I’m still not sure why this has to be explained to people, Amanda, but unfortunately it does.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve argued these points to certain friends/acquaintances of mine.  All I can say is, just keep iterating it, and iterating it as well as you do, and it will eventually sink in at large.

Eventually.

I bet you’d find that’s true of men and women, if they ever bothered to study anything that might have a chance of disproving Nice Guy® theories about irrational women and cynical men.

Or irrational men and cynical women, depending the the specific evo-psych/Nice Guy-ism being pushed.

“Females who have higher mating intentions may maximize their economic displays, saving little and even spending beyond their capacity through the use of credit.  These women may seek and possibly obtain a greater number of sexual partners.”

I can’t see why this wouldn’t be true as well.  I mean, to be the perfect sexbot, you have to invest a lot of money in your looks - boob jobs, regular hair and nail maintenance, waxing, gym membership, etc.  It’s a lot of work to look perfect.

But even on a normal level, it’s not as if it’s not true for either gender.  I spend money on clothes that look good on me and spend money on my hair, and I would assume the same as well for a guy who buys pants that fit him and gets a haircut.  Goods and services cost money.  Really, is an iPod different than a Coach purse, in terms of status symbols?  Both are expensive, but both also signify the status of the owner.  I guess if it’s a woman’s item, it’s frivolous or something.

I suppose, though, if you’re not concerned about basic hygiene, style, or treating women like human beings, you’d welcome a study that says all you need to do is make money to get one of those female things.  Because “woman” is just another status symbol, much like the iPhone.

In Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States there is an interesting part where during the 20s the Suffragettes and the Socialists teamed up to achieve social justice for all.  There came a point where they had to choose which agenda to push first , economic equality for all or more benefits for women. 

In this post you seem say that women make the right choice being with men with more resources.  Fair enough,economic opportunism, smart on an individual basis.  But you also complain about women being at a disadvantage economically. What about the men who are disadvantaged economically? 

Shouldnt the priority be to even the economic playing field for all?  Is the personal political? When a women selects a higher economic status man is it only a personal decision or should their be some solidarity against a system that disadvantages all but a few? 

United we stand ( nice guys and all )  divided we fall.  Think you can beat the system?  Maybe but I doubt it, that’s what it is counting on , individual selfish decisions and buying off a few here and there.

Humans evolved because we saw that thinking in the group’s interest got us further than a selfish focus on the individual.

It is not just Nice Guys®.  Evo Psych also contains large numbers of retrograde sexist assholes.  The main social function of Evolutionary Psychology and related approaches in the other social and behavioral sciences (all descended from E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology) is too reaffirm and give a semblance of “scientific” cover to the prevailing social stereotypes and the existing social order.  In this regard they are similar to the “Race Science” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  No point in trying to change the way things are because it is all in our genes and biologically determined.  Please note that their research never challenges Western stereotypes or social practices nor validates conflicting practices and beliefs in other cultures.  They never study the highly nurturant and fully engaged parenting of Aka and !Kung men for instance.

Echidne dismantles the statistical methods of the study, and suggests that papers that “prove” nasty stereotypes about men and women tend to be held to a much lower standard of evidence than other studies.

The same is true of studies of birth outcomes that hold women responsible for harming their children through, say, consuming alcohol or even breathing air pollution (the latter isn’t likely to happen again, because I stomped my foot down on it).

Somehow, 25 women sucking down a fifth of jack a day having seriously destroyed offspring gets expanded to “no pregnant woman or even possible to get preganant woman should ever drink anything!”.

Same reasons too: women can’t be trusted!

I think this is the argument guys come up with when they’ve been turned down too many times. “Well, she doesn’t like me ‘cuz I drive a crappy car.”

Right, keep telling yourselves that.

Okay, this is just anecdoatal, but in the artsy-fartsy crowds I’ve always run with, money was often the least of considerations for women.

Intelligence, the indefinable “cool,” were deciding factors.

