Evo Psych is a garbage field for frauds but I would buy insecure dudes expressing more misogyny.
Evolutionary psychology is very much a real science. But like every other science, it is based on a lot of assumptions. So the actual scientists work mostly on boring theoretical questions, while the frauds often come up in the news pushing some pseudoscientific defence for their bigotry.
Hasn’t evolutionary psychology been heavily debunked at this point?
I think it’s much easier to say that dudes have it hammered into their heads that girls are bad at games, so when they underperform and a girl is on their team, they feel emasculated. This isn’t too far off from when dudes end up losing their ‘bread winner’ status in their relationship. They were told they had explicit traits to exhibit and they failed to do so, so it hits them in their self esteem. Classic fragile masculinity.
Patriarchal conditioning makes way more sense than “caveman brain HATE competing with woman!”.
The entire field of evolutionary psychology debunked? Do you mean the idea that our brains are subject to evolutionary forces like every other part of our anatomy? No, not debunked.
This is conflating specific methodological problems with theoretical claims. Yes, many have criticized the game theoretical methodology typical of evolutionary psychology. There are a lot of highly speculative junk claims out there. It’s also true that some (not all or even most!) cognitive scientists think that we cannot take the perspective that psychology evolved at all. But it is certainly untrue that there is some consensus that evolutionary psychology has been “debunked”.
This criticism is also a bit ironic given the highly speculative nature of the claims you put forward. Your guess sounds plausible I suppose, but I see no reason to think it’s any more methodologically rigorous.
Making predictions and conducting manipulation experiments isn’t possible / practical in all fields of science. Medicine, astronomy, archaeology, evolution and climate studies are other examples.
That’s not how science works. I understand that you’re trying to criticize the field, but lack of predictions, even reliable ones, is not itself a problem it has. For one thing, even false theories can make reliable predictions, like Levoisier’s defunct theory of caloric in the 18th century which has now been replaced by modern thermodynamics. The caloric theory can be used to make mathematically accurate predictions, but the underlying theory is still wrong.
Similarly, evo psych can make a lot of reliable predictions without saying anything true. On the contrary, one criticism of the field is that it’s unfalsifiable because an evolutionary theory can always (allegedly) be proposed to fit the data. Which is to say, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
One example: it is proposed that the fusiform face area of the brain is a domain specific module evolved for face detection. It’s present in other animals that recognize conspecifics by their face. In humans, damage to the area leads to face specific agnosia. The theory makes accurate predictions, but is it true? It’s still being debated.
If you raise a group of human children without ever exposing them to language, they’ll invent their own.
Hasn’t evolutionary psychology been heavily debunked at this point?
No. On the most basic level it shouldn’t really be terribly contentious that evolution has an impact on psychology, on a more detailed level, well, they have their hits and misses just as every other field.
Patriarchal conditioning makes way more sense than
…case in point “everything is socially constructed” is just as bonkers a position as “everything is biologically predetermined”. Why do people have to universalise their specialised area of investigation and “caveman brain HATE competing with woman!” is a rather cartoonish take on evolutionary psychology. If anything it’d be “young male annoyed he can’t hunt for shit while female age-peer can because he wouldn’t be able to provide for her while heavily pregnant”. Note that not being annoyed in that case doesn’t require better hunting skills, only sufficient ones, and “annoyed” can lead to “will work harder on his skills” or “is going to lash out” or “becomes depressive and walks into the desert” or “is going to look around, see all those capable hunters, and focus on hut building instead”. There’s a fuckton of behavioural flexibility left there.
Bad social conditioning then comes into that and shapes tendencies into caricatures of themselves, or good social conditioning comes in and, well, does good things. It’s not an either/or thing, pretty much everything is both nature and nurture.
Idk man. I am shoving respect into my son’s head at all times, I show respect and love to my wife/his mom all the time, and he is misogynistic AF. I don’t get it. I am trying so hard to raise him to be respectful towards women and he just doesn’t accept it.
He’s 7, ADHD, Autistic, etc. But I really don’t know if that even has anything to do with it because I am, too.
I wouldn’t say it’s been debunked. Probably improbable, but in no way debunked
Hasn’t evolutionary psychology been heavily debunked at this point?
It’s not without a good heap of criticism, that’s for damn sure.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
I tend to think the social angle is more credible Because the behavior of being a dick to female-sounding voices in games is not a universal behavior. Those who aren’t misogynists don’t act that way. How strange.
I was about to point this out - evopsych is an essentialist pseudoscience. Human interactions are governed by culture at least as much as they are by biology.
I disagree with the conclusion. My experience is anecdotal, of course, but I’ll share. I’m a gamer female with a husband and grown son. Husband is gone now, but the three of us gamed quite extensively together and separately for years, playing various MMORPGs and MOBAs, among other things. My son is exceptionally good at gaming, I am mediocre and consider myself a proud “filthy casual,” and my husband was absolute dogshit - to the point I had to leave my chair and go help him by taking over the controls to get him past certain difficult hurdles (and my son does the same for me on occasion).
My husband’s ego was never threatened by this. He never took his frustration out on me. Why? Because he was a decent person who was confident in his masculinity.
In the end, lack of skill does not cause misogyny. I believe misogyny springs from the same source as the lack of skill: a tiny brain.
Not saying I agree or disagree with the author. However you being his wife did not result in “female-initiated disruption of a male hierarchy” (their words) so it’s not really an argument against their hypothesis.
(Of course your husband being nice and not a dickhead probably also plays a role)
Loser gamers are mad screaming chimpanzees confirmed
What I would be really interested in, is how does it play out in reversed scenarios.
How do inexperienced women react to a singular man commenting in a competitive area that is female dominated, do you see the sane sorr of vitriol from lower performing women, vs welcoming behavior from better performing women?
Well if you want a reversal you need to be true to the parameters: get an experienced male operating - not commenting - and you need to do so NOT in an area dominated by women.
Because the gender split in gaming is almost 50/50. A 1% difference is negligible
That’s true for all video games but most competitive games with an esports scene will have many more male players than women. A lot of this is due to the extra toxicity female gamers experience in those scenes. Not only do they have to deal with the usual toxicity that everybody does when playing those kind of games, but also have to deal with the misogynistic and rape comments on top of that.
I wish it wasn’t the case, and it does appear to be changing with time, thankfully. I notice quite a few more women in Counter Strike 2 than I have in past iterations of the game. I hope to see many more women in competitive esports in the future.
Competitive arena shooters have always seemed the worst to me, so if cs2 has more women that’s really good to hear. I think in a combined ~1k hours of csgo and valorant (haven’t played either in years though) i can count the amount of times ive hears women speak in vcs on my hands, and I’m not sure if it was ever not followed by some stupid sexist comments.
Definitely seeing many women in other genres, just waiting for more to reach pro level so we actually see mixed gender or sometimes all women teams in professional esports commonly. As it stands it also still seems like a few too many people would immediately blame any bad performance on being a woman, and no one really wants to deal with that kind of public response.
