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September 09, 2008

Ev Psych, metaphysical style, takes another hit

But it’s not totally good news

Regular readers of my science posts here will note that I regularly and carefully distinguish between Evolutionary Psychology, a quasi-metaphysical, and quasi-scientific, belief system that human psychological and sociological differences are almost entirely reducible to genetic evolution and that within that, the biggest driver is male-female difference, and the legitimate study of the genetic evolution component of changes in human psychology, called evolutionary psychology without capital letters.

Well, capital-letter Ev Psych takes yet another hit as a legitimate line of scientific hypothesis-generation, and this one right in its metaphorical breadbasket.

Male-female personality differences vary widely among different societies around the globe.

Flip side? Here in the USofA, male-female personality differences have been widening in recent years.
The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women. Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less assertive and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

The authors of the study at hand suggest some reasons for this, with which I don’t totally agree, or at least don’t find comprehensive enough.

I think the cyberworld has contributed more to the widening difference than they apparently even thought to consider.

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