Writer’s General Warning: The following entry may cause your head to implode from an overload of information. Head implosion is not necessarily guaranteed, but the writer wishes to warn his readers that the act of writing the entry certainly had this effect on him, and that he assumes no responsibility for any further head implosion that this entry may cause.
Introduction
I find, sometimes, that it’s difficult to respond to something that someone says about a given subject, because it requires a level of knowledge that I do not, at the time, possess. Take for example, one of Jonathan Tweet’s recent blog entries, which was written in response to a discussion panel on the subject of “Why Does Gaming Appeal Mostly to Guys?” Here is what he has to say about the subject.
“Roleplaying, as currently construed, appeals disproportionately to guys because it’s mostly about the things that men evolved to enjoy: hunting and warfare. It’s about a group assembling to undertake (imaginary) risks for glory and dominance. It’s the same reason that team sports, such as basketball, are more male, whereas women compete to be judged beautiful and worthy (ice skating, gymnastics). TCGs are even more male-oriented than RPGs as they’re about direct conflict with little to no story or personality. When I was in Finland 5 years ago, the TCG players were typified as guys without girlfriends. LARPing has more female appeal because it’s more about personalities, relationships, clothing, and make-up. Finally, the quality of gamer men is a factor. A Finnish gamer I met said she got into gaming as a way to meet good-looking guys. The US gaming scene has less to offer along those lines.”
After some debate between Tweet and myself over whether or not men have evolved to enjoy hunting and warfare (or conversely, that women evolved to enjoy ice-skating and clothing), Tweet eventually made the comment that my “sharp questions, contrary evidence, and other challenges merely demonstrate that you and I come to this issue with very different premises, including, it would seem, what evolutionary psychology implies in the first place… at least one of us has a badly skewed idea of what evolutionary psychology means, and I won’t blame you if you think it’s me.”
Because of this, I have decided to try and get a better sense of what the premises of evolutionary psychology actually are (as well as sociobiology, and other scientific fields related to the subject). In so doing, I want to determine if the premises of evolutionary psychology are generally accepted by the scientific community, to determine if they betray any preconceived biases in regards to evolution, and finally, after having done this, to determine if either Tweet’s or my conclusions are skewed, and to see if they agree with anything evolutionary psychology has to say about women.
Challenges
Unfortunately, trying to get even a rudimentary sense of evolutionary psychology is an enormous task, one that I don’t think I was entirely prepared for when I started to write this entry. I have, therefore, decided to break this discussion up into at least two entries (possibly more).
In this first entry, I will discuss one of the fundamental elements of evolutionary psychology: The Baldwin Effect. Though this discussion has very little to do with women and gaming, I intend to show that the hypothesis itself is a highly disputed one that calls into question the very premise of evolutionary psychology. In future entries, I hope to tie the subject of women and gaming more concisely into this discussion. Hopefully, though, my readers can appreciate the process I’ve taken to try and understand the subject better, and will be patient enough to stick with me as I explore this subject further.
The Baldwin Effect: The Foundation of Evolutionary Psychology
The term “Baldwin effect” was first coined by a researcher named George Gaylord Simpson, and refers to a hypothesis simultaneously proposed by three researchers, Lloyd Morgan, H.F. Osborn, and of course J.M Baldwin himself, in the year 1896 . The hypothesis itself is presented as a challenge to the theory that natural selection is a blind process, and that the behaviors and movements of an organism play no role in the evolutionary process. Baldwin’s own treatise on the subject of the Baldwin Effect had the following steps.
1. Over the course of their life-cycles, organisms learn to adapt random movements and behaviors into habits that allow them to better interact within their environment. These habits might include learning how to walk, how to interact socially, how to acquire food, etc. Some are acquired through learning, some through imitation, some through reactions to environmental stimulus, some through reasoning, and so on. These habits, which are acquired over an organism’s life-cycle, are what Baldwin calls “ontogenetic adaptations.”
2. Ontogenetic adaptations further adapt instincts that have already been inherited. So for example, birds are born with a natural instinct to vocalize. However, they are not born with a natural instinct to produce the various calls used by their species in the wild. As a result, they must ontogenetically adapt their natural instinct to vocalize by acquiring a working knowledge of their species’ bird calls.
