Evolutionary psychology?

Laika

I've read a little bit of work from the field of evolutionary psychology, but nearly all of this stuff comes across as pseudo-scientific bs to me. Much of this stuff just seems to me to be a case of preferring a particular human behaviour over another one, and then saying that this is what nature intended with a story about how it 'evolved'. A lot of evolutionary psychologists also seem to use evolutionary psychology as cover for their misogyny or racism.

I think most of our behaviours are socialised rather than genetic.

I am hardly an expert here however so could, of course, be completely wrong. That is why I am curious to get the opinions on this 'science' by the board's actual scientists and educated evolutionists.

Thoughts?

Dismissing servant

If one accepts evolution, then one have to consider evolution of the brain as well as the function of the brain. Of course the brain and psychology have been subject to natural selection as well as other organs in our bodies.

Psychology is not only behavior, it is also cognition/emotion and other stuff .

cofty

Our bahaviour is very much effected by our genes. It is not the whole story however. As Matt Ridley puts it, it's not "Nature versus Nurture" but more like "Nature via Nurture"

Let's take an simple example.

We descend from a very long line of ancestors who spent every day and night trying not to end up as dinner.

When they heard a noise in the bushes or thought they saw the movement of a shadow they could either assume it was a predator and scamper to safety, or they could be really chilled out and assume it was just the breeze or a passing cloud.

We mostly descend from the jumpy ones who assumed agency to every trivial event. Our more chilled out ancestors lived lives that were as short as they were peaceful.

A "false-positive" wasted time and energy, but a "false-negative" was fatal.

We need to be careful not to fall into lazy Lamarckianism. Our ancestors didn't change their genes by practising caution. Rather, our ancestors who possessed genes that inclined them to caution were more likely to live long enough to pass on those genes to us.

It's not difficult to see the origins of superstiton - a tendency to ascribe agency to random events - in those evolutionary roots.

A lot of evolutionary psychologists also seem to use evolutionary psychology as cover for their misogyny or racism.

Racism and mysogyny tends to be rare in academia. Do you have any examples in mind?

Laika

DS, I have discovered that the biologist PZ Myers is also skeptical of evolutionary psychology: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/category/bad-science/evolutionary-psychology/ so I am not yet convinced that I have to accept evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology as a package deal, though of course I recognise that our brains were subject to evolutionary processes as well.

Cofty, thanks for your response, I was hoping you would contribute to this thread, I will try to come back with some examples for you tomorrow.

cofty

wow PZ Myers really is negative about evo psych. Thanks for the link. I stopped reading PZ a while ago when he became obsessed with radical feminism.

Some incident in a lift at a conference led to a huge online battle that became farcical.

breakfast of champions

I am no expert in evolutionary psychology, but I think a healthy skepticism about it is understandable.

Ultimately, if you believe we are material beings, and that "mind" is a result of natural, material processes, yes, to think of mind in evolutionary terms makes sense.

However, I think that at this point, we do not have enough information about how cognitive processes work to make sweeping generalizations about the efffects of evolution on human behavior/cognition.

That is why COGNITIVE SCIENCE ROCKS!!!!!!!

Oubliette

Evolutionary psychology is an interesting field. It does, however, have some inherent problems.

First, it generally starts with an affect and works backwards to propose an explanation. As I pointed out on my related thread about the philosophy of science, this kind of inductive reasoning is a useful tool in the scientist's toolkit, but it does not necessarily lead to solid conclusions. Rather, it is generally one of the first steps in the process.

One can hardly lose at hindsight explanations, which is why Stephen Jay Gould called it mere "speculation [and] guess work in the cocktail party mode." (Myers, 2011, p. 144)

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References:

Myers, D. (2013). Psychology. New York: Worth

Evolutionary psychology?

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