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Is there any reason most evolutionary psychology articles talk about gender? Is there not any other element of human society that has both a biological and a be
by arandr 12y ago
Is there any reason most evolutionary psychology articles talk about gender? Is there not any other element of human society that has both a biological and a behavioral component to study?
Aside from their hyperfocus on a specific part of what they claim to be their subject of interest, my main problem with evolutionary psychologists is that they keep the "evolutionary" part of their argument (too often) to a vaguely-plausible story that has exactly no biological substance whatsoever. I would be more interested if they even went so far as to use comparisons with other species or actual ethnographic research rather than elaborating about their idea of prehistoric human societies.
I also find strange that it's accepted in psychology to derive conclusions on human nature from a study of a single class of Western freshman psych students that have probably been recruited via spam email. I think even focus groups are more scientific.
- kijin 12y agoThe greatest factors that determine the course of evolution are (1) how likely you are to get laid and (2) how likely your offspring are to get laid. Since it's already difficult enough to produce falsifiable conjectures about an aspect of human psychology (sex/gender) that is directly related to those factors, it's not surprising that most EP researchers haven't even bothered to branch out into less closely related things.
- arandr 12y agoI think there's a debate to be had as to the relative importance of sexual selection (how likely you are to get laid) versus plain old selection (how likely you are to not die) or competition (how likely you are to have to share your food), especially over the timeframes being considered. I agree that current EP research seems unlikely to ever manage to produce falsifiable conjectures (let alone actual hypotheses and experiments) on e.g. suicidality, social competition, or other subjects related to selection, but those questions are also interesting (even more interesting, I would say, that the question of whether women evolved to wear high heels). I would like to see an "evolutionary psychology" article linking studies of depression with, for example, studies of the effect of loneliness on the behavior of non-human social animals, or theorizing as to how depression continues to exist despite being on the face of it a negative trait for the purposes of reproduction and survival. As an added help there have been studies on genetic and metabolic associations to depression, whereas near as I can tell exactly zero molecular biologists are interested in the high heel connection.