to injury compared to men because __________.

A) less; women would have encountered such events less frequently throughout our evolutionary past
B) less; women have evolved more defenses against such attacks
C) greater; women have evolved a more cautious strategy whereas men have evolved to take greater risks
D) greater; women would have encountered such events more frequently throughout our evolutionary past

Question 37

Selection is weaker later in life because __________.

A) most reproduction has already occurred
B) little empirical work has examined the effects selection had on older adults
C) selection operates more strongly on women than on men
D) there are fewer men alive later in life

Question 38

Senescence refers to __________.

A) the deterioration of all bodily mechanisms as an organism ages
B) humans' fears related to adaptive problems in ancestral environments
C) an elevated amount of iron in one's blood
D) the process whereby a gene can have two or more effects

Question 39

What is the adaptive function of fainting as a fear response?

A) signaling to an attacker that one is not a threat
B) becoming alert, watchful, and vigilant
C) remaining still to trick predators sensitive to motion cues
D) raising blood pressure and heart rate for a surprise escape attempt

Question 40

Fever is an adaptive response designed to __________.

A) deter closely related individuals from coming near you
B) increase aid from one's kin
C) reduce the amount of iron in one's blood
D) reduce the effects of various diseases

Question 41

The fact that children everywhere need to be coaxed into eating certain foods, such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts, is likely due to which of the following proposed adaptations?

A) the potlatch effect
B) the provisioning hypothesis
C) taste neophobia
D) taste neophilia

Question 42

Which of the following represents the relative degree to which pregnant women experience food aversions, from most aversive to least aversive?

A) coffee, meat, bread
B) bread, vegetables, meat
C) vegetables, coffee, bread
D) coffee, bread, eggs

Question 43

Which of the following, if found, would not support Wrangham's cooking hypothesis?

A) Cooking is universal among human societies.
B) Humans experience lower fitness on raw food diets.
C) Cooking decreases the net energy value of the food.
D) Digesting raw foods burns more calories because they are harder to digest.

Question 44

Which of the following pieces of evidence illustrates that disgust is still adaptive in the current environment?

A) People who are most easily disgusted have fewer infections.
B) Babies show evidence of disgust from birth.
C) Women are more easily disgusted than men by disease-carrying objects.
D) People find more materials in the modern environment to be disgusting than materials found in ancestral environments.

Question 45

Which of the following is a piece of evidence indicating that food sharing is important to mating?

A) Stone tools have been consistently found in the same sites as bones from large game animals.
B) Divorcing men for a failure to provide food is not uncommon in tribal groups.
C) Humans' diets generally consist of 20-40 percent meat.
D) Men generally engage in most or all of the hunting while women do most of the gathering.

Question 46

Why would women possess a lower threshold for disgust than men?

A) because men possess other adaptations that help them avoid disease: namely, lower sensation seeking
B) because their immune systems are less robust than men's
C) because they have to take care of infants and children who have less developed immune systems
D) all of the above

Question 47

How do human and rat infants solve the adaptive problem of food-seeking?

A) by getting all their calories from their mother's milk
B) by growing a temporary set of "baby" teeth that are replaced with permanent teeth later in life
C) by delaying the development of specialized taste receptors
D) by exhibiting taste neophilia: the preference for novel tastes

Question 48

__________ are much more likely to commit suicide when they _______________.

A) Men; experience an unexpected status gain
B) Men; are of old age
C) Women; are of old age
D) Women; are menstruating

Question 49

Which of the following represents evidence for Profet's pregnancy sickness hypothesis?

A) The foods that pregnant women find most disgusting are the ones most likely to contain toxins.
B) Pregnancy sickness peaks two to four weeks after conception.
C) Women who do not experience pregnancy sickness are more likely to experience a spontaneous abortion.
D) all of the above

Question 50

Evolved navigation theory predicts that __________.

A) vertical distances seem larger when at the bottom of a mountain than at the top of a cliff
B) vertical distances seem larger when at the top of a cliff than at the bottom of a mountain
C) horizontal distances seem smaller to men who have evolved to travel long distances during hunting
D) horizontal distances seem smaller to women because they are shorter and thus closer to the ground

Question 51

When a rat eats a familiar food and a novel food at the same time and illness is induced, it subsequently __________.

A) avoids the familiar food
B) avoids the novel food
C) avoids all food for about twenty-four hours
D) increases foraging behavior

Question 52

Which of the following tastes is associated with the most calorically dense food?

A) salty
B) bitter
C) sour
D) sweet