The Roberto Selbach Chronicles

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The Evolutionary Psychology Nonsense

I have a friend who is all into the whole evolutionary psychology fad. It’s useful when you want to rationalize bad behaviour. I once told him that evolutionary psychology was pseudoscience to which he replied saying that I was just trying to negate the world as-is.

But apparently I’m not alone, as Jonathan Marks writes (emphasis is mine) —

I can’t shake the feeling that the methodologies I have encountered in evolutionary psychology would not meet the standards of any other science.  For a notable example, it is apparently a revelation to evolutionary psychology that one cannot readily generalize about the human condition from a sample of humans that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Perhaps this was news in psychology – creationist, evolutionary, or otherwise – but, sad to say, everybody else who works with cultural diversity knew that a really long time ago.