Discuss historical and current controversy surrounding the genetic analysis of personality.
Discuss why behavioral genetics research is controversial, with reference to issues surrounding ideology conflicts and fears about eugenics.
Define and discuss the concept of heritability, with reference to phenotypic variance, genotypic variance, and environmentality.
Identify and discuss three key misconceptions about heritability.
Identify and discuss the four key research deigns used by behavioral geneticists, including a discussion of the advantages, disadvantages, and assumption of each design.
Identify and discuss the major findings from behavioral genetics research, including findings in the areas of personality, sexual orientation, attitudes and preferences, drinking, and smoking.
Discuss and differentiate shared environmental influences from nonshared environmental influences.
Discuss the impact of shared versus nonshared environmental influences on personality.
Define and provide examples of genotype-environment interactions.
Define and provide examples for each of the three types of genotype-environment correlation, including passive, reactive, and active correlations.
Discuss the emerging field of molecular behavior genetics, including its goals, methods, and recent findings.
Discuss why science, politics, and values sometimes seem to be in conflict with respect to behavioral genetic findings.
Discuss Sheldon’s physiological approach to personality.
Describe the key physiological measures used by modern personality researchers, including electrodermal activity, cardiovascular activity, brain activity, and chemical analyses of blood and saliva.
Discuss Eysenck’s original and revised theories about individual differences in extraversion-introversion. Be able to briefly define the characteristics of someone who is high on extraversion or high on introversion.
Review some of the key findings generated by work inspired by Eysenck’s theory.
Discuss Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory, including a discussion of how Gray’s theory is similar to and different from Eysenck’s theory.
Describe the personality dimension of sensation seeking as originally presented by Zuckerman, including a discussion of how Zuckerman used Hebb’s theory of optimal level of arousal to generate his theory about sensation seeking.
Discuss some of the key correlates of sensations seeking, according to recent work by Zuckerman and others.
Explain the process of neurotransmission and discuss recent research and theory on the relationships between neurotransmitters and personality traits.
Describe the personality dimension of morningness-eveningness, and discuss identified relationships of this dimension with circadian rhythms.
Describe the defining features of temporal isolation studies, including why they are conducted and what they have revealed.
Discuss some of the key practical consequences of individual differences in morningness-eveningness.
Discuss recent work suggesting that asymmetry in frontal brain activity may predict affective style.
Discuss the identified relationships between brain asymmetry, and personality and affective traits.
Describe the key features of evolution by natural selection.
Define and provide an example of an adaptation.
Describe the key features of evolution by sexual selection. Differentiate between intrasexual competition and intersexual competition. Provide examples of each of these two types of sexual selection.
Discuss the concept of “differential gene reproduction.”
Describe “inclusive fitness theory.
Discuss and provide examples of the three key products of the evolutionary process—adaptations, by-products of adaptations, and noise or random variation.
Identify and discuss the three key premises of evolutionary psychology.
Discuss the different levels of evolutionary analysis, differentiating between general evolutionary theory, middle-level theories, and specific hypotheses and predictions.
Differentiate between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, and discuss how modern evolutionary scientists use each strategy.
Discuss how evolutionary psychologists approach the human nature level of analysis. Include in your discussion brief reviews of theory and research on the need to belong, helping and altruism, and universal emotions.
Discuss how evolutionary psychologists approach the sex difference level of analysis. Include in your discussion brief reviews of theory and research on sex differences in aggression, jealousy, the desire for sexual variety, and mate preferences.
Discuss how evolutionary psychologists approach the individual differences level of analysis. Include in your discussion a review of the three primary strategies for addressing individual differences: Environmental triggers of individual differences, adaptive self-assessment of heritable individual differences, and frequency-dependent strategic individual differences.
Identify and discuss the key limitations of evolutionary perspectives on personality.