As smatter of fact, I rejected a couple candidates outright who were boors enough to hint broadly upfront at their earning power—including at least one artsy-fartsy type, who’d hit it rich.

His pickup line, “Becoming a millionaire hasn’t made me happy.”

To which I replied, “Then I can’t see how anything I might do could make any difference.”

Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related to reproductive success.

What that statement says, which our fair Kruger probably doesn’t understand is “people with money tend to have more children who survive into adulthood.”

which might be true in undeveloped or developing countries, but in the developed world where surviving to adulthood is less fraught with danger, large family size is statistically linked to lower incomes.

“sex partner count” and “reproductive success” are far from mutually inclusive terms.

Amanda, its *No More*  Mr. Nice Guy, OK!  Evo Psych is where weve been.  We have 3 brains , the highest being the most human and Evo Psych is more about the lower two.  We need all three but the higher one which is not Evo Psych material and it points to our potential.  When feminist are thinking equality and not gender advancement alone they are using the third and Evo Psych doesnt apply to them anymore.

Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related to reproductive success.

Speaking as a cultural anthropologist, I would like to say that this statement is categorically false.  Reproductive success is determined not by male economic power, but by household economic success.  In a large number of societies it is either a balance of male and female contributions or primarily female contributions which determine success.  Among the mobile foragers, women provide on average about 60% of the food and society can survive adequately without any male contributions at all.  All humans were mobile foragers up until 20,000 years ago and most were until about 5,000 years ago.  Thus the primary evolutionary forces operating on humans ought to reflect conditions in those societies, not modern patriarchal societies.

The study seems to ignore a lot of other factors that might contribute to “reproductive success”. Some people are better at getting people to breed with them than others.

I have several friends who truly believe that what kind of car they drive and what they wear should lead to more success with members of the opposite sex. When they don’t succeed they say the women just doesn’t understand how cool their car is or how expensive their watch is. This. Research seems to be an attempt to confirm that if everyone knew how cool an escalade really was than people driving them would get laid more often. What nice guys really need is to educate women about how cool their stuff is and why women should want them for their stuff.

The study seems to ignore a lot of other factors that might contribute to “reproductive success”. Some people are better at getting people to breed with them than others.

First off, “reproductive success” is not about how many people you get to mate with you.  It is about the numbers of your descendants who survive to reproduce in successive generations relative to other individuals in the same population.  There are multiple possible strategies for doing this.  One strategy is to have as many offspring as possible with minimal subsequent investment in each of them, relying on sheer numbers to guarantee some survive.  This is the strategy employed by insects, fish, amphibians, and most reptiles.  It is also what Evo Psych says human males do.  Another strategy is to have relatively few offspring with a very high parental investment in each.  This is what all apes, including humans, do.  It makes no evolutionary sense for the sexes to have differing reproductive strategies.  Males benefit just as much as females from investing in their young.  Reproductive promiscuity has equal advantages for both men and women by increasing the genetic diversity of their offspring (which is the fundamental purpose of sexual reproduction) and thereby increasing the odds of survivorship for some offspring.  There are a number of studies showing about equal levels of “cheating: by men and women when the social costs are equal and minimal.

Okay, I’m preaching to the choir here, but all these studies seem to use two different spins on the idea of “attraction”.

Take the idea that men are attracted to youth and beauty. Women are attracted to money and security.

Yes, men are attracted to youth and good looks. Sexually attracted. A young and attractive female is more likely to arouse them.

Yes, women are attracted to money and security. Particularly in cultures where women are disenfranchised (most) or cultures where any offspring are primarily the responsibility of the women (all) or women make less money and own less property and have enjoy less physical safety than men (again, all cultures, everywhere in the world.) Women are not actually sexually attracted to men who offer money and power and security. I was attracted to the idea of obtaining my comfy civil service job with good benefits, yet don’t want to fuck it. In other words, thinking of a younger David Beckham showering makes me wet. Thinking about my pension does not.

