Rebecca Sear

@rebeccasear.bsky.social

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Director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London @brunelcce.bsky.social https://www.rebeccasear.org/

Chapter title and authors: Personality Development and Psychopathology Aurelio José Figueredo, Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre, Steven C. Hertler
Title of chapter from a new Springer book on The Evolution of Psychotherapy: Integrating Insights from Sexual Selection Theory and Life History Theory into Psychotherapy: Evolutionary Perspectives on Mental Health and the Treatment of Sex- and Gender-Related Issues
Graph showing higher testosterone levels in men from Boston, US, than men from Nepal and three small-scale populations, Efe, Lese and Ache, especially in the morning. Diurnal variation in T is also greater in Boston men
Extract from the article: And I knew when I gave the “F%*# Free Speech” talk, people were talking about absolute free speech, that this was where we were heading — to a place where we brought back, and we’re bringing back, ideas of Black biological, intellectual, and cultural inferiority, and we’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. We call it Whac-a-Mole, and it prevents us from being able to do more creative stuff, because we’re constantly tethered to having to react to some new reactionary piece of data.
Here are four levels of attitudes toward racist science: 1. Fully endorsing it, with priors suggesting that it is probably true. Watson, Richard Lynn, Emil K, Cremieux, etc. 2. The Journal of Controversial Ideas crowd. What is wrong about Watson’s statement is that he was getting ahead of the data. What we call racism is really just stereotyping prior to definitive scientific confirmation. We should be encouraging scientific investigation to find out what is true and what isn’t. 3. The open science response. These ideas are ugly and probably false, but in a free country and open scientific Academe there is nothing much that can be done, so we might as well tolerate it politely. James Flynn, one of my intellectual heroes, held this point of view. Also Sandra Scarr. 4. Scientists are free to conduct whatever kind of science they want, but on the other hand there is no need for the rest of us to tolerate it politely. It should be vigorously condemned as abhorrent. We are under no obligation to hire people pursuing the hypothesis, or to give them grant money, although tenure will protect most of them. 5. Full woke, circa 2020. There needs to be mechanisms in place to prevent this kind of work being conducted and published. People advancing these ideas should be fired, even if they have tenure. There should be committees at universities reviewing published work to ensure it isn’t racist.
Figure from the paper showing the largest connected co-authorship network in the dataset, which demonstrates several clusters: “biological anthropology and archeology” in red; “mathematical modeling and dual-inheritance theory” in green; "cognitive linguistics and experimental cultural evolution” in blue; “cross-cultural and phylogenetic studies” in yellow; “computational biology and cultural niche construction” in purple; “evolutionary psychology” in cyan; “behavioral ecology and birdsong” in orange
CRITICAL WOKE STUDIES The intellectual origins of woke: Protestant, liberal, neo-Marxist or postmodernist? Are woke ideas downstream of equality law, or are laws and institutions downstream of culture? Is woke a result of self-interest, status distinction and 'luxury beliefs', or genuine belief? Bottom-up versus top-down: did woke beliefs spread epidemiologically through the media and social media, or through a more deliberate 'march through the institutions'? The politics of woke: how important is the culture war for deciding elections? Can public policy roll it back? The psychology of woke: how important are hyperparenting, fragility, therapeutic concept creep, psychopathology and personal victimhood in spurring the rise of this ideology? The political theory of woke: is there a case for limiting speech, mandating equal outcomes or deconstructing a majority tradition?
Blurb for an article by Centre Fellow Satoshi Kanazawa on the Centre for Heterodox Social Science website
W. Bradford Wilcox (University of Virginia) - "The Future is Family: Why Marriage Matters More than Ever" Jonathan Anomaly (Herasight/University of Austin) - "Liberalism, Tribalism, and Fertility"
5:00 - 6:15 PM - Theme: Developments and Debates in US Higher Education Policy Michael Jindra (Boston University) - remote Chris Rufo (Manhattan Institute) - remote Suella Braverman, Reform Party MP and Education spokesperson - Discussant / UK perspective
Diagram illustrating the pro-alignment perspective on policy, which responds to fertility rates and family composition/structures but where fertility or family structure are not the intended outcome of policy. This contrasts with pro or anti-natalist perspectives on policy, where fertility or family are targets of policy
Photo of a good book (Muskism by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff) and a crisp glass of white wine sitting on a garden table with grass and a small grey tabby cat visible beyond
Even moderate departures from replacement fertility produce large cumulative losses when compounded across generations. With a fertility rate of 1.6 (e.g., USA), about 44% of a cohort remain after three generations; with a rate of 0.6 (e.g., Shanghai), only 2.3% remain.
