In this paper, I ask feminist philosophers and science studies scholars to consider the goals of developing critical analyses of evolutionary psychology. These goals can include development of scholarship in feminist philosophy and science studies, mediation of the uptake of evolutionary psychology by other academic and lay communities, and improvement of the practices and products of evolutionary psychology itself. I evaluate ways that some practices of feminist philosophy and science studies facilitate or hinder meeting these goals, and consider the merits (...) of critical engagement with some of the scientists themselves. Finally, I describe a community of feminist evolutionary psychologists with whom it might be both fruitful and interesting to engage, and identify ways that these interactions may benefit the science and the study of the science. (shrink)

In recent times evolutionary psychologists have offered adaptation explanations for a wide range of human psychological characteristics. Critics, however, have argued that such endeavors are problematic because the appropriate evidence required to demonstrate adaptation is unlikely to be forthcoming, therefore severely limiting the role of the adaptationist program in psychology. More specifically, doubts have been raised over both the methodology employed by evolutionary psychologists for studying adaptations and about the possibility of ever developing acceptably rigorous evolutionary explanations of human psychological (...) phenomena. We argue that by employing a wide range of methods for inferring adaptation and by adopting an inference to the best explanation strategy for evaluating adaptation explanations, these two doubts can be adequately addressed. We illustrate how this approach can be fruitfully employed in evaluating claims about the evolutionary origins of language, and conclude with a brief discussion of the future of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Contemporary mate preferences can provide important clues to human reproductive history. Little is known about which characteristics people value in potential mates. Five predictions were made about sex differences in human mate preferences based on evolutionary conceptions of parental investment, sexual selection, human reproductive capacity, and sexual asymmetries regarding certainty of paternity versus maternity. The predictions centered on how each sex valued earning capacity, ambition— industriousness, youth, physical attractiveness, and chastity. Predictions were tested in data from 37 samples drawn from (...) 33 countries located on six continents and five islands. For 27 countries, demographic data on actual age at marriage provided a validity check on questionnaire data. Females were found to value cues toresource acquisitionin potential mates more highly than males. Characteristics signalingreproductive capacitywere valued more by males than by females. These sex differences may reflect different evolutionary selection pressures on human males and females; they provide powerful cross-cultural evidence of current sex differences in reproductive strategies. Discussion focuses on proximate mechanisms underlying mate preferences, consequences for human intrasexual competition, and the limitations of this study. (shrink)

The incorporation of niche construction theory (NCT) and epigenetics into an extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) increases the explanatory power of evolutionary analyses of human history. NCT allows identification of distinct social inheritance and cultural inheritance and can thereby account for how an existing-but-dynamic social system yields variable influences across individuals and also how these individuals’ microlevel actions can feed back to alter the dynamic heterogeneously across time and space. An analysis of Chinese footbinding, as it was ending during the first (...) half of the twentieth century and China was industrializing, illustrates the evolutionary dynamics of niche construction across inheritance tracks and explains regional heterogeneity as well as the persistence of a cultural belief that was socially inaccurate. Incorporating anthropological and sociological insights into an EES with NCT has the potential to proffer source laws for relationships between individual actions and macro-patterns in beliefs, structures, climate, and demography. (shrink)