Why is this difficult for evo-psych scientists to understand? Does anyone argue that fifteenth century noblemen were sexually attracted to women with larger dowries? Or notice that in situations where money isn’t an issue, girls and women mate with people who they’re sexually attracted to (youth goes to youth, etc.)? Could this inability to see the obvious switcheroo in how one defines the concept of attraction possibly be because women and girls are seen as having no sexual feelings, and lust being solely a male trait? Nah, these are scientists! They must know that women are sexual beings and not just objects created for male enjoyment. Nobody could be that cluelessly misogynist….

For what it’s worth, I’ve never known any woman to marry for money. Not my college friends, not the women I have known in the fifteen plus years since graduating. All the young women I work with, many who are high school or college age date men within a few years of their age and usually of their social/economic class. They’re mostly interested in men who they think are hot and that they click with. It’s almost like they have a libido or something. Even though they’re girls from very working class families for the most part, they’re somehow unwilling to peddle their ass to the highest bidder. I think this might have something to do with the fact that they live in a culture where they can earn their own money, own property, and have a law enforcement system that provides some personal protection and thus not depend directly on a male protector.

(The problem with this country is it’s too easy for a person to be upwardly mobile. Here we have, in my place of employment, all these first and second generation young women from economically depressed nations, and instead of selling themselves off to the highest bidder, they’re becoming educated and entering into the middle class, and steadfastly dating men who are their peers and who they find physically attractive. This is tragically unfair to rich and unattractive older men, who now have to either rent by the hour or buy women directly from overseas. Damn women’s lib!)

Actually, in the days before widespread contraception the rich guys might have had (relative to poor guys) access to more sexual, uh, partners because they could support (fsvo “support”) more out-of-wedlock offspring. 

But really, the notion that people choose sexual partners they consider fit seems kinda obvious—it’s just that it leads, if anything, to different partner choices at different life stages.

or women make less money and own less property and have enjoy less physical safety than men (again, all cultures, everywhere in the world.)

This is not in fact true.  There are (or were until relatively recently) many cultures where women had their own property and sources of wealth equal to and independent of men.  Still true in many traditional West African societies.

The studies or maybe just me seem to confuse reproducive success with dating success. For a male the best way to insure reproducive success is to become a sperm donor and I would guess women could become egg donors and produce far more offspring than they could in a conventional way. Plus, it seems that lower income indaviduals are probably the most likely people to become egg and sperm donors so in terms of who is most likely to have reproductive success it is people who donate eggs and sperm.
In other words reproductive success in our current culture seems like a very poor measure of anything.

<This is not in fact true.  There are (or were until relatively recently) many cultures where women had their own property and sources of wealth equal to and independent of men.  Still true in many traditional West African societies.>

Can you name some? Because I’ve seen stats that claim that women own about 2% of the world’s land. And while you’re at it, can you let me know where in the world women enjoy safety from violence equal to the average man’s?

For a male the best way to insure reproducive success is to become a sperm donor and I would guess women could become egg donors and produce far more offspring than they could in a conventional way.

Again, just having lots of offspring is not reproductive success.  It is having larger number of offspring (and their offspring) survive to reproduce successfully.  Having large numbers alone do not guarantee that will happen.  All primates, including humans, have adopted a different pattern of having relatively fewer offspring and investing more time and effort into ensuring that they survive and possess the skills to succeed.  This gives them more control over the process and produces more high quality offspring.

Nothing gets the motor of deceitful, shallow females running like a jerk with cash

Well, if someone is shallow and deceitful, then yeah.  But not all women are like that, obviously.

is the entire field of evolutionary psychology being run by Nice Guys® with ulterior motivations?

Heh.  It sure seems to me that evolutionary psychology is a bunch of quackery.  I don’t buy, at all, that we humans with enormous brains are slaves to desires locked into our genes 100,000 years ago.

“(And if you think unemployed women do as well as employed women on the dating market, you have another thing coming.)”

