Standard social science model

The term the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) was first introduced to a wide audience in the 1992 edited volume "The Adapted Mind", and is commonly used by proponents of evolutionary psychology (EP) to describe a "blank slate" or "cultural determinist" perspective they attribute to the social sciences that developed during the 20th century. This purportedly ubiquitous perspective views culture as a kind of superorganism, which is absorbed upon the blank slate minds of humans, shaping their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, without reference to biological or evolutionary substrates.

Thinkers in the EP tradition have argued that the SSSM is now out of date and that a progressive model for the social sciences requires evolutionarily-informed models of cultural learning grounded in the computational theory of mind.

ample quotes

* "Instincts do not create customs; customs create instincts, for the putative instincts of human being are always learned and never native." (Ellsworth Faris, 1927, cited in Degler, 1991, p. 84)
* "We are forced to conclude that human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions." (Margaret Mead, 1935/1963, p. 289)
* "Much of what is commonly called 'human nature' is merely "culture" thrown against a screen of nerves, glands, sense organs, muscles, etc." (Leslie White, 1949, cited in Degler, 1991, p. 209)

Criticism

Nowadays few people defend the theory of the blank slate. However, it has been questioned to what extent the SSSM was really ubiquitous in the 20th century. It has been argued that evolutionary psychologists have taken isolated quotes out of context to make the SSSM appear much more popular than it in fact was, in order to create a "straw man". [http://au.geocities.com/neil_levy/Documents/articles/EP_SSSM.pdf]

References

* Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. 1992. The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Degler, C. N. 1991. In search of human nature: The decline and revival of Darwinism in American social thought. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Rose, H. 2001. Colonising the Social Sciences? In Rose, H. and Rose, S. (Eds) "Alas Poor Darwin": London, Cape.

Further reading

* Hampton, Simon Jonathan. 2004. "The Instinct Debate and the Standard Social Science Model". "Psychology, Evolution & Gender". 6, no. 1: 15-44.
* Levy, Neil. 2004. "Evolutionary Psychology, Human Universals, and the Standard Social Science Model". "Biology and Philosophy". 19, no. 3: 459-472.
* Schmaus, Warren. 2003. "Is Durkheim the Enemy of Evolutionary Psychology?"."Philosophy of the Social Sciences".33;25