CB: Shameless self-promotion: the discipline that is most directly
involved in scientific discovery of human nature is anthropology,
cultural and biological. General biologists study other species
mainly.
You haven't been keeping up CB. Evolutionary psychology is quickly
becoming the ONLY psychology. Many free peer-reviewed papers can be
found here http://www.epjournal.net/
A book search on Amazon finds over a thousand results:
http://tinyurl.com/275rl2d Moreover, see the comments below. Although
the snip is over twelve years old, it's still the best mini-explanation
of why evolutionary psychology is so valuable.
Jay
==================================
*HANDBOOK OF EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY:* Ideas Issues and Applications,
Eds. Charles Crawford & Dennis Krebs; Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805816666
INCOMPATIBILITY OF EVOLUTIONARY AND NONEVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATIONS
Must evolutionary and nonevolutionary explanations make different
predictions? To answer this question consider two sets of explanations.
The first set contains explanations that were explicitly constructed
with evolutionary theory in mind. The second set contains explanations
that were developed without any explicit knowledge of evolutionary
theory. However, some of these latter explanations, such as commonsense
explanations like, "Blood is thicker than water," and, "It is a wise
father that knows his own child," are compatible with evolutionary
theory, although they were devised without knowledge of it. Other
members of this second set, such as those designed to explain true
altruism, where fitness costs outweigh benefits, are incompatible with
the logic of evolution by natural selection. Thus, the greater set of
all explanations that are compatible with evolutionary theory includes
all of Set I and some overlap from Set 2.
Explanations that are not compatible with evolutionary theory can be
thought of as "warp drive" explanations because warp drive is what the
crew of the Starship Enterprise use when they wish to violate Einstein's
theory of relativity to travel faster than the speed of light.
Developing explanations of physical phenomena that violate Einstein's
theory of relativity is risky, as is developing explanations about
behavior that violate Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
Hence, it is likely that any good explanation of behavior will be
compatible with an evolutionary explanation, even if it were not
explicitly developed from an evolutionary perspective. Although a good
explanation of behavior need not have been explicitly constructed from
an evolutionary perspective, the contributors to this volume are
committed to the proposition that an explicit consideration of
evolutionary theory will i! mprove the quality of explanations of human
behavior.
Why do they believe this? First, explicit evolutionary thinking can
sometimes eliminate certain kinds of errors in thinking about behavior
(Symons, 1987). For example, it has been seen that explanations that
implicitly assume organisms have evolved to act for the good of their
group or species should be treated with considerable skepticism. In
addition, use of the theory can sometimes help prevent one from making
and accepting moralistic fallacies--where one assumes that what ought to
be actually is. Consider some examples. Stepparents ought to treat their
natural and stepchildren equally. However, when Daly and Wilson (1980)
applied evolutionary thinking to the problem of child abuse, they found
that stepparents were a major source of abuse. There ought not to be
conflict within families, but Trivers (1974) has used evolutionary
theory to help us understand the within-family conflict that has
perplexed us for generations.
Recently, Haig (1993) argued for the occurrence of mother-offspring
conflict during gestation. Men and women ought to have the same
intellectual abilities, but Silverman and Eals (1992) have been able to
use evolutionary thinking to predict and explain gender differences in
some perceptual abilities. A rigorous application of evolutionary theory
may help us identify and deal with other oughts that contradict reality.
Second, because the theory of evolution explains the evolution of all
life forms, concepts developed when using it are likely to be very
general. Kinship theory (Hamilton, 1964), parental investment theory
(Trivers, 1972), sexual-selection theory (Darwin, 1871/1898), and
reciprocity theory (Trivers, 1971), for example, have been used to
explain behavior in a great many species of animals. For many, it is
intellectually satisfying to use the same theoretical framework, such as
kin selection, to help explain sterile castes in worker bees, wasps, and
ants (Hamilton, 1964); alarm calling in ground squirrels (Sherman,
1977); helping at the nest in jays (Woolfenden & Fitzpatrick, 1984);
suicide in humans (de Catanzaro, 1991); the naming of natural and
adoptive children (Johnson, McAndrew, & Harris, 1991); mortality and
risk during a crisis year (McCullough & Barton, 1991); genetic
relatedness, the biological importance of a decision, and decision rules
(Burnstein, Crandall, & Kita yama, 1994); village fissioning among
hunter-gatherers (Chagnon & Irons, 1979); and whom new babies are said
to resemble (Daly & Wilson, 1982).
Third, and most important, the theory of evolution can be used to help
scholars and scientists develop substantive testable predictions about
human behavior. Cosmides (1989) used it to make predictions about
content effects in logical reasoning. Silverman and Eals (1992) used it
to make predictions about gender differences in spatial abilities. Singh
(1993) used it to make predictions about preferences for body images.
Buss (1994) used it to make predictions about gender differences in mate
choice criteria and tactics for acquiring mates. Orians and Heerwagen
(1992) used it to make predictions about evoked responses to landscapes.
Several chapters in Part III of this book discuss recent research in
which various aspects of evolutionary theory were used to derive
testable predictions about human behavior. [pp. 8-10
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