You searched for evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary Psychology: Predictively Powerful or Riddled with Just-So Stories?

This essay is part of a series on the value of evolutionary approaches to psychology. Part 1 clears away seven key misconceptions. Part 2 shows why evolution is necessary for…

View Post

View Post

16 min

Seven Key Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary approaches to psychology hold the promise of revolutionizing the field and unifying it with the biological sciences. But among both academics and the general public, a few key misconceptions…

View Post

View Post

23 min

Science & Tech

Assessing Female Mate Preferences: Answers to Ten Common Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology

A few years ago, I was giving an invited presentation to an audience of mostly sociologists and family studies professors on the topic of evolution and human reproductive strategies. I…

View Post

View Post

14 min

Features

Postmodernists Don’t Understand Evolutionary Psychology

“Racist Wilson, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” — A member from the International Committee Against Racism (prior to dumping a pitcher of water on E.O. Wilson’s head),…

View Post

View Post

20 min

Evolutionary Psychology in the Humanities: Shakespeare’s Othello

“We believe that works of art are shaped by our evolved human nature, by culture and by individual experience. We therefore distinguish ourselves from cultural constructivists who effectively give exclusive…

View Post

View Post

13 min

Why Do We Get Sick? The New Science of Evolutionary Medicine

If you infect a rabbit with a virus or a bacterium, it’ll start to run a fever. Why? The surprising answer is that fever is not a disease; it’s a…

View Post

View Post

11 min

The Why is Not the Same as the How: Levels of Analysis and Scientific Progress in Psychology

The emerald-colored jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) parasitizes the common cockroach with a sophistication that beggars the imagination. Here’s how the morbid scene unfolds. The wasp begins by injecting a venomous…

View Post

View Post

6 min

Science & Tech

The Evolutionary Roots of Identity Politics

“We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping…” — James Douglas Morrison It seems these days whether you are an Islamist in Dhaka, an Antifa extremist in Boston, a…

View Post

View Post

9 min

The Bedevilments of Sex: Louise Perry’s “The Case against the Sexual Revolution”

The legacy of the sexual revolution has been scrutinised, even called into question altogether recently. What was traditionally hailed as a liberation, in particular for women and sexual minorities, that…

View Post

View Post

5 min

Oversharing Celebrities and the Search for Meaning

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear almost any “how.”—Viktor Frankl The findings of evolutionary psychology suggest that most people derive meaning from their loyalties to family, tribe…

View Post

View Post

9 min

Human Nature and the Human Future: Emotional Amoral Egoism, by Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan

Certain questions have vexed philosophers for millennia: What is human nature? Do we have free will? How can we build healthy societies? Are we motivated more by emotion or by…

View Post

View Post

11 min

When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault

The topic of David Buss’s new book, When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault, has scarcely ever been more relevant. It seems that, every…

View Post

View Post

9 min

The Trick of Evocative Science Writing: “Books Do Furnish a Life” by Richard Dawkins

In his previous essay collection, Science in the Soul, Richard Dawkins ponders why a scientist has never received the Nobel Prize in Literature—the only possible exception, Henri Bergson, was “more…

View Post

View Post

11 min

Politics

In Defense of the George Floyd Uprising

Conservatives, especially white conservatives, have always been reluctant to seriously discuss the politics of race in America. From Bill Buckley’s equivocation on Jim Crow segregation and “outside agitators” in the…

View Post

View Post

7 min

Politics

Israel: Toxic Church-State Relations and the Necessity of Secularism

When it was formed in 1948, Israel was declared a place for the world’s Jews to call home after almost two millennia of Jewish exile and persecution and the recent…

View Post

evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary Psychology: Predictively Powerful or Riddled with Just-So Stories?

Seven Key Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology

Assessing Female Mate Preferences: Answers to Ten Common Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology

Postmodernists Don’t Understand Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology in the Humanities: Shakespeare’s Othello

Why Do We Get Sick? The New Science of Evolutionary Medicine

The Why is Not the Same as the How: Levels of Analysis and Scientific Progress in Psychology

The Evolutionary Roots of Identity Politics

The Bedevilments of Sex: Louise Perry’s “The Case against the Sexual Revolution”

Oversharing Celebrities and the Search for Meaning

Human Nature and the Human Future: Emotional Amoral Egoism, by Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan

When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault

The Trick of Evocative Science Writing: “Books Do Furnish a Life” by Richard Dawkins

In Defense of the George Floyd Uprising

Israel: Toxic Church-State Relations and the Necessity of Secularism

New to Areo

Join the Discussion

Read by Category