As an Exercise, Write a Research Article in Evolutionary Psychology, Off the Top of Your Head
David Klinghoffer
If you put your mind to it just a little you could probably sit down and compose a research article in the field of evolutionary psychology, right now off the top of your head. It's easy, as this from Science Daily suggests. It promotes an article from the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, "Sex differences in sports interest and motivation: An evolutionary perspective." Here we go.
Start with a glaringly obvious fact from daily life.
Sports are enormously popular...
Check. Another?
... and one striking pattern is that boys and men are typically much more involved than are girls and women.
Right. Obvious.
Give a reason why we should care, tied to contemporary political or cultural controversies:
This sex difference has policy implications, and it raises fundamental questions about the nature of sex differences.
This sounds familiar. Haven't we heard it before? You need to explain why this seemingly well-trodden ground should be trodden again:
Although scholars from many disciplines have explored sex differences in sport involvement, few have addressed the issue from a broad, evolutionary perspective.
Now, "demonstrate" what everybody already knows:
First, the authors demonstrated that females' underrepresentation in sport -- both as participants and spectators -- generally reflects their lesser sports interest, not merely fewer opportunities for involvement. Moreover, this sex difference occurs in all societies described thus far, from hunters and gatherers to large contemporary societies.
Speaking of hunters and gatherers, how about some imaginative stories about the ancient human or pre-human past? You can't leave those out.
One hypothesis focuses on the importance of needing to ally with coalitions in between-group contexts, while the other emphasizes the need to develop social and motor skills. Another hypothesis holds that individuals compete in sports to gain status and that nonparticipants monitor sports performances so they can evaluate potential competitors and allies. The evidence indicates that this hypothesis applies chiefly to males. A fourth hypothesis is that sports serve as courtship displays that advertise participant quality to the opposite sex....
Since this is evolution we're talking about, a speculative physiological connection would be helpful:
[S]everal studies indicate that prenatal hormones contribute to males' greater sports interest.
Now recapitulate, demonstrating that we're really no wiser than when we started out:
The take-home points from this review are that the sex difference in sports interest is (1) substantial and widespread, (2) partly due to evolutionary pressures that differentially affected males and females, and (3) unlikely to be fully overturned by socialization.
Remind us of the ramifications. They can be found either to confirm liberal prejudices or upset them. The latter is sexier, isn't it? Fine. Either way, the results need to be cast as surprising, even though they are not:
These points challenge the bedrock assumptions of many scholars and policy makers. Most notably, Title IX is a U.S. law that prohibits sexual discrimination in educational opportunities, including sports, and Title IX is generally implemented under the assumption that females' sports interest is intrinsically equal to that of males.
No one with any common sense, especially if you've raised kids, would for a moment doubt that boys are more interested in sports than girls and that this is inherent, not learned. Nor would anyone doubt that Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences would offer evolutionary explanations, tales of the unobservable past that, as I said, you could come up with yourself on demand.
Say what you will of Freud and Totem and Tatoo -- as a pioneering work in this field, that one was superbly written and entertaining, and offered a really juicy "hypothesis" (father murdered by sexually jealous sons, to explain the incest taboo), a genuinely surprising story that I sure never would have guessed.