Pinker is currently listed as a reference on the Curriculum Vitae of Nathan Cofnas, a ‘race realist’ philosopher who promotes the pseudoscientific idea that there are genetically-based intelligence differences between racial groups. Despite repeated refutations in mainstream science, this notion is kept in circulation by a small group of committed ideologues. If you are looking for a recent empirical and theoretical refutation, this peer-reviewed scientific article should cover it. Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where Cofnas was formerly employed, cut its association with Cofnas after he wrote a particularly offensive blog post in 2024 in which he railed against diversity, equity and inclusion policies and suggested that in a meritocracy Black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. Cofnas has recently been employed at Ghent University.
List of referees on Nathan Cofnas’ CV, including Pinker and Shackelford
Screenshot of the title of a paper published in the Evolutionary Psychology section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology: “An evolutionary case for polygyny to counter demographic collapse”
Pinker effectively helped Dershowitz to obtain a “completely unprecedented” plea bargain with U.S. attorney Alex Acosta in 2008 which granted Epstein and alleged co-conspirators immunity to federal prosecution for trafficking dozens of underage girls. In exchange for pleading guilty to lesser “prostitution” charges, the plea bargain allowed Epstein to serve just 13 months in Palm Beach County Jail, with work release seven days per week. Epstein allegedly continued with his sex crimes at the offices of his Florida Science Foundation during his work release. Without the deal, Epstein could have served a life sentence and might not have been free to continue abusing hundreds of victims for another decade, up until his final arrest in 2019 on separate federal charges for trafficking minors. Regardless of whether he knew whose defense he was writing the letter for, Pinker’s expert opinion helped Dershowitz to create a potential loophole for pedophiles to escape federal charges.
The report also characterizes anthropology’s attention to positionality and reflexivity as evidence of a broader rejection of objectivity. This is wholly incorrect. Reflexivity is not, as the report asserts a claim that facts don’t exist, that they are irrelevant, or that all interpretations are equally valid. It is a methodological commitment to examining how knowledge is produced and to making visible the assumptions, relationships, and contexts that shape research. Far from weakening scholarly rigor, many anthropologists see reflexivity as one of the ways rigor is strengthened.
One hundred twenty-eight countries used in the Templer and Arikawa (2006) study were used in the present study. Yugoslavia was not used because that country no longer exists. The same winter high, winter low, summer high, and summer low temperatures employed in their study were used in the present research. IQ was obtained from Lynn and Vanhanen (2012). The centigrade temperatures were obtained from Fodor’s World Weather Guide (Pearce & Smith, 1998). Precipitation in mean cubic millimeters per year and relative humidity were obtained from The World Bank Organization (2013). The set of IQs was that of Lynn and Vanhanen (2012). Two persons assessed the predominant nasal index of all the relevant countries for which information was available (Biasutti, 1967). A technologist with very exacting work was requested to specify the predominant nasal index ranging from 1 to 8. A second highly skilled technician also provided ratings that ranged from 1 to 8 with a higher number indicating a larger nasal index. The product moment correlation between the two raters was r = .97. The mean of the two raters was used. It is here parenthetically noted that Australian aborigines have the largest nasal index in the world but this is not used in the present study because most inhabitants of that nation (and continent) are not indigenous. Lynn and Vanhanen (2012) reported a mean IQ of r = 62 for the Australian aborigines.
