Uchiyama and colleagues provide a timely and compelling analysis of cultural influences on estimates of the genetic contribution to psychological and behavioral traits. Their focus is on the relevance of their arguments for the practice of behavioral genetics. Their target article also resonates with current emphases in both standard and extended evolutionary approaches briefly mentioned by the authors that are used in psychology and allied fields which, for example, distinguish the ecological from the cultural environment, highlight niche construction, afford a constitutive role for culture, and emphasize other “extra-genetic” forms of stable influence on a phenotype, such as epigenetic inheritance (see e.g., Jablonka & Lamb, Reference Jablonka and Lamb2014). As such, Uchiyama et al.'s analysis can be extended to evolutionary psychology (EP), including the programmatic sense of EP associated with the theoretical and empirical work of Buss, Cosmides, Tooby, and Pinker (e.g., Buss, Reference Buss1995; Pinker, Reference Pinker2002; Tooby & Cosmides, Reference Tooby, Cosmides, Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby1992).

Although behavioral genetics and EP have different goals and criticisms of the former might appear to have little relevance for the latter, the target article will likely be seen by some of EP's critics to call into question several of the assumptions of the approach. For example, in contrast to Uchiyama et al., EP is well known for: (1) arguing that the speed of evolutionary change is slow because the speed of genetic change is slow; (2) emphasizing adaptation to the ancestral environment; (3) relying on mismatch arguments between ancestral and present environments; (4) locating human nature in the ancestral environment; (5) dichotomizing culture into a transmitted versus evoked form; and, (6) making strong commitments to psychological domain specificity. Although many of these concerns are valid, they also have the potential to repeat certain misconceptions about EP.

EP is mostly unconcerned with variation, genetic or otherwise; its goal is to describe a universal human nature that, as such, is genetically fixed (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides, Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990). One might think of the basic human body plan as analogous to what EP has in mind. They claim there is a basic human psychology plan that is universal, genetically fixed, and in the language of behavioral genetics not heritable; universal phenotypes have zero heritability by definition. EP focuses on adaptations that would have promoted ancestral survival and reproduction. From this point of view, psychological adaptations are complex and analogous to the evolution of a phenotype like the human eye with a deep evolutionary history that precedes humans. As such, psychological adaptations shared with other species are still seen as part of our uniquely human nature. Complex adaptations like these seem necessarily laid down in the distant past with the pace of genetic change being too slow to be greatly affected by adaptation to the Holocene. Thus, although it is well known that genetic change continues to occur and that, for example, genes for lactase persistence have been selected in several human populations with the advent of animal husbandry, these sort of single-gene changes seem highly unlikely to radically transform any evolved human capacities. This is the central point of EP, and it is one that is not always given its fair due. If one conceives of, for example, the capacity for color perception or language competence as analogous to other psychological capacities such as the adaptations for social exchange singled by Tooby and Cosmides, or so-called core knowledge competencies like theory of mind, folk physics, numerosity, and so on, this is the basic idea of what EP is arguing. Of course, theoretical and empirical research in evolutionary developmental biology that has emerged in parallel to EP suggests that the causal story involves more than mutation-driven selection acting over evolutionary time (see e.g., Hall, Reference Hall2012), and how such capacities develop in real time is also complex (Witherington & Lickliter, Reference Witherington and Lickliter2016), but the notion that humans might have evolved a basic human psychology that is analogous to a basic human physiology has certainly been a fruitful endeavor despite its detractors (Buss, Reference Buss2020).

The work of Uchiyama et al. appears to add additional challenges to EP that turn on the ability to logically separate the effects of genes and cultures. As such, it calls into question some of the ontological distinctions between biology and culture or genes and environments that are made in EP and in the field of evolutionary studies more generally. It also speaks to the wider WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) problem that has bedeviled the field. However, it is worth repeating the central point that despite the potential lack of universality of certain psychological competencies, a chief example used by Uchiyama et al. is the evolution of skin pigmentation, which is a paradigm case of the evolution of a simple phenotype. Although it is instructive that even in such a simple case it is easy to overlook possible cultural factors, it is not as easy to imagine that such issues necessarily obtain when addressing more complex phenotypes. It does speak to the need of more complex models though and the importance of pluralism in evolutionary explanation; it also suggests that explaining all aspects of human psychology could not be tantamount to theorizing their underlying ancestral contexts. To be fair though, EP takes pains to distance itself from such reductionism and determinism. Whether they are fully successful continues to be openly debated both by its advocates and detractors.

In conclusion, the target article adds to a growing body of literature that emphasizes the importance of considering the cultural dimension of inheritance and the necessity for a more nuanced and dynamic conception of the evolutionary process. However, it also has the potential to re-invite familiar criticisms of EP. This is not to say that EP, or any theory, is beyond criticism, but to paraphrase a point recently made by Apicella, Norenzayan, and Henrich (Reference Apicella, Norenzayan and Henrich2020, p. 319) in their 10-year retrospective on the WEIRD problem discussed in the target article, a cultural analysis of heritability should not be taken to be a “knock-down critique of evolutionary psychology.” However, Uchiyama et al. could add to potential calls for the construction of a more nuanced EP.