Let’s take a normal scientific question- at what temperature does water freeze. Even if we didn’t already know the temperature that water freezes at, we’d be able to figure it out without a lot of discuss. There would be no compelling argument for water freezing at -40, or at 88. We’d just bust out a thermometer, test it, and know.
The cutest explanation doesn’t win. Nor does the one that fits an agenda. It just is.
Let’s take an evolutionary psychology question. Why do men prefer virgins.
Wait a minute. If we didn’t already have this idea that men preferred virgins, would we even come up with this idea? I can think of some compelling reasons why men wouldn’t prefer virgins- what better sign of fertility than having already popped out a kid? And very young women are more likely to have problems in childbirth. Maybe we could test if men right now in the societies we have prefer virgins (in reality, culture vary widely on this one.) but we couldn’t ever test why. The just-so-story is that men prefer virgins so that they don’t waste their resources on someone else’s kid. A quick moment’s thought will reveal some complications behind that idea. If you played brainstorming, you can come up with a dozen equally as likely scenarios. Maybe men like virgins because younger bodies remind them of the lithe deer they are hunting…or maybe they are just easier to catch and force into sex. Maybe virgins were often sent to go pick far away berries, so men realized they were an easy chance for sex. We could play this game all day.
The point is. it’s not science. It’s baseless speculation, with the only difference between a “good” theory and a bad one being how cute’n’clever it seems and if it fits your particular worldview.
Sure, evolutionary theory is used to promote mysogynistic viewpoints. They used to use the same methods to “prove” racist viewpoints, but you’ll notice that doing that has fallen out of favor recently. Mysogyny, not so much.
I should have stipulated that my example was drawn from one part of the field,
and that it has no more than suggestive application to the entire field.
However, the entire field has produced little if any more of practical utility
than the psychiatric subset. Masses of data, yes. Personal and public policy
guidelines, no. The study of intelligence and the various tools used for testing
intelligence would be another example of value non-added which completely
envelops a completely different subset. There we are no closer to resolution
than we were ~100 years ago, and there is no hope of obtaining resolution any
time in the foreseeable future.
So, I doubt there has been any development worth bragging about since the
word “psychology” was coined in 1748. If anyone can provide citation establishing
otherwise I would really like to have a look at it, and I do not consider speculation
about why old men prefer young women to constitute such a development.
Bullshit. Psychological testing disovered CBT, a methodology that psychiatrists to this day measure against. On the other hand, psychiatrists overstated the effectiveness of SSRIs for a long time without getting caught because the sale of the medication was so lucrative that covering up results was justified.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the word “psychology” means the same thing as “evolutionary psychology.”
I would just say that what some dismissively call “just so stories” I would call logical, but untestable hypotheses. Yes, it’s a problem that these hypotheses (often) cannot be tested, but I don’t think that means there is no value in thinking about them.
(Actually having read that, parts of it are pretty good examples of why evolutionary psychology gets criticized as “just so stories.” Particularly the bit about dragons.)
In science, if it’s untestable, it’s not real. So while these conjectures may be a fun little thought experiment, there is no real practical application. They do not prove anything, and should not be used as proof.
Though it could have been a prediction, and therefore part of a theory or explanation, what you have described, alone, is just a raw observation.
No, but you can verify that that observation is valid. Like you measure the temperature at which water freezes.
Then you can do the science. You can hypothesize why you think men prefer virgins, and then use those hypotheses to make predictions about an experiment.
I’m not saying that everything that gets labelled under EP is valid science. An innate desire for virgins is on the more dubious side IMO.
But plainly, yes, of course we can test hyptheses that certain behaviours or predispositions are innate.
The only people arguing otherwise are those that are uncomfortable with the idea that such behaviours exist.
Well yeah, you could test the observation in a given population. You could definitely say “the group of middle class white Americans in Detroit that we tested showed a preference for virgins.”
But that, on it’s own, is just plain psychology. Yes, we are able to make testable observations about human behavior. When tested across cultures in different situations (something that is almost never done) or by backing up our experiments with physical evidence, such as MRI scans, we can come up with some useful and well supported theories of how the human brain works. This is what research psychologists do, and they do it pretty well.
What we cannot do, however, is tie a modern day behavior to pre-historic times. We cannot say “Population X likes virgins, so we can assume ALL men like virgins, and this shows cavemen liked virgins, and this is because (insert story whose only merit is its cuteness).” That’s a just-so-story designed to explain the unexplainable, which is just the hip new version of the myth making process that humans have done forever.
The bingo chart had one thing exactly right- it’s kind of funny how evolutionary psychology always seems to support an “innate” gender relation that resembles 1950s America, isn’t it? Somehow, across the vast richness of human gender relations- from Tibetan polyandrists, modern female-dominated universities with their hook-up culture, the Woodabe male beauty pageants, Islamic fundamentalist extreme female opporession…somehow mid-century Americans just happen to be the one situation where our natural caveman tendencies are just perfectly expressed, free from environmental or economic factors.
