1. Issues and Benefits of Evolutionary psychology

Question 1

what is a pseudo science?

Answer 1

a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method

Question 2

what is the goal of EP?

Answer 2

The goal of EP is to study human behaviour as the product of evolved psychological mechanisms.

Question 3

what has happened over the past 20 years or so?

Answer 3

Over the past 20 or so years evolutionary psychology has emerged as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science

Question 4

but what has EP generated

Answer 4

At the same time is has generated many critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists.

Question 5

what issues covered in essay about cons

Answer 5

Five principle issues will be covered
- the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA), massive modularity and EP’s politically incorrect claims, spandrels and concerns of falsifiability

Question 6

what will essay on this attempt to identify?

Answer 6

This essay will attempt to identify some of the most common concerns and attempt to elucidate EP’s stance to pertaining them and cover the limitations as well of the benefits of applying an evolutionary framework to studying human psychology and behaviours.

Question 7

quote on EEA and pseudo-science

Answer 7

‘The pseudo-science of Evolutionary psychology purports to explain human behaviours by reference to an ancestral environment’ -Tattersall 2001

Question 8

what does the EEA refer to?

Answer 8

The environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) refers to those aspects of the ancestral environment that were relevant to the evolution, development and functioning of an organism’s adaptations- roughly, the environment in which a species evolved and to which it is adapted.

Question 9

who first proposed the EEA?

Answer 9

First proposed by Bowlby (1969) it is an essential and logically necessary aspect of the theory of natural selection.

Question 10

what has the EEA been?

Answer 10

As the content of EP is almost entirely to be found in the structure of the ancestral environment it is clearly important yet it has been a lightning rod for criticism.

Question 11

who gave a bad definition of the EEA

Answer 11

• T&C (1990) definition of the EEA:
– “The EEA is a statistical composite of the adaptation relevant properties of the ancestral environments encountered by members of ancestral populations.”

this is too vague to actually be of use

Question 12

when is the EEA assumed in literature to be?

Answer 12

– Assumed often in literature that the EEA is roughly about 250,000 to 10,000 years ago, sometime in the Pleistocene.

Question 13

researchers who gave typical controversial opinion of the EEA.

Answer 13

• “the human brain may have difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment, roughly the African savanna during the Pleistocene Epoch.“
Li & Kanazawa (2016)- evidence of how the EEA is typically seen.

Question 14

what is the issue of the EEA

Answer 14

False idea of statis since Pleistocene

We didn’t have one area of where we lived there was no one direct environment thus psychologists who seem to claim that this is the case are inherently wrong. - Homo erectus lived from the south of Africa to the north, southern Europe, southern Asia- a huge global expanse

Homo-erectus interbred with homo-sapiens so their evolutionary adaptations would have influenced ours.

Clearly we are missing something- homo erectus – know they cared for people who were injured so they were engaging in complex human like behaviours and living in a wide area of ecological conditions.

Question 15

Skeptics that past is knowable

Answer 15

). Yet when it comes to the selection pressures that shaped the brain, some are skeptical that the past is knowable (e.g., Ahouse and Berwick 1998).

Question 16

support for using the EEA and who argued

Answer 16

Hargen (1998)- argues that too much emphasis has been placed on the differences between the EEA and our current environment- or the differences that have occurred. He argues that if a species diverges too rapidly and too far from its EEA then quite simply it will go extinct. The human species is clearly not going extinct; hence the common belief that EP claims humans currently live in an entirely novel environment is incorrect. Most aspects of the modern environment closely resemble our EEA. Pain, illness, friendship, status, mating, parenting, pregnancy all work in modern society- evidence that we have not diverged from the EEA quite as much as some would say.

No one would dispute that our lungs evolved in an oxygen atmosphere (the lung EEA) nor that our immune system evolved in response to pathogens (the immune system EEA).

Question 17

what is a common misconception about the EEA

Answer 17

It is a common misconception that the EEA refers to aspects of the past that differ from the present, when it actually refers the aspects of the past whether or not they correspond to aspects of the present.

Question 18

what do we know about the EEA

Answer 18

We know that in the EEA women got pregnant and men did not. This single fact is the basis for perhaps three-quarters or more of all EP research.

