Saturday, August 4, 2012

More thoughts on Evo Psych

Ok, lots of stuff.  This one's not ready for the public, but I'm putting it out there anyway.  Thoughts and comments would be very much appreciated here.  I'm thinking about how EP is FUNDAMENTALLY not the same as other evolutionary sciences.  We are not talking about discrete variable or even things that can be tracked on a simple linear continuum (pigmentation or whatever).  Personality and behavior are SO intrinsically multifaceted that it's hard enough just to pin down what you are even looking at.  Should a discipline be penalized for trying to study something that is simply really, really hard to fully grasp?  Everything I said last time still stands- I'm not saying there's not a long way to go and that proponents of EP don't need to step up their game, maybe, but the field is really just starting out. Statistically significant results are usually worth looking at in a larger context.  They might not always (or even often...who knows) meant precisely what EP authors suggest that that mean, but I think it's worth finding out 1. What they DO really and truly suggest from a scientific standpoint and 2. what we can do to further contextualize those findings and build something more convincing from them.
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2 comments:

  1. RoiaAugust 4, 2012 at 2:32 PM

    I may be totally off in my response here, but (like you) I'll put forth the thoughts that occurred to me as I read this post (as well as the last). And please note that my thoughts are based on just what you've written and not on any true understanding of evolutionary psychology (which I think you explained to me, but it requires more reading on my part). Okay. Disclaimer done.

    No, a discipline/field/approach should not be discounted. Practitioners simply need to find better ways to study it. While there are many who seem to feel qualitative research lacks the strength of quantitative research, I think evolutionary psychology may benefit from some well thought out qualitative studies in order to describe particular elements more fully (perhaps leading to more effective quantitative studies). Mixed methods research is, I believe I've heard, considered quite favorably of late.

    One thing that's been happenning in the music therapy community (a field also lacking in large, controlled studies) has been to do Cochrane reviews (not easy to do from what I gather, but they are important) by gathering up all the smaller studies and lumping them together and studying them as a whole. Here's a link to a Google search regarding music therapy related reviews: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=music+therapy+cochrane+review&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=kJMdUMrLMsbs0gHsuIHICA&ved=0CFIQgQMwAA

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  2. CiciAugust 12, 2012 at 8:29 AM

    Thanks for responding, Roia. I want to think more about what kind of qualitative studies could potentially be done to inform Evo Psych, even if- like you said- they're mainly a way to frame better quantitative studies. With current research, though, I think the problem comes in when studies are presented as traditional quantitative research but really aren't. I suspect that's largely because of the negative view/distruct many in the scientific community have of anything that is NOT that, but in the end it still complicates the debate.

    I just hope that in the future we can have more collaboration and less infighting.

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