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Evolutionary Psychology Strikes Again

The trouble with evolutionary psychology is that there are no (or few) ways of testing its theorems. With enough ingenuity on the part of the researcher, nearly any finding about gender can be twisted to suit the evolutionary lens. Prime example, from Crooked Timber last week: the Times in London reported on a study in which men rated the "sexiness" of women's walks. The study found that men rated the women in the less fertile part of their cycle as sexier than the women in a more fertile part of their cycle, because the fertile women walked with "smaller hip movements." You might think that this finding would give evolutionary psychologists pause—might lead them to consider, for a moment, whether some other factor might be at work, such as culture (or tampons!). But no; instead, the Times goes on to say:

That makes evolutionary sense, because it would benefit a woman to advertise her fertility only to those men she believes would make a suitable mate. In contrast, men can pick up on the attractiveness of a woman’s walk from long distance, and it can therefore act as an unwitting signal to less appealing males whom she might not want to choose.

Dr Provost said: “If women are trying to protect themselves from sexual assault at times of peak fertility, it would make sense for them to advertise attractiveness on a broad scale when they are not fertile.”

But you can bet if the study had found that fertile women were seen to have the "sexiest" walks Dr. Provost would have thought that made evolutionary sense, too. There's just no control group here.

via Crooked Timber.