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Studying evolutionary mismatch: Insights from human mating research

This Club EvMed event occurred on February 15, 2024. Learn more about Club EvMed at https://clubevmed.org.

This conversation was led by Dr. Cari Goetz

Evolutionary mismatch concepts are being employed across disciplines such as medicine, health, and psychology to generate novel hypotheses and better understand existing findings. Through the lens of research on human mating psychology, I provide insights into how scientists can study evolutionary mismatch and incorporate mismatch thinking into their work. In this talk, I address challenges to studying mismatch. I also provide recommendations for how to study evolutionary mismatch, including specifying dimensions of mismatch relevant to the area of study and seeking diverse samples that vary along mismatch dimensions. I argue that explicit research focus on mismatch is necessary to appropriately contextualize empirical findings and protect against advancing biased conclusions about human nature.

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