Testing the Controversy

Tybur, Joshua M.; Miller, Geoffrey F.; Gangestad, Steven W.

doi:10.1007/s12110-007-9024-y

Cited by 49 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Evolutionary studies provide a case in point: Scientists who adopt an evolutionary approach are perceived as concealing a conservative agenda (Segestrale, 2000), when in fact evolutionary psychologists (Tybur, Miller & Gangestad, 2007) and anthropologists (Lyle & Smith, 2012) are substantially more liberal than the general public, and no different ideologically from their departmental peers with other research foci. In conjunction with other recent studies, the present work provides a plausible explanation: Evolutionary methodsmuch like behavioral genetics-explain human behavior in terms of intrinsic, biological mechanisms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology between the lines: Lay inferences about scientists' values and motives

Hannikainen¹

2018

Preprint

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While philosophers emphasize the distinction between description and prescription, in practice people’s beliefs about contentious issues seem to reflect their normative commitments. Less is known about the way that people infer others’ ideology from their reports about matters of fact. In the context of scientific research on the heritability of intelligence, scientists’ normative views (Study 1a) and motives (Study 2) are inferred from the evidence they report–independently of their stated research objectives. Two pre-registered replications (Studies 1b and 3) revealed that these effects generalize to other contentious domains of behavioral and social science research. Thus, laypeople view social scientific inquiry as (partly) a guided pursuit of evidence in favor of scientists’ personal ideology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology between the lines: Lay inferences about scientists' values and motives

Hannikainen¹

2018

Preprint

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“…Evolutionary psychologists defend their discipline by asserting that these arguments are based on misunderstandings. Tybur and Miller (2007) "tested the controversy" and found that scholars in EP are actually less conservative than a typical US citizen. EP scholars also argue that the field does take culture and social learning into account, and that both genes and environment are involved in any manifest human behaviour (Confer et al, 2010;Buss & Schmitt, 2011).…”

Section: Evolutionary Psychology and Lgbtq+ Issues: A Qualitative Stumentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Psychology and LGBTQ+ Issues: A Qualitative Study of Queer Women’s Perspectives on Research Results

Burchell¹,

Firth²,

Robinson³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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This study examines reactions to a recent evolutionary psychology article that uses self-report data to claim that same-sex attraction in women evolved because men find it a desirable quality in a mate. Our study explores a novel perspective on the article by interviewing 29 women with attraction to women in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Participants read a news article about the original study, then the original article, and were then asked about their thoughts and feelings. Our research questions were as follows: 1) What cognitive and emotional reactions to the article do women with attraction to women experience? 2) Why did this article generate a lot of online criticism, from the perspective of women who are attracted to women? 3) Do papers like this cause women with attraction to women to change their opinions about psychological journals and/or psychological research? Using thematic analysis, we found seven themes: Negative emotion, identity threat, failure to address sociocultural explanations, male/hetero-centric, differences in paradigms, sensationalized news article, and contextualizing. The proliferation of articles like these represents one of many small stressors women attracted to women deal with as a minority population, and this stress can have important implications for health.

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“…Accusations of "biological determinism" have typically been accompanied by claims that belief in genetic causes undermines the hope of altering human behavior in ways concordant with liberal or progressive social ideals. Or more aggressively, that belief in genetic causes provides a biologically grounded sanction for violence and for existing distributions of social power (Sociobiology Study Group 1976;Lewontin 1980;Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin 1984;Degler 1991;Buss and Malamuth 1996;Segerstråle 2000;Pinker 2002;Vandermassen 2005;Tybur, Miller, and Gangestad 2007;Duarte et al 2015). A model of personality that incorporates a conception of "honesty" (the "H Factor") might help integrate hypotheses about underlying qualities of intellectual character with hypotheses of direct causal relationships between belief in science and belief in genetic influences (Chirumbolo and Leone 2010;Lee and Ashton 2012;Rindermann, Flores-Mendoza, and Woodley 2012;de Vries et al 2016).…”

Section: Scientific Explanation and Beliefs About Biology And Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs about Human Nature, Culture, and Science

Carroll¹,

Johnson²,

Salmon³

et al. 2017

Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture

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How far has the Darwinian revolution come? To what extent have evolutionary ideas penetrated into the social sciences and humanities? Are the "science wars" over? Or do whole blocs of disciplines face off over an unbridgeable epistemic gap? To answer questions like these, contributors to top journals in 22 disciplines were surveyed on their beliefs about human nature, culture, and science. More than 600 respondents completed the survey. Scoring patterns divided into two main sets of disciplines. Genetic influences were emphasized in the evolutionary social sciences, evolutionary humanities, psychology, empirical study of the arts, philosophy, economics, and political science. Environmental influences were emphasized in most of the humanities disciplines and in anthropology, sociology, education, and women's or gender studies. Confidence in scientific explanation correlated positively with emphasizing genetic influences on behavior, and negatively with emphasizing environmental influences. Knowing the current actual landscape of belief should help scholars avoid sterile debates and ease the way toward fruitful collaborations with neighboring disciplines.

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Testing the Controversy

Cited by 49 publications

References 13 publications

Ideology between the lines: Lay inferences about scientists' values and motives

Ideology between the lines: Lay inferences about scientists' values and motives

Evolutionary Psychology and LGBTQ+ Issues: A Qualitative Study of Queer Women’s Perspectives on Research Results

A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs about Human Nature, Culture, and Science

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