What is Evolutionary Psychology?

Page Index

• Definition and Overview
• Domains and Scope of Study
• When and Where Our Mind Developed
• Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology
• Controversies – Nature vs. Nurture and Evolved Sex Differences
• Applications and Future of Evolutionary Psychology

Domains and Scope of Evolutionary Psychology (index)

Drawing from biology, primatology, archaeology, and anthropology, evolutionary psychology suggests the most important adaptive problems to solve were:

1. avoiding predators
2. eating the right food
3. forming alliances and friendships
4. providing help to children and other relatives
5. reading other people’s minds (theory of mind)
6. communicating with other people
7. selecting mates

Behavior Shaped by Evolution and Studied by Evolutionary Psychology

Several domains of human behavior are particularly illuminated by applications of the evolutionary approach. These behaviors occur in all cultures as likely evolutionary adaptations: inferring other’s emotions, discerning kin from non-kin, cooperating with others, and of course, identifying, preferring and selecting healthy mates. Cultural universals also include language, cognition, social roles, and gender roles.

Key areas of study include child development and parenting: the study of parental investment, attachment theory, alloparenting (care provided by a non-biological parent), extended-kin networks, human emotions, and parent-offspring conflict. EP studies entire realm of human social structures and prosocial behavior: gossip, indirect reciprocity, interpersonal aspects of self-enhancement, jealousy, cheater-detection, role of pathogens in prejudice, formation of alliances and friendship, forms of altruism (kin-selected, reparative/reciprocal and competitive), religion, and aggression and its derivatives such as war and murder.

Mate Selection and Reproductive Success (RS) — the Central Focus of MatingStraightTalk.com

Darwin’s theory of sexual selection asserts that qualities that facilitate reproduction may be selected even if these same qualities hinder survival.  The most important thing from a gene’s point of view is reproduction.  “Survival, from the perspective of evolution, is a tool that ultimately works toward reproduction.  Organisms that exist, must exist because their ancestors had features that led to RS.   So, features of a species that are species-typical may well have the ultimate purpose of increasing RS” (Geher, G. 2014, p. 5).

Given that sexual reproduction is the means by which genes are propagated into future generations, sexual selection plays a large role in human evolution.  The evolved mechanisms to attract and secure mates (human mating) is of critical interest to evolutionary psychologists and the central focus of MatingStraightTalk.com.

EP studies mate selection, mate poaching, mate retention, mating preferences, and conflict between the sexes.   Mating includes behaviors and psychological processes that bear directly on creating offspring:  courtship, dating, pair-bonding, extra-pair relations, sexuality, and love.

EP is critically interested in intersexual selection, intra-sexual competition, ovulation, genital morphology, male female differences and similarities in attraction, short-term and long-term mating, infidelity, assessment of mate value, fertility assessment, paternity certainty, and mating intelligence (see Mate Selection Science).

Mating intelligence is a relatively recent framework of study in EP.  It pertains to the distinction between courtship display mechanisms and mating mechanisms.  Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind, 2000) developed a theory of human creativity based on the premise that creative processes such as musical ability evolved largely to serve a mate-attraction function.  Mating intelligence identifies creative abilities that serve as fitness indicators for mate selection.

Study of Other Evolutionary Products

There are three products of the evolutionary process:  adaptations (cited above), byproducts of adaptations (also called “spandrels”), and random effects (or noise).

The evolutionary process produces byproducts of adaptations.  By-products are characteristics that do not solve adaptive problems and do not have functional design.  They are coupled with adaptations and carried along with characteristics that do have functional design (e.g. the human belly button).  EP includes the study of byproducts.

The third and final product of the evolutionary process is noise or random effects.  Random effects can be produced by mutations, sudden and unprecedented changes in the environment, or accidents during development. “Noise is distinguished from incidental by-products in that it is not linked to the adaptive aspects of design features but rather is independent of such features” (Buss, D.M., 1999, p. 38). EP also studies the random effects of evolution.

When and Where Our Mind Developed (index)

Humans (the genus Homo) appeared between 1.5 and 2.5 million years ago, in a time roughly coinciding with the start of the Pleistocene epoch.  The Pleistocene is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world’s most recent period of repeated glaciations. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology.

