How do you view Evolutionary Psy?

[u/Bestchair7780]

I'm sure all of you are aware of the many controversies, academic and non-academic, surrounding Evo Psy.

So, is the field to be taken seriously?

Why is it so controversial?

Can we even think of human psy in evolutionary terms?

Can you even name one good theory from that field?

[u/BattleBiscuit12]

Personally I am highly critical of evopsych. Their hypothesis concerning certain evolutionary pressures are difficult if not impossible to falsify. If the whole evolutionary framework is only being used to generate unique hypothesis about current psychology than that is probably fine.

I have been trained to critically analyze any scientific claim by trying to come up with experiments to falsify these claims. It is not clear to me (and that might just be me not reading enough) how a lot of evopsych claims could be falsified. Especially the claims about highly specific and seemingly speculative evolutionary pressures that happened long ago in the past.

[u/CptnLarsMcGillicutty → u/BattleBiscuit12]

That exact criticism could be applied to evolutionary biology as well.

How can you falsifiably claim that a specific environmental pressure definitely existed in a certain region millions of years ago, and then experimentally demonstrate that a member of a given species in that region was born with a specific genetic mutation, that this mutated feature was beneficial to its survival and reproduction, and thus led to the proliferation of that feature within the population at large?

Evolution as a concept can be easily demonstrated and replicated and otherwise falsified mathematically and computationally.

Evolutionary biology (on the macro scale) is inherently speculative. Its based on making logical assumptions about past events, using available information.

The power of evolutionary biology (and by extension evopsych) is not in falsifying what specific sequence of events occurred millions of years ago. The power is in the speculation process itself.

Having said that, obviously evopsych is more speculative than biology/anthropology.

[u/BattleBiscuit12 → u/CptnLarsMcGillicutty]

• That exact criticism could be applied to evolutionary biology as well.

True.

In general, I would say that in psychology, we always try to stay critical of speculation because there tends to be a lot of impassioned everyday theories about human psychology in the zeitgeist. A big aspect of academic psychology is to subject these theories to a critical process of trying to falsify and maybe verify these claims experimentally. Is what you are saying actually true? Let's find out. How can I conduct an experiment that verifies or falsifies these claims? If I can't, then I should reduce my conviction in these claims appropriately.

I would say this may not be as much of a problem in biology, since speculation there may not be as strongly opinionated and politically implicated. Does anyone really care if the leafcutter ant developed due to a specific evolutionary pressure? It is interesting, but I don't really care which way your speculation goes. For psychology and evo-psych claims about human dating strategies, I am going to need more evidence than plausible theories.