3. The more ontogenetically adapted an organism is, the more likely that it will be able to respond to environmental challenges, thus enhancing its life expectancy. For example, a lion who is unable to take down prey, will likely have a shorter life expectancy than a lion that is proficient at taking down prey, because it is not as well ontogenetically adapted.
4. Because of their increased life expectancy, organisms that are more ontogenetically adapted have a greater probability of leaving offspring.
5. In some species, ontogenetic adaptations are made more effective by social heritability. In other words, by imitating the ontogenetic adaptations of others within their species and/or social network, organisms are able to acquire ontogenetic adaptations at a much more rapid pace. For example, learning to hunt from one’s parents is an example of an ontogenetic adaptation acquired through social heritability.
6. If a socially inherited, ontogenetic adaptation is maintained long enough within a population, a corresponding, genetically inherited adaptation may eventually arise. When this happens, the ontogenetic adaptation can become a congenital instinct, or an instinct acquired at birth. For example, a dog’s herding instinct may be an example of an ontogenetic adaptation that has since been translated into a congenital instinct.
7. Newly evolved congenital instincts provide a platform for further ontogenetic adaptation. For example, the development of the Broca’s area of the brain in humans- the area of the brain responsible for controlling the motor functions needed for producing human speech- has further enhanced our ontogenetically adapted ability to use language.
These steps are part of a cyclical process that Baldwin, and others, have referred to as “organic selection,” and they form the very basis of evolutionary psychology. According to proponents, an organism “selects” the ontogenetic adaptations that are most beneficial to its survival, and then waits (in a manner of speaking) until a corresponding, genetically inherited adaptation comes along. It’s like a kind of “mind-directed” natural selection, where ontogenetic adaptations give an organism a certain amount of “breathing space” to survive until genetic adaptations can come in to take their place.1
Critics of the Baldwin Effect
If the process of organic selection sounds vaguely Lamarckian, it should come as no surprise. Baldwin proposes the idea of organic selection as a way to bring Lamarck’s theories of evolution into agreement with the prevailing theory of natural selection. And like Lamarckism, the Baldwin effect is not without its critics. Indeed, many have questioned whether or not ontogenetically acquired adaptations might ever be replaced by genetically acquired ones, since ontogenetic adaptations are more flexible in regards to meeting the challenges of a changing environment than genetically acquired ones. Also, there is nothing to suggest that ontogenetic adaptations are a necessary stage in the process of evolution. An organism may develop genetic traits that allow it to respond to a change in the environment without ever needing to develop an intermediary, ontogenetic adaptation. In addition, the Baldwin Effect assumes that in response to an environmental challenge, an organism first gets smarter, through ontogenetic adaptation, and then gets dumber again, once a genetic adaptation takes its place. Finally, the Baldwin effect presupposes a rapid, long term environmental change in an organism’s environment in order for it to occur. Since such changes rarely occur in nature, it is considered by most researchers to be a special case scenario, that likely accounts for very little in the normal process of natural selection.2
Waddington and Canalization
In spite of the criticism, there have been some verifiable examples of the Baldwin effect demonstrated in a laboratory setting. In 1942, for example, a researcher named Conrad H. Waddington published a paper called “Canalization of Development and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters.” It was in this paper that Waddington first proposed the theory that organisms have the ability to (as he put it), “respond to external stimulus by some developmental reaction… [that] must itself be under genetic control.” In other words, organisms have the ability to alter existing genetic traits in order to respond to environmental stimuli. To demonstrate this effect, Waddington refers to his experiments with fruit flies. By applying moderate electrical shocks to a few generations, Waddington was able to observe a change in the cross vein structure of the fruit flies’ wings that, over the course of a few generations, eventually became inherited as a genetic trait inherited by generations who had never been exposed to the initial stimulus.3
Waddington’s experiments were the first to demonstrate a form of the Baldwin Effect; where organisms, responding to environmental stimuli, are able to produce phenotypes that are eventually expressed as genetic traits. Nevertheless, while Waddington’s experiments reliably demonstrate an example of the Baldwin effect, they also call into serious question the validity of Baldwin’s initial hypothesis. For example, Waddington’s experiments demonstrate fairly conclusively that the inherited changes are the result of a rearrangement of already existing genetic traits that are simply not expressed, rather than the acquisition of new genetic traits that coincide with ontogenetic (or in this case phenotypic) adaptations. Also, the fact that Waddington’s experiments demonstrate only that an organism is able to produce phenotypes that are later expressed as genetic traits, still leaves the subject of whether or not an organism can translate learned behaviors into genetic traits open to debate.
