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Originally Posted by Poker phenom
Your citation does not support the claim that theorists in sociology (n.b. this survey is targeted even more specifically then sociologists in general) want to push blank slate theory. In fact, the paper supports the opposite conclusion. See for example tables 1 and 2.
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Social theorists’ familiarity with evolutionary theory suggests something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, only 13.7% have experience carrying out research that draws substantially from an evolutionary perspective; and only 25.5% claim to have substantial or expert knowledge of an evolutionary perspective. On the other hand, 41.7% report that they have taught at least one evolutionary biological perspective in class. (Given its absence in theory textbooks, this figure struck us as surprisingly high, though we do not know how affirmatively the material is taught.) Finally, just under half of the respondents (48.3%) is actively or potentially considering teaching an evolutionary perspective in a future course. Prima facie, these substantial numbers appear to contradict the widespread allegation of ‘‘biophobia’’ among sociologists.
If social theorists endorsed blank slate theories of human nature then they would disagree with any and all evolutionary explanations for human behavior. The data shows that the opposite is true for their survey cohort.
I also think, re: table 3, the survey questions used in this study do not actually support the claim about sociologists' "receptiveness to evolutionary explanations" regarding sex differences. There are two problems with this claim. The first is that less than half of the survey respondents said that evolutionary perspectives were implausible for all of the sex-related questions except one, and a similar number found evolutionary explanations plausible as found them implausible for all but two of the questions. These numbers do not support some strong claim that sociologists are rejecting evolutionary explanations. If anything, they indicate a lack of consensus.
As an aside, it's interesting that they do not present complete data for table 3, though they do for the first two. The percentages don't add up to 100%. Presumably the missing responses were some form of agnosticism, in which case a fairly substantial majority either agreed that evolutionary explanations were either plausible or weren't sure for most of the questions, including those which touch on sex.
The other problem is that the researchers seem to have missed the most obvious explanation for their data, and the most obvious problem with their methodology. The fundamental problem is that it's invalid to draw such a general conclusion from what are actually quite specific questions. If they wanted to know people's attitudes about blank slate theories of human nature then they could have asked directly. The problem with using such specific questions as a proxy is that you can color the results pretty easily. That is, say you ask me whether I think evolutionary explanations are plausible to explain differences in clothing style between men and women. I'm going to say such explanations are not plausible at all, but it does not follow that I would similarly reject evolutionary explanations for beauty as a fitness indicator (a question on which many more of their respondents recognized such a plausible role for evolutionary accounts).
This is a major issue IMO, but I think they also miss a fairly obvious explanation for the different response rates as well. They write:
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Note that the four questions that specifically address behavioral differences between the sexes scored the lowest in terms of the ‘‘plausibility of a significant evolutionary component.’’ It is plain that sociological theorists are most inclined to reject evolutionary reasoning when it is employed to explain behavioral differences between women and men. We see no other interpretation for this variation in responses than political outlook. Why would natural selection be limited to feeding behavior or animal phobias, but not to a range of emotions bearing on human sexuality?
I think a better explanation, supported by other data in the same survey (including the unreported percentage who apparently weren't sure), is that social theorists are less likely to consider evolutionary explanations for phenomena which are widely studied as social phenomena in sociology. What they are measuring is specialization: where sociologists think they have good theories about social behavior, they tend to prefer them over explanations from other fields. Gender is a major area of study in sociology. Fear of animals is not. Partly I suspect this just reflects a lack of familiarity with alternative perspectives.
I've always thought that a lot of academic disciplines are over-specialized and insulated from perspectives from other fields. So I'd be inclined to agree that the responses represent something of a blind spot, although not one that constitutes an ideological commitment to blank slate theories. That claim is just way too strong. But people who study sociology probably overrate sociological explanations. I'd suggest that this is likely more a consequence of specialization than ideology. It's having a hammer and thinking everything is a nail. I think you can pretty easily observe the opposite biases among specialists in fields outside the social sciences: sociologists probably overrate sociology, but everyone else tends to underrate the field. IMO.