At the moment I’m writing a book on the integration of evolutionary psychology and behaviorism in personal relationships that is tenatively called “How to Train Your Boyfriend”. Just today a video came out where I discuss my thoughts on the intersection of behaviorism and evolutionary psychology for the comedy podcast, TRIGGERnometry. But, I’ve been thinking about how we’re intutive beahaviorists for a long time.
I wrote this paper for an evolutionary psychology seminar run by David Buss back in 2007 when I was working towards my PhD. Around that time David had published many papers and The Murderer Next Door, a book that outlined his thesis that murder is an adaptation. This was contrary to Martin Daly and Margot Wilson’s thesis that murder is a byproduct as outlined in their masterful book, Homicide. David’s papers both on homicide and on conflict between the sexes had a big influence on my thinking here.
A couple of months before I wrote this paper I had only ever heard Skinner strongly criticized by evolutionary psychologists and social psychologists, who made up much of the department at UT Austin. When I picked up Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, I expected that I’d write a strong critique. It ended up being one of my favorite books. Reading it was so rewarding that it’s probably caused me to read more stuff I thought I would disagree with over the years. Meta. I assigned the first chapter, A Technology of Behavior (you can read it here), to over a thousand undergraduates in the UK over the years, with pretty polarized responses.
I don’t agree with everything in this essay anymore, of course I hardly knew anything about behaviorism at that time and had only read Skinner on behaviorism. By 2007 behaviorism had dealt with many of the critiques I lay out here, for example, equipotentiality. But this is a good insight into the origins of the book and other projects I’m working on now. I’ve edited it a bit and added commas, which I’m terrible at using now, and was even worse about using then. I’ve added a few links to clarify some concepts and save the reader a google.
Content warning: Child abuse, Jealousy, Domestic Abuse, Murder
Continue reading “Integrating Evolutionary Psychology and Behaviorism”
DIANAVERSE 