Screenshot of the information of a paper published in 2014 in the Elsevier journal Intelligence, the flagship journal of the International Society for Intelligence Research Title: The relationship between IQ and climatic variables in African and Eurasian countries Authors: Donald Templer and John Stephens
Extract from Warne's defence: The sample size criticism is much less of a problem. The minimum sample size to have a 95% confidence interval width of ± 3 IQ points is 96. For a confidence interval of ± 2 IQ points, a combined sample size of 216 is needed for a country.
Extract from the “eugenics will solve climate change” paper: As in the case of innovation-related benefits, economy-driven climate benefits do not support procreation exclusively among intelligent individuals, but extend to a broader group—in this case all those whose children are likely to make net positive contributions to a country's GDP. That said, due to the high heritability of intelligence (see Section 2.1), the offspring of intelligent individuals are particularly likely to make above-average economic contributions. Current estimates suggest that an additional IQ point at the national level is associated with a 2-3% increase in GDP (Hanushek and Woessmann 2015). Consistent with this, a study of 161 countries found that performance on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) correlates with per capita income at 0.82 (Rindermann 2018). This relationship appears to be largely causal, with intelligence influencing economic performance. Supporting evidence includes the fact that average cognitive ability remains a strong predictor of economic prosperity even after controlling for geography, legal origin, religion, and colonial history; that studies have found little evidence of reverse causality; and that intelligence is also associated with higher earnings and socioeconomic status at the individual level (Belsky et al. 2018; Christainsen 2013; Hanushek and Woessmann 2015; G. Jones 2016; Rindermann 2018).6
Screenshot of a tweet from far-right magazine Aporia promoting one of their articles on “Embryo selection as foreign aid: the obvious path to a flourishing self-sustaining Africa”, with the text: “Scientific and technological advances have permitted a new voluntary and moral form of “eugenics” that is too powerful to ignore. While many may find this vision of the world distasteful, we must face reality for the betterment of humanity”
HOW TO FIGHT AGAINST ANTI-SCIENCE AS PART OF THE COMMUNITY AS MEMBER OF SOCIETY Build Collective Power • Dedicated advocacy organizations with fundraising and political capacity • Formal solidarity networks and legal defense funds to protect individuals • Form cross-domain alliances, not science only coalitions Pressure Platforms and Systems, Not Humans • Change platform incentives through regulation, transparency, and real accountability • Journalistic retorm: pertormative neutrality and false balence need to go • Institutional reform: demand consequences for unethical behavior and spreading lies Spotlight Moral Clarity • "Apolitical" postures actively benefit bad-faith actors and attackers • Moral and analytical clarity increases trust more than forced noutrality Surface intent and incentives behind false claims, not just inaccuracy Don't Withdraw, Get In • Ceding terrain ensures loss, fight where people actually are • Public trust and authority are rebuilt aurbunt presence, participation, and • Plural styles for plural audiences, meet people emotionally first Defend Democracy and Science as Public Good • Science improves democratic decision-making and ensures accountability • Protest, organize, vote; normalize civic participation by scientists • Protect the independence of scientific institutions from political interference
In memorandums of understanding (MOUs) signed with more than 30 nations since December, worth $20.6bn, governments have accepted five years of funding — often much reduced from previous levels — in return for a pledge to provide up to 25 years of patient data and, in some cases, pathogenic specimens, along with a commitment to co-invest. Recipient countries have promised to stump up $7.8bn, about a third of the total, and the US can withdraw funding if it determines nations are not meeting their co-investment pledges. Critics have likened these transactional agreements to a form of digital and genomic colonialism, warning that data could be made available to unnamed private US corporations, including pharmaceutical companies and big data analytics groups.