Hinton and Nowlan’s Model
In 1987, Geoffrey Hinton and Steven Nowlan created a computer model, known today as the Hinton and Nowlan Model, designed to simulate the Bowlan Effect. In this computer model, the researchers assigned 20 genes to computer generated organisms, each with an allele labeled 0, and 1. In order to survive, the computer organisms would have to correctly express all alleles as 1’s. With a population of 1,000, and with the program giving each organism a set of randomly generated alleles, it was determined that a fit individual would arise about once in 1,000 generations. Unfortunately, because of the effect of sexual reproduction, the optimum genotype of 20 1’s would be lost upon mating, and so the relevant genotype would never evolve. On the other hand, if a learning mechanism was introduced, where an organism could learn an ontogenetic trait that would allow it to survive, it could then reliably pass that trait onto the next generation, thus allowing the correct genotype to appear in as few as twenty generations.
The problem with the Hinton and Nowlan model is that it is extremely abstract. For starters, the “learned traits” that the researchers ascribe to the computer generated organisms could easily be the result of a rearrangement of already existing genetic traits, similar to the ones discovered in Waddington’s fruit flies. As a result, Hinton and Nowlan’s computer model fails to show that the Baldwin effect is necessarily a mechanism independent of natural selection, and therefore fails to show that behavior has any effect on genetically inherited traits.4
Deacon’s Mechanism
Terrence Deacon, a vocal proponent of evolutionary psychology, suggests a third mechanism, separate from Baldwin’s and Waddington’s, that may be able to successfully reproduce the Baldwin Effect. According to this mechanism, ontogenetic adaptations within a species, and not the environment, provide the selection pressure necessary to induce the Baldwin effect. In this case, if an ontogenetic trait proves to be an advantage to certain members of a population, and the behavior becomes common amongst a given population, then the individuals who are unable to acquire the newly learned trait, will ultimately be less likely to survive to produce offspring. Under these circumstances, any newly acquired genotypes that either improve an organism’s cognitive ability to acquire the skill, or which lower the demand on the organism’s cognitive abilities, or both, will make it more likely that a particular individual will survive to produce offspring. Finally, as individuals become more and more proficient at acquiring the skill, individuals with greater proficiency will have an evolutionary advantage over others, and the process will begin again.
Unfortunately, an intriguing idea without evidence is exactly that, and while Deacon expounds upon a number of ideas, including the idea that the early primate habit of sharing of meat, led to the acquisition of language, and the creation of the first marriage-like contracts*- he fails to relate any of his ideas back to this earlier described mechanism.5 As a result, there is no data available to verify his earlier claim.
Conclusion
The Baldwin Effect, in many ways, serves as the foundation for the field of evolutionary psychology, and yet it remains a hypothesis that is still highly disputed. This leaves me feeling skeptical of any argument that relies on the claims of evolutionary psychology, at least until its most basic tenets can be better substantiated.
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*I can’t say for certain that Deacon’s argument is flawed here (not having had an opportunity to do much reading on the subject). However, the premise of the argument is based on the theory that primates use meat as a kind of currency for sexual favors; a supposition that appears to be refuted by recent studies involving Ngogo chimpanzees, which show that hunting patterns are in no way affected by the presence of female chimpanzees who are in oestrus.6 Even if this weren’t the case, however, the underlying message of Deacon’s argument is essentially that prosititution, and the systematic exploitation and devaluing of women, is the result of genetic inheritance. In other words, men simply can’t help themselves when it comes to exploiting women sexually, because it’s simply part of their genetic makeup. I’ll leave you to decide what you think of such an argument.
1. Depew, David “Baldwin and His Many Effects.” Evolution and Learning, p. 6-8. Weber, Bruce, and David Depew. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2003.
2. Godfrey-Smith, Peter “Baldwin Skepticism and Baldwin Boosterism.” Evolution and Learning, p. 58-59. Weber, Bruce, and David Depew. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2003.
3. Scharloo, Willem “Canalization: Genetic and Developmental Aspects.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 22, (1991), p. 65-93.
