Jacob Weisberg has a new article in Slate riffing on Charlie Sheen’s recent woes that lists eight reasons why people care about celebrities. Reason #7:
Another version of this theory comes from a 2008 article in Scientific American, which attributed our celebrity obsession to status-jockeying. Some research findings: Men are mainly interested in gossip about men and women mainly interested in gossip about women; we care much more about those above us in social hierarchy than those below; we care more about people in our own age group; we care more about negative news (someone got arrested) than positive (someone won an award). According to Frank McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College, we instinctively collect information that can affect our social status. Negative information about higher-status, same-sex others is ammunition against biological competitors.
I don’t normally have much truck with Evolutional Psychology, but damn, if this one paragraph doesn’t explain the entire tech press as we know it. Of course, see also Reason #8.
I always feel like Evo Psych is a case of wasted potential. There’s a really good idea for a field of study, buried in there somewhere, but most of the time it just churns out Just-So Stories, without the literary skill or charm of Rudyard Kipling.
Oooh, you will like this parlor game: **Evo Psych Tennis**.
1. Player 1 names a human behavior, X. Anything is fair game.
2. Player 2 has 30 seconds to come up with a vaguely plausible bullshit Evo Psych explanation for why humans do X.
3. Player 1 then has 30 seconds to come up with a vaguely plausible bullshit Evo Psych explanation for why humans do Not-X.
4. It’s now Player 2’s turn to lob another human behavior.
First person to flail, loses.
I think the game would be more like real evolutionary psych if it was played like so:
1. Player 1 names a human behavior, X. Anything is fair game.
2. Player 2 has 30 seconds to come up with a vaguely plausible racist or sexist Evo Psych explanation for why humans do X.
3. Player 1 then has 30 seconds to search the Internet for an actual evolutionary psychologist making that exact claim with just as much evidence as Player 2.
4. If Player 1 succeeds, everyone takes a shot and shakes their head in shame and pity for humanity.
Ah, your version of the game is better. It successfully captures the raison d’?tre of the field, which seems to be mostly about providing artillery support for Wall Street Journal editorials.