Because the Pleistocene ended only 11,700 years ago, most human adaptations either newly evolved during the Pleistocene or were maintained during that era.   EP therefore proposes that the majority of human psychological mechanisms are adapted to survival and reproductive problems frequently encountered in Pleistocene environments.

Put another way (and perhaps overstated): “Around 100,000 years ago, some of our ancestors began to emigrate out of Africa and eventually colonized the whole world.  But 100,000 years is only about 5,000 generations – too short a time for evolution to produce major changes.  Humans have not changed that much in that time, so we can ignore it when discussing the evolution of the mind.  “This means that all the history of human civilization and culture, from the birth of agriculture some 10,000 years ago until the present, is mostly irrelevant to understanding the design of the human mind” (Evans, D., & Zarate, O., 2005, p. 46).

Mental Modules Unique to Humans

John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, pioneers in EP, argued that there are hundreds of special-purpose mental modules (adaptation capacities) in the human mind.  Some modules evolved after the human species split from our closest relative, the chimpanzee. These modules are unique to humans.  To investigate the most distinctively human modules, the ones we do not share with any other animals, we must look at the environment in which our ancestors lived after the human lineage split from the chimpanzee.   That occurred about 6 million years ago.  From that time until about 100,000 years ago, our ancestors lived on the East African savanna.

African Savanna – the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness

All organisms are the products of generations of selection under whatever ecological conditions existed during that extended time.  John Bowlby (1969) called this the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA).   So, it is believed that the human mind evolved on the African savanna.  The climate was hot and sunny.  Flat plains were covered with long grass and dotted with trees, some of which were rich in food like fruits and nuts.  The social environment was tight-knit groups with a complex social structure. Interacting with other people in the group was just as important for survival as being able to detect and escape from predators.

Natural selection favored preferences, motivations, and cognitions that developed in environments abundant with the resources needed to sustain life while avoiding environments that lacked such resources and posed risks to survival.  These preferences and this process are called the “savanna hypothesis” because the African savanna fulfilled these requirements and is where humans are thought to originate.

Correcting Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology (Adapted from Al-Shawaf, 2019) (index)

EP sees total congruence between learning and evolution; they are natural explanatory partners – perfectly compatible.

Many evolutionary hypotheses are about learning.  Humans are endowed with evolved learning mechanisms embodied in the brain.   For instance, the claim that humans have an evolved fear of snakes and spiders does not mean that people are born with this fear.  Instead it means that humans are endowed with an evolved learning mechanism that acquires a fear of snakes more easily and readily than other fears. Learning itself is a Darwinian process and provides one of several possible mechanisms of inheritance in addition to conventional genetic processes.

EP does not claim that products of evolution are present at birth or emerge very early in development.

This is not how natural selection works.  Adaptations come online during the developmental phase in which they are needed – they develop reliably in all or most members of a species during the appropriate developmental state of an organism’s life.

EP does not imply that behavior is genetically determined.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that everything in the mind, body, and brain is co-determined by genes and the environment.  Environmental pressures drive the evolution of adaptations and adaptations require environmental input to develop properly during an organism’s lifespan.  Environmental triggers are necessary to activate the adaptation in the present.  All adaptations have a genetic basis, but are not genetically determined.  Genes often build different minds in response to different environments.

Different environments influence the way the mind causes behavior.   Thus, evolutionary psychologists accept that it is possible to change most human behavior. This flexibility is an important part of how we are designed.  Natural selection has programmed human development to be contingent on various environmental triggers.

“However, humans are not infinitely flexible.  Changes in the environment still interact with a relatively stable genome and a relatively fixed mental architecture.  We can’t make people fly just by giving them plastic wings” (Evans, D. & Zarate, O., 2005, p. 161).

EP does not suggest behavior will be uniform across cultures; it suggests the neurocognitive machinery that produces behavior will be uniform across cultures.

