Is sarcasm really an evolutionary adaptation?

Color me skeptical of this claim, no sarcasm involved.

It seems like this is bleeding over from evolutionary psychology to the “just-so stories” part of Evolutionary Psychology. (Read through this blog, and even more through my science and philosophy blog, for more on the difference between “ep” and “EP.”)

First, sarcasm couldn’t be developed until a number of other things, not all of which are driven by evolutionary biology.

Obviously, human language needed to develop. Other than eye-rolling, there’s not any non-verbal sarcastic comment.

Second, for sarcasm to really expand, it’s likely that a certain level of civilization had to be attained. That’s both for a critical mass of people to spread sarcasm around and for social ideas and constructs to be sarcastic about. And, neither of those two is directly based on evolutionary biology, or evolutionary psychology.

Finally, its value as an adaptation is itself questionable:

Fast forward a few million years [emphasis added] and the network of human relationships is wider and more complex, and just as important to survival. The corporate chairman throws out a sarcastic remark and those who “get” it laugh, smile, and gain favor. In the same way, if the chair never makes a remark, sarcastic people are making them behind his or her back, forming a clique by their mutually negative, but funny, comments. Either way, sarcasm plays a role in making and breaking alliances and friendship.

First, a side note. As I observed above, sarcasm couldn’t start without language, which started just tens of thousands of years ago, not a few million. (And, this isn’t the first time I’ve caught LiveScience.com bordering on vacuousness, or simply being inaccurate, in a story.)

Second, taking modern, brief-term cultural evolution as inevitably producing long-term results is another EP vs. ep issue.

Further on my main point

I can think of many maladaptations of sarcasm. One, what if, in tribal days of 5,000 years ago, rather than the inaccurate modern corporate suite, sarcasm inspired a rebellion instead of suck-up-it is? In other worse, the beta males, to caricature EP, were tired of getting verbally kicked in the tuchis too much and a “kinder, gentler alpha male” arose?

Finally, this illustrates what happens when social scientists, such as article author Meredith Small, an anthropologist, try to dabble in the natural sciences without properly grounding themselves.

Oh, you can sound off to Small yourself if you want. Show her some e-criticism.