What is the status of evolutionary psychology in academia today? Having an interest in human psychology (but no formal training) I decided to take  Coursera's Introduction to Psychology as a Science. Here's a snippet from an introductory lecture (it requires signup, so I'll paste the transcription):


  Statement: "Much of human behavior is instinctive."   
  
  Answer: "No, we have very few instinctive behaviors. There are some reflexes that
  young infants have, like for example the reflex to suck if you put
  something in their mouth or if you tickle the bottom of their feet,
  their toes will spread out. Those are reflexes that go away as the
  child gets older. We certainly have genetic predisposition to do
  things in a certain way. But, instinct, species specific behaviors
  that lower animals have, are very rare in human behavior."


This emphatic assertion really surprised me. It was my understanding that -at least at some degree- the fundamentals of evolutionary psychology had influenced "traditional psychology" over the years (not as explanation of every human behavior, sure, but certainly more than to explain the sucking reflex).

So here is the question: has evolutionary psychology found its place in universities (syllabus, articles, ...) or is it pretty much ignored in academia?
This is a bit of a quick answer and hopefully others will provide a more comprehensive response.

The number of reflexes that exist in humans is arguably a separate issue to the support for evolutionary psychology. The answer below focuses specifically on the support for evolutionary psychology in academic psychology.

Almost all researchers in psychology would agree that evolutionary processes have shaped what it means to be human. A good example of a well-developed theory is ACT-R, which provides a model of cognition. An underlying assumption of the theory is that the nature of the underlying structure of cognition has evolved to minimise the consumption of computational and biological resources (although you're better off reading ACT-R material directly to understand how they describe the interface of genetic and environmental adaptation, e.g., Anderson 1991). This still leaves many issues regarding how to conceptualise human nature and the extent of human plasticity. 

However, "just so" arguments made in the name of evolutionary psychology are generally not respected in academic psychology. For example, Someone might say that women are better at multitasking because throughout evolution men's behaviour has required singularity of purpose in hunting and mate seeking, whereas women have had to juggle competing tasks of child rearing, looking after the camp, and so on. Of course, that's all rubbish. I just made that argument up out of nothing. Such an argument takes an observation, possibly not even true in the first place, and then seeks to find some vaguely plausible evolutionary story to justify it. It's a "just so" argument. 
You can see further discussion of critiques of evolutionary psychology here.

References


Anderson, J. R. (1991). Is human cognition adaptive. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14(3), 471-517. PDF