Maestripieri et al. present a compelling case for why attractiveness wins social favor. We enjoyed the breadth of the review and found the central argument compelling. However, we were less enthused by the manner in which the authors presented other perspectives (indeed, entire disciplines) as foes to be vanquished, rather than allies in a common enterprise. Such a framing risks exacerbating perceptions of “evolutionary psychology” as an unwelcome wolf at the door.
We see little value – and potentially high costs – in pitting “social psychologists” against “evolutionary psychologists.” Social psychology describes a collection of research lines dedicated to studying topics diverse in scope, including emotion, cooperation, competition, morality, and political ideology. Evolutionary psychology describes an approach to understanding psychology, guided by a core set of theoretical principles (Buss Reference Buss1995). Social psychology is a content area without a unifying theory (Kelley Reference Kelley2000), and evolutionary psychology is a theoretical perspective without a clearly defined content area (at least in terms of traditional psychological subdisciplines). The two are not natural (nor possible) foes in a debate regarding the underpinnings of the phenomenon the authors wish to explain.
Indeed, any account of the human capacity to perceive attractiveness relies on some evolutionary assumptions. Those assumptions might imply functionally specialized mechanisms that identify traits that, over evolutionary history, have been associated with fertility and genetic quality. Or they might imply a content-free “blank slate” that soaks up culture and stereotypes like a thirsty sponge – what Tooby and Cosmides (Reference Tooby, Cosmides, Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby1992) refer to as the “Standard Social Science Model.” Neither of these perspectives is intrinsically “social psychological,” both perspectives are “evolutionary,” and both perspectives imply different testable predictions, many of which the target article authors aptly describe.
Diversity within evolutionary perspectives
Some of the resistance to evolutionary perspectives might stem from erroneous assumptions that evolutionary perspectives imply a single hypothesis – perhaps a hypothesis that seeks to explain a given psychological trait as directly promoting mating success. Consider a type of question that we, as researchers who identify as both social psychologists and evolutionary psychologists, often receive from our colleagues: What is the evolutionary explanation for (insert phenomenon here)? Such questions are misconceived because there is no single evolutionary explanation for social psychological phenomena. Instead, evolutionary psychology offers a type of meta-theory with the potential to subsume and organize midlevel theories and, in doing so, generate multiple competing hypotheses (for a recent example, see an exchange between Tybur et al. Reference Tybur, Inbar, Güler and Molho2015a; Reference Tybur, Inbar, Güler and Molho2015b; and Shook et al. Reference Shook, Terrizzi, Clay and Oosterhoff2015). We fear that using the definitive article before “evolutionary hypothesis” or “evolutionary explanation,” as the target article authors do, might exacerbate this misconception.
Consider how evolutionary psychologists could generate a number of accounts (not discussed in the target article) for the social effects of attractiveness. Such biases could stem from psychological mechanisms that function to detect and avoid infectious individuals, if attractive features provide information about an individual's current or future infectiousness (Kurzban & Leary Reference Kurzban and Leary2001). Or they could stem from psychological mechanisms that function to identify and target social allies who receive benefits from others, as attractive individuals do (Sell et al. Reference Sell, Tooby and Cosmides2009). Both of these perspectives are “evolutionary” alternatives to the reproductive value account presented in the target article. To be sure, the authors do not state that there is a single evolutionary explanation for the phenomenon they are analyzing, but they describe “mating motive” accounts as the evolutionary explanations for prosocial and financial biases. In doing so, they risk playing into the hands of evolutionary psychology's critics, many of whom find repeated appeals to mating motives to be narrow oversimplifications of the complexities of human behavior that they too are dedicated to investigating.