Sorry to be nitpicky and nonsubstantive, but this drives me crazy:  THINK, not THING.  If you THINK thus-and-so, you have another THINK coming.  I’m seeing this wrong everywhere, and the wrong way doesn’t make any sense!

OK, I feel better now.

Can you name some?

The Baule; the Musuo; the Dahomey; the !Kung San; the Aka; the Mbuti; traditional (not modern) Iroquois, Cherokee, Salish, and Hopi.  Also most, though not all, mobile foragers.  Modernization and colonialism has severely undermined women’s status around the world, in part by spreading western patriarchy and capitalism.  The spread of violence against women is also an outgrowth of this process.  The current situation does not reflect inevitablility nor universality and there were until the last 100-200 years many societies around the world where women’s lives were much better than they are in the west or the imperial civilizations of Asia.  When talking about evolutionary impacts, it reflects societies where women’s status was not subordinate and where their economic contributions mattered as much or more than men’s.  these mobile foragers represent all but at most 20,000 years out of humanity’s 4.5 million year evolutionary history.

Dr D:
Chances are the person who can afford fertility treatment will most likely be able to get that to adulthood. So the sperm/egg donor has in fact increased their reproductive success without even getting a partner.
Producing lots of kids that then go on to produce lots of kids is not a difficult thing to do. A study that measures the success of doing it is sort of worthless.

Producing lots of kids that then go on to produce lots of kids is not a difficult thing to do. A study that measures the success of doing it is sort of worthless.

It is not gross numbers, but numbers relative to other members of the same population and it is not as easy as it seems (ask salmon of butterflies).  Likewise, in evolutionary terms reproductive success (and with it, evolutionary fitness) is simply having more offspring (and their offspring) survive to reproduce than others in the same population.  When we talk about evolutionary “fitness” that is the only thing we are talking about.

Karl -

As a case in point, in 1900 about 40% of all children died before reaching adulthood (which is why the average life expectancy was only about 45).  In the third world that figue is in the 40-50% range.  Families were and are much larger than today, but relatively few children actually survived compared to today.  By having fewer children and investing more in them (particularly medical care and education) we have increased the proportion of children who grow up and reproduce successfully.  Replacement rate has dropped from over 4 children per couple to slightly over 2 children per couple.

Mine at 3:49 should read “about 40% of all children in the US”.

I have read two or three posts on Nice Guys and am still not clear what one is? If a guy is complaining women won’t automatically sleep with him based on some characteristic of his, that is not very nice. Or respectful of a partner’s independence of mind in choosing. Or with an eye to real love, which is hardly a social advancement project, at least never with that as its conscious purpose. If you sleep with someone or marry someone because everyone else tells you that you should, that is sad.

Dr D:

If your numbers are right than back in the good old days people had more reproductive success.
The average couple had four kids with 60 percent of those kids making it to adulthood. Today you are saying that the average couple has two children with even with an almost one hundred percent survival rate the couple with four children are st .4 more children than are the couple with two children.
I still argue that in todays society the jackass with ten kids and a weekly visit to the Springer show has more “reproductive success” at a lower income than does a a typical person with a good income.
I am saying that income and even money spent don’t lead to reproductive success. And the study does not allow for the use of contraception that might thwart the nice guys reproductive success even more.

</blockquote> I have read two or three posts on Nice Guys and am still not clear what one is? If a guy is complaining women won’t automatically sleep with him based on some characteristic of his, that is not very nice. Or respectful of a partner’s independence of mind in choosing. Or with an eye to real love, which is hardly a social advancement project, at least never with that as its conscious purpose. If you sleep with someone or marry someone because everyone else tells you that you should, that is sad.  <blockquote>

Fuck. I have no idea how to do the html.

