Benjamin Mark Winegard

Hillsdale College · Psychology

Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological structure that is invariant across human populations. Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populatio...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

In the following article, we forward the coalitional value theory (CVT) and apply it to several puzzles about human behavior. The CVT contends that humans evolved unique mental mechanisms for assessing each other’s marginal value to a coalition (i.e., each other’s coalitional value). They defer to those with higher coalitional value, and they asser...

Humans create many apparently functionless artifacts such as paintings, novels, poems, films, and decorative blankets. From an evolutionary perspective, such creations appear somewhat puzzling. Why create artifacts that do not appear to contribute to survival? One recent explanation, the cultural courtship model, argued that such creations are used...

Humans create many apparently functionless artifacts such as paintings, novels, poems, films, and decorative blankets. From an evolutionary perspective, such creations appear somewhat puzzling. Why create artifacts that do not appear to contribute to survival? One recent explanation, the cultural courtship model, argued that such creations are used...

Four studies tested the hypotheses that (1) romantic partners function as hard-to-fake signals of status and (2) men are concerned about signaling their status to both other men and to other women. In study 1, participants rated the status of an individual (gender remained neutral) who was described as attending a party with either a high-quality g...

In this chapter, we follow up on the work of other scholars who have recently cautioned about the dangers of ideological uniformity in the social sciences. We forward the paranoid egalitarian meliorist (PEM) model to help account for bias in the social sciences. Paranoid is not a pejorative term, but describes a sensitivity to perceived threats to...

Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological structure that is invariant across human populations. Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populatio...

This chapter focuses on the developmental antecedents and psychological traits of mass shooters. Mass shootings are such astonishingly rare, idiosyncratic, and multicausal events that it is impossible to explain why one individual decides to shoot his or her classmates, coworkers, or strangers and another does not. The chapter presents a tentative...

An essay about political bias in the social sciences; a working draft.

We agree with Duarte et al. that bias in social psychology is a serious problem that researchers should confront. However, we are skeptical that most social psychologists adhere to a liberal progress narrative. We suggest, instead, that most social psychologists are paranoid egalitarian meliorists (PEMs). We explain the term and suggest possible re...

Women’s preferences for men’s masculinized faces and voices were assessed after women (n = 331) were primed with images of male-on-male aggression, male-on-female aggression, pathogens, and neutral scenes. Male-on-male aggression and pathogen primes were associated with increased preference for masculine traits, but the same effect emerged in the n...

Evolutionary psychology has provoked controversy, especially when applied to human sex differences. We hypothesize that this is partly due to misunderstandings of evolutionary psychology that are perpetuated by undergraduate sex and gender textbooks. As an initial test of this hypothesis, we develop a catalog of eight types of errors and document t...

Researchers have theorized that manhood is a precarious social status that requires effort to achieve. Because of this, men whose manhood is threatened react with a variety of compensatory behaviors and cognitions such as aggression, support for hierarchy, low tolerance for homosexuality, and support for war. In the following article, we argue that...

Grief is a puzzling phenomenon. It is often costly and prolonged, potentially increasing mortality rates, drug abuse, withdrawal from social life, and susceptibility to illness. These costs cannot be repaid by the deceased and therefore might appear wasted. In the following article, we propose a possible solution. Using the principles of social sel...

Darwin’s (1871) sexual selection, in particular male–male competition over mates and female choice of mating partners, has successfully guided research on sex differences across hundreds of species, including our own. One consequence of the success of sexual selection has been a relative indifference to other pressures that can result in the evolut...

We review Nicholas Wade's courageous and entertaining but flawed book, "A troublesome inheritance: Genes, race, and human history."

Mating decisions are influenced by conspecifics' mate choices in many species including humans. Recent research has shown that women are more attracted to men with attractive putative partners than those with less attractive partners. We integrate these findings with traditional accounts of social signaling and test five hypotheses derived from it....

Main supporting information packet with demographic and other data. (DOCX)

Flaunting and concealing as a function of religious affiliation. (DOCX)

Flaunting and concealing as a function of relationship status. (DOCX)

Pamphlet 1 (given to experimental group). (DOCX)

Means, standard deviations, and correlations among all major measured variables. (DOCX)

Face ratings. (DOCX)

Pamphlet 2 (given to control group). (DOCX)

Men's but not women's investment in a public goods game varied dynamically with the presence or absence of a perceived out-group. Three hundred fifty-four (167 male) young adults participated in multiple iterations of a public goods game under intergroup and individual competition conditions. Participants received feedback about whether their inves...

The relative impact of genetic and social influences on disordered eating behaviors (DEB) including binging, purging, excessive dieting and negative self-evaluations about weight remain an issue of debate. The current study sought to examine the relative influence of genetic and social influences on DEB. A 7-year prospective analysis of 580 monozyg...

Men's but not women's investment in a public goods game varied dynamically with the presence or absence of a perceived out-group. Three hundred fifty-four (167 male) young adults participated in multiple iterations of a public goods game under intergroup and individual competition conditions. Participants received feedback about whether their inves...

Much attention has focused on the influence of media images of thin women on body dissatisfaction among female viewers. Disagreement exists regarding the nature of media influences, with meta-analytic results suggesting only small effect sizes. Fewer researchers have focused on the role of peer influences and peer competition on female body dissati...

Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is a brilliant analysis of the decline in human violence over the past several centuries and of the social and psychological processes associated with this decline. His sweeping work encompasses the intricacies of the medieval practice of breaking miscreants on the wheel, to...

Comments on Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations (see record 2010-02208-001) by Confer et al. We applaud Confer et al.'s (February-March 2010) clarifications of the many misconceptions surrounding the use of evolutionary analyses in psychology. As they noted, such misunderstandings are common and result in a...

Sport fandom has received considerable attention from social scientists, yet few have considered it from an evolutionary perspective. To redress this gap, we develop the hypothesis that team sports exhibit characteristics that activate mechanisms which evolved to facilitate the development of coalitions in the context of small-scale warfare. Based...

In this paper we develop a general model to explain the hostility toward, and ignorance of, human evolutionary theory (ET) in the social sciences. We first provide relevant theoretical background explaining the basics of ET. We then briefly describe the history of, and reasons for, social science attacks against ET. After providing this background,...