HYPOCRISY REVEALED (AND THOUGHTS ON THE ROLE OF MODULARITY IN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY)

Make no mistake: Robert Kurzban is one of the most important scholars in modern evolutionary psychology (EP) circles. His work on social cognition and moral decision-making (e.g., Kurzban, DeScioli, & O’Brien, 2007) is as well-thought-out and implemented as any modern research in the social sciences. Further, he is an extremely eloquent scholar with an engaging presentational style. For these reasons, his first book has been met with great excitement and interest by folks in our field. And I’d have to say that while I don’t agree with all of his points, I think the overall product of Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind is really outstanding. Written in a highly engaging style, this book does an exceptional job of summarizing work on the psychology of morality and, to some extent, it serves as an interesting introduction to the field of EP. To my mind, this book has two primary goals – and these goals are encapsulated in the title and subtitle of the book respectively. Primarily, this book sheds light on the nature of moral psychology – with a specific eye toward elucidating hypocrisy. This is great for several reasons – largely because people are, without exception, fascinated by hypocrisy. People seem to love to catch others in moments of hypocrisy. And in a highly political world (as ours is), calling people out on hypocrisy is something of a silver bullet – often used by people in all sorts of contexts to advance their own agenda. Second, per the book’s subtitle, this book sets out to provide an evolutionarily informed argument for why a modular conception of the mind is the best way to understand human psychology.