Satoshi Kanazawa Does Not Speak for All of Evolutionary Psychology

It's one thing for him to post articles with appalling logic on a site like this one, but why would American Psychologist accept his article if it had fundamental flaws? As a an academic (PhD in social psychology), this does not bode well for the so-called peer review system.

This is a serious problem in evolutionary sciences, that it so easily falls into a eugenics way of thinking with the hubris of being part of the dominant mechanistic mindset of mainstream culture. Yes they are allowed to get away with it because they know how to scream "political correctness" at anyone who objects and make it not worth the effort to argue. At the same time this hateful way of thinking can also be argued to be the result of some sort of evolutionary regression, so tit-for-tat.

I don't blame people for wanting to throw out the whole discipline since it has provided philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of some of the worst crimes against humanity of the past century.

@anonymous, 12:43

I certainly blame people for wanting to throw out a discipline because blaming it for crimes against humanity is nonsensical. We could just as easily blame religion(submission to authority), physics(producing the bomb), mathematics(railroadschemes to Auswitsch) etc. Disciplines don't cause wars, they mereley justify them in the minds of certain people. We progress, we learn. It is good to see that almost everybody in the field strongly disagrees with this article. What an enormous difference from 70 years ago.

So many misconceptions of Black women are fueled by fear and ignorance. The truth is often ignored or overlooked. Where are the facts: 4,7000 years ago three Black women gave the world geometry,trigonometry, and calculus; the communications media has programmed the entire world into believing Africian Americans came from an ancestral home of ignorance, savagery and huts; the media still sends out the message the dark skin is ugly. No other race has been so disrespected!

...Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available. I would venture to say there isn't much real information available. This means Satoshi is hosting the Jerry Springer show at Psychology today! What a wonderful way to take two different genres and combine them!

...but how about an explanation on how that article written by that writer, whose logic as you say has been so widely questioned by his colleagues, made it onto Psychology Today? Good post, but the editors of Psychology Today seriously need to step up and offer something to the community of readers that felt so outraged by it. It would be the professional and considerate thing to do, and not totally unheard of in the blogging community.

Eagerly awaiting some sort of reply.

I am appalled at that Kanazawa post.

You have a black female blogger at psych today who addresses the very fact that we black women are looked down upon and unfairly so! Her blog at your site is http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/black-womens-health-and-happiness.

Dr. McCloud has been on CNN and written articles about this recently. I bought her book and it deals with this very thing. Shame on the magazine for allowing that post up in the first place. We are tired of this negativity.

It's funny that everybody else is buying tanning solutions to get our color, injecting their lips with collagen to get our lips and all that, but yet when we have it naturally, folks say eeew. Shame!! I hope psych Today stops him from blogging here. does he get paid to blog? Shame, shame, shame.

Of all the academic fields that deal with human evolution in some manner, it seems that Evolutionary Psychology is the one that most often has to correct 'misperceptions' about whether it is racist. How often do misperceptions have to occur before they become perceptions? I understand the logical case that is made here: you cannot blame everyone in a field for the actions of a few members, especially people who are somewhat marginal in the first place (Kanazawa's appointment is in Management at LSE and not in psychology or evolutionary theory). But if your field attracts all the racists like moths to a flame, perhaps there is fundamental rot in your methods and assumptions.

It is one thing to point out technical flaws in Kanazawa's arguments. It is another thing entirely to participate in a field in which those arguments can even be made sensible in the first place.

Anyone with a background in statistics can easily see how empty and misleading the article was. The author drew conclusions and injected proposals that, even for the middle school aged English class student, were unorganized and purposely vague. In addition to his terrible manipulation of statistical information, the use of science to describe race is inherently flawed. Depending on what country, culture, and even political affiliations one may have, the definitions and terms for race vary immensely. How can a study such as this have ever been completed without addressing the complexities of race labeling? This is a study that is better off having never been done, as the time needed to make this study valid could be put to better use improving the lives of women around the world

Kanazawa apparently sought to use science to make claims that he more than likely feels himself. If he never dates a black woman in his whole entire life, no one will really care. He has the right to feel and think whatever he wants to.

