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If we truly believe in the values of equality and peace and want them to reign once again as the norm for human beings, then we need to (a) find ways to deflate the egos, rather than support the egos, of the despots, bullies, and braggarts among us; (b) make our ways of life more playful; and (c) raise our children in kindly, trusting ways. Read More
WRT 1/a - reverse dominance
I'm guessing you've heard of the tall poppy syndrome, which sounds very much like "reverse dominance", so the practice exists as a relic even in our modern societies. We certainly love to build our celebrities up to near-godlike status for, seemingly, the mere purpose of pulling the stilts out so we can delight at their swift plummet back to earth. One doesn't have to look very hard to see at least the resentment of greatness
It's easy to understand how such a cultural trait would function to keep everyone in a simpler society in the stable equilibrium condition of being both equal (in a lowest-common-denominator sort of way) and thus at a level not far above subsistence.
In the kind of unchanging but inherently fragile ecosystems where such cultures survived up to the present, this must have been a valuable survival trait. In different environments it could easily be more of hindrance if it operates too efficiently.
Not tall poppy syndrome
Thanks for this thought, Martian. According to the Wikipedia link you provided, the tall poppy syndrome involves the resentment of genuine achievement. Hunter-gatherers don't resent achievement. They value high skill and creativity. What they won't tolerate is bragging, swaggering, telling other people what to do, etc. I think we see that in our society to some degree, too. We admire achievement, but also admire modesty. But we are inconsistent. Altogether too often, in my opinion, we inflate the egos of people whose egos are already dangerously large. -Peter
Intra-sexual competition among males
The sexual dimorphism of humans today (and among hunter-gatherers) suggests a bit less of a peaceful, cooperative existence.
Rather, it suggests physical contests among males for "wives" could be pretty intense.
See my previous posts related to sexual selection and greater male reproductive variance:
https://my.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/2011...
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/2011...
Of course, "what was" doesn't always determine what "should / could be."
Cheers,
Michal Mills
Dramatically declining sexual dimorphism
Hi Michael,
I enjoy your blog. Thanks for joining in here.
I would never argue that there is no male competition for females among hunter-gatherers, nor that there is a total lack of physical violence. Indeed, the anthropological reports suggest that when violence does occur, it usually involves men, and sexual jealousy usually is the motive. However, band hunter-gatherers engage in much less of such violence than do people in most agricultural societies, and they never approve of it. They have developed creative ways of diffusing such anger and solving the problems without physical aggression.
Now, however, let me turn to your use of sexual dimorphism data. It is true, overall, that sexual dimorphism in body size correlates roughly, over species, with degree of polygyny and with degree of male physical competition for mating opportunities. However, as you well know, sex differences of all sorts, including differences in height, can be supported by other processes as well. For example, simple female choice can account for sex differences. If we suppose that women have tended to prefer taller men--perhaps because they are in some environments better hunters--this could result in men being taller than women even if physical aggression never occurred.
An even better argument, however, could be made that the sexual dimorphism we see today in human stature is vestigial. Here are some numbers to chew on:
Among our ancestors of about 3.5 million years ago (Australopithecus afarensis) males were, on average, 59" tall and females were, on average, 41" tall. In other words, males were a whopping 44% taller than females.
Among our ancestors of about 2 million years ago (Homo habilis), males were, on average, 62" tall and females were, on average, 49" tall. In other words, males were by this point only 26% taller than females.
Among modern human beings, males are on average 69" tall and females are on average 63" tall. In other words, now males are only about 9% taller than females.
(See http://anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/australo_2.htm)
Wow, what a decline in sexual dimorphism! Another way to look at it is this: Over the past 3.5 million years, females in our human line have gained 22 inches in stature while males have gained a mere 10 inches in stature! What does that tell us about natural selection over the past 3.5 million years of hominin evolution, or the 2 million years of human evolution?
In theory, at least, the remaining sex difference in size could be completely vestigial. It has been gradually selecting out, but just hasn't selected out completely yet.
Peace be with you. -Peter
Perceptions of the Environment
I'm wondering about the environment being perceived as benign or threatening.
There was some stuff on this and how it related to hierarchy and violence. I'm afraid I can't remember the reference for the life of me.
