In psychology, preparedness is a concept developed to explain why certain associations are
learned more readily than others.
For example,
phobias related to survival, such as snakes, spiders, and heights, are much more common and much easier to induce in the laboratory than other kinds of
fears. According to
Martin Seligman, this is a result of our
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
ary history. The theory states that organisms which learned to fear environmental threats faster had a survival and reproductive advantage. Consequently, the innate predisposition to fear these threats became an
adaptive
Adaptation, in biology, is the process or trait by which organisms or population better match their environment
Adaptation may also refer to:
Arts
* Adaptation (arts), a transfer of a work of art from one medium to another
** Film adaptation, a ...
human trait.
The concept of preparedness has also been used to explain why
taste aversion
Conditioned taste aversion occurs when an animal acquires an aversion to the taste of a food that was paired with aversive stimuli. The Garcia effect is that the aversion develops more strongly for stimuli that cause nausea than other stimuli. Th ...
s are learned so quickly and efficiently compared with other kinds of
classical conditioning
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the learni ...
.
References
External links
The Malicious Serpent: Snakes as a Prototypical Stimulus for an Evolved Module of Fearlink not working
{{DEFAULTSORT:Preparedness (Learning)
Learning
Preparedness