The past, however, was much like the present. Physics was the same. Chemistry was the same. Geography, at an abstract level, was much the same—there were rivers, lakes, hills, valleys, cliffs, and caves. Ecology, at an abstract level, was also much the same—there were plants, animals, pathogens, trees, forests, predators, prey, insects, birds, spiders, and snakes. Virtually all biological facts were the same. There were two sexes, parents, children, brothers, sisters, people of all ages, and close and distant relatives

Question 19

what should EP remain cautious of in terms of the EEA

Answer 19

The fact remains that EP needs to remain highly cautious not to assume that the EEA was in one place at one time- and perhaps move away from the definition of the EEA as such- instead- it may be better to focus on a list of known evolutionary histories that we know we’re occurrences for all humans and make sure to point out that other issues such as what culture was like or what food humans ate is very unknown.

Question 20

what don’t we possess about the EEA

Answer 20

Don’t possess records of mullions of past years that would reveal in precise detail all of the selective events over millions of years that have led to the current design of the human body and mind.

Question 21

what other ways can we know about the EEA

Answer 21

Evolutionary psychologists also use evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, comparative biology and ethology to elucidate some aspects of an otherwise scientifically uncertain ancestral past.
Can use many sources of evidence e.g. human remans and cave paintings- which as cumulative findings yield reasonable inferences about our ancestral past that we can be relatively sure about (Buss, 2008)

Question 22

what will EP always be limited in in terms of knowledge about past selection pressures?

Answer 22

Although convergent evidence from independent data sources yields especially reasonable inferences about some past selection pressures, evolutionary psychology and indeed the entire field of psychology will always be limited by an incomplete knowledge of past selection pressures.

(or until the advent of time tra

Question 23

what may the EEA uncertainties also have led to?

Answer 23

Unwarranted reliance on hunter-gathered models

Question 24

what is important to remember about HG groups?

Answer 24

• Modern HG are not in a time capsule- can’t say that Hazda for example are the same as early homo-sapiens because they are not.
• What’s so strange about HG groups now…? In most cases to be a HG you have to be isolated to begin with or would have been pulled into historical transformations. Also some have gone back to hunter-gathering so haven’t always been hunter gatherers.
• They are not homogenous

Question 25

what is a gap that fills the space between two necessary things?

Answer 25

Spandrel

Question 26

who came up with the name spandrels and how

Answer 26

Gould and Lewontin (1979) observed that many organism ‘traits’ are not adaptations but simply incidental by products of other structures terming them spandrels.

Question 27

what is the idea behind spandrels?

Answer 27

The idea that an organism’s traits may be erroneously identified as adaptations. If spandrels and adaptations were difficult or impossible to distinguish , this would undermine claims that true adaptations have been found.

• Basic assumption that we shouldn’t assume everything is adaptive is valid.

Question 28

who argued that many things we see are just side effects and what e.g.’s did they use

Answer 28

• Gould argued that we think many things have evolved but really they are just the way they are e.g. bones are made of calcium them being white is just a side efect. g. Argued the female orgasm was a spandrel. Selection of male orgasm across many species as essential component of reproduction argued that female orgasm is non-functional and has evolved because the structure is needed to make a male orgasm happen (don’t agree lots of work on benefits of female orgasm)

Question 29

evidence that spandrels exist

Answer 29

Can get behaviours that look adaptive and useful that still aren’t adaptations- if you put live and dead ants in a petri dish- then live ants move dead ants into piles called “corpse aggregation”- clears out nest supprosdly but….
Pfeiffer, 1996- can create the same outcome in a very different way- robot with two sensors front left and front right telling it where things are like an ant cant see well straight ahead of them- rule is to avoid obsticles- means that anything in middle gets pushed around- set them going and the same outcome happens as ants where blocks are moved into piles. Can get exactly the same behavioral outcome using a very simple set of decision rules that have no direct link to the supposed outcome that has been put forward as to why we see the pattern in ants.

Question 30

whose criticisms mimic the issues of the ant and robot findings, what did they compare ET to and what other criticism did they make?