Benign vs. threatening environment
Evan, anthropologists report that hunter-gatherers see the environment generally as benign, despite the ever present risks of predators, storms, etc. Interestingly, nearby farming communities generally see the same environment as threatening. This is reflected, too, in religious beliefs and stories. To hunter-gatherers the gods are playful pranksters, but generally relatively benign. To farmers, the gods are to be feared, and sacrifices must be made to them regularly. Gods generally represent forces of nature and capture people's perceptions of nature. This does relate to hierarchy. I wrote about this to some degree in this previous post: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200906/play-makes-us-h....
-Peter
I would argue as to which
I would argue as to which method win in the long-term: competition vs. cooperation. History has shown competitive people and critters win out over cooperative people and critters. Hence when imperialists came from large islands and continents to small islands where peaceful people and animals lived they were too peaceful for their own good and got subjucated or killed. It's nice to romanticise about such cultures however the modern world wasn't built on niceties.
I guess that would depend on
I guess that would depend on how you define winning. Of course, a peaceful society wouldn't win a war, but what result do we want to support as a culture?
Also, cooperation in the work place yields far better results than competition.
To quote Perry Buffington, PhD, "If in fact competition brings out the "beast" in us, then
research demonstrates that cooperation surely brings out the
"best" in us. This finding has been held in virtually every
occupation, skill, or behavior tested. For instance, scientists
who consider themselves cooperative tend to have more published
articles than their competitive colleagues. Cooperative
businesspeople have higher salaries. From elementary grades to
college, cooperative students have higher grade point averages.
Personnel directors who work together have fewer job vacancies
to fill. And, not surprisingly, cooperation increases
creativity."
"band" hunter-gatherers?
Thanks for another great article.
I'm curious as to your use of the word "band" with respect to the HG groups you are speaking about. I recently read a history of our local indigenous people, a coastal Indian tribe of the Pacific Northwest. While this history was restricted to the last 5,000 - 10,000 years they were certainly living a HG lifestyle. Yet they did engage in warfare with neighbouring tribes and had dominance hierarchies (in this tribe, family clans), however they also tended to live in groups larger than the 20 - 50 you talked about in your article. So, when you refer to "band" HG groups, are you specifying the smaller HG communities? Was there something about exceeding a critical mass of people in a tribe/group that led to the development of hierarchies, warfare, and slavery that occurred even in the absence of agriculture?
If so, could this be related to resource availability? For example, the PNW was a resource-dense environment and by all accounts there was plenty to eat that was easily harvested. And yet I read of tribes who'd fight over specific hunting grounds, such as salmon-laden river mouths. If so, perhaps it is not agriculture that is the real culprit, but simply having an abundance of resources?
Band hunter-gatherers vs. collector societies
Good question, FreeLearners. As I have explained in my published writings, anthropologists commonly identify two varieties of hunter-gatherers. By far the largest variety, in terms of number of different cultures identified, are the "band hunter-gatherers," also sometimes called "simple hunter-gatherers." The other variety, sometimes called "collector societies," or "complex hunter-gatherers," includes the Kwakiutl of the American Northwest Coast and the Ainu of Japan. These are sedentary societies that live on some rich, localized resource, commonly fish. When anthropologists use the term "hunter-gatherers" or "foragers" unmodified, they are usually referring specifically to the band variety. The collector societies are more like agricultural societies in many ways. They have relatively dense populations, hierarchical social structures, chiefs; and are often warlike. Most archeologists believe that band hunter-gatherers long predated collector societies and are more likely to represent the normative way of living of our distant hunter-gatherer relatives. However, a reasonable case can be made that over a long period of history both types of cultures existed. If true, this may help explain why our genetic tendency toward dominance behavior, which we inherited from our ape ancestors, was not selected out over the course of our hunter-gatherer history.
The key differences between the two in terms of effect on cultural moral ethos is that the collector societies, like agricultural people, are sedentary, accumulate wealth, and have a resource to defend.
-Peter
thank you
Thanks for the explanation! Good to know.
Is it possible in
Is it possible in contemporary societies to break the pattern and adopt these three attitudes towards life? My question focuses especially on the first one: deflating egos. I believe our societies are well structured around the egos.
Humility is a forgotten value in the US
I really don't know much about HG societies but humility is still very much valued, if not necessarily rewarded, in most societies in the world, HG or not. In my experience (not being American and growing up exposed to both European and Middle Eastern cultures) it really is only in the US that people are practically expected to shamelessly promote themselves. Humility is taken as a sign of being a sucker and a loser.
