William Costello

The psychology behind society’s fixation on incels Despite their small numbers, incels loom incredibly large in public consciousness. A new study explains why: their stories hit our deepest evolutionary panic buttons regarding sex, status, and societal threat.

Incels capture extraordinary public attention not because they are especially numerous or violent, but because their stories tap into deep-rooted psychological biases that make them unusually memorable and shareable. https://www.psypost.org/the-psychology-behind-societys-fixation-on-incels/

Evolutionary psychology distinguishes between two broad mate retention strategies

Benefit-provisioning

Cost-inflicting (derogation, restricting autonomy)

The manosphere advocates the latter

Research consistently finds cost-inflicting tactics are used more often by lower mate value individuals.

As of 2024: 81% of US women have kids by their 40s, down 9 points from 1976.

79% get married (seven-of-eight of them have kids).

21% don't get married (half of them have kids).

Since the 1970s, married with kids dropped about 20 points, while never-married with kids increased 10 points.

Coming soon…

as for the overly male perspectives being prioritized. There have been many many female leaders in the field of evolutionary psychology since its very inception.

I don’t read it as a criticism of deriving hypotheses from an evolutionary perspective per se either. I just think that the caricature depiction of how evolutionary psychologists conceptualise the EEA is really quite juvenile.

As for relying on self reports…

bsky.app/profile/will...

If anyone is interested in an alternative to this “just so story” (ironic) about how evolutionary psychology derives hypotheses and its conceptualisation the environment(s) of evolutionary adaptedness that shaped our psychological mechanisms, then I suggest you read for yourself.

See Buss and Schmitt (2019)
Annual Review of Psychology.

Mate Preferences and Their
Behavioral Manifestations.

labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2...

See Buss and Schmitt (2019)
Annual Review of Psychology
Mate Preferences and Their
Behavioral Manifestations.

labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2...

Remarkable to characterise evolutionary psychology as solely interested in self report when it’s been triangulating diverse sources of evidence for hypotheses for decades, including substantial cross cultural evidence for the behavioral manifestations of mate preferences.

"14,532 participants across 42 societies...sex similarities and differences in the strength of social motives across adulthood and sociocultural contexts, employing generalized additive models that account for spatial autocorrelation" royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Evolutionary psychology is unfalsifiable? New scientific paper aims to kill this "zombie idea" Critics have long dismissed evolutionary psychology as “just-so stories.” A new conceptual review challenges this view, arguing the field generates rigorous, falsifiable predictions—some of which have...

🎯"[T]here are so many who are ideologically motivated to dismiss evolutionary psychology... There are those who think that we should not bother defensively correcting misconceptions and instead just focus on improving our field. I think we can and should do both."

Evolutionary themed valentines cards in our house. Saff couldn’t decide so got me two 😂

Reconciling Our Three Traditions: Human Behavioral Ecology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Cultural Evolution - HBES – by Nicolas Baumard & Jean-Baptiste André The evolutionary social sciences are grounded in the idea that evolutionary theory provides a unified framework to explain human behavior, including social n...

"In placing human agents—and their evolved interests—at the heart of cultural dynamics, the ecological approach to culture [...] reclaims the original power of inclusive fitness theory that grounded the evolutionary study of behavior"

If my 'genes made me do it', am I still responsible? Yep. Sorry. If you tell the judge that your genes made you do it, she can tell you that her genes are making her throw you in jail.

Just a reminder.

(From the evolutionary psychology FAQ I wrote as a grad student back in the 90's). 🧪 grasshoppermouse.github.io/evpsychfaq/

Men are More Likely to Agree to a Hookup When Their Phone's Battery Level is Low - Sex and Psychology We’ve long known that scarcity plays an important role in sexual attraction. For example, in a classic study, research assistants approached people at a bar at different points during the night and asked them to rate the attractiveness of other patrons.What they found was that, for men and women alike, perceived attractiveness increased as the night went on and the bar got ready to close. This finding has been replicated a few times and has been dubbed “the closing-time effect.” Basically, it means that as our opportunities for finding a hookup decrease, our standards change.

As the perceived time available to make a sexual decision decreases, men's odds of saying yes increases—a scarcity effect. https://www.sexandpsychology.com/blog/2020/2/17/men-are-more-likely-to-agree-to-a-hookup-when-their-phones-battery-level-is-low/

Bad victims: Moral transgressions against immoral victims are judged less harshly Four preregistered studies find that perpetrators who commit moral transgressions are judged less harshly when their transgressions impact individuals…

vilifying victims is an effective strategy for perpetrators seeking to avoid blame"

People don't like individuals who vigilantly monitor and reprimand wrongdoings at work.

These "hall monitors" are seen as less moral and hyper competitive (the only people who like them are other vigilantes).
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congrats, Tom! Well deserved!

That’s interesting, which ones?

The belief that evolutionary psychology makes unfalsifiable hypotheses is old, but deeply misconceived:

New paper by @costellowilliam @ProfDavidBuss et al.

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

The Scientific Revolution of Evolutionary Psychology: Current Status and Future Directions. A Commentary on Zagaria (2024) - Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology Objectives: A bibliometric analysis by Zagaria (2024) claimed that research in Evolutionary Psychology (EP) lags behind research grounded in the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) in prevalence and ...

Sorry to tell you that evolutionary psychology continues to flourish.

Political psychology, incidentally, is a domain of great evolutionary psychology work (see work from Michael Bang Peterson et al.)

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

😂. I'm quite happy that many people in America assume I'm mafia affiliated based on my surname!

Decreased Sexual Motivation during the Human Implantation Window - HBES – by James R. Roney A lot of research has investigated shifts in women’s psychology and behavior across different phases of the menstrual cycle. One pattern that has emerged in multiple studies is an…

Risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections may be elevated for women during the days when the endometrium is receptive to embryo implantation (“the implantation window”).

Now out in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
OA link: rdcu.be/e2g4X

Thanks, I agree that there’s nothing unique to EP about obstruction.

Also, do you think the flagrant hostility toward evolutionary psychologists might also drive some young scholars away and perhaps cultivate a somewhat defensive mindset among those who stay?

Like any field, many terrible studies and bad actors abound.

Glad to hear you don’t count me among them 🫡

You may be blinded by my sheer sex appeal though 😂😜

ya maybe.

Could also see Walter et al. (2020) failed replication of the greater importance of physical attractiveness in highly pathogenic environments.

Anyway, stay tuned for more inwardly critical work and pre-registered predictions from our lab coming soon. Thanks again for the review(s) 👍

I guess I don't interpret him developing a full competing theory (mate switching) when a hypothesis he originally endorsed (ovulation shifts/dual mating) was falsified as an "uneasy Burgfrieden".

See also his initial chastity mate preference hypothesis being unsupported by his own data.

Nitpicking but both items closer to 3/5 means than 2.

I suppose more research could clarify precisely what scholars mean when they endorse the items “evolutionary psychology’s theories are unfalsifiable” & “assumptions are not testable”.