The Evolutionary Psychology of Social Behavior: Examining the New Science of Human Nature

SES 99-85820 - David J. Buller（北伊利诺伊大学）“社会行为的进化心理学：检验‘人性的新科学’”这个项目对进化心理学的理论原则和方法论进行了全面的、批判性的检验。“进化心理学”一词有时被用来指一个研究领域，它包含了极其广泛的工作，其共同之处只是一个非常普遍的观点，即进化的观点将告诉我们关于人类认知、情感和行为的信息。相比之下，“进化心理学”一词也经常被用来指在一组特定的理论和方法承诺中进行的工作，这些承诺是由该领域的一群杰出的、极具影响力的研究人员共同承担的（最著名的是大卫·巴斯、勒达·科斯米德斯、马丁·戴利、史蒂文·平克、唐纳德·西蒙斯、约翰·托比和玛戈·威尔逊）。这一群体的共同理论承诺是：(1)人类思维由“成百上千”个模块组成，这是(2)对我们更新世祖先狩猎采集生活方式的适应；(3)这些适应在智人中是普遍存在的，因此(4)进化的人类心理包含“单一的、普遍的泛人类设计”，这构成了“人性”；因此，(5)个体心理差异不具有适应性。除了这些原则之外，这组研究人员还一致致力于一套核心的实证研究范例（例如，巴斯关于配偶偏好的研究，科斯米德斯关于骗子检测的研究，以及戴利和威尔逊关于“歧视性父母关怀”的研究）。在这个狭义上，“进化心理学”指的是在一个与库恩范式非常相似的框架内进行的研究。这个项目的重点是这个范式，命名为“进化心理学”（大写，以区别于进化心理学，探究领域）。这个项目的目的是双重的。首先，PI将调查进化心理学上述五个原则的理论和实证问题。其次，PI将研究进化心理学中关于配偶选择、不忠、嫉妒、父母照顾和社会合作的最突出的解释性范例的方法论问题。这些研究将表明，只有在进化心理学范式被取代之后，进化心理学领域才会朝着对人类心理学更准确的进化理解前进。该项目将产生一本书，这将是文献中第一个对进化心理学范式的持续和全面的批判性检查。本书的目标受众包括三个主要群体：(1)哲学家，他们感兴趣的领域是科学哲学，心理学哲学，生物学哲学或人性哲学；(2)研究领域为进化心理学、行为生物学或人类学的行为科学家；(3)这些领域的学生。

SES 99-85820 - David J. Buller (Northern Illinois University)"The Evolutionary Psychology of Social Behavior: Examining the 'New Science of Human Nature'"This project undertakes a comprehensive, critical examination of the theoretical tenets and methodology of Evolutionary Psychology.The term "evolutionary psychology" is sometimes used to designate a field of inquiry that encompasses an extremely broad range of work, which has in common only a very general commitment to the idea that an evolutionary perspective will inform us about human cognition, emotion, and behavior. In contrast, the term "evolutionary psychology" is also frequently used to designate only work conducted within a specific set of theoretical and methodological commitments shared by a prominent and highly influential group of researchers in this field (most notably, David Buss, Leda Cosmides, Martin Daly, Steven Pinker, Donald Symons, John Tooby, and Margo Wilson). The shared theoretical commitments of this group are: (1) the human mind consists of "hundreds or thousands" of modules, which are (2) adaptations to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our Pleistocene ancestors; (3) these adaptations are universal in Homo sapiens, so (4) evolved human psychology consists in "a single, universal panhuman design," which constitutes "human nature"; consequently, (5) individual psychological differences are not adaptive. In addition to these tenets, this group of researchers is united in its commitment to a core set of exemplars of empirical research (for example, Buss's work on mate preferences, Cosmides's work on cheater detection, and Daly and Wilson's work on "discriminative parental solicitude"). In this narrower sense, then, "evolutionary psychology" designates research within a framework that strongly resembles a Kuhnian paradigm. The focus of this project is this paradigm, designated "Evolutionary Psychology" (in upper case, so as to distinguish it from evolutionary psychology, the field of inquiry).The purpose of this project is twofold. First, the PI will investigate theoretical and empirical problems with each of the above five tenets of Evolutionary Psychology. Second, the PI will investigate methodological problems with Evolutionary Psychology's most prominent explanatory exemplars concerning the psychology of mate choice, infidelity, jealousy, parental care, and social cooperation. These investigations will show that the field of evolutionary psychology will progress toward a more accurate evolutionary understanding of human psychology only once the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm has been replaced. The project will result in a book, which will be the first sustained and comprehensive critical examination of the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm in the literature. The intended audience of this book consists of three primary groups: (1) philosophers whose areas of interest are philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of biology, or philosophy of human nature; (2) behavioral scientists whose areas of research are evolutionary psychology, behavioral biology, or anthropology; and (3) students of these fields.