I definitely agree that play has something to do with creating a happy and free environment that does not promote games of dominance and the injuring of others. I've certainly observed that there is not as much tolerance for children's playing in the West in general. Children must always be hushed up. I would say that oppression of the spirit is much more common in the "free world" than the politically repressive "third world." Go figure.
Reply to Soliloquino & Clara -- on humility
In my lifetime, in the US, I have seen humility decline and egos inflate in parallel with the decline in free play and the rise in adult-organized children's sports. Children, on their own, in free social play, don't tolerate bragging and domineering behavior in their peers; but coaches and parents seem to promote it, as do altogether too many professional athletes. We also see it, of course in the entertainment industry, with bullies such as Bill O'Reilly, Donald Trump, and Rush Limbaugh. I think that the renewal of free social play, and reduced emphasis on competitive sports, could move us a long way toward restoring humility and human decency.
-Peter
Human Nature?
Underlying all your posts is the question of Human Nature. Or Human Potential. You do a good job on presenting views, based on evidence, that run counter to the mainstream conventional 'wisdoms', most of which are heavily influenced by Western European/Christian ideas.
These 'conventional' ideas at root suggest that human beings are somehow tainted, prone to destructive behaviour and require intense control for Society to be 'safe' : which is ironic, given the vast resources that have always been poured into organised violence, be it policing or military, to keep whom safe from whom...?
Iraq and Afghanistan both show clearly that whilst the stated aim was to make the US/UK safe, it has failed, is failing and is creating many more angry people than it is creating loving people. This is of course, insane.
David Chamberlain and others at www.birthpsychology.com outline in some detail the actuality of the biologically mandated empathic human being, in terms of research that shows that a) gene's govern structure, whilst environment governs behaviour and heavily influences the development of our neurology, physiology and mind-set and that b) where the natural child-mother bonding processes are disrupted pathology emerges.
Which is what James Prescott's 1975 paper 'BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE' suggested.
What this also shows, and this is beyond hypothesis, is that neuro-plasticity, that is to say the fluidity of our physiology, allows for adaptation or adjustment to the prevailing environmental conditions. Thus mothers and children who experience a traumatic birth, for example, can be supported to address that experience in ways that allow both to recover, and amazingly this works with new born babies and infants, who have little language ability, yet seem to understand much more than they can express.
Some of this research is indicated in the documentary "What Babies Want".
Alice Millers work demonstrated the reality of intergenerational trauma patterning in her book 'For Your Own Good' which looked at, amongst other things, the traditions of child rearing that developed in Western Europe, which originated in elite families and were spread as literacy and wealth advanced, as the 'middle classes' emerged.... This tradition is called 'poisonous pedagogy'.
Judith Herman also explored the reality of intergenerational trauma patterning, which occurs if trauma is not resolved. It is almost inevitable, in that the baby is born into the psychology of the parents and immediately 'adjusts' to that psychology.... what is also true is that not every child will respond or react in the same way, and in spite of the fairly common levels of trauma and abuse, the majority do not go on to repeat the cycles of abuse. This speaks to the innate empathic nature, in that it ameliorates the adverse conditions to a larger degree.
However due to the unresolved trauma - we still have not fully dealt with WWI and WWII, never mind the massive genocides that have littered history over the last 2000 years, intense conditioning and (not least by the current mode of indoctrination/teaching) most people experience at some level a loss of self empathy, (a form of self alienation) and this generates fear (because one feels disconnected) and generates a desire to control. To dominate.
So, the question before us is this : how best to facilitate the empathic culture that we do NEED to emerge over the next 50 years or so......?
My take is that we have to get the message out, the one you are exploring, and that parents need all the support possible from Society to engage in empathic parenting, and that it will be this more than any other factor that will drive the changes, because a) it can happen at the grass roots, and deepen over a few generations.
This also will require a ruthlessly honest appraisal of the actual costs of the current predominant cultural paradigm, in human and natural terms.
I realise of course, that this is for many a BIG ASK. It takes effort to face one's own demons without recourse to the quick fix of belief or fantasy. However the costs of not doing so are immense, on a personal level and on a collective level.
hunters and gatherers
Here is an e-mail that sent to Steven Pinker regarding a talk he gave on the decline of violence. Then I found your article which makes the same point regarding the yanomamo. Do you have any further thoughts on this?
