The results were depressingly predictable.
“Participants displayed a strong negative reaction to the attractive female when she was dressed provocatively,” said study author Dr Aanchal Sharma.
…
This research provides support for the innate roots of female conflict.
How? Same as all evolutionary psychology bullshit: take a bunch of people from the same environment and look at their behaviour then wave your hands like an Underpants Gnome and declare this proves said behaviour is innate, ingrained, evolutionary, so shut up and suck on your inequality because we’ve just provided the perfect excuse not to address it.
I mean, it couldn’t have anything to do with socialisation or dominant memes about That Bitch Who Steals Your Girlfriend or Men Can’t Control Themselves So Blame Other Women For Their Cheating (yes, in dominant-social-paradigm land we’re all hetero, too). And if “mate-guarding” exists it has to go back to our monkey phase and can’t at all be linked to messages about how being single is the worst thing ever, much less financial dependence necessitating finding a male partner or the concept of compulsory heterosexuality or anything.
Wait, wait, there I go again, just ascribing natural phenomena to insidious magical messages created by some vast conspiracy against women. I’m going to go relax with some nice popular music …
Pretty good description of pretty much 95% of the evolutionary psychology work I’ve seen. The field as a whole could be an interesting idea but so much of the work is just so … sloppy and made up.
May or may not be of interest:
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2010/09/brief-rant-about-waist-to-hip-ratio.html
Some psychologists putting the boot into evolutionary and the perpetual tendency to succumb to the psychologists fallacy and get stuff wrong.