Deck 6: The Evolving Mind: Darwin and His Psychological Legacy

Question 1

A British political economist and demographer whose writings on population growth influenced Charles Darwin's development of the theory of evolution by natural selection was:

A) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
B) Thomas Malthus.
C) George Romanes.
D) Charles Lyell.

Answer 1

Thomas Malthus.

Question 2

Darwin delayed publishing The Origin of Species for 18 years because:

A) he was uncertain of his own hypotheses.
B) he was ill and unable to finish the work in a timely fashion.
C) he believed the theory would require a massive amount of supporting evidence before being taken seriously.
D) On the basis of his religious views, Darwin's father asked him not to publish it.

Answer 2

he believed the theory would require a massive amount of supporting evidence before being taken seriously.

Question 3

Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow influenced young Darwin in which of the following ways?

A) They taught him botany and geology at Cambridge.
B) They were favorably disposed to evolutionary theories.
C) They persuaded Darwin's father to allow him to go on the Beagle.
D) all of the above

Answer 3

They taught him botany and geology at Cambridge.

Question 4

Uniformitarianism and catastrophism were opposing theories from the nineteenth century concerning:

A) the origin of species.
B) the theory of natural selection.
C) the processes by which the major natural features of the earth were created.
D) choices among variants of evolutionary theory.

Question 5

What was a factor that helped convert Darwin to the uniformitarian viewpoint during his Beagle voyage?

A) Captain FitzRoy's endorsement of the idea
B) the presence of fossilized seashells high in the mountains
C) his observations of exotic wildlife
D) all of the above

Question 6

Darwin's writings about human issues included all of the following subjects except:

A) emotions.
B) child development.
C) gender differences.
D) consciousness and will.

Question 7

Although Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution by natural selection and his biological expertise,he also made important contributions to which field?

A) Mathematics
B) Anthropology
C) Geology
D) Anatomy

Question 8

____________________ and _______________ helped bring the idea of evolved species to scientific awareness,but without suggesting a plausible mechanism by which evolution could occur.

A) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck; Erasmus Darwin
B) Robert FitzRoy; William Paley
C) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck; Charles Darwin
D) Thomas Malthus; Erasmus Darwin

Question 9

_____________________became known as "Darwin's Bulldog" and staunchly supported Darwin's theory in a celebrated 1860 debate with the Bishop of Oxford.

A) Herbert Spencer
B) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
C) Thomas H. Huxley
D) Charles Lyell

Question 10

Which of the following provided a crucial insight that helped Darwin develop his theory of evolution by natural selection following his reading of it "for amusement"?

A) Thomas Malthus on population
B) Shakespeare's Hamlet
C) James Ussher on the age of the earth
D) James Audubon on the birds of America

Question 11

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection,as presented in his Origin of Species,presupposed the existence of:

A) inheritable psychological characteristics in human beings.
B) several fixed groups of species.
C) inheritable small individual differences.
D) all of the above

Question 12

The English geologist Charles Lyell promoted and supported which geological theory?

A) catastrophism
B) natural selection
C) uniformitarianism
D) sexual selection

Question 13

Darwin's view that males surpass females intellectually while females are stronger than men in the moral virtues is sometimes called:

A) the variability hypothesis.
B) the complementarity hypothesis.
C) the comparative hypothesis.
D) the continuance hypothesis.

Question 14

The philosopher and theologian William Paley is best remembered for promoting which idea?

A) evolution via sexual selection
B) The Argument from Design
C) catastrophism
D) the value of a comparative psychology

Question 15

In Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man,and Selection in Relation to Sex,he theorized that:

A) there are fundamental qualitative differences between humans and animals in terms of mental faculties.
B) human beings have descended from animal ancestors.
C) primitive and "savage" human groups represented separate species.
D) human beings are immune to the influence of natural selection.