Natural selection has sculpted a universal ability to learn language, but the actual language learned depends on where a person grows up.  “Evoked culture” refers to cultural differences between groups that arise from the combination of a universal psychological mechanism with environmental inputs that differ across cultures.  Cultural differences in mating strategy demonstrate this by the response to a particular operational sex ratio in the local environment.   Evolutionary approaches to psychology predict cross-cultural universality at the level of information processing mechanisms, not at the level of behavior.

EP does address individual difference.

Although evolutionary psychology began with the study of universal and sex-typical mechanisms, the last twenty years has produced a plenitude of research on individual differences related to personality characteristics, sexual jealousy, disgust, mating strategies, and within-sex variation, just to name a few.

EP does not think everything is an adaptation.

Evolution also yields “byproducts” (spandrels) and “noise.”  Examples of byproducts include racism, sexual fetishism among men, homicide, uxoricide (killing of a wife), and filicide (killing of a son or daughter), religion and belief in the supernatural.  Evolutionary biology uses the term “spandrel” for features of an organism arising as byproducts rather than adaptations that have no clear benefit for the organism’s fitness and survival.

Evolutionary psychologists accept that much of human behavior is a side-effect of modules designed for other things. Some authors believe that the great products of human civilization — including art, religion, and science, are side-effects of modules originally designed for other purposes.  However, Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind, 2000) and most evolutionary psychologists now say that capacities for creative expression are in fact essential modules, or primary adaptations inside the global adaptation of sexual selection.

EP does not use questionable research methodology – is not “just-so stories.”

Just-so storytelling refers to the process by which a researcher notices something about human behavior, proposes an explanation for it (an evolutionary one in this case), and then decides to believe that explanation without further inquiry or testing.  This criticism asserts EP over-applies evolutionary explanations and that there are no safeguards against such over-application.  But, it is a misconception that evolutionary psychologists will take any finding and mold it into an evolutionary explanation after the fact.

This “bottom-up” scientific approach is a normal part of science and is used in EP; a researcher notices something about human behavior, comes up with a hypothesis to explain the behavior, uses this hypothesis to generate new predictions, and then tests those predictions.  A bottom up-approach can potentially lapse into story-telling if the researcher stops and does not test the new predictions.  But, according to Laith Al-Shawaf, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, in “Seven Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology,” (Areo, 2019), most evolutionary psychologists do not make that mistake.  Rather, they generate novel predictions from hypotheses and proceed to test them in empirical studies.  EP yields predictions about what we might find when we test modern humans under a particular condition.

Important to note in response to this criticism: much of EP also uses a top-down research method — uses a theory to generate a hypothesis, drives specific predictions for that hypothesis, and then tests those specific predictions.

EP does not assert that what is true ought to be true (the “naturalistic fallacy”).

Evolutionary psychologists attempt to describe what human nature is like, not prescribe what humans should do.  They argue that discoveries of EP could be used to inform left-wing polices just as much, if not more, than right–wing policies.  For example, the equal distribution of wealth could be advocated for by knowing that humans are adapted to live in groups in which inequality is relatively low.  EP does not make moral or value judgements.

EP does not believe in or promote eugenics.

EP does not believe in selective breeding or optimizing the gene pool.  EP is focused on human behavior as shaped to optimize an individual’s own chances of reproduction with no regard for saving the species.  Natural selection happens at the level of the individual organism.  Eugenics is a group-selection doctrine.  But it is true that finding mates with good genes is one of the major functions of mate choice across all sexually reproducing species.

Trends in sperm donor choice – choosing the quality of sperm based on phenotypal features of the genetic father, has been cited as a concern.  From the New York Times: “Short donors don’t exist because most women seek out tall ones; most banks don’t accept men under 5 foot 9.”   Choice of sperm donor is simply another version of individual mate choice.  A donor profile is no different than a dating profile.   Obviously, a woman wants a taller man to father her child.

Controversies and Resistance to Evolutionary Psychology (index)

Nature versus Nurture

EP has been entangled in the philosophical and social science debate of nature versus nurture.  EP does not align with the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) — the “blank slate,” “relativist,” “social constructionist,” or “cultural determinist” perspective that has dominated the social sciences throughout the 20^th century.  The SSSM assumes the mind was shaped primarily, if not entirely, by culture.

