I've always been suspicious about Evolutionary Psychology, and David Buller is (or was nine years ago) as well. Let me be clear, I don't doubt evolution; I doubt in the methods and results ascribed to evolutionary psychology. So in short this paper is preaching to the choir. Prepare for some rah-rah in this post.Tangent: I think the title of this article is needlessly inflammatory, just as much as "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience." It comes as no surprise to me that when scientists engage in tearing down other scientists research, we do so with no lack of venom. Criticizing (destructive or otherwise) the science of others is half of what science is (the other 90% is statistical errors), in my experience scientists have a thick skin about it.
"Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it (Cosmides & Tooby 1997)."This definition sets up the paradigm of evolutionary psychology (EP) with the goal to analyze human behavior as an adaptation that would have helped our ancient hunter-gatherer kin survive or reproduce. This seems logical enough, but how could this be science? In review of The Method, we see that logical observation is only half of the equation, and that relevant and testable explanations are also required (Copi 1982). In this paper Buller examines three 'discoveries' of EP and suggests that they are not sufficiently supported by evidence.
The Cheater-Detection Module
EP researchers claim to have evidence of this predisposition to thinking about social interactions by manipulating the content of situations (social and otherwise) presented as part of the Wason selection task. The original Wason selection task involves logical deductions about the relationships between the color of a card and the number printed on the other side; the EP modification changed this to social relationships between the age of a person and the presence of alcohol. Unfortunately, as Buller illustrates, the manipulations used were flawed at least linguistically if not also logically; by making the situation a social interaction researchers also changed the logical type of the situation from indicative (if statements) to deontic (must statements). I'm not entirely sure if I've use the correct grammar vocabulary, but the important thing is that subjects may have interpreted the social situation as what "must" be instead of as an "if-then".
Sex Differences in Jealousy
The theory from EP is that men are more concerned with sexual infidelity since his offspring would have to compete with another male's offsprings for maternal care. Likewise, women are more concerned with emotional infidelity since her mate might withdraw paternal care from her and her offspring. Thus men respond to sexual cues of infidelity while women respond to emotional cues. EP researcher David Buss gathered survey data from a questionnaire on infidelity to support this theory. And while it did show that men care more about sexual infidelity than women, it did not show that men cared more about sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity. Additionally female sexual infidelity is more (compared to males) indicative of general relationship dissatisfaction and is more likely to result in abandonment. So the perceived threat of the infidelity may be the cause of the sex-difference, rather than an adaptive behavior related to competition of offspring.
Discriminative Parental Solicitude
EP suggests that substitute parents are more likely to engage in dangerous parenting than genetic parents. I'll restate that: Step-parents are more likely to abuse their kids than biological parents. Estimating conservatively step-children are 8 times more likely to be physically abused. But the problem is that the data are confounded. Invariably these data come from official state records, and unfortunately state records only note about half of the fatal maltreatment of children officially. Maybe as few as 1 in 10 child abuse cases are confirmed by the state. Also, state child-protection workers often use the presence of a step-parent as a diagnostic indicator of abuse; step-parents are more likely to be recorded as abusers by the state simply because they are step-parents. So it may be there step-parents don't abuse kids anymore than biological parents; the state just catches more step-parents. Results: inconclusive. In the interest of full-disclosure: I'm a step-father.
I'll close here with a direct quote from this paper:
"Thus, although the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm is a bold and innovative explanatory framework, I believe it has failed to provide an accurate understanding of human psychology from an evolutionary perspective."Buller, D. (2005). Evolutionary psychology: the emperor's new paradigm Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (6), 277-283 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.003