For this and other reasons, social psychology's adoption of evolutionary theory has been slow, contentious, and fraught with misunderstandings (Park Reference Park2007). For example, evolutionary perspectives are often erroneously associated with an activist conservative political agenda (Tybur et al. Reference Tybur, Miller and Gangestad2007), a political agenda at odds with social psychology's overwhelming liberalness (Inbar & Lammers Reference Inbar and Lammers2012). Hence, evolutionary psychology can be viewed as a hostile enterprise – a wolf at the door – competing with social psychologists for grant funding, journal space, and Ph.D. students. This slows the conversation, limits knowledge exchange, and restricts the integration of empirical findings from “competing” subdisciplines.
In the current instance, evolutionary theory is not in competition with (some) economists' taste-based discrimination model of the social advantages attractiveness affords, nor with (some) social psychologists' stereotype-based accounts. Instead, it provides an ontologically based foundation for interpreting why these tastes and stereotypes exist in the first place. Evolutionary psychology, in general, provides a grounded distal framework, but it requires proximal mechanisms as proof of concept. If perceptions of attractiveness – and resulting behaviors – are adaptations, then they should elicit behavior that is “adaptive.” Among others, positive stereotypes and taste preferences serve this function. They complement the motivational state piqued by physical attraction, and they provide a proximal trigger for adaptive behaviors, such as increased acts of prosociality (Jensen-Campbell et al. Reference Jensen-Campbell, Graziano and West1995). By themselves, positive stereotypes and taste preferences cannot explain the relationship between attractiveness and prosociality at any fundamental level. They are interesting observations, but they are more interesting, more navigable, and more integrated in the light of an overarching theory of human behavior such as evolutionary psychology provides.
Despite its promise, evolutionary psychology has at times been annexed in the literature as a precocious new kid on the block. Evolutionary psychologists have sometimes responded to such rejection by investing in research that seeks to offer simple “proofs” that evolutionary theory has some role in explaining human psychology (see mating motives). For the field of psychology at large, this dynamic slows our ability to harness the power of a unified theory of human behavior. Such a theory, evolutionary or otherwise, could span the boundaries of the ever-increasing subdisciplines, increasing diversity of thought and limiting groupthink. In short, the offering by Maestripieri et al. highlighted for us that psychological science might be better advanced were the wolf to live among the lambs.
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Maestripieri et al. present a compelling case for why attractiveness wins social favor. We enjoyed the breadth of the review and found the central argument compelling. However, we were less enthused by the manner in which the authors presented other perspectives (indeed, entire disciplines) as foes to be vanquished, rather than allies in a common enterprise. Such a framing risks exacerbating perceptions of “evolutionary psychology” as an unwelcome wolf at the door.
We see little value – and potentially high costs – in pitting “social psychologists” against “evolutionary psychologists.” Social psychology describes a collection of research lines dedicated to studying topics diverse in scope, including emotion, cooperation, competition, morality, and political ideology. Evolutionary psychology describes an approach to understanding psychology, guided by a core set of theoretical principles (Buss Reference Buss1995). Social psychology is a content area without a unifying theory (Kelley Reference Kelley2000), and evolutionary psychology is a theoretical perspective without a clearly defined content area (at least in terms of traditional psychological subdisciplines). The two are not natural (nor possible) foes in a debate regarding the underpinnings of the phenomenon the authors wish to explain.
Indeed, any account of the human capacity to perceive attractiveness relies on some evolutionary assumptions. Those assumptions might imply functionally specialized mechanisms that identify traits that, over evolutionary history, have been associated with fertility and genetic quality. Or they might imply a content-free “blank slate” that soaks up culture and stereotypes like a thirsty sponge – what Tooby and Cosmides (Reference Tooby, Cosmides, Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby1992) refer to as the “Standard Social Science Model.” Neither of these perspectives is intrinsically “social psychological,” both perspectives are “evolutionary,” and both perspectives imply different testable predictions, many of which the target article authors aptly describe.