Answer 30

Gould & Lewontin who postured that the explanations that adaptionists gave for traits were analogous to Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (outlandish explanations as to why the elephant got its trunk). Criticised the acceptance of stories without sufficient empirical evidence.
They made two important epistemological criticisms of the story telling of adaptationists:
1) often use inappropriate evidentiary standards for identifying adaptations and their functions.
2) Often fail to consider alternative hypotheses to adaption.

Question 31

from Gould and Lewontin’s first issue what has now become a key issue to EP

Answer 31

Frequent criticism is that theories and assumptions of EP are not falsifiable

Question 32

what example can you use in the case of hypotheses not being falsifiable

Answer 32

The example of Rape (Thornhill and Palmer, 2000; Thornhill and Thornhill, 1990)

Question 33

what is the theory of rape and who by

Answer 33

• Theory asserts that human social behaviour is guided by specific evolved predispositions that were selected because they increased reproductive success.
• An instance of this is the idea that men have a predisposition to engage in rape behaviour towards women because this leads to an increase in their RS (Thornhill and Palmer, 2000)

Question 34

how was the theory of rape tested?

Answer 34

• In a test of this theory Thornhill and Thornhill (1990) hypothesised and found that rape victims are more concentrated in those whose age is within the normal span of fertility.

Question 35

but how is the test of rape theory not actually adequate?

Answer 35

• But this is not ample evidence to support the theory that is proposed two assumptions would need to be met for the theory to be correct- but neither of these can be falsified

1. Rape behaviour was a specific target of evolution- because adequate evidence in favour of this is not available nor identifiable, the assumption is not falsifiable.
2. Rape increases a man’s RS- although this statement is not true in our current society the researchers assert that rape increased RS in human ancestral history- but again is impossible to tested.

Question 36

in rape theory what could be falsified overall and what couldn’t?

Answer 36

• Thus, whilst the specific hypothesis that rape will target fertile women can be falsified, the assumptions and thus the theory are not.

Question 37

what is valid in the absence of clearly established background assumptions

Answer 37

• In the absence of clearly valid background assumptions the data they found is open to many explanations.
• For example younger women could be at a greater chance of rape simply because they are more likely than the very old and very young to engage in activities that increase vulnerability to rape such as being outside their homes in the evening.

Question 38

what is oft the problem with untestable assumptions?

Answer 38

above the problem with untestable assumptions is often side-stepped by presuming them to be true.

Question 39

but what have others argued about EP and falsifiability?

Answer 39

Others have argued that EP hypotheses are in fact often falsifiable and that indeed throughout the course of EP many hypotheses have been proven false (Confer et al., 2010).

They argue that although EP is a relatively young field, hundreds of empirical studies have been conducted to test a variety of evolutionary psychological hypotheses. Some have been confirmed; others have bene falsified and some have not been subjected to enough empirical tests to render a firm scientific conclusion.

Question 40

what is an example of something that has been proven true through rigorous testing

Answer 40

e.g. challenge hypothesis in males- made a number of direct predictions which were found to be true- the basis of this hypothesis is that T effects aggression which has been found to be true but T also has costs- if that is not assumed to be true then would be an issue that faced psychology/ biology as a whole rather than simply EP.

Question 41

what is an e.g. of something that has been proven false

Answer 41

For example the kin altruism theory of male homosexuality (Bobrow and Bailey, 2001)

Question 42

what does the kin altruism theory purport?

Answer 42

contends that homosexuality is an adaptation that involves a shift among those whose heterosexual mating prospects are not promising from direct mating effort to investing in kin, such as the children of one’s brothers and sisters (Wilson, 1978).

Question 43

what was the test on the kin altruism theory of male homosexuality?

Answer 43

In a direct test of this hypothesis, Bobrow and Bailey (2001) used samples of heterosexual and homosexual men matched for age, education, and ethnicity. They assayed generosity toward family members; financial and emotional investment; avuncular tendencies, such as willingness to give gifts or cash to support nieces or nephews; and general feelings of closeness toward genetic relatives. The results proved conclusive—they found no evidence for any of the key predictions made by the kin altruism hypothesis of male homosexuality.