Indeed, looking at how quickly gender norms have changed in the last few decades, for clearly and obviously economic/social/environmental reasons, it’s really ballsy of anyone to make a blanket assertion about gender relations. We’ve gone from “women are grudgingly accepted into select female fields at school, and are expected to marry in their late teens or early twenties” to “women dominate pretty much all higher education and are increasingly not really seeing the point of getting married at all” within two generations. My life looks like nothing that was even possible in my grandmother’s day. Such rapid, massive change would be impossible if our gender behavior was so directly related to innate tendencies.
And that is not to say there are not innate tendencies- there are. But these fundamental urges are expressed in complex ways as they interact with individuals, cultures, and social organizations.
Women, for example, may have a desire for security. There have been times where that drive for security steered us towards finding protective men to take care of us. But these days, that drive for security is steering us towards going to school and getting a decent job, and without the need for men to provide security we are getting married later and marriages have less stability.
The drive is there, but how this drive is expressed is complex, making it hard to universalize.
No it doesn’t. I have seen evolutionary psychology used to explain female sexual behaviors, including taking a mate while at the same time secretly seeking other sexual partners outside that relationship. That doesn’t exactly conform to idealized 1950s norms.
Bullshit yourself. The Wiki article, as usual the most detailed in the 1st two pages
of Googling, is nothing but cheerleading boilerplate, for the most part obviously
composed by CBT therapists. Only the brief final section presents anything in the way of rebuttal.
Here is the abstract for the article’s footnote #2:
So, here we have one faction accusing another faction of being party to not only
massive logical fallacy but also myth!!! These vitriolic charges should be addressed
at length before CBT gets credit for being a majot scinetific advance.
In the interest of transparency I also provide this citation from footnote #74:
Immunization, cure and survival rates have been improving all my life for numerous
illnesses, including the most common life-threating ones. It should have been big
news if inroad has likewise been made against mental illness. Have I missed it?
Can the psychological sciences point to improvement in our national mental health
remotely approaching improvement in cardiovascular and oncological outcomes?
The fact that people with mental illnesses are even given therapy seems to be an improvement that is completely lost on you.
The positive challenging, normalizing, approach we now take with developmentally delayed individuals, such as those with autism or Down Syndrome, is a result of psychology.
Learning and memory tools developed from cognitive psychology are used everyday.
You know that neuroscience is a branch of experimental psychology right? I’m sure you could find some useful information from that field.
What it comes down to is your first post. Your awareness is old, your old knowledge is from a specific branch of psychology, and although I mentioned 3 functional improvements from psychology research and theorizing, many millions find benefits in learning more about themselves. Maybe you shouldn’t discount knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
The fact that therapy itself is not an improvement unless it produces results
seems to be lost on you.
Sticking a needle in someone is not an “improvement” unless it provides immunity
or cure. Cutting open someones chest is not an “improvement” unless to cure
something, such as a faulty heart valve.
Recall that I specified remission. Down is not susceptible to remission. Is autism?
I would hope that after all the money and effort some patents’ lives might be made easier,
even if they are not cured. However, the explosion in autism diagnosis makes me wonder
if what is happening now in that area may be considered a form of progress, and whether
some gaming and a spoils system are at work. Furthermore efficacy of present treatment
cannot be measured until much later outcomes are known, for example, the number of autism
patients obtaining advanced academic degrees, or their income levels, or other revealing data.
Oh? Like what, and why are they not leading to greatly improved US acheivement test scores?
Have East Asians and Finns adopted these tools for the last several decades but the US has not?
It most certainly is not!
Neuroscience is the biological study of the entire nervous system. For psychology
to attempt to usurp credit for neurological advance is typical of its more devious apologists.
You have fallen far short of making a case for any functional improvement,
and you have done nothing to bring my “old awareness” up to date.
Anyone who wants to shell out ~$200 per hour for knowledge for knowledge’s sake
is welcome as long as none of it comes out of my $300 per month health insurance
premiums ($5000 copay per year).
Because most of the non-religiously motivated people who hate evolutionary psychology also hate admitting that humans have instincts. After all, once you admit humans have instincts you’ve practically admitted the validity of evolutionary psychology; where else would those instincts come from? The religious types will just say “God did it” of course, but someone who isn’t willing to do that is left with “evolution” as the answer. And hostility to admitting that we aren’t special, that we are just another species of animal is at the core of the opposition to evolutionary psychology.
I feel there is little purpose in continuing this conversation, but you might want to look up Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Social Psychology.
Try reading Kahnemann’s work. My interaction with psychology is only in that area. I know of one professor who has made a whole bunch of money applying some of these principles to the market, if you want a really measurable result. I don’t know what you’d call significant - I’d think the combination of psychology and studies of the brain would count.