Examine+the+Evolutionary+Explanation+of+Emotions+-+Sarah

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Examine the Evolutionary Explanation of Emotions ======

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Evolutionary psychology explains psychological traits such as memory, perception, language, and perception. The study of psychological evolution on emotion has provided findings which provide explanations for certain behaviours. For instance, Dan Fessler of the University of California in Los Angles, investigated the nausea experienced by women in their first trimester of pregnancy. During this period of time an infusion of hormones lowers the pregnant woman’s immune system so that it would not fight the new foreign genetic material in the womb. As he hypothesised, the findings show that the nausea response helps to compensate for the suppressed immune system ======

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In 2006, Fessler aimed to find whether the nausea experienced by a women in their first trimester of pregnancy compensates for the for the suppressed immune system. As the procedure, he asked 496 healthy pregnant women from the ages of 18 to 50 years, to consider 32 potentially stomach-turning scenarios. These scenarios consisted of walking barefoot and stepping on an earthworm, accidentally sticking a fish hook through their finger, and maggots on a piece of meat in an outdoor waste bin. However, before Fessler asked the women to rank how disgusting they found the scenarios, he asked them a series of questions. These questions were specifically designed to determine whether the pregnant women were experiencing morning sickness. ======

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The findings showed that the women in their first trimester scored much higher across the board in disgust sensitivity than their counterparts in the second and third trimesters. Even so, when Fessler controlled the study for morning sickness, the findings showed that these responses only held for disgusting scenarios involving food, such as the maggots on a piece of meat in an outdoor waste bin. ======

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Fessler also stated that of the most dangerous diseases, many are food borne. But because our ancestors could not be picky about what they ate, natural selection could have helped to compensate for the increased susceptibility to disease during the first trimester of pregnancy, which is a risky period for pregnant women, by increasing the urge to be picky about food. This means that during the first trimester of pregnancy, women would get morning sickness, which would decrease their appetite, and therefore the result to not eating as much. ======

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In conclusion, the study by Fessler showed that women in their first trimester of pregnancy showed a much higher disgust sensitivity as women in their second and third trimester. Also, the the study was controlled by morning sickness, the levels of disgust were for scenarios which involved food. This shows that the sensitivity was diminished as the risk of disease and infection decreases is consistent with the view of disgust as a form of protection against disease. ======