4. Downes, Stephen M. “Baldwin Effects and the Expansion of Explanatory Repertoire.” Evolution and Learning, Weber, Bruce, and David Depew. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2003.
5. Mitani, John C. and David P. Watts “Why Do Chimpanzess Hunt and Share Meat.” Animal Behavior, Vol. 61, No. 5, (2001), p. 915-924.
I just found this post by Jonathan Tweet on one of the threads discussing this issue in Astrid’s Parlor. I thought I should share it.
“While I don’t want to breathe new life into a long and ugly thread, I do feel as though I owe interested parties some closing thoughts.
It was a mistake for me to broach such a touchy topic as casually as I did. I’ve heard reports of evolutionary psychology arousing hostility, but I’d never experienced it myself. Wow! Still, it was an oversight, as I can recall how angry I used to get when people asserted that men and women are different. I originally composed my thoughts anticipating that I’d share them live at a panel. Compared to a live discussion, the Internet is a decidedly difficult medium for fruitful controversy. I’d like to think that if I’d composed my thoughts for the Internet, I’d have been more careful.
I have also underestimated the “boys club” phenomenon that many women gamers report experiencing. When I got into D&D (1977), it was mostly a college phenomenon. The player who invited me to play with the college kids was a woman. One of my first DMs was a woman. It never occurred to me that women weren’t welcome or shouldn’t play these games. Most of my game groups have included one or more women, often at my invitation. It seems that when D&D moved to middle school, the “boys club” phenomenon kicked in. But I never saw it myself.
My topic, and the panel’s topic, was gender difference. That’s a touchy topic, and only half the story. The other side of the issue is gender similarities. Men and women are more alike than different. As mammals, we’ve inherited a propensity to play (and thank goodness). As apes, we’ve inherited the capacity to make and cherish friends. As humans, we’ve inherited creativity, language, and story. Gaming is creative play with our friends, usually using language or some other sort of code. Roleplaying adds in the concept of story. All this good stuff is built into the human soul, male and female.
While I see evolutionary differences in male and female behavior, that’s only half the story. The other half is culture, which also creates, directs, and enforces gender differences. Personally, I’m proud to be a Western liberal who thinks that people should be allowed to make their own lives and choices in the world, without being forced into or excluded from certain roles on account of gender or race.
When I was in college (ca. 1985), my gender-differentiation textbook said that boys and girls are born without any built-in preference for gender roles. The case of a boy successfully raised as a girl, under the textbook author’s supervision, offered proof. I believed all gender differences to be cultural and conditional. In 1997, the boy’s true story came out, the sad story of David Reimer. All his life, he hated being treated as a girl and assumed a male gender role when he finally learned the truth of his own past. This case got me to question my previous views and look at the situation again. There’s a lot of evidence from the last 10 to 20 years that there are enduring evolutionary differences in male and female psychology.
I have been subject to some number of caricatures and insults, but there’s no point in responding to them.”
It takes a big person to recognize when something they’ve said or done has upset someone. It takes an even bigger person to apologize for it. Tweet and I may not ever agree on these issues regarding evolutionary psychology, but I hope he recognizes how much it means to me that he apologized. Cheers!
Having studied the philosophy of biology with a notable research chair in the subject, I’d like to point out that evolutionary psychology is rather controversial in its own right, and I’ve never seen any satisfactory arguments for it.
Rather than it being EP which is keeping women away from gaming I think it’s comments like those of Jonathan Tweet’s and the gaming culture which they arise from.
It was nice of him to apologize, but even in his apology, his bias is quite apparent.
I agree that Tweet’s apology doesn’t go far enough to remedy some of the things that were said, and after hearing the opinons of several others like you, I’m beginning to think that I may have been too hasty in accepting Tweet’s apology as quickly as I did. For example, in his apology he states that it was a mistake to have broached the subject. I was so excited to hear that statement, that I conveniently skipped over the part where he says he shouldn’t have broached the subject so casually. This little addendum makes it sound like he thinks the problem was in the delivery, and not in the content itself. That, to me, is troubling, because it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that the primary think people were upset was the content. So while I am grateful that he chose to apologize, because I do think it is an acknowledgment that what he said was hurtful, I think you’re right, and that his apology doesn’t go far enough.
