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I defended the view that one of the notable symbolic functions of disgust is to the avoid the limitations inherent in our unconscious desire to be invulnerable to life. Via the plasticity of disgust's gene-cultural evolution throughout enduring norms on human sanctity, we inherited an unconscious, instinctive desire to be invulnerable, whose characteristic emotion is disgust. My framework on disgust can explain a wider variety of instances of disgust than the contemporary literature, such as the nausea we feel before a theatrical performance, the allure of disgust in humour and storytelling, and disgust where core-disgust elicitors are not operative. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / One of disgust's function is to avoid the reminder that we are not invulnerable to life. We want to be invulnerable to life, but we also recognize that life doesn't work like that. One of disgust's functions is to avoid being reminded that we are vulnerable.

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No / In this paper I examine how Darwinian thought has been applied to understanding the evolutionary origins of depression. The application of evolutionary theory has produced a significant number of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of depression. Some of the main models are discussed. The ‘separation-distress’ emotional system described Watt and Panksepp (Neuropsychoanalysis 11:7–51, 2009), provides a convincing evolutionary-conserved neurochemical and emotional system which may form the basis of a depressive response in humans. By reflecting on these models, I discuss whether depression in humans can be considered to be an adaptation in evolutionary terms, or whether it is a maladaptive response to adverse life events.

Pragmatics concerns the material function of language use in the world, and thus touches on profound questions about the relationship between our cognition and the environments in which we operate. Both psycholinguistics and evolutionary linguistics have afforded greater attention to pragmatics in recent years. Though the potential of evolutionary psycholinguistics has been noted for over twenty-five years (e.g. Tooby & Cosmides, 1990; Scott-Phillips, 2010a), there has arguably been little dialogue between these two fields of study. This thesis explicitly acknowledges and investigates the adaptationist nature of functional claims in psycholinguistics, and attempts to demonstrate that psycholinguistic inquiry can provide evidence that is relevant to theories of how the cognitive architecture of linguistic communication evolved. Chapter two reviews a broad polarisation in the pragmatic and psycholinguistic literature concerning the relative roles of linguistic convention and contextual information in comprehension. It makes explicit the theoretical approaches that reliably give rise to these polar positions across scholarly domains. It goes on to map each model of comprehension to the adaptationist particulars it may entail, and in doing so illustrates two different pictures of how linguistic cognition has developed over phylogeny. The Social Adaptation Hypothesis (SAH) holds that linguistic comprehension is performed by relevance-oriented inferential mechanisms that have been selected for by a social environment (i.e. inference-using conspecifics). In particular, the SAH holds that linguistic conventions are attended to in the same way as other ostensive stimuli and contextual information, and because of their relevance to communicative interactions. The Linguistic Adaptation Hypothesis (LAH) holds that linguistic comprehension is performed by specialised cognition that has been selected for by a linguistic environment (i.e. language-using conspecifics) that was established subsequent to, and as a consequence of, the emergence of inferential communication. In particular, the LAH holds that linguistic conventions are a privileged domain of input for the comprehension system. The plausibility and congruence of both accounts with the current state of knowledge about the evolutionary picture necessitates empirical psycholinguistic evidence. The remainder of the thesis presents a series of experiments investigating referential expressions relevant to the contrastive predictions of these two adaptationist accounts. The broad question that covers all of these experiments is: how sensitive is the comprehension process to linguistic input qua linguistic input, relative to various other grades of relevant contextual information? Chapter three presents a reaction time experiment that uses speaker-specific facts about referents as referring expressions, in a conversational precedent paradigm. The experiment measures the relative sensitivity of comprehension processing to the knowledge states of speakers and the consistent use of linguistic labels, and finds greater sensitivity to linguistic labels. Chapter four introduces a further contextual variable into this paradigm, in the form of culturally copresent associations between labels and referents. The experiment presented in this chapter compares the relative sensitivity of processing to culturally copresent common ground, the privileged knowledge state of speakers, and the consistent use of linguistic labels. The results indicated greater sensitivity to linguistic labels overall, and were consistent with the LAH. Chapter five turns to visual context as a constraint on reference, and presents two pairs of experiments. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate the comprehension of referring expressions across congruous, incongruous, and abstract visual contexts. The experiments measured reaction time as subjects were prompted to identify constituent parts of tangram pictures. The results indicated a sensitivity to the visual context and the linguistic labels, and are broadly consistent with the SAH. If comprehension is characterised by particular sensitivities, we may expect speakers to produce utterances that lend themselves well to how hearers process them. Experiments 5 and 6 use a similar tangram paradigm to elicit referring expressions from speakers for component parts of tangrams. The experiments measure the consistency of produced labels for the same referents across visual contexts of varied congruity. The results indicated some methodological limitations of the tangram paradigm for the study of repeated reference across contexts. Lastly, the thesis concludes by considering the SAH and LAH in light of the empirical evidence presented and its accompanying limitations, and argues that the evidence is generally consistent with the assumptions of the LAH.

