I've heard of her before, and read at least one thing by her.
One nice thing about internet posts is that you can tentatively advance half-completed ideas without fear. I know (from personal experience) that academic talks are much more limiting.
true. she was reporting on statistics done on female advancement in the work place (compound disadvantage over years of promotion opportunity) which is limited in its own right
We - our brains, our behaviors, or social institutions - are products of naturally selective forces.
Again, I must bring up my tired refrain: If you mean this exclusively... that we are ONLY products of such forces, then the claim is simply false. If you mean to allow for other forces, then the question of EvoPsych's importance in explaining social biases/stereotypes is directly tied to the proportional importance of selective explanations. If it turns out that selectionist explanation is of comparatively little importance in complex social behaviour, then in fact evolutionary psychology is precisely the wrong kind of activity to engage in.
I agree with everything you said. But I very much doubt that "selectionist explanation is of comparatively little importance in complex social behaviour". It's a mixed bag, and sometimes, for some behaviors, evolutionary explanations are going to be most powerful.
I wonder. In some fields of endeavor, prowess is easily quantified, so that "success" in athletics, or big-game hunting, or financial investing, say, is pretty blatant. Anyone paying attention will know who's doing well. For these intellectual pursuits, however, I wonder if the women are supposedly unconsciously judging the success of the men by how much fuss their peers make over them and how much others defer to them... Or does the discerning woman, the one who would really "win" in terms of status and security through alliance with such a man, do best if she becomes an expert too? An intellectual connoisseur who is actually qualified to judge the quality of the man's work?
Here's a super social-construction style answer: there's no such thing as the "quality of the man's work" independent of "how much others defer to [him]". Sometimes I'm tempted to hold such a view. And it's sort of reasonable - surely part of how women (and men) judge is formed by the disciplinary standards they've been taught by dominant (usually male) voices in the profession.
An interesting question: does competence in intellectual professions actually have anything to do with reproductive fitness? Or is this just a case of evolution-induced behavior coming unlatched from its selective environment?
Hmmm... I believe there is an aspect of fulfilled expectations when it comes to reading evolutionary psychology due to the narrowness of scope and innate bias of the research. It is just too difficult to control for cultural and individual factors. They tend to take what seems to be the prevalent social science attitude of if it is true for one group of individuals, it must be true for the whole.
(For example, I wonder how her research would play out in Nordic cultures, where women have been culturally encouraged to be equals to men in all fields and there is a strong cultural value on silence and strength, especially in men. )
On another note, I find the best way to deal with someone who can't shut up, is to ignore them. I feel like if I tried to meet them on a verbal and intellectual level, they will just see another opportunity for sparring. Why I always carry a crossword or a book on me...
Definitely, a cross-cultural element would be good. There might have been one, actually: this research went on for years. But, yes, it would be a real problem for the theory if it turns out that only some cultures display this pattern of conversational dynamics.
This was a cool post and I agree generally with the thesis of not burning every evo-psych theorist for witchcraft. And I agree absolutely that the point of such causal-psychological theories is to use them as practical tools that show us the joints.
That said, I wonder how much the data distinguishes between the evo-psych hypothesis and the easy, roughly equivalent social one, in which you replace "successfully mating ancestors did this, so I do it now" with "I successfully got some before when I did this, so I do it now." The lek species traits could just as well manifest themselves as a sociological phenomenon, right?
Anyway, it's funny--for me "work and academic matters” have most often been about topics I've expected to annoy or bore other people around me who aren't similarly specialized. Since they've been in male-dominated topics, that basically means in effect that I try *not* to bring them up in mixed company. Hmm.
The learned-behavior hypothesis is a possible, but it seems a bit of a stretch. This would require that certain men are first accidentally conversationally aggressive, and then keep it up after thereby achieving sexual success. Maybe, but the attractiveness of an evolutionary hypothesis is that it doesn't require each individual organism to acquire the fitness-upping trait personally. That is, if a trait does promote fitness, it is likely to be selected for. (Unless there's no heritable basis for the trait!)
Assuming the account is right, I wonder if some men are drawn to careers that make for good cocktail party banter, precisely the avoid the problem you mention...
The learned-behavior hypothesis is a possible, but it seems a bit of a stretch. This would require that certain men are first accidentally conversationally aggressive, and then keep it up after thereby achieving sexual successWell, there's also socialization, right? Simplified model: men are likely to imitate the behavior of other men around them. Then the tendency towards conversational aggression can persist culturally without it being relearned by each individual
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One nice thing about internet posts is that you can tentatively advance half-completed ideas without fear. I know (from personal experience) that academic talks are much more limiting.
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Again, I must bring up my tired refrain: If you mean this exclusively... that we are ONLY products of such forces, then the claim is simply false. If you mean to allow for other forces, then the question of EvoPsych's importance in explaining social biases/stereotypes is directly tied to the proportional importance of selective explanations. If it turns out that selectionist explanation is of comparatively little importance in complex social behaviour, then in fact evolutionary psychology is precisely the wrong kind of activity to engage in.
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An interesting question: does competence in intellectual professions actually have anything to do with reproductive fitness? Or is this just a case of evolution-induced behavior coming unlatched from its selective environment?
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(For example, I wonder how her research would play out in Nordic cultures, where women have been culturally encouraged to be equals to men in all fields and there is a strong cultural value on silence and strength, especially in men. )
On another note, I find the best way to deal with someone who can't shut up, is to ignore them. I feel like if I tried to meet them on a verbal and intellectual level, they will just see another opportunity for sparring. Why I always carry a crossword or a book on me...
Reply
Reply
That said, I wonder how much the data distinguishes between the evo-psych hypothesis and the easy, roughly equivalent social one, in which you replace "successfully mating ancestors did this, so I do it now" with "I successfully got some before when I did this, so I do it now." The lek species traits could just as well manifest themselves as a sociological phenomenon, right?
Anyway, it's funny--for me "work and academic matters” have most often been about topics I've expected to annoy or bore other people around me who aren't similarly specialized. Since they've been in male-dominated topics, that basically means in effect that I try *not* to bring them up in mixed company. Hmm.
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Assuming the account is right, I wonder if some men are drawn to careers that make for good cocktail party banter, precisely the avoid the problem you mention...
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