Question 16

Robert FitzRoy became an important figure in Darwin's life because:

A) he was Darwin's beetle-collecting mentor at Cambridge.
B) he convinced Darwin to leave medical school.
C) he took Darwin on as his Beagle dining companion and ship naturalist.
D) he taught Darwin the elements of geology.

Question 17

What was the most revolutionary aspect of Darwin's theory as published in his 1859 Origin of Species?

A) the notion of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution
B) the notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics
C) the notion of evolution itself
D) all of the above

Question 18

While on his Beagle voyage,Darwin made important observations of ____________,which eventually helped lead to his evolutionary theory.

A) fossilized remains of extinct animals who resembled current species but were much larger
B) finches with differently shaped beaks on different islands
C) a species of short-necked giraffes in Brazil
D) both a and b above

Question 19

Darwin posited a theory of "sexual selection" to help account for:

A) the evolution of qualities such as beauty, which lacked obvious "adaptive" value.
B) the evolution of intelligence.
C) the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
D) all of the above

Question 20

Prior to becoming a naturalist,Darwin seriously contemplated careers in which of the following fields?

A) medicine and the clergy
B) mathematics and medicine
C) the clergy and philosophy
D) medicine and philosophy

Question 21

In Darwin's "Biographical Sketch of an Infant" he reported on:

A) comparisons between his own child's behavior and that of the animal species he had observed while in the Galapagos.
B) comparisons between his own child's behavior and that of one of his nephews.
C) the development of his own child's reflexes, emotions, and earliest moral development.
D) the development of his own child's "abnormalities."

Question 22

________________________was a younger friend and follower of Darwin's who used Darwin's notes on animal behavior in helping to found the new field of comparative psychology.

A) Herbert Spencer
B) George Romanes
C) Thomas H. Huxley
D) Alfred Russel Wallace

Question 23

One of the purposes of Darwin's book,The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was to show:

A) that many human reactions with no obvious survival or utilitarian value today did have an adaptive purpose in the evolutionary past.
B) that animals and humans have very different emotional responses.
C) that human emotional expressions vary widely across different cultures.
D) that many human reactions with a clear adaptive purpose today had no adaptive purpose in the past.

Question 24

A recently developed subdiscipline which analyzes psychological functions in terms of independently evolved "modules" and their possible adaptive value in the distant evolutionary past is called:

A) evolutionary psychology.
B) comparative psychology.
C) Sociobiology.
D) archeological psychology.

Question 25

The idea that political systems and societies evolve and "progress" due to unbridled competition and "the survival of the fittest" is often referred to as:

A) Sociobiology.
B) Social Darwinism.
C) Comparative Psychology.
D) Evolutionary Psychology.

Question 26

A recently developed approach hypothesizing that the unit of evolution is the individual gene,rather than the individual organism or the group is called:

A) social Darwinism.
B) sociobiology.
C) evolutionary psychology.
D) behavior genetics.

Question 27

Alfred Russel Wallace is known for which of the following?

A) independently developing the theory of evolution by natural selection and having a paper on it read jointly with one by Darwin in 1858
B) anticipating Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection by several years but neglecting to publish it
C) collaborating with Darwin on a paper describing the theory of evolution by natural selection, which was read at a meeting of the Linnean Society in 1858
D) plagiarizing much of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and presenting it as his own at a meeting of the Linnean Society in 1858

Question 28

Herbert Spencer is known for being:

A) a promoter of the theory of social Darwinism.
B) a promoter of the phrase "survival of the fittest."
C) a promoter of sociobiology.
D) both a and b above

Question 29

A Victorian-era theory holding that the mainly non?European,"savage" peoples represented a distinctly different species of being was known as:

A) Social Darwinism.
B) Polygenism.
C) Monogenism.
D) Sociobiology.

Question 30

Darwin's so-called "variation hypothesis" suggests that:

A) males have been more modified by evolution and show more variation than females.
B) females have been more modified by evolution and show more variation than males.
C) males and females have been equally modified by evolution but males show more variation.
D) reproduction between males and females causes variation in the human species.