Post by Tamrin on May 27, 2012 10:15:30 GMT 10
The term the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) was first introduced to a wide audience by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides in the 1992 edited volume The Adapted Mind, to describe the "blank slate," social constructionist, or "cultural determinist" perspective that they claim is the dominant theoretical paradigm in the social sciences as they developed during the 20th century. According to this alleged paradigm, the mind is a general-purpose cognitive device shaped almost entirely by culture.
Richardson (2007) argues that evolutionary psychologists developed the SSSM as a rhetorical technique: "The basic move is evident in Cosmides and Tooby's most aggressive brief for evolutionary psychology. They want us to accept a dichotomy between what they call the "Standard Social Science Model" (SSSM) and the "Integrated Causal Model" (ICM) they favor ... it offers a false dichotomy between a manifestly untenable view and their own." Wallace (2010) has also suggested the SSSM to be a false dichotomy and claims that "scientists in the EP tradition wildly overstate the influence and longevity of what they call the Standard Social Science Model (essentially, behaviorism)"