Dear Professor Pinker,
I have a question regarding a talk that you gave regarding the decline of violence (link included). In order to refute the idea that humanity was less violent when we were hunters and gatherers you show some statistics from modern “hunters and gatherers.” However, it is my understanding that the term hunters and gathers refers to people subsisting on hunting /fishing and the gathering of wild plants. The Yanomamo (who were used in your statistics)
had domesticated plants (bananas and plantains) that they farmed using “slash and burn” horticulture. And thus the Yanomamo are not hunters and gatherers based on my understanding of the term. Could you please clarify this?
Thank You, Andrew Poggie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk&feature=player_embedded
hunter-horticulturalists
Pinnker was nice enough to send me an e-mail stating that the Yanamomo are indeed hunter-horticulturalists rather than hunter-gathers. He said that the criteria for inclusion in the graph was an absence of government. I don't mean to be overly critical but in his talk he clearly refered to the cultures included in his graph as hunter-gathers.
Hunter-gatherers & hunter-horticulturalists
Andrew, thanks for sharing your question and Steve Pinker's response. I have seen others make the same mistake, of speaking of hunter-horticulturalists as if they were hunter-gatherers. One problem is that it is hard to find PURE hunter-gatherers in recent times. Even most of those that I include in the band hunter-gatherer category have some sort of trading relationships with neighboring farmers, and so someone could argue that they are not pure hunter-gatherers. But there seems to be a significant difference between those who trade with agriculturalists and those who actually engage in agriculture. The latter generally develop larger, more sedentary, more warlike societies (at least partly because they need to defend their crops).
I should also add, as I did in another comment above, that band hunter-gatherer societies are not entirely nonviolent. They apparently do not engage in war, but murders do occasionally occur. Anthropologists don't see murders, because the groups are small and murders are rare, but when they interview the elders about the past, some can recall murders or can recall stories of murders in preceding generations. Hunter-gatherers are human beings, like all human beings, subject to fits of rage (especially concerning sexual jealousy), subject to genetic differences that probably include the occasional psychopath, etc. But hunter-gatherers, unlike most primitive agriculturalists, never approve of murder--except in those rare cases where the murder is capital punishment to get rid of a murderer who is a continuous danger to the group as a whole. This is their only choice if the person refuses to leave and stay far away; they don't have any way to imprison someone. I have seen some attempts to quantify the murder rate among hunter-gatherers, but it seems to me that such attempts are subject to lots of errors. For the most part they depend on informants' recall and stories that have been passed along.
I wonder what Pinker means exactly when he speaks of absence of government. I wonder how he defines government. Hunter-gathers do govern themselves and they have worked out rather normalized ways of doing that. I don't know of any long-lasting social groups that are anarchists.
-Peter
two meanings of government
Anarchy means literally "no rulers". As I understand your exposition of hunter/gatherer bands, they have no "leaders", but make decisions by consensus. This exactly fits the meaning of anarchy.
Government has two very different senses. In one sense, it is the coercive imposition of rules by superiors who outrank most of the population; rulers. In the other sense, it is the use of social norms to create order, usually without the use of force. Nobody has a privileged "right" to coerce others.
In the book Order Without Law, Ellickson investigates conflict resolution in Shasta County, California. He finds that a very large percentage of conflicts are efficiently resolved without resorting to government force - without "going to law." In fact, social norms discourage resort to coercion. Violence in Shasta County was limited and was regulated by social norms; it was seen as a last resort, not the first, and had to be proportionate to the offense.
Anarchy
Terrymac, thanks for this clarification. Yes, by this definition, I believe it is appropriate to say that hunter-gatherer government (in the second sense) is one of anarchy. That, most definitely, however, does not imply a state of disorder (the sense in which the term "anarchy" is often used). -Peter
Now what??
All fascinating posts and seem key to our evolving harmoniously. But only one post had a concrete suggestion of what to do about it...empathetic parenting. Given the state of the world, we may not have that time before extinction of our species. I praise all the academic research presented. But it's just head stuff if nothing is done! Even if meditation on harmony of the collective consciousness were suggested it would be something. (a good idea). It seems to me from what I've read, that calling out the bullies and ridiculing them in a playful exposing way would be of benefit to the whole. Like Wikileaks on steroids. Any suggestions on how to go about this. Jon Stewart, Bill Hicks, and those like him seem to have some beneficial impact. Is there a way to use facebook, internet to implement all that you speak of? We need ideas that can be put into action. Maybe a website that collects ideas that can make a difference and voting by consensus on which idea holds the most merit?