Screenshot of world map of IQ drawn using Lynn and Becker’s IQ data, from the World Population Review website
Bluesky post from Prospect Magazine promoting an article on Britain’s upcoming “Depopulation bomb”, a framing as irresponsible as it is nonsensical
An opened box from a pet shop full of smaller boxes of cat food, with a very interested tuxedo cat in the box and sniffing away at the cat food. Smaller grey tabby standing outside the box, sniffing in
A tuxedo cat with glossy fur sitting on a box just delivered from a pet shop food, with a suspicious hole on the top
Quote from the linked paper, written by Sarah Hrdy: "I am not sure young biologists today realize just how charged and vitriolic they were. Here's an example from one of the Science for the People rallies I used to attend in Cambridge, this one held in 1979 Harvard’s old Geology Lecture Hall. It began with a speech by Freda Salzman on “Nazi Social Biology: Engineering of consent to genocide”, followed by Richard Lewontin and Jonathan Beckwith speaking in turn on “Sociobiology Theory and its Political Origins” and “Sociobiology and Fascism Today”. The absence of evidence linking Wilson to neo-Nazi views might have been deafening were it not drowned out by the auditory impact of hearing the phrase “social biology” repeated again and again, loudly, and rapidly, until the words blurred together and sounded like “sociobiology”, occasioning more roars and stomping feet resonating against the wooden floorboards. "
Photo of an image from the tv tribute showing a gorilla looking directly at the camera with an arm under their head, while a baby gorilla in the foreground looks up at the sky
Front cover of Larry Niven’s science fiction novel Ringworld
Photo of a wood carpeted with bluebells
Image from the textbook, which shows a back view of a hunter with spear, with the caption: Evolutionary theory suggests that men have developed better spatial ability owing to being involved in hunting. However, men may have ended up in the hunter role because they naturally had better spatial ability and therefore were better at hunting.
Passage from Maltby, John, et al. Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence, published by Pearson Education: On measures of general intelligence (IQ), Court reviewed nearly 120 studies that had provided information on sex differences on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. He found some studies suggesting that women scored higher than men and other studies reporting that men scored higher than women. In the majority of studies, Court found there was no difference. Lynn and Irwing, however, using a meta-analysis of intelligence data taken from 57 studies in 30 countries, found that among adults, men scored on average five IQ points more than women.
Stop and think To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth Consider the following story. It is part of an obituary writ- this, anyway?' Dick recalled the day when, as a young ten about Richard Herrnstein in 1994, after his death, by man, he had been awarded tenure. It was his dream Charles Murray (Murray, 1994). Think about this statement fulfilled - a place in the university he so loved, the with regard to reporting group differences in intelligence. chance to follow his research wherever it took him, About four years ago, shortly after Dick (Richard economic security. For Dick, being a tenured Herrnstein) and I had begun to collaborate on a new professor at Harvard was not just the perfect job, but book about intelligence and social policy (The Bell also the perfect way to live his life. It was too good to Curve), we were talking over a late-evening Scotch be true; there had to be a catch. What's my part of at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts). We had the bargain? he had asked himself. 'And I figured it been musing about the warning shots the prospec- out, he said, looking at me with that benign, gentle tive book had already drawn and the heavy fire that half-smile of his. "You have to tell the truth.' was sure to come. The conversation began to depress me, and I said, 'Why the hell are we doing (Murray, 1994, p. 22)
US evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald (1997) suggests that the trade-off between mating effort and parental investment is a central dimension of reproductive strategies that range from a high parental investment/low mating effort to a low parental investment/high mating effort. US psychologist Jean Philip Rushton (1985) used such an idea to develop his differential K theory. Within this theory, Rushton suggests that life history might be useful to understand human individual differences by looking at individual and group differences in life histories, social behaviour and physiological functioning. He referred to the central dimensions that represent the trade-off between parental investment and mating effort as K . US psychologist Aurelio José Figueredo and his colleagues (Figueredo et al., 2005) examined Rushton’s idea of K and MacDonald’s idea that K might be related to personality among a group of 222 university undergraduate students. First, Figueredo and colleagues had to measure K . They found that a number of variables correlate to measure an overall K -factor. These variables are as follows.
