In general, when evolutionary psychologists see things they think are cultural universals, they look for an evolutionary explanation. Some evolutionary psychologists also go looking for evolutionary explanations for broad commonalities, and these explanations usually have commensurately lower strength. But broad commonalities are sometimes thought to be cultural universals (as in this comment), which leads to inappropriately strong explanations.
Less often, narrow commonalities are thought to be broad commonalities or cultural universals, which again leads to errors. Mistakes of this class are made more often than they probably should be because psychologists perform most of their studies on college undergrads; I often see studies labelled as “multi-cultural” because they sample college undergrads from several predominantly white, industrialized, modern Western cultures.
Says who?
They try to explain what they can, especially broad commonalities across cultures, but of course they can see that there are variations.
In general, when evolutionary psychologists see things they think are cultural universals, they look for an evolutionary explanation. Some evolutionary psychologists also go looking for evolutionary explanations for broad commonalities, and these explanations usually have commensurately lower strength. But broad commonalities are sometimes thought to be cultural universals (as in this comment), which leads to inappropriately strong explanations.
Less often, narrow commonalities are thought to be broad commonalities or cultural universals, which again leads to errors. Mistakes of this class are made more often than they probably should be because psychologists perform most of their studies on college undergrads; I often see studies labelled as “multi-cultural” because they sample college undergrads from several predominantly white, industrialized, modern Western cultures.