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The title of Darcia Narvaez's recent blog post, "What you think about evolution and human nature may be wrong," presumably was intended to describe the wrongness of what her readers might think about evolution and human nature. Ironically, the title aptly describes the wrongness of her own thinking about evolution and human nature. Several bloggers who are experts on human nature and evolution have already documented Dr. Narvaez's lack of understanding in this area. See posts by Catherine Salmon, Gad Saad (Part1, Part 2), Michael Mills, and Robert Kurzban.
After reading all of these replies from evolutionary psychologists, you might get the impression that Dr. Narvaez is one of those "anti-biology" psychologists who naively believe that who we are is determined completely by our social environment. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have followed Dr. Narvaez's research for a number of years because of my own career-long interest in the evolution of morality. Her academic background is diverse. Her undergraduate majors were music and Spanish. She earned a Master of Divinity and a PhD in Educational Psychology. Her early work with James Rest extended Kohlberg's cognitive developmental approach to understanding moral development. Her later work deviated considerably from the cognitive developmental paradigm, as she apparently discovered Paul MacLean's triune model of the brain. This led to her own Triune Ethics Theory, an attempt explain how affect generated by primitive brain structures influences moral reasoning. The title of a forthcoming book she is editing, Human Nature, Early Experience and the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, indicates a keen interest in human evolutionary history.
I appreciate what Dr. Narvaez is trying to accomplish (nothing less than making this world a better place to live). But we happen to have different views about human nature and how we might indeed improve the human condition. Recently, Dr. Narvaez engaged in a spirited debate with Jonathan Haidt about the role of emotional intuitions and abstract reasoning in the realm of morality. I happen to think that Haidt is closer than Narvaez to the truth on this issue. In her blog post, Dr. Narvaez prominently cites the work of Christopher Boehm to support her ideas. I also cite Boehm in my work, but we seem to have different understandings of the implications of Boehm's ideas (see my article, Hierarchy in the library: Egalitarian dynamics in Victorian novels.) Both Dr. Narvaez and I are deeply concerned about the disparity of wealth in this country, and we both cite the book The Spirit Level. But once again, my ideas about how to address the disparity of wealth, which I presented at the most recent NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference, differ greatly from hers.
It seems to me that Dr. Narvaez is trying to be "interesting" in the sense that sociologist Murray Davis described "interesting theories." According to Davis, an interesting theory is one that denies certain assumptions of the audience. Narvaez apparently thinks that we evolutionary psychologists assume that the 99% of human history spent in small-band, hunter-gather groups (HGSB) is not important. She thinks that we assume that human groups are always hierarchical and never egalitarian. She believes that we assume that human societies are dominated by competitiveness and coalitionary violence rather than cooperation and peacefulness. She says that evolutionary psychology assumes that humans are naturally selfish rather than generous and sharing, and that we are all cheaters rather than virtuous, good citizens. In each case, she denies the validity of the alleged assumptions of evolutionary psychology.
The trouble is, as the other bloggers who responded to her post have noted, we evolutionary psychologists do not make the assumptions she accuses us of making. One of the fundamental assumptions of most evolutionary psychologists is that the 99% of human history spent in HGSB is extremely important. If she had denied that assumption, her theory would be interesting (but not necessarily correct). In fact, a few evolutionary psychologists have been brave enough to challenge the conventional wisdom that virtually all important evolutionary changes in the brain took place prior to the advent of agriculture, and that significant evolutionary changes have occurred in the most recent 1% of human history. Now that is an interesting proposition (but not necessarily correct).
Concerning the question of whether we are "naturally" hierarchical or egalitarian, competitive or cooperative, selfish or generous, etc., we evolutionary psychologists think it is senseless to engage in such either/or thinking. Just as senseless as the false nature/nurture dichotomy. Since human beings obviously engage in all of these behaviors, what could it possibly mean to say that we are "naturally" one way or the other? Another fundamental assumption of evolutionary psychology is that human behavior is facultative, which means that human beings tend to adjust their behaviors in ways that bring about consequences that tend to maximize the perpetuation of our genes. This means we tend to act differently in different situations. For example, We neither ignore nor help others indiscriminately. What we do depends on a number of factors such as how closely related we are to the other person, what the cost is to us, what the benefit is to the other person, the probability that the favor will be returned, what we know about the person's reputation, and so forth. Evolutionary psychologists have given us fine-grained analyses of the factors influencing whether we will be selfish or altruistic, competitive or cooperative, etc. For Dr. Narvaez to suggest that we are "naturally" one way or the other, that evolutionary psychologists have chosen the wrong side of the dichotomy, and that she has chosen the correct side, is simplistic Manichean thinking.
For each of the issues that Dr. Narvaez discusses, she asks the important question, "Why does the issue matter for your life?" I think we can all agree that we would like to improve the quality of life as much as possible. We would like less violence, greater degrees of psychological well-being, happier and healthier children, more virtue and good citizenship, and better sex lives. The question is how to achieve these things. Dr. Narvaez seems to suggest that we need only change what she claims are incorrect assumptions about human nature. Evolutionary psychologists, on the other hand, suggest that we need to understand the environmental conditions that facilitate or impede human flourishing so that we can create environments that bring out the best in us. We humbly suggest that our approach has a better chance of improving the human condition, if only people will listen to and understand what we are saying.