Question 44

subsequent tests on kin altruism theory of male homosexuality

Answer 44

Subsequent empirical tests have also failed to support the kin altruism hypothesis, finding no significant differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals in generosity toward kin, general feelings of familiality, or willingness to invest in nieces or nephews (Rahman & Hull, 2005). On the basis of the current empirical evidence, we can conclude that the kin altruism theory of male homosexuality has been refuted.

Question 45

what can we say overall about falsifiability.

Answer 45

The key point is that precisely formulated evolutionary psychological hypotheses that yield specific predictions about design features that are not known to exist prior to empirical testing are fully amenable to empirical confirmation and falsification.

Question 46

what do EP hypotheses vary in

Answer 46

Evolutionary psychological hypotheses, like those from other theoretical perspectives within psychology, vary in their quality, their precision, and the degree to which they are anchored in well-established theoretical foundations. Sloppy and imprecise evolutionary hypotheses that fail to generate precise predictions deserve scientific criticism.

Question 47

what overall can be said about the “just-so stories claim”?

Answer 47

The sometimes reflexive charge that evolutionary psychological hypotheses as a rule are mere “just-so stories,” however, is simply erroneous, as the examples above demonstrate.

Question 48

what would class a phenomena that would be puzzling from an EP perspective?

Answer 48

For example those which appear to reduce an individual’s reproductive success, and cannot be explained by mismatches with, or hijacking of, our psychological mechanisms by modern day novel environmental inputs.

Question 49

e.g.s of phenomena that are puzzling and why are they

Answer 49

Most obvious is homosexual orientation, which has been called the ‘Darwinian paradox’. Exclusive homosexual orientation defies evolutionary logic since it presumably fails to increase an individuals RS

Another example is suicide- large numbers of people take their own lives each year.

Question 50

has there been support for any Evolutionary hypothesis for homosexuality

Answer 50

Although some evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed for explaining homosexuality, none have received empirical support thus far (e.g. Bobrow and Bailey, 2001)

Question 51

some explanation to suicide but then what does this fail to do?

Answer 51

Another example is suicide- large numbers of people take their own lives each year. Although suicide has been proposed to be more likely in individuals who have a dramatically reduced ability to contribute to their own reproductive fitness, e.g. relation to ill health, burdensomeness to kin and failure in heterosexual mating were strong predictors of suicidal ideation, ie. if more of a burden on family then they can’t reproduce (Brown et al., 1999). This still fails to explain suicides seen in youth, could be beneficial to overall RF.

Question 52

what can we say these inexplicable phenomenons are?

Answer 52

Such suicides are likely to be nonadaptive by-products of evolved mechanisms that malfunction (Wakefield, 2005)

Question 53

what can we say overall about suicide/ homosexuality?

Answer 53

Overall, there are puzzling phenomena such as homosexuality and suicide that remain at least somewhat inexplicable on the basis of current EP accounts.

Question 54

intro to socio-political issues of EP quote

Answer 54

Thornhill and Palmer (2000) assert that the scientific community must choose between politically motivated views of the biological world and the ‘truth’ of evolutionary psychology.

Question 55

what has led critics to claim that EP is racist and sexist?

Answer 55

Examples of underlying assumptions, values, beliefs, ideologies and training influencing all aspects of a research program are numerous in EP.

Question 56

what is an e.g. of inherent sexism in EP (monkeys)

Answer 56

e.g. Gannon (2002) points out bonobos are primates whose social sphere is female centred and female dominant. Because the idea of a female centred culture is so foreign and perhaps aversive, to many individuals the bonobo culture is labelled as an aberration ‘it is safe to assume that bonobos started out with male dominance’ (DeWaal and Lanting, 1997)  there are concerns that statements like these are simply reflected of individual ideas regarding sexual hierarchies of males and females.

Question 57

what is an e.g. of inherent sexism in EP?

Answer 57

Returning to the example of rape, Thornhill and Thornhill (1992) claim, without supporting research or references that ‘rape is not about a terrifying experience in a women’s lives, but rather a men’s mating strategy’ also arguing that in the context of rape ‘there may be an involved intuition that women lie for their own gain’ (Thornhill and Thornhill, 199) whilst failing to analyse the motivation to lie amongst men faced with a prison sentence.