The problem is that as a scholar, he has the responsibility to be careful with his use of science to support personal opinion. It is incredibly likely that someone will read this article, and either because of a lack of information or a preconceived notion, will believe its claims to be true. Kanazawa gives credibility to those who seek to negatively affect the self esteem of others.

For every young Black girl who views articles like this, in addition to a media engine that rarely celebrates Black women as beautiful (as opposed to sexy), I feel a huge pain in my heart. As a Black woman myself, I have grown up seeing very few images of myself. My parents did all that they could to ensure that I knew I was still worthy of any title I sought to hold, regardless of whether anyone told me it was in my grasp. I grew up in a home with limited media input, and spent more time reading about different cultures and people as well as meeting them in person. I have grown to understand my place within the global community and I can find beauty in myself as well as people of all different cultures. Every girl does not have the luxury of growing up in a house such as mine. For girls with low self-esteem, and the women that they later become, words from allegedly respected scholars sting far more than the taunts of a school mate.

Funny enough, Kanazawa shows us a graph concerning the relatively high self esteem of Black women as compared to other races. This is perhaps in jest considering their scientifically proven unattractiveness. What is his point? It's as if he sought to cut a wound with his words and then rub salt in it under the guise of assistance.

Let me also add that his consistent praise of Black men leaves me to wonder if he has some sort of desire for Black men that forces him to competitively berate Black women to get closer to his fantasies with the attractive Black man. I would liek to think there is a point to his article's inclusion of black men (besides using it to alienate black women as solely unattractive).

Women in general face a constant battle with self-esteem. Kanazawa's article is harmless in that its essentially just a man's attempt to put numbers behind his own opinions. However, his article is also dangerous because it gives credence to those who seek to belittle women of color and also because it harms the fragile self esteem of Black women who would heed his words.

PT cannot be blamed entirely for posting his piece, and I appreciate the removal, but the bigger issues of misusing science and racial bigotry do not go away by silencing Kanazawa, especially thanks to Google cache.

I am hurt by Kanazawa's article and I hope he finds more thoughtful and honest methods of expressing his own opinions.

I am not supporting anyone on this blog, but if a black woman or black man have enough self respect for herself or himself, why get so easily offended by any negative remark about their black tribe.

I guess it was inevitable; I can't say I'm shocked. Come on PT moderators---don't compound Kanazawa's transgression by letting trolls take over this comment thread.

Obviously Psychology Today will publish ANYTHING so I am going to do a study that demonstrates that Satoshi Kanazawa is less attractive than everyone AND everything. I will compare his photograph with Halle Berry's, Brad Pitt's, Denzel Washington's, Lucy Liu's, and the photographs of other people of different ethnicities(objectively) considered attractive. I will also compare his photograph to pot bellied pigs, llamas and baby calves. Finally, I will compare his photograph to an iphone, a gamebox and a serving McDonald's Chicken McNuggets. I will use a sample of pubescent white boys and girls who are well known for their objectivity as my test subjects. My conclusion will be that this Asian male psychologist is less attractive than everyone and everything else on the earth. I know this because, like Kanazawa, I can use data to demonstrate my subjective, I mean objective personal feelings. My findings will also likely objectively conclude that racism makes people very unattractive. Will Psychology Today publish my study?

One factor is that studies have shown higher rates of obesity in lower income neighborhoods. And another fact is that in the US, blacks are more likely to live in lower income areas.

A study of attractiveness could compare people of similar income to adjust for this issue.

The deeply "religious" and the deeply "scientific" will probably be the last who will be willing to acknowledge as being limited by evolution. Prior to our boom in education in the 20th century certain types of thinkers would have been under the umbrella of religion as justification for their views. It's now expanded into science and the term "science" is used as a justification for poor logic skills. I am constantly amazed at the psychological similarities that many in religion and science have with each other at many levels.

I am sure you will love for more detail to your friends