Psychology can be an interesting subject, even if I've found most people with psychology degrees to have poor logic and reasoning skills, ie, it mostly tends to be an easy degree that doesn't require much mental discipline, up to the masters level.
Evolutionary psychology is the most interesting part for me and it obviously links up with evolutionary nutrition.
When I first came to Prague, I didn't have much to read, and there was no internet at the time, so I would tend to read what I had over and over again (I never acquired to skill or the fortitude to read books in Czech although I really did try a few times). One of these books was JM Roberts History of the World. Another one was an Introduction to Psychology textbook my wife had around.
I just want to touch on a couple of classic experiments that stuck with me from the psychology book.
The first one was the rat shock experiment: two rats are hooked up to electrodes in parallel which supply electric shocks. The first rat can stop the shock by pressing a bar, the second rat has no control, both rats receive the same amount of external stress (shock). The rat without control, not surprisingly, experiences more stress effects on their health as measure by CHD, hormone levels, etc (I believe, I'm too lazy too look up the experiment right now).
This is interesting to me, as one often hears that lower middle class people (or even just the poor) have much higher standards of living in Western Countries than the richest king in the Middle Ages had. The fact is, being in a low-status position in society is stressful in an of itself, since it usually indicates less control over ones life. Some people with relatively low incomes my be living on farms or small towns and not experience this, but it's probably true as a general rule for urban dwellers.
Being part of a community might be another factor that helps one feel more in control of one's life. I guess anything that lets one feel more in control of one's life is going to reduce stress even if it also increases stress in another aspect (say Tom Naughton getting a 'real' job in an office in order to buy and renovate a farmhouse).
The second thing that really stuck with me from that book were the experiments with babies and language acquisition, how infants zero in on phonemes in their own language. This is why exposing your baby to a bunch of languages without context actually retards their language acquisition. My reaction was, duh, of course evolution has selected for this phoneme winnowing for a reason, don't mess with it. I have a native speaking bilingual kid, but bilingual kids learn things in context, and they aren't exposed to seven languages at once on a TV screen. Again, this is why I have a low opinion of "educational" television.
One last thing about evolutionary psychology. I once had an argument with a woman about the differences in sex drive and motivation between men and women. This was a long time ago, mid-90s, but she was a recent college graduate and the idea that egg-bearers and sperm-bearers might have different characteristics that had genetic origins was basically appalling to her. I don't think she had a problem with watching nature documentaries which might distinguish between male/female behavior in wolves, hyenas, lion, or even our cousins in the primate kingdom, but apparently this difference couldn't translate to our species. In fact, I don't recall much or any discussion of evolutionary factors in behavior in the intro to psychology book which was printed in the early 90s. I believe evolutionary psychology has gotten a lot more mainstream than then but there's still a PC backlash against it.
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