Quantifying Common Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology

In a sample of academics (N = 111), we quantified the dimensions underlying criticisms of evolutionary psychology in relation to criticisms of its parent fields (i.e., general psychology and evolutionary biology) and examined how various demographic and sociopolitical individual differences were related to these criticism dimensions. The five primary criticisms of evolutionary psychology reflected conceptual concerns, concerns over political implications, concerns over sampling, concerns about the validity of findings, and religious concerns. Evolutionary psychology suffered the worst selective skepticism relative to its parent fields. In a general sense, political liberalism was associated with more intense criticisms toward evolutionary psychology, but these associations were weak and differed across three measures of political personality (i.e., Right-Wing Authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and religiousness). Homosexuals and qualitative researchers were especially critical of evolutionary psychology. We offer these limited findings as insights into the motivated resistance to the theory of evolution as a unifying meta-theory in psychology, and we hope to provide a future framework for reducing unmerited and selective resistance to an evolutionary-informed psychological science.