© University of New HampshireSubrena Smith
The field of evolutionary psychology is no stranger to critiques, given its central idea: that human behaviors can be explained in evolutionary terms and that the core units governing our actions haven't changed since the Stone Age. But Smith's paper garnered a particularly strong response after science journalist Adam Rutherford discussed it on Twitter and PZ Myers discussed it in his Pharyngula blog.
We at Gizmodo have long rolled our eyes at the often-nonsensical conclusions that some people come to when employing evolutionary psychology theory, so we were excited to chat with Smith about her work. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Gizmodo: Your paper's main refutation of the field is something called the matching problem. Can you explain what that is?
Subrena Smith: Evolutionary psychologists' thought is that, for at least some of our behaviors, they believe that we have — dare I use this term — hard-wired cognitive structures that are operating in all of us contemporary human beings the same way they did for our ancestors on the savannas. The idea is that, in the modern world, we have sort of modern skulls, but the wiring — the cognitive structure of the brain itself — is not being modified, because enough evolutionary time hasn't passed. This goes for evolutionary functions like mate selection, parental care, predator avoidance — that our brains were pretty much in the same state as our ancestors' brains. The sameness in how our brains work is on account of genetic selection for particular modules that are still functional in our environment today. [Editor's note: These "modules" refer to the idea that the brain can be divided up into discrete structures with specific functions.]
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