Revisiting the Miller-Kanazawa debate: Should Asia be afforded more attention from evolutionary psychologists?

• Main Author: LEE, Sean Teck Hao
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Geoffrey Miller; Satoshi Kanazawa; debate; Asia; future of evolutionary psychology; response; opinion; Asian Studies; Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2844; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4101/viewcontent/fpsyg_10_00547.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

A decade ago, Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa and Dr. Geoffrey Miller, two renowned evolutionary psychologists, participated in a debate on whether evolutionary psychologists should focus on Asia in their quest to establish a stronghold in the general field of psychology. Despite painstaking efforts to foster greater receptiveness among Western psychologists toward an evolutionary perspective of psychological phenomena, most still seem to be critically reserved toward it; favoring instead proximate sociocultural explanations of psychological phenomena as stipulated by the standard social science model. Facing such an inertia, Miller suggested that it may perhaps be wise to re-direct the field's efforts on the up-and-coming Asia region, to potentially secure better prospects for the field of evolutionary psychology. Kanazawa, however, opposed such a notion and expressed considerable doubt on whether Asia would be worth the effort.