Evolutionary Psychology Citations in Sociological Theory

The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (1992) by Barkow, Cosmides & Tooby

• Supports evolutionary psychology
• Notes the link between Darwinism and evo psych
• Pinker and Bloom cover language (apparently with quite a strong argument - Sterelny 1995) 
• Sterelny 1995 notes that Shepard on colour perception and evo psych is also convicing
• Sterelny argues that others are less convincing, e.g. Profet arguing that morning sickness is to prevent mother eating food poisonous to foetus
• Sterelny likes book, but says it doesn't explain link between molecular genetics and behaviour as much as it should 

Brown, Laland & Mulder 2009. Bateman's Principles and Human Sex Roles. Trends in Ecology and Evolution

• Desires are consistent across different peoples and cultures BUT they are also consistently different between men and women (culture doesn't matter for desires, but gender does)
• This must mean integral desires (as I think superficial differences obviously do exist)

Daly & Wilson 1988

• Children living with step-parents (especially a step-father) are more likely to die in a family-related homicide than children living with two biological parents
• This supports evo psych, as that would expect (linking in to the selfish gene theory) that parents want their biological children to succeed more than anyone else
• However, not the whole picture, as Hamilton, Cheng & Powell 2007 conclude that adoptive parents invest the same in their kids as biological parents in comparable family set-up (two-parent)
  
• Daly & Wilson have also been criticised for not considering other explanations, such as family tensions, as step-parents often come into the child's life later on, which could lead to more arguments, for example, as the family bond hasn't been formed
• Criticised quite strongly, esp by Buller 2005
• Don't account for a range of factors, including emotional attachment between child and parent/step-parent, poverty, living situation, etc (e.g. if all living in one room, as an extreme, going to have a lot more tension, which could, in extreme cases, make homicide more likely). And other factors (like who are the kind of men likely to become step-fathers, maybe those less able to maintain stable relationships, and who are the women more likely to date them)

Freese, Allen Li, & Wade (2003). The Potential Relevances of Biology to Social Inquiry. Annual Review of Sociology

• See evo psych as useful
• Sees sociologists' fear that biological explanations will make sociology unneeded and unimportant as behind a…