Some evolutionary psychologists contend sociocultural influences on the mind and behavior have been overstated, while the importance of evolutionary factors have been understated.  (Mackiel, A., Quillete, April 8, 2019.)  Socialization and culture do not exist independently of the human mind.  Human minds are what created culture in the first place.  Also, it would be virtually impossible for humans to acquire and learn their culture and all its complexity without innate mechanisms in place to make it happen.

Sociocultural and evolutionary explanations are not necessarily at odds with each other.   Both often operate simultaneously to cause most human actions, such as aggressive behavior.  Problems arise when proximate explanations, like sociocultural theories, are used in place of ultimate explanations, or evolutionary theories, to explain human characteristics.

Preeminent evolutionary psychologist, David Buss, says “evolutionary psychology is explicit in formulating an interactionist framework.  Psychological adaptations evolve precisely to respond to recurring environmental challenges and are activated only when those environmental events, or key cues to them, occur” (Buss & von Hippel, 2018).  As stated above, evolutionary psychologists believe that everything in the mind, body, and brain is co-determined by genes and the environment.

Evolutionary psychologist Glenn Geher offers, in summary: “Given this focus on both environmental and innate cusses of behavior, coupled with a genuine focus on proximate and ultimate cause of behavior, evolutionary psychology is truly an approach to psychology that embraces both the nature and nurture side of that debate” (Geher, G., 2014, p. 22).

Evolved Behavioral Sex Differences: THE Central Controversy of our Cultural Moment

EP believes men and women show some natural differences as a result of evolutionary processes; there are evolved behavioral sex differences. Much of modern academia in the social sciences rejects this idea from a “social constructivist – blank slate” theoretical perspective. Modern day feminist theory and activism considers the proposition of evolved behavior sex differences as anathema to progress for gender equality, and rejects the science of evolved behavioral sex differences for political reasons.

In aggregate, men and women differ in physical morphology, emotions, behavior, cognition, hormones, brain structures, and a host of mechanisms for mate selection and sexual psychology.  (See Biological Differences, Sexual Differences, Science of Attraction and Beauty.)

There are also similarities; evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists do not deny the similarities. But it is the differences that tend to be denied and downplayed, with many mischievous results for heterosexual relationships and our educational system, health care and mental health systems, criminal justice system, social policies, and political advocacy.  There are also assaults on free speech and a censorship of ideas related to evolved behavior sex differences (see Men’s Issues).

Beliefs in Academia, Women’s Studies, Among Non-Parents and Political Liberals

Responding to growing evidence of bias against EP, especially in academia, Glenn Geher (State University at New York at New Paltz) and Daniel Gambacorta (New Mexico State University) did a study (2010) to examine the degree to which political orientation, parental status, and academic employment related to attitudes about the origins of human behavioral sex differences.

They found that academic employment was predictive of a belief that sex differences are a result of “nurture.” Being an academic seemed to predispose one to deny the influence of biological forces in behavioral sex differences.  The effect was higher among those working in sociology and women’s studies.  Scholars from these fields held stronger attitudes that nurture is primary in explaining the differences between boys and girls, sex differences in human adults, sex differences between hens and roosters, and universal features of human psychology.   These scholars underscored nurture over nature for all variables except the one explaining the behavioral difference between cats and dogs.

Political orientation was strongly related to attitudes about the origin of sex differences in both children and adults. Political liberals were more likely to endorse “nurture” as a cause of such origins.  Parents were more likely than non-parents to endorse “nature” for sex-difference variables.

Geher and Gambacorta concluded that male-female differences are much more politically volatile than EP research on emotions, universal fear responses, or anything else.

Bias Among Social Psychologists

In 2018, researchers David Buss and William von Hippel found that EP is a controversial field among social psychologists.  Despite being in agreement that Darwinian evolution is true and applies to physical human traits, social psychologists were mixed on whether evolution applies to human minds.

Buss and von Hippel suggested that members of The Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) worried that empirical documentation of evolved gender differences would be exploited to justify unequal treatment of women.  Although this concern applied mostly to differences in cognitive abilities, it appeared the concern was generalized to a rejection of other evolved gender differences. 

