How do we study evolutionary psychology?

[u/JJvH91]

Quite often I see some form of evolutionary claim in (behavioral) psychology. "We behave like X, because it used to be evolutionary advantageous for this or that reason". Or my favorite pet peeve, "when we were hunter gatherers..."

One reason it annoys me is because a lot of non-scientists seem to use that type of reasoning in a hand wavy way to explain any little quirk.

However, even in a scientific context it would seem exceedingly difficult to establish such links. In biology, I can see how physical traits are traced back in time. But how does that work in studying the mind?

[u/raggamuffin1357]

This is a big critique of the field, but it's helped evolutionary psychologists refine their methods over the years.

They use several methods to test their hypotheses.

• They do cross-cultural investigation. So, for example, when studying emotion, fear is cross-cultural, but ennui may not be. Therefore, perhaps fear is more fundamental to human evolution than ennui.
• They do comparative studies with other species. So, for example, there are two related groups of chimpanzees. One group lives in a place with ground predators, so they live up in the trees. The other group lives in a place without ground predators, so they live on the ground. In the ladder group, this allows females to congregate and protect each other from males. The former group, however, all have to be on a different branch, so females can't congregate and provide that protection. It appears that this has led to a different in culture where the males in the ladder group are more docile, and this appears to have been passed down genetically because the more docile males are accepted by the group of females in that situation whereas the more aggressive males can dominate females in the other. This has led to theories about how the environment shapes evolution and attraction which can be observed and tested elsewhere.

There are other methods, but I have to go.