Until your discipline can dispense with unproven modularity, gender and race essentialism, arguments from a presumed "mental fossil record" which of course can never be demonstrated, sociobiology, Dawkins' selfish gene and its general use as a justifier of the worst social norms and localized prejudices, I'm not really interested in discussing its value to leftist revolution.
- Jack Crow*
My discipline has never relied on unproven modularity. We have no interest in race essentialism, and to the extent that our theories involve what you might call "gender essentialism," they are supported by overwhelming cross-cultural evidence**. We don't argue from an undemonstrable mental fossil record, and we don't use The Selfish Gene to justify norms or prejudices, because we understand very well that one cannot infer a moral "ought" from an empirical "is."
So, now we can talk about the value of ev psych to leftist revolution!
* I don't mean to pick on Jack specifically. I like his writing, and I appreciate his willingness to discuss the topic. I think his views are likely shared by many others, so I'm using his public remarks as a representative sample of leftist objection to evolutionary psychology.
** Yes, we do think that just as there are, on average, physical differences between men and women, there are psychological differences, and that evolution explains these differences. This is a value-neutral observation, and we acknowledge huge variance in behaviours and preferences within and between sexes. These differences are in no way used by the discipline to encourage discrimination or to restrict individual freedom.
4 comments:
Hi again. Because I agree with the idea that human intelligence is adaptive, I decided that I had been too influenced by bad science in the media and was unfairly assuming the evo psych field as a whole was not much better. But. I just saw a review of Louann Brizendine's book on the Evolutionary Psychology journal web page, and I couldn't stop myself from looking.
It is just a book review, and I won't tar the actual science with the faults of a pop "science" book, but I have to say that unless there is a serious misunderstanding then Brizendine's book is shoddily cited and plays to the worst gender stereotypes. I put some links to articles which point out parts of her book which are not cited or even contradicted by the studies she does cite.
I know, it is a blog, but Mark Liberman doesn't, for a change, object to evo psych in general. He is a critic of bad science reporting, much of which has to do with gender difference "research". From what I can tell, the actual research isn't sexy so it doesn't tend to get reported on.
Sorry. My point is simply that having a favorable review of this kind of thing doesn't lend credibility to the journal that publishes it. I understand your perspective, but criticism of evolutionary psychology as a field doesn't spring up just out of nowhere.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2208
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2216
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2232
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003847.html
Brizendine isn't an evolutionary psychologist. I haven't read her books, and it is possible that her scholarship is shoddy. From what I can tell, she's an M.D. not a Ph.D., which you may or may not think is relevant.
"Evolutionary Psychology" the journal is okay. Some good stuff and some bad stuff. Definitely lower quality than "Evolution and Human Behaviour." The review is question was written by someone from the Singapore Management University, an institution I don't know much about.
I haven't read the book and have no plans to do so, so I can't comment on the quality of the review. But as you acknowledge, a book review published in a second-tier journal is no basis for judging an entire field of research! You're right that criticism of ev psych doesn't spring up from nowhere, but there's bad work in every field, and the bad work in our field (or by people who aren't even in our field but write about it) gets a LOT of attention.
You're right that Brizendine is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, and it looks like her research is mostly on hormonal influences on the brain. I think this points to another issue, which is that a lot of bad science may tend to use evolution as a catch-all explanation, which I think at least in my case tends to make me associate it with evolutionary psychology because I am not familiar enough with the field to distinguish between research in the actual field versus a paper that simply mentions evolution.
Anyway, thanks for these blog posts. You've helped me see a bit more clearly on this issue.
I don't even like that "evolutionary psychology" is thought of as a field, and to an extent I regret perpetuating that term. Anyone studying human behaviour ought to work within an evolutionary framework, at least implicitly, meaning that their theories and findings shouldn't and couldn't be incompatible with evolutionary theory. Some people choose to make the evolutionary framework explicit, but this approach is not without problems.
Most notably, evolutionary theory is often misunderstood which results in two categories of problems: (1) scientists who misunderstand evolutionary theory, compromising their work, and (2) audiences who misunderstand (or dislike) evolutionary theory, and thus fail to recognize good research and/or are accepting of bad work.
What I consider "Evolutionary Psychology" is the body of GOOD scientific research on brains and behaviour that has made evolutionary theory an explicit part of the research process. This work avoids problem 1, though might fall victim to problem 2. What people outside the field seem to want to consider "Evolutionary Psychology" is, most charitably, ALL (good and bad) research of behaviour and brains that makes evolution an explicit part, or, least charitably, only the bad stuff.
Say what you will about your "Evolutionary Psychology," but mine is amazing!
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