David W. Lawson | Lightnews

Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Evolutionary psychology makes a big to-do about their finding that sexual selection favors a "feminine body type" that "signals fertility/reproductive potential", including some rather... silly research. Turns out, those traits don't seem to signal reproductive success. Oops! doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Kate Messner @katemessner.com · 1d

Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...

Fedora man unmasked: Meet the teen behind the Louvre mystery photo

Fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux has become an internet sensation after an Associated Press photo captured him outside the Louvre on the day of a crown jewels heist.

apnews.com

Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 5d

Tomorrow (Nov 6) at 6:00 pm PST, join Chaucer's Books in hosting @mgurven.bsky.social, author of Seven Decades, for a talk and a signing! Come explore the unique evolutionary path that led to human longevity and challenge how we think about aging.

Learn about this in-person event: buff.ly/tKzGDn1

Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer by Michael D. Gurven

Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.bsky.social · 5d

Curious about using census microdata in your research? 📊

Join us for a webinar on IPUMS International, the world’s leading repository of harmonized census data.

🗓️ 12 Nov 2025 | 🕒 15:15–16:30 UK | 💻 Zoom
Register: forms.gle/oqTDNU4Zpn2s...

Hosted by the LSE Historical Economic Demography Group.

Register for IPUMs International Online Session

Please use this form to register for the IPUMs International Session hosted by the Historical Economic Demography Group at LSE. The session will be on Zoom from 15:15-16:30 UK Time on 12 November 202...

forms.gle

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 6d

Prepping a lecture on paternal care and revisiting this brilliant 2024 article by Brooke Scelza.

Such a good demonstration of the value of an anthropological lens when thinking about the evolution of human family life.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The cuckoldry conundrum

Concerns about cuckoldry are a dominant theme in evolutionary studies of mating, frequently used to explain sex differences in reproductive strategies. However, studies in nonhuman species have shown...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 7d

"Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygyny can be compelling but they risk misleading the public, reinforcing notions of Western cultural superiority & disrupting global health policy by sidelining pertinent initiatives. Building healthier societies necessitates paying attention to evidence"

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 20d

Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygamy can be compelling & intuitive, but what is the evidence that monogamous marriage is advantageous for society?

theconversation.com/rethinking-p...

Rethinking polygamy – new research upends conventional thinking about the advantages of monogamous marriage

Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygamy can be compelling and intuitive. But new research suggests some arguments about its harms don’t hold up.

theconversation.com

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 11d

Congratulations to the now Dr Joseph Kilgallen 🧑‍🎓🥂 - who give a wonderful defense talk yesterday! So proud of what he has achieved over the last 6 years - and excited for what is to come! Woo-hoo!

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 12d

Today!

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 19d

⭐️ Negotiating Masculinity in a Changing World ⭐️

Grad student - and soon to be doctor - Joseph Kilgallen will be giving a public talk on his thesis on Wed Oct 29th 9am (California time).

Join us in person or on zoom (dm me and I’ll send you a link!). All welcome!

EHBEA 2026 @ehbea2026.bsky.social · 13d

Leiden looking good today ;-)
📢 Abstract submission will be open Nov 1st – Dec 15th for EHBEA 2026
⚡Present your research, connect & collaborate 14-17 April
📝 300 words (extendable to 800 after acceptance)
For more information & our full call for abstracts, check www.ehbea2026.com

EHBEA 2026 in Leiden - abstract submission opens soon!

Annie Wertz @anniewertz.bsky.social · 14d

I’m recruiting #PhD students to join my Lab for Infant Learning and Cognition (LILAC) at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social! We study how infants learn about the natural world from others 🌱 If you’re interested in #devpsych, #EvPsych, and #infantstudies, please reach out and apply! More info below (1/2)

TristanBridges.bsky.social @tristanbridges.bsky.social · 17d

Thrilled to see Raewyn and my new book up at Polity. Easily the greatest experience and honor of my career to work on this book with my academic idol. We have done so many wonderful things in this edition. I hope others love it as much as we have loved writing it. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Gender: In A World Perspective

Gender: In A World Perspective, How can we understand gender in the contemporary world? What psychological differences now exist between women and men? How are masculinities and femininities made? And...

www.politybooks.com

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 17d

When we talk about behavior being evolved, we mean the underlying processes (cognitive tendencies, hormones, physiology, social learning rules, etc) that lead to differences in behavior are subject to natural selection.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/h...

