PT: Your book is a great primer or overview of EP. You explain an epiphany you had in understanding the power of evolutionary theory--can you briefly retell that?

In my first semester as a doctoral student at Cornell University (Fall 1990), I was enrolled in Professor Dennis Regan's "Advanced Social Psychology" course. Around the middle of the semester, Dr. Regan assigned Homicide, a book authored by Drs. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, two of the founders of evolutionary psychology housed at McMaster University in Canada. In their book, they demonstrate how numerous crimes occur in very similar manners and for similar reasons across otherwise varied cultural settings.

For example, the greatest physical threat to a woman is her male partner, and the trigger for spousal homicides (or battery) is perceived or realized infidelity. This holds true across epochs and cultures, and is linked to the sex-specific threats of paternity uncertainty. I should mention that to offer a scientific explanation for such a dreadful form of violence in no way condones or justifies it. As a second example, Daly and Wilson showed that the presence of a stepparent in a family is a driving factor behind child abuse (coined the Cinderella Effect). This is known as discriminative parental solicitude, namely it makes evolutionary sense for individuals to provide greater care to kin more so than to non-kin, and this is certainly the case when it comes to parental investment (or lack thereof). Daly and Wilson offer numerous other examples, all of which are parsimoniously and elegantly explained via evolutionary principles. Upon reading their book, my epiphany had taken place. My intellectual path became crystal clear: I would seek to Darwinize the field of consumer behavior, which had heretofore been void of evolutionary-based theorizing.

PT: Robin Dunbar is quoted as saying, "If I have a plea on which to end, it is that social scientists refrain from the kinds of knee-jerk abhorrence of the evolutionary approach, and ask instead how this approach might benefit what they do." Why do you think many people, including many social scientists, have a negative visceral reaction to EP? Do you think that's changing at all? Why or why not?

The list of people who detest EP is a long one, as is the list of reasons for the antipathy. Some of the key ones include:

(1) Conflating evolutionary theory with its misapplication by those who hold sinister political and social agendas (e.g., Nazis, eugenicists, social class elitists, racists);

(2) Wrongly assuming that EP is tantamount to genetic determinism (i.e., we are doomed to succumb to our biological impulses);

(3) Unwilling to accept that the same evolutionary principles that drive the behaviors of animals are operative when it comes to humans;

(4) Erroneously believing that EP is only concerned with human universals while ignoring the importance of individual differences and cross-cultural differences;

(5) Holding on to the ignorant belief that EP is nothing more than fanciful post-hoc story telling otherwise void of any theoretical substance;

(6) Rejecting the idea that evolution is a scientific fact on the ground that this would be tantamount to advancing an atheist agenda since many evolutionary and related scientific principles contradict "accepted" religious doctrines;

(7) Believing that to offer an evolutionary explanation for a criminal or immoral act (e.g., infanticide, rape, marital infidelity) implies that one condones, agrees with, or justifies the act in question;

(8) Wrongly assuming that evolutionary psychology proposes that humans are violent, competitive, and brutish beasts who are otherwise void of compassion, empathy, love, and a cooperative spirit;

(9) Assuming that if one finds a single example that is contrary to an evolutionary principle, this means that EP has been falsified ("My nephew is dating an older woman. Hence, the supposed evolutionary principle that men prefer to mate with younger women is nonsense.");

(10) Deeming that any theory that purports that men and women might possess innate sex differences must inherently be sexist nonsense;

(11) Rejecting the possibility that humans might have innate biological blueprints. Rather, it is much more "hopeful" to believe that we are all born with equipotential blank slates;

(12) Denouncing universal theories of a shared human nature (as purported by EP) since all knowledge is supposedly subjective (postmodernism), all reality is constrained by language (deconstructionism), and all cultures are emic-based (cultural relativism).

There are several other reasons for the antipathy toward EP. That said you might see how we might have our hands full trying to quell all of these erroneous and antiquated criticisms.

I find solace in the fact that the scientific method is an auto-corrective system. Its capacity to sift through competing ideas and identify the one that best explains the world is what offers me hope that a growing number of critics will eventually accept the central tenets of EP. However, there will always be ideologues who will reject EP for reasons that have nothing to do with scientific issues, and everything to do with ideological dogma.

PT: EP does a great job of explaining why we crave certain things that are bad for us (fat and salt, for example) or why some people engage in maladaptive behaviors, such as hoarding. But the frustrating thing about EP in terms of mental health is that knowing the evolutionary roots of a feeling or impulse does not usually make it go away. Is our only hope against our evolved psychology huge doses of willpower?

Your point is not restricted to EP. Moral philosophers and theologians have repeatedly warned us against the seven deadly sins and yet most people have a very difficult time avoiding these alluring traps. People have a very clear understanding of the deleterious effects of smoking and yet this does not necessarily stop them from engaging in the behavior.

As I explain in my book, the operative premise when it comes to consumer wellbeing has been that individuals make poor choices because they do not have the necessary knowledge to make better ones. Educate them and the problem will be solved. This is grossly incorrect. To give an example closer to EP, many powerful men know full well that to engage in sexual indiscretions might ruin their careers, and yet they still succumb to the temptations (see Arnold Schwarznegger and Anthony Weiner most recently).

Knowledge is power but only when instantiated via self-restraint. Men and women have evolved the capacity to stray from their monogamous unions. However, we've also evolved a moral calculus that permits us to resist such temptations. Accordingly, at any given point, there might be multiple Darwinian drives pulling us in different directions. Our biology does not doom us to a deterministic fate. It is up to each individual to ensure that given his/her goal state the "appropriate" evolutionary pull wins out!

PT: Speaking of Dunbar, one fun fact in your book is that the average number of guests at American weddings is 164--a number close to 150, the number Dunbar determined to be the average size of our "tribes" in the evolutionary era. What do you take that to say about modern weddings?