New research in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences, from University of Kent researchers Louis Bachaud and Sarah Johns, explores how members of various manosphere communities (think Andrew Tate and his ilk) misuse research and concepts from evolutionary psychology to bolster their own misogynistic views.
I’m not surprised. There are few ideas more nebulous and malleable than “evolutionary psychology”. You can derive any justification for any behavior by saying that it aids your survival…
If you want to do it right, the conclusions in evolutionary psychology are: -hard to get to (because just making up shit is not proper evidence, Santa Barbara church of evolutionary psychology…) -not as news sexy as that shit
Like, you can do stuff where you use phylogenetic history to make predictions about the prepotency of phobic stimuli, and that’ll be solid enough, but just screaming how your sexism is science is so much easier!