Question 58

what quote sums up the idea that people don’t like evolutionary explanations for terrible things?

Answer 58

‘to propose that (rape) serves some evolutionary function is distasteful and unnecessary’- Henry Gee senior editor at Nature

Question 59

what can have a bias on assumptions in EP?

Answer 59

Thus, we see the bias that culture has on these assumptions- and there is a lack to consider one’s own cultural backgrounds in effective analysis.

Question 60

what would EP argue about gender differences?

Answer 60

Male and female bodies are profoundly similar in some ways e.g. heart and lungs but profoundly different in others e.g. the difference in sexual organs. Male and female cognitive abilities are likely to be identical in most respects, but differ fundamentally in domains like mating where the sexes have recurrently faced different adaptive problems (Buss, 2004)

Question 61

what would be fears on EP to rape?

Answer 61

In the case of issues such as rape also, many fear that providing an evolutionary explanation to these seems to justify it to some degree, and relinquishes blames from those conducting the rape.

Question 62

but what can be argued in defense of morality issues

Answer 62

Whist this may be true, it is also clear that whilst these may have evolved evolutionary, humans have also evolved parts of the brain that deal with issues of morality and understandings of what is socially acceptable- thus maybe EP needs to make more clear that we still have free will and choice.

Question 63

what don’t people like the notion of and what do they claim this makes EP?

Answer 63

People do not like the notion that phenomenon’s such as rape, homicide, infanticide, war, aggression, infidelity and deception are hardwired into our brains and are genetically evolved adaptions. Thus people argue that Evolutionary psychologists who argue an innate unchangeable nature must be therefore opposed to social or political change, and are merely attempting to scientifically justify the status quo.

Question 64

but what can be said to address claims that EP doesn’t allow socio/ political change

Answer 64

if EP predicted that social or political change were impossible, then it would be wrong on its face. The tremendous amount of social and political change over the course of human history is irrefutable.

Question 65

how is the body massively modular?

Answer 65

The body is massively modular. It contains thousands of different parts, each with specialized functions. This means that the brain could be massively modular but doesn’t mean that the brain is massively modular.

Question 66

what is modularity of mind?

Answer 66

Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or modules which have distinct established evolutionarily developed functions.

Question 67

who first developed the concept of modularity?

Answer 67

Fodor (1983) who first developed the concept of cognitive modularity

Question 68

what did Fodor state about modular systems?

Answer 68

must—at least to “some interesting extent”—fulfill certain properties:

1. Domain specificity: modules only operate on certain kinds of inputs—they are specialised
2. Informational encapsulation: modules need not refer to other psychological systems in order to operate
3. Obligatory firing: modules process in a mandatory manner
4. Fast speed: probably due to the fact that they are encapsulated (thereby needing only to consult a restricted database) and mandatory (time need not be wasted in determining whether or not to process incoming input)
5. Shallow outputs: the output of modules is very simple
6. Limited accessibility
7. Characteristic ontogeny: there is a regularity of development
8. Fixed neural architecture.

Question 69

where did fodor claim modules could be found?

Answer 69

In his views modules can be found in peripheral processing such as low-level visual processing but not in central processing

Question 70

how do Evolutionary psychologists instead define modules as?

Answer 70

functionally specialized cognitive systems that are domain-specific and may also contain innate knowledge about the class of information processed. Modules can be found also for central processing

Question 71

what is massive modularity?

Answer 71

Concept of modularity applied to far more sophisticated behaviours. Have had modules posited as the meanings- known as massive modularity. Fodor was proposing modularity for basic perception as opposed to these sophisticated behaviours.

Question 72

who particularly established massive modularity

Answer 72

Other perspectives on modularity come from evolutionary psychology, particularly from the work of Cosmides and Tooby.

Question 73

what does the perspective of massive modularity suggest?

Answer 73

This perspective suggests that modules are units of mental processing that evolved in response to selection pressures. On this view, much modern human psychological activity is rooted in adaptations that occurred earlier in human evolution, when natural selection was forming the modern human species.

Question 74

What does Fodor say about massive modularity?