Good question
Hi Jeff, good question & good thoughts. Perhaps there is hope in the Internet. We, more and more, are a world in which bullying of all sorts runs the risk of exposure, with resulting shame and ridicule. I just yesterday heard about a new Website in India where people post, anonymously, bribes they were forced to pay to government officials. The idea is to make all this as public as possible, with the idea of shaming those who are taking bribes. -Peter
The Future?
Thank you for your interesting article.
Do you have any ideas how in the future we as a species can have truely egalitarian societies? I think the agreement among the advocates of egalitarian societies is that only by implementing these, human suffering and environmental destruction can be alleviated. So I think this is an essential feature of future human societies.
If the deviation from band hunter gatherers was the "fall from grace" so to speak, do you think there is any way that such a society can be built up while maintaining an industrial, agricultural or even horticultural society? What role does group size play? It seems there is evidence that larger groups - usually grown by abundant local resources or using horticultural and agricultural practices - develop inequality and hierarchy, which then self-perpetuates the growth pattern and conquest. Do you think that "smaller is better" when it comes to societies, this would be an arguemnt against mass society and in favour of a type of society that is rooted in small scaled communities as a possible future. Or do you think that these non egalitarian properties are not so much linked to group size, but directly to agriculture? Would we then need a non-agricultural society? Or do you think it is possible to apply the principles these hunter gaterers used to modern industrial agricultural mass society - and if so how to do that if the basis for this "misbehaviour" is pervading the dominant cultures of the planet.
Thank you
Great questions
Aurora, these are great questions. I wish I had the answers. I think your thoughts on this are as good as mine. I do think that the route is through movement more and more toward real democracy. Hunter-gatherer societies were the original democratic societies, and we, with our democracy in the United States, are still a long way from them; but we do have some of the right ideas. - Best wishes, Peter
RE: The Future
Thank you for your reply, Peter Gray.
Indeed I also think that hunter gatherer societies were the original democracies and maybe even more than just that as they also had by design rather flat hierarchies. I think this is a major distinction to present day representative democracies. Even in the more democratic European countries that often have more than 3 or 4 political parties participating in politics instead of basically only 2 as in the US, the will of the people is often not properly represented or rather used as a bargaining chip in attempts to reach decisions. What bugs me about this model of democracy compared to the original democracies is what I hinted at before, the application to a mass society. An example may be that 90% of all people in a country are for putting a really ugly project in one particular place (in Germany this happened with nuclear waste storage). The local people who are affected do not pose a majority, so the democratic decision on that scale appears unfair towards these people, especially thinking that this could happen to any other region. So I think it has to be questioned if a truely free and egalitarian (or originally democratic) society can be reached if not some of the fundamental elements of how we think of society and democracy change. If I remember this correctly, native american original democracy worked by finding consensus decisions of all people that are involved. Clearly this is impossible to do with too many people having a part of this.
Some people say, that the only way to reach a society that has all these benefits mentioned for hunter gatherers is to be hunter gatherers. Others say that one can imitate this in a way and apply this to modern societies. Do you think the ways of the hunter gatherers can be disconnected from that lifestyle and be applied to different circumstances?
Thank you
Democracy
Democracy does not have to be a dictatorship of the majority.
Everyone is in the 10% group once in a while. Everyone is in many different groups and plays main different roles during his live. Thus everyone has a reason to protect small groups against abuse. One of the main ways to protect small groups is by our constitution.
In case of storing nuclear material, you can first fix the rules for finding the best possible location and only then start searching for it.
I do not want to claim that our democracy already works that well, I just want to state that it is not impossible to solve such conflicts cooperatively and democratically.
Human nature
Your article on hunter-gatherers (and how they maintain
egalitarianism) was amazing. About 8-9 years ago I read Daniel Quinn's book "The
Story of B". In it he postulates that hunter-gatherers found the only
(psychologically and ecologically) sustainable way of life, though there are
many ways to implement it. In the book he makes hunter-gatherers seem
egalitarian, sane, and healthy; he also, therefore, makes it seem like they
don't generally engage in brutal war, inequality, etc. Ever since I read
that book I've been sensitive to ethnocentric biases in everyday life, but
especially in psychological science.