As far as my blog entry is concerned, I agree that evolutionary psychology is not the issue that is keeping women away from gaming. The reason that I focused on discussing the Baldwin Effect in this entry is because I thought it best to demonstrate that evolutionary psychology is a field whose very foundations are widely disputed before responding to Tweet’s comments, so as to avoid responding to any potential arguments regarding the legitimacy of evolutionary psychology.
In retrospect, I’m not sure if that this was the best strategy. In fact, I was about three quarters of the way through writing this entry when this very thought occurred to me. However, I didn’t want to simply post nothing, so I finished what I was working on and posted it. I hope you can forgive me for failing to pull my thoughts together more concisely in one shot.
Finally, I hope you can forgive me if I didn’t handle these issues as well as I could have. I certainly didn’t mean to exacerbate issues further by downplaying the egregiousness of what happened. I screwed up, and I’m fully willing to admit to that. I just hope that I didn’t offend you, or anyone else, too badly in the process.
Regarding Tweet’s apology, I think the gist of it is, that in the discussion groups he’s accustomed to, making bold controversial, (and often outright wrong) statements is par for the course and often the way interesting discussions are started.
Regarding his initial claim, after reading this entry on evolutionary psychology, my understanding of his claim is dramatically altered. It changes from an argument of genetic predisposition to an argument of cultural predisposition as it seems the Baldwin Effect is essentially arguing that cultural norms will eventually become genetic, thus making the culture the ultimate and initial source for such inclinations. In fact, I’d argue that this explanation of Evolutionary Psychology implies that distinguishing between nature and nurture is almost pointless since they affect one another in a cyclical loop.
This is my first exposure to the Baldwin Effect so I hope I’m not misreading things too terribly.
Well, I think it honestly depends on what you mean when you’re describing the Baldwin Effect. As you can see, there are several different examples of what the Baldwin Effect is, how it might occur, and how likely it is to be an instrumental component of evolution. For example, if you’re describing the Baldwin Effect as Baldwin or Waddington have, I would say that it the environment, and not culture, that is the impetus. If you’re describing it as Deacon has, then culture would be the impetus.
In any event, the main reason that I bring up the Baldwin Effect is to point out that one of the quintessential components of Evolutionary Psychology is actually a poorly defined, unproven hypothesis that is supposed to account for the evolution of certain behavioral instincts, or traits in organisms. In my next entry, I hope to show that even if the Baldwin Effect can account for the genetic inheritance of certain behavioral traits, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it should, or even could, account for differences in behavior between the sexes.
DoveArrow-
Jonathan here. I have a few questions.
What exactly is your take on EP. Its detractors land in any of several camps, and I’d like to know where you are.
1. There are no significant built-in behavioral traits in humans (making EP impossible).
2. There may be significant built-in behavioral traits in people, but they didn’t evolve by natural selection a million years ago in Africa (making EP false).
3. People evolved significant built-in behavioral traits (EP is correct to that extent), but we did not evolve any significant built-in gender differences as far as behavior is concerned.
Second, please cite the most prominent biologist who agrees with you in your stance. You mentioned Gould as having discounted EP. My own reading is that Gould’s 30-year old paper about just-so stories criticized the excesses of adaptionism, and that he and Chomsky defended the idea that the language capacity did not evolve by natural selection, but that’s not the same as discounting EP, per se. You might be able to convince yourself that EP is unsubstantiated, etc., but I’m holding out for what the experts think.
So what’s your stance, and who’s the most authoritative biologist who shares it?
My stance is that we evolved behavioral tendencies, that males and females evolved different tendencies, and that these tendencies combine with environmental effects to result in actual behavior. As near as I can tell, this is the stance of Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins.
Hey Jonathan! Thanks for taking the time out to read and respond to my blog.
In response to your question, my view on evolutionary psychology is a little more complicated than just a matter of whether or not I think it’s true, false, or somewhere in between. I think that evolutionary psychology is an interesting field, and I think it’s possible that certain behaviors may have been genetically inherited (even gender specific ones). I think, though, that it’s difficult to say which of those behaviors are genetic, and which of them are cultural. I also think that, even if you can tease the two apart, it’s difficult to say which genetic traits are the result of preexisting ontogenetic adaptations, and which are the result of random, genetic inheritance. Finally, even if you can determine which genetically inherited behaviors are the result of ontogenetic adaptations, I think that it’s difficult to say exactly which ontogenetic adaptations resulted in the acquisition of our current, genetically inherited traits. Because of these difficulties, I think it’s prudent to hold a healthy dose of skepticism regarding any of the claims made by evolutionary psychologists, particularly when those claims are used to bolster arguments regarding real world issues, and the policies that affect those issues (like why there are so few female gamers, and what, if anything, can be done about the disparity). That, in a nutshell, is my take on evolutionary psychology, and as I said, it’s a lot more complicated than whether or not I think evolutionary psychology is true or false.
