Comments on: The Fight Over Mankind’s Essence http://popsych.org/the-fight-over-mankinds-essence/ The Internet's Best Evolutionary Psycholo-guy Wed, 03 Jan 2018 01:05:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Jesse Marczyk http://popsych.org/the-fight-over-mankinds-essence/#comment-424 Jesse Marczyk Mon, 31 Dec 2012 01:45:30 +0000 http://popsych.org/?p=1158#comment-424 I wrote about this issue sometime ago - the way people see some situations as being "strong" and others and being "weak" in terms of determining some individual's behavior (which can found here: http://popsych.org/can-situations-be-strong-or-weak/). I find that kind of writing to be entirely unhelpful, but people seem quite wedded to the idea, generally speaking. Understanding why they are is an important question to answer. Your point is well taken though. My guess is that when people view traits as "innate" or not, they are, more or less, making a prediction about the likelihood of the bearer of that trait consistently behaving in a certain fashion. To say that someone is innately violent, for instance, is to predict that across a wide-range of environments, that person is more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. This prediction, in turn, would effect the extent to which the person in question is viewed as a valuable social asset. If their good performance on some task is "innate", they're more valuable to you in that regard than if their success was a fluke they would be unlikely to replicate. To bring this back around to gender differences, people might have a specific aversion to those differences being viewed as "innate" because that could make certain groups of people seem like better or worse social assets. If my guess is on point, however, that would only provide part of the answer, as it still wouldn't explain why innateness is also seen, at times, anyway, as a morally exculpatory variable. The debates that people have about moral responsibility in a deterministic universe or the ones over whether people with homosexual orientations are "born that way" attest to that. I wrote about this issue sometime ago – the way people see some situations as being “strong” and others and being “weak” in terms of determining some individual’s behavior (which can found here: http://popsych.org/can-situations-be-strong-or-weak/). I find that kind of writing to be entirely unhelpful, but people seem quite wedded to the idea, generally speaking. Understanding why they are is an important question to answer.

Your point is well taken though. My guess is that when people view traits as “innate” or not, they are, more or less, making a prediction about the likelihood of the bearer of that trait consistently behaving in a certain fashion. To say that someone is innately violent, for instance, is to predict that across a wide-range of environments, that person is more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. This prediction, in turn, would effect the extent to which the person in question is viewed as a valuable social asset. If their good performance on some task is “innate”, they’re more valuable to you in that regard than if their success was a fluke they would be unlikely to replicate.

To bring this back around to gender differences, people might have a specific aversion to those differences being viewed as “innate” because that could make certain groups of people seem like better or worse social assets. If my guess is on point, however, that would only provide part of the answer, as it still wouldn’t explain why innateness is also seen, at times, anyway, as a morally exculpatory variable. The debates that people have about moral responsibility in a deterministic universe or the ones over whether people with homosexual orientations are “born that way” attest to that.

]]> By: Scott McGreal http://popsych.org/the-fight-over-mankinds-essence/#comment-423 Scott McGreal Mon, 31 Dec 2012 01:16:41 +0000 http://popsych.org/?p=1158#comment-423 I suspect that one of the reasons that the idea of sex differences having a genetic basis has become such a hot button political topic is due to the idea that innate means fixed and hence not malleable. People who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism seem to find this idea objectionable because they think it means that inequalities between the sexes in particular domains are locked in by nature and therefore cannot be remedied by social engineering. This contradicts the egalitarian belief that any and all disparities between the sexes should disappear if a "level playing field" were created at the societal level. Additionally, adherents of egalitarian ideology, who tend to be politically liberal, often accuse evolutionary psychologists of trying to justify gender inequality via their theories about the evolutionary origins of sex differences. This last assumption is very unfair, as it confuses description with prescription. Additionally, the assumption that because a gender difference has some sort of biological basis that it must therefore be locked in is also questionable. There are a number of genetically based conditions, such as phenylketonuria, that can be remedied with environmental intervention. Similar political concerns appear to have fuelled the infamous "person-situation debate" between personality and social psychology. Psychologists, such as Phil Zimbardo, who argue that situational factors have more influence on behaviour than stable personality traits have claimed that their approach is more optimistic and in accord with liberal world-views. The argument is that situational factors are more open to intervention than personality traits that are thought to be difficult to change. Personality psychologists on the other hand have argued that this view shows a misunderstanding of the subject Additionally, the supposed political implications of scientific findings have no actual bearing on whether or not they are true. I suspect that one of the reasons that the idea of sex differences having a genetic basis has become such a hot button political topic is due to the idea that innate means fixed and hence not malleable. People who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism seem to find this idea objectionable because they think it means that inequalities between the sexes in particular domains are locked in by nature and therefore cannot be remedied by social engineering. This contradicts the egalitarian belief that any and all disparities between the sexes should disappear if a “level playing field” were created at the societal level. Additionally, adherents of egalitarian ideology, who tend to be politically liberal, often accuse evolutionary psychologists of trying to justify gender inequality via their theories about the evolutionary origins of sex differences. This last assumption is very unfair, as it confuses description with prescription. Additionally, the assumption that because a gender difference has some sort of biological basis that it must therefore be locked in is also questionable. There are a number of genetically based conditions, such as phenylketonuria, that can be remedied with environmental intervention.
Similar political concerns appear to have fuelled the infamous “person-situation debate” between personality and social psychology. Psychologists, such as Phil Zimbardo, who argue that situational factors have more influence on behaviour than stable personality traits have claimed that their approach is more optimistic and in accord with liberal world-views. The argument is that situational factors are more open to intervention than personality traits that are thought to be difficult to change. Personality psychologists on the other hand have argued that this view shows a misunderstanding of the subject Additionally, the supposed political implications of scientific findings have no actual bearing on whether or not they are true.

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