Evolutionary psychology takes as its starting point the controversial

Evolutionary psychology takes as its starting point the controversial assertion that the anatomical and physiological features of the human brain have arisen as a result of adaptations to the demands of the environment over the millennia. However, from this reasonable point of departure, these psychologists make unreasonable extrapolations. They claim that the behavior of contemporary man (in almost all its aspects) is a reflection of features of the brain that acquired their present characteristics during those earliest days of our species when early man struggled to survive and multiply.

This unwarranted assumption leads, for example, to suggestions that modern sexual behavior is dictated by realities of Pleistocene life. These suggestions have a ready audience, and the idea that Stone Age man is alive in our genome and dictating aspects of our behavior has gained ground in the popular imagination. The tabloids repeatedly run articles about discoveries relating to genes for aggression, depression, repression, and anything for which we need a readymade excuse. Such insistence on a genetic basis for behavior negates the cultural influences and the social realities that separate us from our ancestors.

The difficulty with pseudo science of this nature is just this popular appeal. People are eager to accept what is printed as incontrovertible, assuming quite without foundation, that anything printed has bona fide antecedents. We would do well to remember that the phrenologists of the nineteenth century held sway for a considerable time in the absence of any evidence that behavioral tendencies could be deduced from the shape of the skull. The phrenologists are no more, but their genes would seem to be thriving.

1. The authors primary purpose in the passage is to

A. argue for the superiority of a particular viewpoint
B. attack the popular press
C. ridicule a particular branch of science
D. highlight an apparently erroneous tendency in an area of social science
E. evaluate a particular theory of human behavior in all its ramifications


2. The author mentions phrenologists as

A. pseudo scientists who are the logical antecedents of evolutionary psychologists
B. a group with inherent appeal to the followers of evolutionary psychologists
C. a warning against blind acceptance of ideas
D. scientists with whom evolutionary psychologists share common assumptions
E. behavioral scientists who have spawned a variety of wrong ideas


3. The author apparently believes that the journalists writing for the tabloids

A. are more concerned with popular appeal than with authenticity
B. believe that human behavior has a genetic basis
C. run the same articles over and over again
D. are victims of the human desire to excuse inexcusable behavior
E. are highly irresponsible in their efforts to pander to the public