This study examined what effects, if any, cultural factors have on conceptual knowledge of evolutionary theory through natural selection. In particular, the study determines if Latino and non-Latino students differ in their misconceptions of natural selection and, if so, whether or not cultural factors could be the reason why such differences exist. A total of 1179 college students attending eight Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Texas participated in the study. The results revealed that the top two challenging natural selection concepts for students to comprehend were causes of phenotypic variation, i.e., mutations are intentional, and selective survival based on heritable traits. In addition, no statistical significant differences were found between the Latino and non-Latino students and the top four natural selection misconceptions between the groups were similar. Not even religion was found to directly contribute to evolutionary misconceptions; even though, it serves as the core of an individual’s beliefs system. However, traditional teaching methods, inadequately trained biology school teachers, lessons poor in content, insufficient teaching time, and lack of age appropriate tasks, as well as, poorly defined evolutionary terms are actually the main causes for evolutionary misconceptions.

In this paper we present the major theoretical and methodological pillars of evolutionary political economy. We proceed in four steps. Aesthetics: In chapter 1 the immediate appeal of evolutionary political economy as a specific scientific activity is described. Content: Chapter 2 explores the object of investigation of evolutionary political economy. Power: The third chapter develops the interplay between politics and economics. Methods: Chapter 4 focuses on the evolution of methods necessary for evolutionary political economy.

As organizations continue to invest heavily in Information Systems (IS) to support business processes, the underutilization of such systems is a key concern that challenges efforts to exploit their benefits. What is most desirable is for users to engage in forms of deep use that effectively leverage the features of the IS for work tasks. But, too often users engage in surface-level use, minimizing their interactions with the IS. Yet for many users how they use an IS changes over time to become progressively deeper as the IS is embedded more in the performance of various tasks. To date there has been limited research on post-adoption IS use, particularly on how individuals choose to or are influenced to learn about, selectively adopt and apply, and then extend IS use. This research therefore seeks to bridge a gap in the literature by responding to calls for greater attention to changes in IS post-adoption use. This study draws on evolutionary theory, that is, Generalized Darwinism and its key principles of variation, selection and retention, to understand and explain how individuals’ IS use change over time, as they enact routines supported by the IS. Using a multi-method research design, this study includes an exploratory phase (qualitative) followed by a confirmatory phase (quantitative). For the qualitative phase, case studies were used to explore change in IS use; a cross-section of 39 users (i.e. basic, intermediate and advanced) of large-scale IS (e.g. CRM) from across three (3) organizations were interviewed. The findings from the qualitative phase coupled Generalized Darwinism principles of variation, selection and retention, supporting theories (e.g. motivation theory) and prior research in IS, were used to develop a conceptual model that framed changes in post-adoption use for further analysis. The model was then tested using data collected from a field survey (86 users) and analyzed using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling. The study showed that variations occur as individuals used formerly unused (available) features, modified use of currently used sets of features, substituted or replaced one (already-used) feature with another feature and found novel or innovative uses of IS features. There were also a number of similarities in the findings from the case study and the survey regarding the triggers and enablers of variations and the impact of variations on retention, and in turn the impact of retention on deeper use via emergent use, integrative use and extended use. Both the case studies and the survey confirmed the importance of feedback valence, intrinsic motivation, and domain-related knowledge and of key sub-dimensions such as intrinsic motivation to learn, knowledge of IS features and work process understanding as triggers of variations. Satisfaction, in addition to variations was also instrumental in determining which variants in use were selected and incorporated into one’s work routine (retention). Furthermore, the results suggest that as changes occurred over time, such changes resulted in more deeply ingrained use behaviours, by way of infusion. At the same time, some differences were observed among the case studies and between the case study outcomes and the survey findings, with some of the factors identified as important in the case findings, such as peer learning, extrinsic motivation, and perceived (IS) resources, not being significant as predictors of variations in the survey context. Overall, the findings on changes in IS use and factors involved provided insights into how change occurs via variation, selection and retention and the outcome of the change (i.e. deeper use). It is anticipated that the findings of this research will contribute to the post-adoption IS use literature and provide useful insights for managers as they tackle the problem of IS underutilization.

This paper provides an overview on the evolutionary theory of the firm. The specific feature of the evolutionary approach is that it explains the adaptive behaviors of firms through the tension between innovation and selection. It is suggested that the evolutionary theory can provide a useful basis for a theory of the firm which is concerned with change over time and development. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

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