From someone who believes cultural conditioning is more powerful than you seem to, here are some (hopefully) constructive criticisms, in the interest of sharpening the disagreement.
most people are unaware of it
Cultural conditioning asserts that the conditioned traits feel “natural.” At the very least, unawareness of the traits should not be evidence against cultural conditioning.
is not useful at all in the present society
“Not useful at all” seems like a great candidate for typical mind fallacy. Cf. status politics. I suggest a friendly amendment like “not presently used for the same purpose as the ancestral environment”.
More generally, a psychological trait which is useful for purposes present in the ancestral environment and not presently used for the same purpose as the ancestral environment is much better explained as inherited than by cultural conditioning.
That seems closer to true. Does it omit any important cases?
who believes cultural conditioning is more powerful than you seem to
How much powerful I seem to believe cultural conditioning is? I suspect that you underestimate my trust in the power of culture.
Cultural conditioning asserts that the conditioned traits feel “natural.” At the very least, unawareness of the traits should not be evidence against cultural conditioning.
I didn’t mean unaware of the fact that the trait is result of cultural conditioning, but that the trait exists at all. If, for example, nobody knows that women write on average 20% smaller letters than men (I made this up), then how the society manages to train women into smaller hadwriting?
But we are discussing socially contested positions (like possibly sex-based differences in ability to do math). What does it mean for the society to be unaware of the trait, when the very dispute is whether the trait is inherent or cultural? By contrast, the existence of cognitive bias is not culturally contested, which is some evidence that it is inherent rather than culturally conditioned.
nobody knows that women write on average 20% smaller letters than men (I made this up), then how the society manages to train women into smaller handwriting?
This is outside of my area of expertise, so I won’t offer judgement on the reliability of the metastudy referenced in the link, but not only is the biological explanation for gender differences in math performance contested, the existence of the phenomenon itself is apparently contested as well
The society in general can be unaware of a trait while few people who are aware of it (perhaps those who have just discovered it through a psychological experiment) can discuss its origin. I don’t see any contradiction in this. Of course it doesn’t apply to sex-based differences in math proficiency which are widely discussed. It can, on the other hand, in principle apply to the refrigerator staring problem discussed in the OP (although, as it has been pointed out, this exact difference can be caused by differences in gender roles with respect to preparing food).
To expand the unparseable section: Imagine you make a study to compare handwriting of men and women in which you, possibly among other things, measure the size of the lettres. You realise that female handwriting is smaller on average by 20% than male handwriting. You repeat the study to exclude confounding factors (compose your experimental groups of men and women of the same education, social and ethnic background, age, handwriting practice, physical dimensions, whatever else) and see that the effect persists. The main remaining explanations are
Men have inherent psychological inclination to write bigger lettres than women.
Men are socially conditioned to write bigger lettres.
Now imagine that the society is unaware of the fact. That means: if you ask random people whether men or women write bigger lettres, most people would answer “I don’t know” and the rest would split equally between the other possibilities; nobody would refer to small compact handwriting as feminine and to big, crude letters as manly. This leaves 2 with a problem: social conditioning is supposed to work by making gender stereotypes apparent and people then accomodate to the roles they are expected to play and traits they are expected to have. But when the traits are not apparent, this couldn’t work. Which pretty leaves us with 1 as the only explanation.
(Note that I have chosen a fictitious example because I am not an experimental psychologist and so I lack knowledge of sex-based differences or other psychological traits unknown to general public.)
From someone who believes cultural conditioning is more powerful than you seem to, here are some (hopefully) constructive criticisms, in the interest of sharpening the disagreement.
Cultural conditioning asserts that the conditioned traits feel “natural.” At the very least, unawareness of the traits should not be evidence against cultural conditioning.
“Not useful at all” seems like a great candidate for typical mind fallacy. Cf. status politics. I suggest a friendly amendment like “not presently used for the same purpose as the ancestral environment”.
That seems closer to true. Does it omit any important cases?
How much powerful I seem to believe cultural conditioning is? I suspect that you underestimate my trust in the power of culture.
I didn’t mean unaware of the fact that the trait is result of cultural conditioning, but that the trait exists at all. If, for example, nobody knows that women write on average 20% smaller letters than men (I made this up), then how the society manages to train women into smaller hadwriting?
But we are discussing socially contested positions (like possibly sex-based differences in ability to do math). What does it mean for the society to be unaware of the trait, when the very dispute is whether the trait is inherent or cultural? By contrast, the existence of cognitive bias is not culturally contested, which is some evidence that it is inherent rather than culturally conditioned.
I’m sorry, I can’t parse this.
This is outside of my area of expertise, so I won’t offer judgement on the reliability of the metastudy referenced in the link, but not only is the biological explanation for gender differences in math performance contested, the existence of the phenomenon itself is apparently contested as well
The society in general can be unaware of a trait while few people who are aware of it (perhaps those who have just discovered it through a psychological experiment) can discuss its origin. I don’t see any contradiction in this. Of course it doesn’t apply to sex-based differences in math proficiency which are widely discussed. It can, on the other hand, in principle apply to the refrigerator staring problem discussed in the OP (although, as it has been pointed out, this exact difference can be caused by differences in gender roles with respect to preparing food).
To expand the unparseable section: Imagine you make a study to compare handwriting of men and women in which you, possibly among other things, measure the size of the lettres. You realise that female handwriting is smaller on average by 20% than male handwriting. You repeat the study to exclude confounding factors (compose your experimental groups of men and women of the same education, social and ethnic background, age, handwriting practice, physical dimensions, whatever else) and see that the effect persists. The main remaining explanations are
Men have inherent psychological inclination to write bigger lettres than women.
Men are socially conditioned to write bigger lettres.
Now imagine that the society is unaware of the fact. That means: if you ask random people whether men or women write bigger lettres, most people would answer “I don’t know” and the rest would split equally between the other possibilities; nobody would refer to small compact handwriting as feminine and to big, crude letters as manly. This leaves 2 with a problem: social conditioning is supposed to work by making gender stereotypes apparent and people then accomodate to the roles they are expected to play and traits they are expected to have. But when the traits are not apparent, this couldn’t work. Which pretty leaves us with 1 as the only explanation.
(Note that I have chosen a fictitious example because I am not an experimental psychologist and so I lack knowledge of sex-based differences or other psychological traits unknown to general public.)