Evolutionary Psychology

Dave!

Hey folks,

Just wondering what are people here's opinions of evolutionary psychology as a means of explaining human psychological traits?

For the uninitiated:

Evolutionary psychology (EP) explains psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychology applies the same thinking to psychology.

I'm not a scientist (well, I'm a computer 'scientist' ), but have quite a big interest in psychology in general. My reading tends to be focused on popular science books and the likes, and in particular I'm a bit of a Steven Pinker fan!

I can't say that I'm well versed in the academic literature surrounding EP, but in principle I find that it makes sense (the rest of our body is a product of evolution, so why not the brain?), and I find most of the arguments in favour of it to be quite persuasive. I also find most specific examples that I've encountered to be fairly compelling.

My perception (as an outsider looking in) is that EP is on the rise, and is becoming the dominant theory for explaining human psychological traits, but perhaps someone could give a more definitive answer for this. Any ideas what percentage of cognitive scientists/psychologists/neurologists/some other discipline accept the idea?

What are some of the more compelling arguments against it? Please don't just link to wikipedia, I'm trying to start a discussion rather than just locating information I know Stephen Jay Gould had some reservations about the whole thing.

Any thoughts?

p.s., anyone know where you can do a masters in EP in Ireland?

hotspur

Most people consider the arguments persuasive and the examples compelling. But that doesn't make it scientific. Historically one of the main difficulties with evolutionary psychology has been that the ability of its proponents to plausibly argue for an evolutionary cause for any feature you could name. You could hypothesise the exact opposite of an existing feature and still use an evolutionary argument for its existence.

So the problem is not that it isn't a powerful model, but that it is so flexibly explanatory that it loses its utility because it can plausibly explain anything. Most science involves making predictions and carrying out experiments to see if the predictions based on a model are falsified. There isn't a lot of falsifiability when it comes to evolutionary psychology, and that's a problem for anyone committed to science.

Dave!

I saw a video where Steven Pinker addressed this point. Essentially he said that, just because more than one explanation works in an evolutionary context, doesn't mean that all of them do. If for example you were to find a culture that is not interested in their offspring, and has no interest in passing on their genes, then this would surely falsify EP wouldn't it?

Red Hand

hotspur wrote: »

There isn't a lot of falsifiability when it comes to evolutionary psychology, and that's a problem for anyone committed to science.

You could say that for much or even most of psychology though, compared to a hard science like chemistry?

dambarude

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

You could say that for much or even most of psychology though, compared to a hard science like chemistry?

Well the research support for chemistry is much more black or white. Unfortunately humans aren't black or white (no pun intended!)- and that's obviously where the problem lies.

Falsifiable or not, Ev Psych is very interesting, and though it may not be best scientific practice, common sense would suggest that at least some of it is true.

JuliusCaesar

dambarude wrote: »

common sense would suggest that at least some of it is true.

Yes. But which bits?

That's the problem.

dambarude

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Yes. But which bits?

Well the bits that are true obviously :pac:.

I think we need the physicist to go build us a time machine and figure it all out!

Valmont

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

You could say that for much or even most of psychology though, compared to a hard science like chemistry?

Absolutely 100% no, what makes you think there isn't a lot of falsifiability in psychology?

steddyeddy

In evolutionary psychology the only thing we can be sure of is were we are at now, the reasons given for various traits are many. In my opinion we could (possibly) learn a lot about the origins of our own psyche by studying our closest relatives, the great apes.

SkepticOne

Interesting article on depression from from an evolutionary perspective in Scientific American here.

Waking-Dreams

I've had a big interest in EP ever since I read 'The Mating Mind' by Geoffrey Miller a few years ago. His recent book, 'Spent' (Geoffrey Miller again) is also a great insight into what shapes consumer behaviour explained through the lens of EP.

David M. Buss is another author to add to your reading list Dave.

dambarude

Waking-Dreams wrote: »

David M. Buss is another author to add to your reading list Dave.

+1 on Buss. Daniel Nettle also has some very interesting articles on Ev Psych on his website. This one [PDF link] in particular gives a nice summary of theories on the evolutionary basis of personality.