Around here when we refer to “Nice Guys”, we are talking, specifically, about the type of guy who thinks that just because he’s “nice” he is OWED something from the woman he is attracted to.  He does not view the women he is attracted to as a separate person from himself, with her own motivations and ideas that do not necessarily jibe in what he thinks what they are.  When the woman he is attracted to rejects him for whatever reason, he is miffed because he didn’t get what he feels that he is entitled to. This isn’t about some guy who is nice, who asks some woman out and gets turned down.  This is about some guy who ACTS nice, tries to get on the side of a woman, and when rejected, stomps away in a huff, insisting that she’s a bitch because she doesn’t see how nice he is! It’s inherently manipulative and dishonest to pursue a friendship with someone when your true goal is to hook up with that person.  It’s not “nice” to do that!

I tried to find an entry about it on Finally, Feminism 101 blog for Larry, but couldn’t find anything. Does anybody know of a good, basic, introduction entry about “Nice Guys”?

Two points.  Replacement rate reflects the number of children you have to have to successfully reproduce yourself and your mate (that is grow up to reproduce themselves), so no they did not have greater reproductive success.  We have, as have all peoples everywhere when child survivorship increases, chosen to have fewer, higher quality offspring.  Secondly, your argument about the larger families having greater reproductive success (and therefor greater evolutionarey fitness) is basically correct.  It does overlook greater child mortality and marginally lower reproductive success overall for these offspring, however.

Evolutionary fitness is only about reproductive success.  Intelligence, speed, strength, beauty, etc. are not fit in themselves, but merely means to an end - more effectively reproducing offspring who pass on more of your genes to the next generation.  Those whose genes have greater representation in succeeding generations are the most fit.

This of course is a tremendously reductive argument and ignores vital social differences within human populations.  A number of social scientists have argued that in stratified societies like our own, you need to treat different social groups as separate, functionally differentiated, and interactve populations.

I’m sure that for someone who actually knows what he’s talking about like yourself, it’s got to be maddening to see misuse of basic terms like “reproductive success”.

It does rank rather high on my list of pet peeves.  See my posts subsequent to that one.

Amanda:
I interned at a zoo and I can tell you from experience most of our primate cousins are happy to spread their seed around as much as possible.

<The Baule; the Musuo; the Dahomey; the !Kung San; the Aka; the Mbuti; traditional (not modern) Iroquois, Cherokee, Salish, and Hopi.>

How cool for them.

The Baule live in Côte d’Ivoire? Where the literacy rate for women is 38% compared to 60% for men. And according to the stats: “Tier 2 Watch List - Cote d’Ivoire is on the Tier 2 Watch List for its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to eliminate trafficking in 2007, particularly with regard to its law enforcement efforts and protection of sex trafficking victims; in addition, Ivoirian law does not prohibit all forms of trafficking, and Cote d’Ivoire has not ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol (2008)” Sounds like women have serious power there!

From what I just lazily googled of the Dahomey, in ancient times the king (who I believe was male) owned all the property. Modern Benin: women literacy’s rates are 24% lower than men’s and women’s life expectancy is seven years lower. Gee, it sounds like Wonder Woman’s Island.

Dr. Dick, I have no doubt that at times in human history, some women have wielded the a good bit of power in some societies. This means absolute shit to me though, since at least throughout written history, and in current times, one is far, far more likely to find cultures where men own more property and hold more political power.

But to get back to my point - in cultures where women do hold some financial power, one is less likely to see men who are “reproductively successful” because of their wealth. Women are more likely to seek partners that they’re physically and/or intellectually attracted to. We don’t need a woman-dominated, matriarchal society for that - even something approaching equality provides women the chance to go along with their basic biological imperative to fuck people they’re attracted to. The men who seem to get laid the most are good looking men.

And of course, all I’ve posted has been merely anecdotal, though I’m not sure my anecdotal non-evidence is any less rigorous than what passes for evo psych studies.

I can tell you from experience most of our primate cousins are happy to spread their seed around as much as possible.