Equality is not Sameness

It has been suggested that some (mostly female) neuroscientists and other critics of EP conflate equality with sameness and assume that a commitment to equal treatment of the sexes is dependent on there being no differences between the sexes.  Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker addressed this idea with clarity in The Blank State (2002): “Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.”  (A full treatment of research and views about sex differences in the brain is beyond the scope of this document. See Biological Differences, Sexual Differences, and blog posts.)

Core of the Resistance

There is concern among some experts inside and outside the field of EP about the misuse or bias in scientific data in light of political concerns.  Buss and von Hippel (2018) argue, using evolutionary principles, that some resistance to EP stems from psychological adaptations for maintaining in-group coalitions and punishing competing coalitions.  In other words, this particular resistance to EP aims to broadcast, as virtue signaling, one’s support for gender equality and social justice.

Buss and von Hippel also found that some social psychologists reject the role of sex-differentiated hormones in social behavior.   Buss and von Hippel cite the example of Cordelia Fine’s (2017) book Testosterone Rex: Unmasking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds, which was broadly praised by journalists but negatively reviewed by evolutionary biologists.  Fine discounts the influence of testosterone in causing desire for sexual variety.

Yet, there is significant evidence for sex differences in the desire for sexual variety (Schmitt, 2003, 2017).  Examples include the number of different sexual partners desired, time elapsed before seeking intercourse, patterns of pornography consumption, responses to sexual invitation from strangers, motives for extramarital affairs, and the perpetrators of sexual harassment.

As Buss and von Hippel point out, gender differences are universal across cultures and large in magnitude.  Despite this bounty of evidence, Fine and others have repeatedly rejected the findings because (it appears) they are perceived to interfere with strivings for gender equality.  “There exists overwhelming evidence for evolved sex differences in human psychology.  The evidence is as strong as any in the social sciences.  Rejection based on the misperception that they interfere with the goal of achieving gender equality degrades the science and delays scientific progress” (Buss and von Hippel, 2018).

Applications and Future of Evolutionary Psychology (index)

As stated on the mission page of the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society (AEPS), “the theoretical and empirical findings that have emerged from Evolutionary Psychology over the past several decades have laid the foundation for a novel approach to solving a vast array of social, political, and ecological challenges we now face.”

“Indeed, knowledge of our evolved psychological adaptations and the circumstances in which they are selectively activated and de-activated, facilitates our ability to create justice via social change.  Knowledge of our evolved psychology, far from impeding social change, provides powerful tools for creating social justice” (Buss, D. & von Hippel, W., 2018).

EP has implications for a host of social problems including racism, poverty, poor education, and violence to name a few. EP has already been applied to child development, educational systems, social relationships, family systems, intimate relationships, sexuality, infidelity, altruism, and aggression.

AEPS seeks more evolutionarily informed (EI) problem-solving on parenting, environmental conservation, psychotherapy, medicine, education, nutrition and exercise, business procedures, and public-policy-making.

Evolutionary Politics

The application of EP to our current political environment is quite revealing and instructive.  In Sex, Power, and Partisanship:  How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide (2019), Hector Garcia explores how evolutionary adaptations reveal and predict our Left-Right political divide and a litany of issues.  Garcia shows how male competition is a driving force behind such issues as affirmative action, social welfare, contraception, abortion, taxes, criminal law, and foreign policy.  Importantly, he reveals how women compete with other women and make alliances with dominant men. (MatingStraightTalk.com addresses this collusion.  See Undiscussables.)  Garcia applies the evolutionary lens to conservatism versus liberalism, equality versus hierarchy, “big ape” authoritarianism, the politics of sexual control, resources and mating strategies, and the power of tribes.   This is a tough critique of what is happening but brings awareness to what is often undiscussable – the underbelly of our political instincts that have deep ancestral roots.

The Future of Evolutionary Psychology

The future of evolutionary psychological research has much to offer in recognizing and ameliorating the “evolutionary mismatches” in our modern life.   “Since organic evolutionary processes take a long time to effect change, our minds are actually better suited to ancestral, preagricultural contexts than they are to modern contexts” (Geher & Wedberg, 2020, p. 8).