Diversity within evolutionary perspectives
Some of the resistance to evolutionary perspectives might stem from erroneous assumptions that evolutionary perspectives imply a single hypothesis – perhaps a hypothesis that seeks to explain a given psychological trait as directly promoting mating success. Consider a type of question that we, as researchers who identify as both social psychologists and evolutionary psychologists, often receive from our colleagues: What is the evolutionary explanation for (insert phenomenon here)? Such questions are misconceived because there is no single evolutionary explanation for social psychological phenomena. Instead, evolutionary psychology offers a type of meta-theory with the potential to subsume and organize midlevel theories and, in doing so, generate multiple competing hypotheses (for a recent example, see an exchange between Tybur et al. Reference Tybur, Inbar, Güler and Molho2015a; Reference Tybur, Inbar, Güler and Molho2015b; and Shook et al. Reference Shook, Terrizzi, Clay and Oosterhoff2015). We fear that using the definitive article before “evolutionary hypothesis” or “evolutionary explanation,” as the target article authors do, might exacerbate this misconception.
Consider how evolutionary psychologists could generate a number of accounts (not discussed in the target article) for the social effects of attractiveness. Such biases could stem from psychological mechanisms that function to detect and avoid infectious individuals, if attractive features provide information about an individual's current or future infectiousness (Kurzban & Leary Reference Kurzban and Leary2001). Or they could stem from psychological mechanisms that function to identify and target social allies who receive benefits from others, as attractive individuals do (Sell et al. Reference Sell, Tooby and Cosmides2009). Both of these perspectives are “evolutionary” alternatives to the reproductive value account presented in the target article. To be sure, the authors do not state that there is a single evolutionary explanation for the phenomenon they are analyzing, but they describe “mating motive” accounts as the evolutionary explanations for prosocial and financial biases. In doing so, they risk playing into the hands of evolutionary psychology's critics, many of whom find repeated appeals to mating motives to be narrow oversimplifications of the complexities of human behavior that they too are dedicated to investigating.
For this and other reasons, social psychology's adoption of evolutionary theory has been slow, contentious, and fraught with misunderstandings (Park Reference Park2007). For example, evolutionary perspectives are often erroneously associated with an activist conservative political agenda (Tybur et al. Reference Tybur, Miller and Gangestad2007), a political agenda at odds with social psychology's overwhelming liberalness (Inbar & Lammers Reference Inbar and Lammers2012). Hence, evolutionary psychology can be viewed as a hostile enterprise – a wolf at the door – competing with social psychologists for grant funding, journal space, and Ph.D. students. This slows the conversation, limits knowledge exchange, and restricts the integration of empirical findings from “competing” subdisciplines.
In the current instance, evolutionary theory is not in competition with (some) economists' taste-based discrimination model of the social advantages attractiveness affords, nor with (some) social psychologists' stereotype-based accounts. Instead, it provides an ontologically based foundation for interpreting why these tastes and stereotypes exist in the first place. Evolutionary psychology, in general, provides a grounded distal framework, but it requires proximal mechanisms as proof of concept. If perceptions of attractiveness – and resulting behaviors – are adaptations, then they should elicit behavior that is “adaptive.” Among others, positive stereotypes and taste preferences serve this function. They complement the motivational state piqued by physical attraction, and they provide a proximal trigger for adaptive behaviors, such as increased acts of prosociality (Jensen-Campbell et al. Reference Jensen-Campbell, Graziano and West1995). By themselves, positive stereotypes and taste preferences cannot explain the relationship between attractiveness and prosociality at any fundamental level. They are interesting observations, but they are more interesting, more navigable, and more integrated in the light of an overarching theory of human behavior such as evolutionary psychology provides.
Despite its promise, evolutionary psychology has at times been annexed in the literature as a precocious new kid on the block. Evolutionary psychologists have sometimes responded to such rejection by investing in research that seeks to offer simple “proofs” that evolutionary theory has some role in explaining human psychology (see mating motives). For the field of psychology at large, this dynamic slows our ability to harness the power of a unified theory of human behavior. Such a theory, evolutionary or otherwise, could span the boundaries of the ever-increasing subdisciplines, increasing diversity of thought and limiting groupthink. In short, the offering by Maestripieri et al. highlighted for us that psychological science might be better advanced were the wolf to live among the lambs.