Human Behavioral Ecology

Cambridge Core - Biological Anthropology and Primatology - Human Behavioral Ecology

www.cambridge.org

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

lol. Why thank you. Hope I wasn’t coming across too defensive in my responses also...

I suspect we are in good alignment - in retrospect the paper would have benefited from interrogating issues of measurement, etc.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

Thanks for helping me understand where you are coming from.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

Wonderful. I’ll send you a link.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

I’d love to better understand your conviction to throw the (overparented) baby out with the bath water, rather than think about how to refine the concept. Seems a bit harsh and stifling to declare the whole exercise worthless.

But time will tell if it’s a useful concept I guess… 😬 2/2

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

Im surprised you see no value in the notion that parental behaviors driven by positive intentions to aid or improve success of children can be developmentally misaligned & have scope for detrimental impacts.

Parents themselves appear to recognize these behaviors & have anxiety about them.

1/2

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

None of this means polygyny is NOT harmful to children or that it is beneficial of course (studies estimating positive or no impacts also suffer from poor causal inference). But my general sense is that forgone conclusions has led much of the literature on this to accept weak standards of evidence.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

Type 2 - large-scale multinational studies (so much scope for confounding!), but some do a more thoughtful job than others. Here, maybe a better example is the work of Smith-Greenaway & Trinitapoli, but I think they would agree causal inference is weak... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... 3/4

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

Type 1 - smaller-scale studies comparing families within a single population (ruling out confounding with socioeconomic marginalization of groups that practice polygyny) + often some supporting ethnography. Here, I would point to the work of Beverly Strassmann sites.lsa.umich.edu/bis/polygyny/ 2/4

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

That is a sobering question - practically all studies on the topic suffer from issues of poor causal inference (i.e. lots of potential for selection and confounding). There are 2 main types of study. So, I can maybe point to examples from each type 1/4...

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 18d

Have been looking forward to seeing this come out. The fundamental population problem is: what is a population?

Adam Van Arsdale @apv2600.bsky.social · 18d

Excited to finally have this article out with @robingnelson.blacksky.app. Although we have nominally centered populations as our unit of evolutionary analysis in biological anthropology, we have no coherent understanding of what a population is. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

The Population Problem: Biological Anthropology and the Many Definitions of a Population

Objectives With a focus on variability, biological anthropology has nominally centered the population as a key unit of analysis and node of evolutionary change. In this paper, we examine constructio...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

The 1st point is fair. I agree it’s still an ill defined concept (but would urge you not to dismiss it outright). 👍

As for the second, all behavior evolved. So still confused on “evolutionary basis”… is there any behavior that did not evolve? Maybe you mean adaptive? But we aren’t claiming that.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

I see your logic. Lots of space for alternative terminology.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

For context, biological definitions of parental investment (PI) actually define PI as care which is costly to a parent’s ability to invest in other dimensions of their fitness. So costs to parents are largely assumed.

I hope that helps make sense of why (possible) cost to offspring is highlighted.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 18d

I think it’s totally fair to have concerns about measurement. I do too.

But I’m curious what you specifically mean by “evolutionary causal mechanism”? That is ambiguous to me - just trying to better understand your comment. Interdisciplinary conversation can be difficult.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 19d

I’m sorry it disappointed you. Science communication isn’t easy. Maybe I failed.

But I do hope it encourages readers to think critically about cultural practices that might be outside of their own experience. Anthropology aims to counter the biases we bring to these topics.

Thanks for engaging.

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 19d

⭐️ Negotiating Masculinity in a Changing World ⭐️

Grad student - and soon to be doctor - Joseph Kilgallen will be giving a public talk on his thesis on Wed Oct 29th 9am (California time).

Join us in person or on zoom (dm me and I’ll send you a link!). All welcome!

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 19d

None of this is to say that you even necessarily need evidence to declare opposition to polygamy (you can just say you think is morally wrong if you like), but as social scientists it’s our responsibility to interrogate claims of cause and effect. (Which is why I love your paper!) 3/3

David W Lawson @davidwlawson.bsky.social · 19d

The problem is that so much of the global health literature starts with the assumption that polygamy has X cost, rather than actually testing assumptions or even questioning them. Or they just accept a very weak standard of evidence. 2/3

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