Evolutionary Psychology

The "halo" effect and Michael Jackson. 

It has long been noted that people tend to view others holistically, that is, as all good or all bad. This is referred to as the "halo effect" because often it seems one characteristic (albeit positive or negative) seems to "outshine" others and bias our perception in the respective direction. We suppose it could be called the "devil's horns" or "pitchfork" effect, but the metaphor just isn't as pleasant. Read More

Anomalous Occurrences

"Nothing happens without a cause
And nothing happens unless it can happen
When that which can happen, does in fact happen
It cannot be considered a miracle
Hence there are no miracles."
Cicero 106 - 43 BC

Anomaly - Oxford English Dictionary: something that differs from what is standard or normal.
Normal: Usual, typical, or expected. Read More

Bargh and Baumeister debated free will for 90 minutes at the giant SPSP convention in Tampa. These are Baumeister's thoughts after the debate.

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The idea that puppies are born functionally blind and deaf seems to make no evolutionary sense. However this condition is the result of a deliberate "choice" to improve the ability for wild canines to survive. Read More

A biochemist recently challenged me to identify a single valuable and/or interesting finding that evolutionary psychology (EP) has produced. Notwithstanding the astonishing hyperbole inherent to such a statement, I decide to take him up on his offer. In today's post, I list a small set of findings originating from the EP framework that I consider to be demonstrative of the field's capacity to generate interesting, innovative, and powerful findings. I am hoping that the readers will note that none of the findings are congruent with genetic determinism; none condone or justify rape or male infidelity; none consist of fanciful just-so story telling; and none posit unfalsifiable hypotheses. Archimedes, as shown in the teaser image, was famous for having had a Eureka moment. Let's hope that I might trigger an Archimedean epiphany in some of the anti-EPers albeit I suspect that their staunchly held opinions are non-malleable.

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One of the first and most often reinforced lessons that children learn in school is that work and play are opposites. Work is what one has to do; play is what one wants to do. Work is burdensome; play is fun. Work is essential; play is trivial. But when we leave school and go on to the "real world," at least some of us, the lucky ones, discover that work is not the opposite of play. In fact, work can be play, or at least it can be imbued with a high degree of playfulness. . . . When work is play, it is humanizing. Read More

While some of the common criticisms of EP are a bit weak and EP has some theoretical strengths, fellow blogger Dr. Saad overstates things by dismissing Sharon Begley's objections as an "antiquated and perfectly erroneous set of criticisms." After all, it's not easy to be perfectly erroneous, even with lots of practice. Read More

Sharon Begley has just written an article in Newsweek wherein she castigates the field of evolutionary psychology (EP) using the same antiquated and perfectly erroneous set of criticisms that have been laid to rest long ago. The anti-EP dragon is slain repeatedly and yet it always resurfaces, emboldened by its blind and prideful ignorance of the facts. In today's post, I will focus on a few key misconceptions as enunciated by Ms. Begley in her article. Read More

I was asked to write this blog because of my soon to be published book, Passings; Death, Dying and Unexplained Phenomena. In this blog I will concern myself mostly with unexplained phenomena - "anomalous occurrences" - that do not fit into test tubes, cannot be prepared for the microscope, replicated or proven. Read More