Sad Hominid Arguments

Via “Tyler Cowen”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/04/evolutionary_th.html , a rather wonderful example of the absurdities of gung-ho evolutionary psychology. Edward H. Hagen, Paul J. Watson and J. Anderson Thomson Jr. “propose”:http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~hagen/HWT.pdf that severe depression is adaptive – it serves a functional purpose. It compels others to help the victim and thus redounds to his or her long term advantage. In short, depression is “an unconsciously calculated gamble to gain greater long-term benefits.”

This is a near-perfect example of what might be dubbed (with no apologies whatsoever to “Cosmides and Tooby”:http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html) the Standard Evolutionary Psychology Model. First, take some human trait or behaviour. Bonus points if it’s something weird like “slash fiction”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000398.html that’s likely to attract the interest of the Sunday supplement editors. Second, construct an “ad hominid argument”:http://homepage.mac.com/jholbo/homepage/pages/blog/blog19.html#201 claiming that this trait or behaviour served some functional need for hunter-gatherers on the veldt. Third, use your findings to justify some right-wing shibboleth or another, showing that hunter-gatherer societies hardwire us for perfectly competitive markets or the like (in fairness, Hagen, Watson and Thomson jr. don’t do this). Fourth, write article. Repeat as often as necessary to get tenure and/or the attention of the popular press. Of course, at no stage of the process need you deign to provide convincing empirical evidence that might sully the clarity and vigour of your argument. It’s wretched stuff, that doesn’t do any favors to Darwinian theory. That our minds are undeniably the product of evolutionary forces doesn’t and shouldn’t provide a license for half-baked functionalist explanations of the psychology of everyday life.