Studies of pre-agricultural forms of diet and exercise (the paleo nutrition and fitness movement) and ways to increase “social capital” (human connectedness) in our cities are examples of solution-focused evolutionary psychology.  EP recognizes that we are the most “communal ape.”  Reciprocal altruism is part of our evolutionary heritage.  Applications of evolutionary psychology can explicate and encourage this expression.  Glenn Geher and Nicole Wedberg have written a groundbreaking book that integrates EP with the field of positive psychology.  They suggest we might want to “treat others like you live in a world of 150 people” (Positive Evolutionary Psychology, Darwin’s Guide to a Richer Life, Geher & Wedberg, 2020, p. 115).

Geher and Wedberg propose other positive applications of EP: the study of moral emotions, human universals of happiness, the underpinnings of religion and spirituality, and the effects of the natural world (biophilia, the love of living things) on the human mind.

The future of EP may be defined and supported by a strong affinity for an interdisciplinary approach within the academy and by collaborations with scholars from outside psychology departments.  Led by Geher, The State University of New York at New Paltz offers interdisciplinary evolutionary psychology (EvoS) programs.  Geher and Wedberg’s book helps build a bridge to a vast and deep reservoir of research in the fields of happiness and positive psychology.  The future application of EP to community building might also tap the robust practices and models in the fields of civic engagement and participatory democracy that are aligned with creating and harvesting social capital, developing livable neighborhoods, and deciphering the common good (e.g. The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation and the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation).

Application to Modern Mate Selection and Mating Economy

While the applications of EP to current social issues are varied and broad, the study of human mating systems and mate selection science has primarily been the subject of basic (as opposed to applied) research.  But applications of mate selection science can and perhaps need to be made to assure our optimal health and well-being.   Mating Straight Talk.com hopes to facilitate this application of EP and mate selection science for the benefit of modern intimate relationships and bring more honesty, empathy, and acceptance to the conversation of who we are and what we need as men and women.

A Note of Caution

Regarding the future of EP, one must consider the misconceptions and controversies discussed above.  Geher perhaps said it best with a note of caution: “As the most interdisciplinary and, perhaps, powerful paradigmatic approach within the behavioral sciences, this area of inquiry has potential to connect all areas of human inquiry, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, literary studies, and more.  On the other hand, resistance to the field is downright palpable, and this resistance does not seem to be letting up.”  (Geher, 2014, p. 142).  This was true in 2014 and it may be even more true now.  Therefore, the future of evolutionary psychology is a bit uncertain.

References for Controversies, Applications, and the Future of Evolutionary Psychology

Al-Sharwaf, L., (2019) Seven Key Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology, Areo, (August 20).

Baumeister, R.F., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Sexual economics: Sex as female resource for social exchange in heterosexual interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 339-363.

Buss, D.M., & Schmitt, D.P. (2011). Evolutionary psychology and feminism. Sex Roles, 64, 768-786.

Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204-232.

Buss, D.M., & von Hippel, W. (2018). Psychological Barriers to Evolutionary Psychology: Ideological Bias and Coalitional Adaptations. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 6(1) 148-158.

Eagly, A.H. (2016). When passionate advocates meet research on diversity, does the honest broker stand a chance? Journal of Social Issues, 72, 199-222.

Garcia, H., (2019). Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide, (2019).

Geher, G. (2014). Evolutionary Psychology 101.

Geher, G., & Gambacorta, D. (2010). Evolution is not relevant to sex difference in humans because I want it that way! Evidence for the politicization of human evolutionary psychology. EvoS Journal, Volume 2(1).

Geher, G., & Wedbeg, N., (2020). Positive Evolutionary Psychology, Darwin’s Guide to a Richer Life.

Mackiel, A. (2019) What Explains the Resistance to Evolutionary Psychology? Quilette (April 8).

Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

Schmitt, D.P. (2017). The truth about sex differences. Psychology Today. (November).

Schmitt, D.P. et al. (2003). Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 85-104.

Von Hippel, W. Buss, D.M., (2017). Do ideologically driven scientific agendas impede the understanding and acceptance of evolutionary principles in social psychology? In J.T Crawford & L. Jussim (Eds.), The Politics of Social Psychology (pp. 7-26).