The Evolutionary Psychology of Social Behavior: Examining the New Science of Human Nature

Northern Illinois University, Dekalb IL

Investigators

Abstract

SES 99-85820 - David J. Buller (Northern Illinois University) "The Evolutionary Psychology of Social Behavior: Examining the 'New Science of Human Nature'" This project undertakes a comprehensive, critical examination of the theoretical tenets and methodology of Evolutionary Psychology. The term "evolutionary psychology" is sometimes used to designate a field of inquiry that encompasses an extremely broad range of work, which has in common only a very general commitment to the idea that an evolutionary perspective will inform us about human cognition, emotion, and behavior. In contrast, the term "evolutionary psychology" is also frequently used to designate only work conducted within a specific set of theoretical and methodological commitments shared by a prominent and highly influential group of researchers in this field (most notably, David Buss, Leda Cosmides, Martin Daly, Steven Pinker, Donald Symons, John Tooby, and Margo Wilson). The shared theoretical commitments of this group are: (1) the human mind consists of "hundreds or thousands" of modules, which are (2) adaptations to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our Pleistocene ancestors; (3) these adaptations are universal in Homo sapiens, so (4) evolved human psychology consists in "a single, universal panhuman design," which constitutes "human nature"; consequently, (5) individual psychological differences are not adaptive. In addition to these tenets, this group of researchers is united in its commitment to a core set of exemplars of empirical research (for example, Buss's work on mate preferences, Cosmides's work on cheater detection, and Daly and Wilson's work on "discriminative parental solicitude"). In this narrower sense, then, "evolutionary psychology" designates research within a framework that strongly resembles a Kuhnian paradigm. The focus of this project is this paradigm, designated "Evolutionary Psychology" (in upper case, so as to distinguish it from evolutionary psychology, the field of inquiry). The purpose of this project is twofold. First, the PI will investigate theoretical and empirical problems with each of the above five tenets of Evolutionary Psychology. Second, the PI will investigate methodological problems with Evolutionary Psychology's most prominent explanatory exemplars concerning the psychology of mate choice, infidelity, jealousy, parental care, and social cooperation. These investigations will show that the field of evolutionary psychology will progress toward a more accurate evolutionary understanding of human psychology only once the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm has been replaced. The project will result in a book, which will be the first sustained and comprehensive critical examination of the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm in the literature. The intended audience of this book consists of three primary groups: (1) philosophers whose areas of interest are philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of biology, or philosophy of human nature; (2) behavioral scientists whose areas of research are evolutionary psychology, behavioral biology, or anthropology; and (3) students of these fields.