Abstract
I discuss two types of evidential problems with the most widely touted experiments in evolutionary psychology, those performed by Leda Cosmides and interpreted by Cosmides and John Tooby. First, and despite Cosmides and Tooby's claims to the contrary, these experiments don't fulfil the standards of evidence of evolutionary biology. Second Cosmides and Tooby claim to have performed a crucial experiment, and to have eliminated rival approaches. Though they claim that their results are consistent with their theory but contradictory to the leading non-evolutionary alternative, Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas theory, I argue that this claim is unsupported. In addition, some of Cosmides and Tooby's interpretations arise from misguided and simplistic understandings of evolutionary biology. While I endorse the incorporation of evolutionary approaches into psychology, I reject the claims of Cosmides and Tooby that a modular approach is the only one supported by evolutionary biology. Lewontin's critical examinations of the applications of adaptationist thinking provide a background of evidentiary standards against which to view the currently fashionable claims of evolutionary psychology.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Axelrod, R.: 1984, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, New York.
Axelrod, R. and Hamilton, W. D.: 27 March 1981, 'The Evolution of Cooperation', Science 211, 1390-1396.
Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J.: 1992, The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, New York.
Blonder, L.: September 1993, 'Review of the Adapted Mind', American Anthropologist 95, 777-778.
Cheng, P. W. and Holyoak, K. J.: 1983, Schema-based inferences in deductive reasoning. Anaheim, 25th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Cheng, P. W. and Holyoak, K. J.: 1984, Pragmatic schemas for deductive reasoning. San Antonio, 25th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society.
Cheng, P. W. and Holyoak, K. J.: 1985, 'Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas', Cognitive Psychology 17, 391-416.
Cheng, P. W. and Holyoak, K. J.: 1989, 'On the Natural Selection of Reasoning Theories', Cognition 33, 285-313.
Cheng, P. W. and Holyoak, K. et al.: 1986, 'Pragmatic Versus Syntactic Approaches to Training Deductive Reasoning', Cognitive Psychology 18, 293-328.
Chomsky, N.: 1975, Reflections on Language, Random House, New York.
Chomsky, N.: 1980, Rules and Representations, Columbia University Press, New York.
Cosmides, L.: 1985, 'Deduction or Darwinian Algorithms?: An Explanation of the 'Elusive' Content Effect on the Wason Selection Task', Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University.
Cosmides, L.: 1989, 'The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped How Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task', Cognition 31, 187-276.
Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J.: 1987, 'From Evolution to Behavior: Evolutionary Psychology as the Missing Link', in J. Dupre (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 277-306.
Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J.: 1995, 'Beyond Intuition and Instinct Blindness: Toward an Evolutionary Rigorous Cognitive Science', in J. Mehler and S. Franck (eds.), Cognition on Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 69-105.
Dawkins, R.: 1986, The Blind Watchmaker, Norton, New York.
Economist (no author noted): 1993, Review of The Adapted Mind 326, 82.
Fiske, A. P.: 1991, Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations, Free Press, New York.
Fodor, J. A.: 1983, The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Gigerenzer, G. and Hug, K.: 1992, 'Domain-specific Reasoning: Social Contracts, Cheating, and Perspective Change', Cognition 43, 127-171.
Gould, S. J. and Lewontin, R. C.: 1979, 'The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B205, 581-598.
Levins, R. and Lewontin, R. C.: 1985, The Dialectical Biologist, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lewontin, R. C.: 1974, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Columbia University Press, New York.
Lewontin, R. C.: 1978, 'Adaptation', Scientific American 239(3), 212-230.
Lewontin, R. C.: 1985, 'Adaptation', in R. Levins and R. C. Lewontin (eds.), The Dialectical Biologist, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 65-84, originally published as 'Adattamento' in Enciclopedia Einaudi, vol. 1. Turin, 1977.
Lewontin, R. C.: 1991, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, Harper Collins, New York.
Mayr, E.: 1983, 'How to Carry Out the Adaptationist Program?' American Naturalist 121, 324-334.
