Briefly Noted: Pop Evo Psych Isn’t Science

I love this Substack note, but the fact that it needs to be written makes me wince. The “evolutionary psychologists” it critiques sound less like researchers and more like the imaginary colleagues of a red-pill fantasy writer.

Real evolutionary psychologists offer a far more nuanced view. There’s a deep literature on sexual conflict theory, showing how male strategies (coercion, mate guarding) co-evolve with female counter-strategies (resistance, concealed ovulation, coalition-building). Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy has shown how women’s cooperation and resistance are central to human evolution; primatologist Frans de Waal has documented female alliances in chimpanzees and bonobos; and evolutionary psychologist David Buss has written on sexual conflict and mate choice, highlighting how women’s preferences function as checks on male dominance.

Although these researchers tend to avoid political terms like feminism or patriarchy, they are not the ones erasing that story. It’s the pop evo psych crowd that flattens complexity and obscures real sexual dimorphism with sweeping, essentialist myths.