As far as what prominent biologist in the field shares my views, I would say that Peter Godfrey-Smith, whom I cite in my entry, would agree that it is prudent to hold a certain amount of skepticism regarding the claims of evolutionary psychology. In fact, he states as much in the conclusion of his essay that I cited. I would also say that even though he remains neutral in his skepticism, David Depew, whom I also cite in my entry, would agree that it is prudent to remain skeptical about the claims of evolutionary psychology.
As far as the impact that the claims of evolutionary psychology can have on real world issues, I will try to get more into that in my next entry, and as always, I will cite my sources, so you can check up on them and see what the authors themselves have to say on the matter, or to see what others have to say about the authors and their claims. So stay tuned.
P.S. On a totally unrelated note, I love how your handle is an anagram of your name.
OK, we’re off to a good start, but there’s a way to go.
You cite Godfrey-Smith as agreeing with you that “it is prudent to hold a certain amount of skepticism regarding the claims of evolutionary psychology.” That statement is so vague that I agree with it, too. For example, I’m skeptical about Pinker’s conclusion that there’s a genetic basis for us preferring paintings of landscapes and flowers. If you want me to seriously reconsider my views, find a biologist who disagrees with me, not a philosopher who simply advocates skepticism.
You state that “it’s possible that certain behaviors may have been genetically inherited.” That’s a bold statement, because it implies a striking parallel statement, that it’s possible that no behaviors have been genetically inherited, gender-specific or not. Can you find a reputable biologist who agrees with you that humans might have no inherited behaviors? To me, that view seems to be outside scientific orthodoxy. If, on the other hand, the existence of inherited behaviors is actually in doubt, then EP is on shaky ground indeed. Find me an expert who agrees with you, and I’ll have to look at my own views more skeptically.
The anagram is cute, isn’t it?
-Jonathan
Well first, I think it’s important to recognize that I’m not using my blog entry to try and get you to agree with me. I may be responding to something that you said, but that doesn’t mean that the goal is to convert you. What I am trying to do is raise awareness about an issue that affects women in general. I am also trying to reflect on my own thoughts about these issues, and to gain a better understanding of them. If I happen to change someone’s mind in the process, or if I help someone think about these issues from a different perspective, then I admit I think that is a good thing. However, that is not the ultimate goal. I would therefore like to encourage you to take a step back, and separate yourself from these issues, because I’m not trying to attack you, I’m not trying to change your mind, and I’m not trying to engage you in a debate. I am trying to discuss an issue that affects women, and your comments have given me an opportunity to do that.
On that note, I would like to encourage you to try and look at these issues as something more than an abstract, intellectual concept. Being men, you and I have the privilege of looking at these issues as abstract, but many women don’t feel the same way. They feel like their everyday lives are affected by these issues, and they take them very personally. I would therefore appreciate it if you could try to be sensitive to this fact and refrain from voicing your dissent. On the Iris Network messageboards, they often tell male posters (myself included) to check our privilege. I may not be a woman myself, but many of my readers are, and I would like them to feel welcome here, and to feel like their concerns and feelings about these issues are being treated with respect. Therefore, while you are here, I would appreciate it if you could try and just listen, to ask questions if you don’t understand something, but to recognize that this isn’t the place to engage in a debate about whether or not gender based behaviors are genetically inherited. That said, if you feel like you need to debate these issues with me, you have my email address, and you can always feel free to PM me on the Wizards of the Coast messageboards. I promise I will do my best to respond. Take care.
“refrain from voicing your dissent”
Really? OK.
Thank you.
[...] the subject of evolutionary psychology, and the effect that gendered behavior has on gaming. In the first entry, my discussion was focused on understanding some of the fundamental principles of evolutionary [...]
Quick response…
This is great. Thanks for writing it up. Onward to part II…