Miller, G. F. and Todd, P. M.: 1994, 'A Bottom-up Approach with a Clear View of the Top: How Evolutionary Psychology Can Inform Adaptive Behavior Research', Adaptive Behavior 3(1), 83-95.
Mithin, S.: Spring 1997, 'Review of the Adapted Mind', Journal of Anthropological Research 53, 100-102.
Nisbett, R. E. and Cheng, P. W.: 1988, Conditional reasoning, 29th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Chicago.
Nisbett, R. E., Fong, G. T., Lehman, D. and Cheng, P.W.: 1987, 'Teaching Reasoning', Science 238, 625-631.
Pinker, S.: 1997, How the Mind Works, W.W. Norton, New York.
Pinker, S. and Bloom, P.: 1990, 'Natural Language and Natural Selection', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 707-784. Reprinted (1992) in J. Barkow, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind, pp. 451-493.
Shepard, R. N.: 1987, 'Evolution of a Mesh between Principles of the Mind and Regularities of the World', in J. Dupre (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality, Blackwell, Oxford.
Symons, D.: 1987, 'If We're All Darwinians, What's the Fuss About?', in C. Crawford, D. Krebs and M. Smith (eds.), Sociobiology and Psychology, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Tooby, J.: 1985, 'The Emergence of Evolutionary Psychology', in D. Pines (ed.), Emerging Syntheses in Science, Santa Fe Institue, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 67-75.
Tooby, J. and DeVore I.: 1987, 'The Reconstruction of Homind Behavioral Evolution through Strategic Modeling', in W. G. Kinzey (ed.), The Evolution of Human Behavior: Primate Models, State University of NY Press, New York, NY, pp. 183-237.
Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L.: 1989, 'Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Part I: Theoretical Considerations', Ethology and Sociobiology 10, 29-49. 'Pt II: Case study: A Computational Theory of Social Exchange', Ethology and Sociobiology 10, 51–97.
Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L.: 1990a, 'The Past Explains the Present: Emotional Adaptations and the Structure of Ancestral Environments', Ethology and Sociobiology 11, 375-424.
Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L.: 1990b, 'On the Universality of Human Nature and the Uniqueness of the Individual: The Role of Genetics and Adaptation', Journal of Personality 58, 17-67.
Tooby, J. and Cosmdies, L.: 1992, 'The Psychological Foundations of Culture', in J. Barkow, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 19-136.
Trivers, R.: 1971, 'The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism', Quarterly Review of Biology 46, 35-57.
de Waal, F. B. M.: 1989, Peacemaking among Primates, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
de Waal, F. B. M.: 1991a, 'The Chimpanzee's Sense of Social Regularity and its Relation to the Human Sense of Justice', American Behavioral Scientist 34(3), 335-349.
de Waal, F. B. M.: 1991b, 'Complementary Methods and Convergent Evidence in the Study of Primate Social Cognition', Behaviour 118, 297-320.
de Waal, F. B. M. and Harcourt, A. H. (eds): 1992, Coalitions and Alliances in Humans and Other Animals, Oxford University Press, New York.
de Waal, F. B. M. and Johanowicz, D. L.: 1993, 'Modification of Reconciliation Behavior through Social Experience: An Experiment with Two Macaque Species', Child Development 64, 897-908.
de Waal, F. B. M. and Luttrell, L. M.: 1988, 'Mechanisms of Social Reciprocity in Three Primate Species: Symmetrical Relationship Characteristics or Cognition?' Ethology and Sociobiology 9, 101-118.
Williams, G. C.: 1966, Adapation and Natural Selecton, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Williams, G. C.: 1985, 'A Defense of Reductionism in Evolutionary Biology', Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 2, 1-27.
Wimmer, H. and Perner, J.: 1983, 'Beliefs about Beliefs: Representation and Constraining Function of Wrong Beliefs in Young Children's Understanding of Deception', Cognition 13, 103-128.
Wrangham, R. W., McGrew, W. C. and de Waal, F. B. M. (eds): 1994, Chimpanzee Cultures, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lloyd, E.A. Evolutionary Psychology: The Burdens of Proof. Biology & Philosophy 14, 211–233 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006638501739
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006638501739