William Costello

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”.

YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast) The Behavioral Immune System with Josh Tybur

This week, we talk to @joshtybur.bsky.social about the immune system in your head. 🤯
youtu.be/O0t8WpICTyo
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-x6vk5...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

bsky.app/profile/will...

The mate switching hypothesis Leaving one mating relationship and entering another, serial mating, is commonly observed in many cultures. An array of circumstances can prompt a mat…

Finally, that evolutionary psychologists are unwilling to challenge our “friends” is demonstrably false.

My supervisor has well documented disagreements with his former student about dual mating V mate switching and Martin Daly about adaptations for murder.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It’d have been nice if you raised the @adamrutherford.bsky.social citation concerns in your review. Perhaps you did and we neglected to rectify, the paper was a long time in the works. Many other contemporary examples we could have chosen, but apologies to Rutherford if he feels mischaracterized.

I am confused by your seeming to distancing yourself from falsifying a key prediction (ovulation shifts) stemming from the dual mating hypothesis.

Were these not critical tests of that hypothesis?

bsky.app/profile/rube...

Evolutionary psychology. Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations - PubMed Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psycholog …

Accusations of panadaptationism have been dealt with thoroughly throughout the decades.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20141266/

Our lab is from an adaptationist tradition, but we do highlight other evolutionary forces in our paper.

Challenging misconceptions is not all evolutionary psychologists do. We publish data in support of pre-registered hypotheses and have work that is much more self-critical of our field. Not all our work can be published all at once. We do discuss some areas for improvement in this already long paper.

I think it is misguided to think that evolutionary psychology should just tolerate widespread misconceptions and that the they will be resolved by being more self-critical and having more pre-registration (although these are of course important).

bsky.app/profile/rube...

I don't think our paper is "aimed at YouTubers"

We cited fairly recent empirical data (Jonason & Schmitt, 2016) about academics beliefs about EP’s falsifiability.

We had one line on a popular YouTube video (concerningly championed by some evolutionary social scientists).

bsky.app/profile/will...

I'm a graduate student preparing to go on the job market. I care a great deal about the (mis)conceptions about our field that pervade academia and cultural consciousness.

I think challenging this misconception in a broad psych journal is worthwhile.

You are free to disagree.

Thanks for taking the time to review our paper and other recent work from our lab.

We will try to take your constructive criticism on board going forward.

I will respond to a few points here in this thread.