Is evolutionary psychology a scientific revolution or an evolving paradigm?

Some scientists argue that evolutionary psychology is revolutionary within the field of psychology. David Buss, a prominent figure in the field, suggests that evolutionary psychology has already triggered a paradigm shift, fundamentally altering how scientists view human behavior and cognition. He draws a parallel to Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shifts, which posits the emergence of a new dominant paradigm that replaces the old one marks a scientific revolution.

Other researchers suggest that the state of evolutionary psychology is contentious, and its acceptance as the dominant paradigm is not as widespread as suggested. In recent work, researcher Andrea Zagaria conducted a bibliometric analysis to assess the prevalence of evolutionary psychology relative to the socio-cultural approach (that is, the Standard Social Science Model; SSSM), to determine whether evolutionary psychology is indeed revolutionary. This study was published in Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology.

Zagaria sourced data from PsycInfo, a comprehensive database of psychological literature, and compared frequency of words associated with evolutionary psychology (e.g., natural selection, ethology) and SSSM (e.g., social identity, acculturation) across a variety of peer-reviewed journals between 1950-2022. The researcher selected terms based on the APA Thesaurus to ensure a broad representation of both subdisciplines. The percentage of publications related to each approach, as well as their intersection, was calculated to visualize the growth and relative prominence of each field within psychological literature over time.

Zagaria found that while the prominence of evolutionary psychology has steadily grown over the past decade, it has not surpassed SSSM. Between 1950 to 1990, evolutionary psychology-related publications were relatively stable at roughly 3% of the total psychological literature. There was a notable increase post-1990, which peaked at approximately 4% in 2005.

However, this growth has plateaued since. SSSM-related publications significantly increased between 1950 to early 2000s, with publications surging from 5% of the total literature in the 1950s to approximately 11% by 2005, stabilizing around 10% in recent years. Zagaria argues this trend shows SSSM has maintained, if not strengthened, its position as a dominant approach in psychology.

Free daily newsletter

The ratio between SSSM and evolutionary psychology has steadily increased over time, with SSSM contributions, on average, being more than twice as prevalent as evolutionary psychology contributions This gap has been widening in recent years, indicating that SSSM is growing at a faster pace than evolutionary psychology.

There were few contributions that integrated both evolutionary psychology and SSSM, showing there are minimal efforts to integrate the two bodies of research–i.e., the cultural-evolutionary approach. This lack of integration further suggests that evolutionary psychology has not achieved a revolutionary status. Engaging in interdisciplinary research may help foster the integration of evolutionary perspectives in understanding human behavior.

Zagaria maintains the continued dominance of the SSSM suggests that psychology is still a pre-paradigmatic science that is characterized by competing schools of thought, rather than one unified paradigm.

A limitation of this study is the reliance on keyword-based searches, which may not fully capture the complexity of theoretical and empirical contributions to psychology.

The study, “Is Evolutionary Psychology a Scientific Revolution? A Bibliometric Analysis”, was conducted by Andrea Zagaria.