Rinstinkt’s Reviews > Evolutionary Psychology 101 > Status Update

In the modern state of academia, evolutionary psychology has led to many successes, including achieving popularity among students and the media. However, resistance to this field within the halls of modern academia is palpable—a fact that makes the future of evolutionary psychology necessarily unclear

... “The California Cryobank, the largest sperm bank in the country, owed a third of its business to single women in 2005, shipping them 9,600 vials of sperm, each good for one insemination.”..., “Short donors don’t exist; because most women seek out tall ones, most banks don’t accept men under 5-foot-9.” ... One could argue that the mothers who are choosing sperm in this way are engaging in eugenicist practices

... the resistance from the left tends to be much more palpable in the realm of evolutionary psychology. This is not because people on the left don’t “believe in evolution.” Rather, social liberalism is often connected with a negative reaction to the idea of innate behavioral qualities, and evolutionary psychology often gets lumped into a group of perspectives that are painted as “genetically deterministic.”

Evolutionary psychology (is) . . . subject to a level of implacable hostility which seems far out of proportion to anything even sober reason or common politeness might sanction. (Dawkins, 2005, p. 975)

applied evolutionary psychologists have helped shed light on such issues of the nature of music and art, politics, urban planning, child development and education, medicine, nutrition, exercise, and mental health. To this point, only the tip of the iceberg has been revealed regarding how powerful evolutionary psychology will be in helping us better understand the human condition

In a recent theoretical development in evolutionary psychology, Bingham and Souza (2009) argue that remote killing abilities actually led to many aspects of our unique humanity, including large-scale cooperation, egalitarianism, and an emphasis on intelligence and effective social abilities.

Not only do our closest-living relatives [chimpanzees]commit murder by forming coalitions of males who will implement a sneak attack to find, kill, and eat a young chimp from a neighboring community, but Wrangham also documented all-male coalitions of chimpanzees planning full-scale, war-like battles, leading to multiple deaths and the acquisition of territory and resources on behalf of the aggressive troop.

Typically, when we see such sexual dimorphism, we can guess that the larger sex includes a behavioral repertoire of physical fighting for access to members of the other sex. Why do bull elk fight with one another at all? Because the victors obtain access to females. Why would a male lion possibly pick a fight with a dominant, harem-holding other male (I sure wouldn’t!)? Again, access to females.

Let’s start with a series of questions. What is love? Why do people fall in love? Why do people fall out of love? Why does divorce exist? Why does monogamy exist in some cultures but not others? Are humans truly monogamous? ...

Female/Female Competition... In addition to using clothing and make-up to make themselves appear more attractive, females use various rival-derogation tactics in the process of trying to secure mates. Two primary ways that women derogate other women include (a) bringing down the reputation of other women or (b) derogating the physical appearance of other women (Fisher et al., 2009).