Sex differences in social behavior are center stage in recent
formulations of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology,
with its emphasis on the long-term consequences of early adaptations,
offers itself as an alternative meta-theory to mainstream social
psychology, which emphasizes the importance of social structures
in determining the existence and extent of social and cognitive
sex differences. Using a range of examples, we argue that evolutionary
psychology is open to criticism on several fronts: It does not
(
a) include a role for mediating and moderating variables or
test predictions rigorously; (
b) appreciate the importance of
the difference between first- and second-order effects; (
c)
offer a truly interactionist theory; or (
d) seriously consider
the social implications of sex-based inequities. We also argue
that social psychology has, in its turn, failed to appreciate
the nonintuitive richness of some evolutionary hypotheses or
that there is a role for evolutionary psychology in a genuinely
interactionist theory This paper restates the need for that
perspective, and suggests how it may be achieved.