I have a few questions.
First, is human nature better reflected in hunter-gatherer cultures, or is
human nature a nebulous concept that expresses itself in any culture? It
seems hard for me to believe that human nature can exist in a truly healthy
way in complex cultures that necessarily involve competition, discrimination,
power differentials, etc.
Second, what do you think of theorists like Steven Pinker who say that inequality, violence, etc. are all necessarily part of the human condition? I haven't had a chance to completely read his Blank
Slate, but I remember him attacking Ashley Montagu for being too pollyanna about the human condition.
Third, what do you think of evolutionary psychology (of the Buss, Cosmides, and Tooby variety)? I read Shweder's"Why Do Men Barbecue?" and it made me further question the assumptions, research, and validity of popular evolutionary psychology.
Great questions
Adam, great questions. I too was impressed by The Story of B, when I read it about 10 years ago or so. My understanding is that Quinn initially wanted to write it as nonfiction, but couldn't get it published, so he wrote it as fiction, with great response.
Here, briefly, are my thoughts concerning your questions:
1. A point of my essay here is that hunter-gatherers found extraordinarily effective cultural means to combat the more aggressive, hierarchical, domineering aspects of human nature. Our primate legacy left us with a strong tendency toward dominance behavior, but the hunter-gatherer way of life required that people overcome that in order to cooperate effectively in hunting, gathering, child rearing, etc. It is amazing that hunter-gatherers everwhere hit upon the same set of ways of doing this, which I outline in this essay. The question of whether on not we can apply what they learned to our modern selves remains to be answered.
2. I am not pollyanish. It's altogether too clear that we have the capacity to be warlike, hierarchical, slave owners, and all the rest. However, I'm also a realist when I look at the repeated findings of anthropologists regarding hunter-gatherers who found ways to overcome these tendencies and--through play, reverse dominance, and non-restrictive child rearing methods--to promote the peaceful caring side of human nature. I know Steve Pinker and admire his work, but if he says that inequality, violence, etc. are all a necessary part of the human condition (and I'm not sure he says it) he is wrong on that.
3. Your third question is a big one, but I'll be brief. I don't have time to go into the details, but in quite a few ways I disagree with the specific version of evolutionary psychology proposed particularly by Cosmides and Tooby. People who understand evolutionary biology (as Cosmides and Tooby do not)--people like my friends David Sloan Wilson and Marc Kirschner--write about the enormous redundancy and flexibility in biological systems of all sorts. The brain in particular has redundancies and enormous flexibility built into it. There is no good reason to believe, as Cosmides and Tooby do, that there are separate modules for each basic human ability. I think that the brain contains general purpose systems (as well as some rather limited-purpose modules), which can be applied to all sorts of novel problems--problems such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, which were not part of our ancestral environment. Steven Jay Gould was too harsh on evolutionary psychology, but his essays are well worth reading. His criticisms were often on the mark.
Best wishes,
Peter
Evolutionary Psychology
Hi Adam,
Evolutionary Psychology is so many 'just so' stories. It has no predictive capacity let alone predictive validity. How it calls itself a 'science' is beyond me. At best a humanity (I value the humanities more highly than the sciences).
For some reason Kropotkin's Mutual Aid doesn't get many mentions. But the role of co-operation is far vaster than that of competition.
People have evolved to learn. We even learn how to walk and speak. The evolutionists who emphasise violence and competition can't account for how peaceful our societies are. They certainly can't account for why societies evolve to more peaceful states - though they can account for a descent into barbarism (but few people have problems understanding this, so it isn't clear what the evolutionists add to the account).
I could go on at great length but probably shouldn't.
Yes, please don't...
...because your knowledge of evolutionary psychology is pretty inadequate.
Evolutionary psychology has no more "just so stories" (e.g., hypotheses) than any other field of science that generates and tests hypotheses.
It has generated many novel predictions which have subsequently been corroborated by empirical results. It has helped to specify the conditions under which cooperation and altruism, as well as conflict and warfare, are more likely to appear.
And, it has done so with far more sophistication than postmodernist social constructionism, the paradigm in decline that it is replacing.
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