Reflections on evolutionary ideas in sociology

Overcoming resistance

Written by Rosemary Hopcroft.

My most cited paper to date, ‘Sex, Status, and Reproductive Success in the Contemporary U.S.’ was initially rejected by the very journal that eventually published it: Evolution and Human Behavior. Although no stranger to rejection, I couldn’t believe it. I thought that if anyone would want the paper, they would.

The paper reported a positive relationship between personal income and number of biological children for men—but not women—using data from a representative 1994 sample of the U.S. population. These data were unusual at the time in that they included information on men’s fertility as well as women’s. By submitting it to Evolution and Human Behavior, I thought I was offering exactly the kind of paper the journal existed to publish. Yet they didn’t want it.

I hadn’t bothered to send it to a journal in my own discipline of sociology. At the time, evolutionary ideas applied to human social behavior were effectively unmentionable. This is despite the fact that the discipline prided itself on theoretical pluralism. The phrase “let a thousand flowers bloom” was widely invoked—all theoretical flowers, it seemed, except that one.

My mentor, Pierre van den Berghe, knew this all too well. Although internationally respected, he was consistently excluded from the mainstream of the sociology department where I was a graduate student, and few students wanted to work with him. There were private jokes and open laughter—sometimes subtle, sometimes not—at his expense.

I remember one occasion when he carefully explained to a sociologist colleague the evolutionary reason why she had obtained certain empirical findings. He wrote out the explanation on a single sheet of yellow legal paper, filling the entire page, and gave it to her. I know this because she pinned it to the wall of her office, adding the sardonic caption: “And that’s how it is!”

Pierre continued trying to educate his sociologist colleagues, often with a memorable turn of phrase. “We (humans) are unique, but we are not unique in being unique” he wrote in an important paper entitled ‘Why most sociologists don’t (and won’t) think evolutionarily’. I have memories of my embarrassed self squirming during departmental seminars when he delivered forthright and often colorful evolutionary explanations.

But Pierre was tenured and seemed to enjoy provoking his fellow sociologists. Épater la bourgeoisie (“shock the bourgeoise”) as they say in his native language. Yet, like many academics, I am sure he would have welcomed their respect. I once told him that one of his colleagues had remarked to another graduate student, “You can’t argue with him—he has an answer for everything.” Pierre was delighted. And, indeed, he usually did have an answer for everything.

As the child of an Australian physician and medical researcher, I had grown up hearing evolutionary theory applied to human behavior. Ironically, I probably pursued a PhD in sociology partly as a reaction against some of my father’s ideas. Even so, it never seemed reasonable to me to dismiss evolutionary theory out of hand.

Pierre was constantly suggesting empirical tests of evolutionary hypotheses using sociological data, but statistical analysis was not his forte and relevant data often did not exist. Having studied anthropology at the Sorbonne, he had been trained in the grand French tradition of ethnography, and his appointment at the University of Washington was joint in both Sociology and Anthropology.

As a sociology graduate student, I could have done some of the analyses he suggested, but I did not dare. I knew from watching what happened to Pierre that basing my dissertation on evolutionary theory was a surefire route to academic unemployment. Instead, I relied on a theory that was somewhat more acceptable at the time—rational choice theory. Eventually, I obtained a tenure-track position and, in due course, tenure.

But once you know something, you cannot unknow it. Evolutionary ideas continued to percolate in my mind. Having children also gave me a much deeper appreciation of the emotional and psychological mechanisms described by evolutionary psychologists. I was delighted to watch evolutionary psychology develop as a field, and my curiosity persisted.

After I received tenure, I decided I might as well test some evolutionary hypotheses. Frankly, I assumed that my sociology colleagues didn’t read what I published anyway. As long as I produced enough publications for my annual performance review, I expected everything would be fine. (And it would have been if I had done a better job of keeping my mouth shut.)

What better hypothesis to examine than the classic evolutionary prediction of a positive relationship between social status and fertility? Sociologists and demographers dismissed the idea, as everyone knew that status and fertility were negatively associated in developed societies. But as Pierre repeatedly pointed out, demographers always measured women’s fertility, not men’s. When I found data on the biological fertility of a nationally representative sample of American men, collected as part of a module attached to the 1994 General Social Survey, I thought: why not investigate?

The results were striking. For men, personal income and number of biological children were significantly positively related. For women, I found the opposite pattern. Time has been kind to those results. In 2018, I was fascinated to learn from a Swedish researcher that what had been true of American men in 1994 was also true among younger cohorts of Swedish men and even women. The changing relationship between status and fertility in affluent societies—against the backdrop of historically low fertility rates—is now well documented. Fertility has declined most sharply among those with the lowest levels of income and education.

Yet when I first tried to publish my paper in the early 2000s, no one wanted it. I did not even consider submitting it to a sociology journal. Instead, I sent it to journals that I thought might be receptive. Each one of them rejected it. Eventually, I shamelessly picked up the phone and argued my case to the editor of Evolution and Human Behavior, who ultimately agreed to publish it.

This was not easy for me at the time. I was a relatively young female academic challenging a senior male editor from another discipline. But my confidence in the robustness of the findings outweighed my reluctance. I confess I did it once again, years later, with a different editor from the same journal. I thank both of them for their willingness to intellectually engage with me (and/or their desire to get me off the phone). I hope the success of both papers vindicates my behavior.

Now, as I discover the pleasures of being a grandmother and no longer worry about the academic rat race, I find myself thinking of my late father. I never talked to him about my research because we were estranged by the circumstances of his last marriage and the fact we lived on different continents. I would like to say to him, “Yes, you were right all along.” I also think of Pierre van den Berghe, for whom I now have an even deeper intellectual respect than when he was alive. Roll on Pierre, wherever you are.

Rosemary Hopcroft is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She is interested in applying evolutionary theory to sociological issues, as well as comparative and historical sociology.

---

Become a free or paid subscriber:

Like and comment below.