Nigel Barber

I’m a sociobiology enthusiast (yes, I know it’s called “evolutionary psychology” now, but I can never spell “psychology” right). I am, however, well aware of the main problem; it’s really easy to come up with plausible explanations of how any aspect of behavior might be adaptive and genetically controlled, but really difficult to actually test those explanations.

And that is the big flaw with this book; it’s made up of what Gould called “just so stories”. The author advances - even asserts outright - various hypotheses about human sexual and romantic behavior - for example:

“Teenage childbearing is an adaptive response to a scarcity of marriageable men.”

“A stressful childhood changes romantic relationships.”

“A plumper ideal body type is admired in societies where women have little social power....In societies where women are economically important...a more slender figure is considered attractive.”

“At times when women have difficulty marrying and when single parenthood rates are high, men are most likely to shave their mustaches.”

All those examples are from the Introduction; we haven’t even got to the first chapter yet. And it goes on and on and on like that; lots of assertions, usually reasonable enough or at least worth further investigation, but very little backup data; the author usually cites only one reference if he bothers to cite any at all. He also has his own ideological axe to grind; Nigel Barber is a proponent of the idea that parental investment in child rearing is very important (as opposed to, say, the ideas of Judith Harris) and goes out of his way to pump up his position (“Peers are competitors. Being socialized by ... playmates is like asking the KGB ... to train CIA agents.”)

I admit that this sort of thing is pretty hard to investigate; political correctness dictates that all genders and races are exactly alike in “human nature”; therefore and behavioral differences must be due to racism or sexism; therefore any attempt to investigate scientifically is itself racism and/or sexism and must be resisted - the most notorious example being the physical attack on E.O. Wilson at a 1978 AAAS symposium by protesters from something called The International Committee Against Racism. Nevertheless, the field deserves better than the cavalier approach taken by this book. Useful for some interesting ideas but don’t get too enthusiastic about anything.… (altro)