The weirdest people in the world

Ecological Psychology, 2004

Properly formed and properly used evolutionary hypotheses invalidate most common criticisms and must be judged, like other hypotheses in science, through their ability to be theoretically and empirically progressive. Well-formed hypotheses incorporate established evolutionary theory with evidence of actual historical conditions. A complex, multifaceted hypothesis can predict patterns of phenotypic variation that would make sense if the hypothesis is true, but be unlikely if it is false. This approach to evolutionarily guided research is illustrated via the sexual-dinichism hypothesis, which proposes historical niche divergence between the sexes during which females could still make adaptive use of trees, but larger males could not. This has led to the investigation of several traits in modern children, where evidence for predicted sex differences in behavior were discovered. We find the objections of critics (e.g., Burton, this issue) to be appropriate for criticizing post hoc evolutionary explanations and perhaps poorly developed hypotheses, but not well-formed and properly used theories. We hold that evolutionary theories are an essential part of psychology in general and ecological psychology in particular.

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2000

Psychological Inquiry, 2006

Cross-Cultural Research, 2008

T his special issue of Cross-Cultural Research is dedicated to evolutionary approaches. Each article was solicited individually; however, they form an unexpectedly cohesive corpus. Carol and Melvin Ember and Nigel Barber examine similar strains of life history theory relevant to socialization for warfare and crime. Rob and Marsha Quinlan and Frank Marlowe explore male-female complementarity in pair-bonds and the division of subsistence labor. Brad Huber and William Breedlove examine the effects of paternal certainty and kinship laterality in perinatal care. Most of the contributions here are holocultural studies by anthropologists; however, Nigel Barber's crossnational study shows that an evolutionary comparative perspective can benefit social psychology too.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010

We welcome the critical appraisal of the database used by the behavioral sciences, but we suggest that the authors' differentiation between variable and universal features is ill conceived and that their categorization of non-WEIRD populations is misleading. We propose a different approach to comparative research, which takes population variability seriously and recognizes the methodological difficulties it engenders.

The full conference program of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society began on a sunny humid Thursday morning in June in the year 2000 on the Amherst College campus and it didn’t wind down until the following Sunday afternoon. I was privileged to attend presentations by such well-known scholars as Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene). As impressive as these well-known scholars were (and there were many lesser-known though just-as-able scholars at the conference) I’d come specifically to attend the panel discussion on the use of evolutionary biology in understanding religion. Dan Kriegman was listed as the organizer and its focus would be Kevin MacDonald’s trilogy on the evolutionary strategy of Judaism... That was the year 2000. In 2020, Charles Murray, in 'Human Diversity, the Biology of Gender, Race and Class' explains: "why there is so little about evolutionary psychology in human diversity." At the end of the introduction to the book, he writes: "Hundreds of millions of years of evolution did more than shape human physiology. It shaped the human brain as well. A comparatively new discipline, evolutionary psychology, seeks to understand the links between evolutionary pressures and the way humans have turned out. Accordingly, evolutionary psychology is at the heart of explanations for the differences that distinguish men from women and human populations from each other. Ordinarily, it would be a central part of my narrative. But the orthodoxy has been depressingly successful in demonizing evolutionary psychology as just-so stories. I decided that incorporating its insights would make it too easy for critics to attack the explanation and ignore the empirical reality. I discuss some evolutionary material in my accounts of the peopling of the Earth and the source of greater male variance. That's it, however, ignoring the rest of the fascinating story." The public demonizing of evolutionary psychology began at HBES 2000 and has persisted for over two decades. I wrote a journal of the event, not because I attended as a journalist, but because I was concerned the event would be forgotten.

In this essay, I begin with an overview of a traditional account of natural kinds, and then consider David Hull’s (1986) critique of species as natural kinds and the associated notion of human nature. Second, I explore recent "liberal" accounts of human nature provided by Edouard Machery (2008) and Grant Ramsey (2013) and criticized by Tim Lewens (2012). They at- tempt to avoid the criticisms offered by Hull. After examining those views, I turn to Richard Boyd’s (1988; 1999) Homeostatic Property Cluster account of natural kinds which is flexible but detailed enough to avoid Hull’s criticisms but also those affecting the more recent views. We then consider what I call the "problem of variation." Fourth, I consider two case studies – the basic emotions and facial expressions and inbreeding avoidance and incest taboos. I argue that the former is a component of a Boydian human nature but the latter is not. The conclusion is that if there is a human nature, it must be argued for on a case-by-case basis. And, one of most discussed cases thought to be part of our nature is simply not.

2019

The goal of cross-cultural psychology to identify and explain similarities and differences in the behavior of individuals in different cultures requires linking human behavior to its context (Cole, Meshcheryakov & Ponomariov, 2011). In order to specify this relation, the focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior. Since cross-cultural psychology also deals with the evolutionary and biological bases of behavior, this focus on culture has regularly led to an unbalanced view (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis & Sam, 2011). Too often, biology and culture are seen as opposites: what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural (Chasiotis, 2010, 2011a). This article will first introduce the central concepts of natural and sexual selection, adaptation, and the epigenetic (open) genetic processes in evolutionary biology, and indicate their psychological implications. It will then argue that biolog...

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010

Henrich et al.’s critical review demonstrating that psychology research is over-reliant on WEIRD samples is an important contribution to the field. Their stronger claim that “WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual” is less convincing, however. We argue that WEIRD people’s apparent distinct weirdness is a methodological side-effect of psychology’s over-reliance on WEIRD populations for developing its methods and theoretical constructs.

Studying human behavior in the light of evolutionary theory involves studying the comparative evolutionary history of behaviors (phylogeny), the psychological machinery that generates them (mechanisms), and the adaptive value of that machinery in past reproductive competition (natural selection). To show the value of a phylogenetic perspective, I consider the ethology of emotional expression and the cladistics of primate social systems. For psychological mechanisms, I review evidence for a pan-human set of conceptual building blocks, including innate concepts of things, space, and time, of number, of logic, of natural history, and of other minds and social life, which can be combined to generate a vast array of culture-specific concepts. For natural selection, I discuss the sexual selection of sex differences and similarities, and the social selection of moral sentiments and group psychology.