Andrea Migliano presenting information about next year’s EHBEA conference in Zurich
Photo of James presenting the first slide of his talk
Photo of Matt standing by his poster on his Sentiments, Respect and the Evolution of Norm Psychology
Slide with a photo of a driver heading towards a bright dawn sun
Title slide: Modeling and testing the evolution and development of sensitive periods in changing environments
Photo of conclusion slide Extreme differences in selectivity (e.g,, in dating apps) between men and women do not necessarlly reflect proportional differences in sexuality / dating goals They are a consequence of feedback on dynamics that operate on: • differences in sexuality ratios and//or • possibly small differences in dating goals
Opening slide Progressing the causal revolution: a case study in causal re-evaluation of applied evolutionary anthropology Sarah Myers (BirthRites MPI-EVA) Sarah Johns (University of Kent)
Photo of the courtyard of a beautifully 17th century building, originally built for plague sufferers
A photo of a canal lined with tall Dutch houses, with glorious blue skies
Photo of a Eurostar train just arrived at Rotterdam Central station
Tweet from spikedonline: “People have no idea how small their fertility window is. In the UK, women only have a 50% likelihood of having kids after 28. Unplanned childlessness is ruining lives” Demographer Stephen J Shaw on the personal tragedies behind the birthrate crisis
Last slide of the talk: Title: Cf. eugenics Eugenics as an economic project, instantiating a particular regime of bioeconomic value - valuing human lives in terms of their ability to contribute to industrial economies - especially the ability to perform productive labour - discriminating especially against those deemed unproductive - segregation and confinement, reproductive controls, murder Genomic medicine instantiating a different regime of bioeconomic value - valuing human lives as resources for a biomedical innovation economy - certain kinds of lives more valuable than others - what does this bring to ethical and policy discourses?
Blurb for the politics of demography session: The politics of demography This session/strand/panel will focus on the ways demographic indicators and trends can be used, and misused, for political purposes. It will explore how demographers can constructively contribute to political debates, and promote a better understanding of demographic trends and their consequences. We welcome research contributions which discuss contemporary politicised topics (such as pronatalism and migration) or measurement issues in demography, as well as historical perspectives. We also welcome expressions of interest by email for taking part in a panel on this topic. Strand organisers: Rebecca Sear (Brunel University London); Wendy Sigle (LSE) & Sarah Walters (LSHTM) – rebecca.sear@brunel.ac.uk; W.Sigle@lse.ac.uk; sarah.walters@lshtm.ac.uk
Screenshot from Merlin bird call-identifying app, listing the following birds: Stock dove Nuthatch Blue tit Wood pigeon Long-tailed tit Wren Robin Great tit Coal tit Chiffchaff
Acknowledgements section of a paper of Rushton's I thank C.D. Ankney, T.A. Bons, A.J. Figueredo, L.S. Gottfredson, A.R. Jensen, and G.F. Miller for critical comments on a previous draft. Some of the data were presented at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Amherst, MA, June 2000, the International Society for Research in Intelligence, Newport Beach, CA, December 2003, and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Berlin, Germany, July 2004.
Article in Quillette on the scandal of a race scientist being hired at Ghent university: “European jurists should not seek to arbitrate controversial matters best settled by science”
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Photo of Brunel’s lecture centre - a listed building where some of A Clockwork Orange was filmed - bathed in spring sunshine
Comment added to the end of the petition defending Cofnas: [alPlease note that Cofnas' appointment is going through as planned, supported by the rector, while just a few weeks earlier the appointment of ERC grantee Harry G Pettit at VU Brussels was annulled after a campaign against his appointment that was led by Maarten Boudry, co-signatory below, and supported by Filip Buekens, another co-signatory. Also that campaign was based solely on Pettit's exercise of his right to free expression, within the boundaries of the law and in his personal capacity. See https://www.vub.be/en/news/vrije-universiteit- brussel-withdraws-planned-appointment-dr-harry-pettit. It makes no sense to support someone whose rights were successfully protected, and to ignore someone whose same rights were almost simultaneously violated. When it comes to free speech and academic freedom, selective indignation is worse than no indignation. It is the very enemy of freedom of expression and academic freedom. It is orthodoxy and hypocrisy, rather than heterodoxy. I would happily sign this letter, as I do support a maximalist interpretation of freedom of expression and of academic freedom. But I cannot do so in good conscience given that some of the co-signatories appear to use this letter as a way to conceal their own attacks against the freedoms the letter purports to defend