Answer 74

in a later book described massive modularity as ‘modularity gone mad’ (Fodor, 2000). If one of modularity’s strongest proponents doesn’t like the massive modularity hypothesis, then there must be something pretty contentious about it.

Question 75

who has identified a key issue with modularity?

Answer 75

Gannon 2010- suggested that an issue with proposed massive modularity is that it is not informed by EP’s essential theories but has been used to explain data in conflict with the theories

Question 76

what is an example of massive modularity being used to explain data in conflict with EP theories?

Answer 76

E.g. the assumption that reproductive success is the prime motivation for human behaviour is contradicted by the observation that men are not lined up for miles to donate at sperm banks. Evolutionary psychologists explain these data by assuming that the naturally selected modules are informationally encapsulated: since sperm banks were not present in human evolutionary history, they were not part of the evolved adaption. Thus, hypotheses generated by the theories are not falsifiable because contradictory data derived from the current environment are easily dismissed as irrelevant to the hypothesis if not part of the ancestral environment; and we do not know, with any acceptable level of certainty, the conditions of the ancestral environment. T

Question 77

what is modular structure of the brain not defended by?

Answer 77

The massively modular organizational structure is defended, not on the basis of evidence, but as a necessary (but untested) assumption for the interpretation of human cognitive function within the EP paradigm.

Question 78

what is another issue with modularity in terms of brain structure?

Answer 78

Evidence also suggests that there are no intrinsic, predetermined area maps in either the cortex or the thalamus; instead, both develop their area specializations as a consequence of their inputs and the temporal (‘chronotropic’) dynamics of neural growth.

Question 79

which psychologists argue for plasticity instead and what do they argue?

Answer 79

Buller and Hardcastle (2000: 307): . . . while the adult human mind/brain typically contains a degree of modularization, its ‘modules’ are neither genetically specified nor evolutionary adaptations. Rather, they result from the brain’s developmental plasticity, which allows environmental task demands a large role in shaping the brain’s information-processing structures. The brain’s developmental plasticity is our fundamental psychological adaptation, and the ‘modules’ that result from it are adaptive responses to local conditions, not past evolutionary environments.

Question 80

what does Gannon note that discussions about modularity are

Answer 80

Gannon 2010- notes though that ‘ the purpose of the discussion above is not to demonstrate that the assumptions underlying EP are false, but rather that there is serious doubt among scholars that the validity of these assumptions can be established.

Question 81

who supports modularity?

Answer 81

A 2010 review by evolutionary psychologists Confer et al

Question 82

what is the opposite to modularity?

Answer 82

domain general hypothesis

Question 83

what did confer et al., 2010 suggest generally?

Answer 83

suggested that domain general theories, such as for “rationality,” has several problems

Question 84

why do confer et al argue for modularity (3 key points)

Answer 84

1) Testability- Evolutionary theories using the idea of numerous domain-specific adaptions have produced testable predictions that have been empirically confirmed; the theory of domain-general rational thought has produced no such predictions or confirmations.
2) rapidity– The rapidity of responses such as jealousy due to infidelity indicates a domain-specific dedicated module rather than a general, deliberate, rational calculation of consequences
3) Reactions may occur instinctively (consistent with innate knowledge) even if a person has not learned such knowledge

Question 85

what do confer et al., 2010 give as in intrinsic reaction example

Answer 85

One example being that in the ancestral environment it is unlikely that males during development learn that infidelity (usually secret) may cause paternal uncertainty (from observing the phenotypes of children born many months later and making a statistical conclusion from the phenotype dissimilarity to the cuckolded fathers)

Question 86

what are some smaller general criticisms of modularity (three)

Answer 86

Some critics have suggested that our genes cannot hold the information to encode the brain and all its assumed modules.[22] Humans share a significant portion of their genome with other species and have corresponding DNA sequences so that the remaining genes must contain instructions for building specialized circuits that are absent in other mammals (Peters and Brad, 2013)
Even within evolutionary psychology there is discussion about the degree of modularity, either as a few generalist modules or as many highly specific modules.
Moreover, critics argue that Cosmides and Tooby’s conclusions contain several inferential errors and that the authors use untested evolutionary assumptions to eliminate rival reasoning theories.[ Lloyd, 2014]