Critical thinking questions

Your answers to these kinds of questions demonstrate an ability to comprehend and apply ideas discussed in this chapter.

1. Explain the concept of natural selection. Also explain the relationship between natural selection and sociobiology.

2. Explain the relationship among genes, chromosomes, and DNA. Also indicate how these entities function in reproduction.

3. Indicate and explain at least three examples of abnormalities in genes and chromosomes.

4. Assume that you have received a number of tests to assess fetal abnormalities. Identify and explain each procedure and what you would learn from it.

5. Describe the methods used by behavior geneticists to study heredity's influence on behavior.

6. Indicate how you would explain to a friend that heredity and environment interact in various ways to produce development. Also provide an example of each of the three types of interaction and shared and nonshared environmental influences that you would use to help your friend understand this concept.

Ex.1. Skim over the text and give your comments on its ideas.

Revising Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs

science – наука

successful parenting – успешное воспитание детей

quaint – необычный

August 2010 - A recent updating of Abraham Maslow's iconic pyramid of needs by a team of psychologists including two from Arizona State University (ASU), published together with four commentaries in Perspectives on Psychological Sciences, concludes that factors involved in successful parenting, such as caring, feeding, nurturing and educating, are indicative of a profound psychological need that merits placement at the top of the hierarchy. Maslow's concept of ordering human motivations dates from the 1940s. The current revision, which the authors acknowledge is controversial, takes into account developments in areas such as neuroscience, developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology.

Lead author Douglas Kenrick, a professor of psychology at ASU explained:

"It was based on some great ideas, several of which are worth preserving. But it missed out on some very basic facts about human nature, facts which weren't well understood in Maslow's time, but were established by later research and theory at the interface of psychology, biology and anthropology."

Co-author Steven Neuberg, an ASU Foundation professor commented:

"Within the psychological sciences, the pyramid was increasingly viewed as quaint and old fashioned, and badly in need of updating."

Researchers (including Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Mark Schaller of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver) restructured Maslow's pyramid to take into account radical changes in psychological processes that occur in response to evolutionary motives.

Self-actualisation has been replaced by three motives described as “evolutionarily critical” – mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting. The researchers argue that many activities defined as self-actualising (such as creativity) actually reflect a biologically basic need to increase status and thereby attract mates.

Douglas Kenrick said:

"Among human aspirations that are most biologically fundamental are those that ultimately facilitate reproduction of our genes in our children's children. For that reason, parenting is paramount."

The researchers comment that they are not implying that creative individuals are consciously motivated by the goal of reproductive success.

Douglas Kenrick commented:

"Reproductive goals are ultimate causes, like the desire of birds to migrate because it helps them survive and reproduce. In our minds, we humans create simply because it feels good to us; we're not aware of its ultimate function."

"You could argue that a peacock's display is as beautiful as anything any human artist has ever produced. Yet it has a clear biological function – to attract a mate. We suspect that self actualisation is also simply an expression of the more evolutionarily fundamental need to reproduce."

The researcher argue that reproduction also involves raising children to an age at which they can reproduce. They therefore place parenting at the top of the revised pyramid.

Other proposed amendments involve overlapping, co-existing needs rather than replacement of a met need by the next in the hierarchy. The authors argue that external environmental factors can destabilise the situation, for example by requiring a response to a new or unanticipated threat.

Douglas Kenrick concluded:

"The pyramid of needs is a wonderful idea of Maslow's. He just got some of it wrong. Now people are talking about it again, which will help us get it right."

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Questions:

1. What are the factors of successful parenting?

2. What is wrong with Maslow's hierarchy of needs according to the opinion of some scientists?

3. What three motives have replaced self-actualisation?