Actually not so much.  There is huge variation among primate species regarding mating patterns.  This ranges from the complete promiscuity of chimpanzees and bonobos to the harem keeping of gorillas (one senior male monopolizes several females) to monogamous pair-bonding among marmosets and some other moneys.  You can find primate models to support just about any model of human reproductive strategy.  Most authors relying on primate models (especially in EP) tend to be highly selective and never bother to justify why they chose the species they did. 

One of the most commonly chosen species are baboons (who actually exhibit a variety of different patterns depending on the species), who have mixed sex troops and a strongly hierarchical social organization with a dominant alpha male.  The traditional view was that the alpha male monopolized sexual access to females in the troop.  Subsequent observational and DNA analysis have disproven this notion.  Alpha males in fact father only a minority of offspring.  The most prolific male breeders are cooperative males who help out (aid in conflicts, groom, and share food with) females and their offspring (even when thos are not their own offspring).

I’m not a statistician, so I’m curious:  is a sample of 100 men and over 300 women, where the hypothesis is intended to reveal something significant about male behavior, considered a legitimate data set?  It would seem that by using larger numbers of women the data set is designed to DECREASE the percentage of women who exhibit the same behavior in order to make claims about men seem more true.  I don’t know, that just stood out to me.

is a sample of 100 men and over 300 women, where the hypothesis is intended to reveal something significant about male behavior, considered a legitimate data set?

Ummm, no.  I have not read the study (reading EP studies is not good for my blood pressure), but I cannot imagine such a study with sample imbalance favoring women (and I occasionally teach research methods).  Just on the surface I would expect either all men, a predominance of men, or equal numbers of men and women depending on what exactly they were asking.  It is worth noting that self-reporting studies like this are notoriously unreliable as compared to observational studies.

Sorry to be nitpicky and nonsubstantive, but this drives me crazy:  THINK, not THING.——
Rebecca

Rebecca, thanks for taking the hit on that one: I’ve used up my quota of copy-editing, and the procter gets all snippy about it…..

I’m gonna play a little bit of devils advocate here.

First of all, to those who say that we are way too smart to be ruled by inherited desires and instinct; that’s not really true. There are lots and lots of instincts that has been ingrained in us because of our evolutionary history. For example, if we somebody who suffers, the vast majority of us will feel bad for that person. That is an instinct that is left over from us evolving as social creatures, and it doesn’t matter how clever we are, this *will* affect us.

Second of all, as a very basic approximation it *does* make sense for women to seek out wealthy males to have their kids. A woman can only have, say, fifteen or so kids in her lifetime, and each and every one is an investment of effort and risk. (Even if she would give the kid away to someone else as soon as it was born, the risks of childbirth alone would be too large to ignore, for example.) Therefore, it makes sense that a woman should try to have her kids with someone who has the resources to take care of them, as they are more “expensive” from a purely biological standpoint. A man can, in theory, have hundreds of kids with little personal investment.

But what these things always ignore or miss, is that reality is *much more complicated than this*.

For one thing, this only mentions how things are *on average*. This does not mean that any one particular individual should be compared to this theory. It’s like saying that since men are on average stronger than women, only men should be allowed to do heavy lifitng. It’s obviously stupid.

Another thing is that it completely ignores the fact that women also has a genetic interest in making sure the guy stays around to take care of the kids. I.e, that the guy is someone who actually cares for her and the kids. I.e, that the guy is a caring and moral human being. So wealth is obviously not the only thing that enters into the equation. Having kids by an enormously wealthy guy who leaves is much worse than having kids with a guy who is half as wealthy but stays around.

The same is true for men; while it is *possible* to have hundreds of kids, most likely you won’t. Therefore it makes perfect sense to stay and take care of your kids, instead of fucking off and going out trying to have sex with other women. So this behaviour will also be selected for.

Also, the theory completely ignores all the OTHER ways of raising kids than by mother and father. Some cultures didn’t really have the concept of father, and the kids were raised by the mother and her sisters, and her *brothers*. The father never really entered into it. In this kind of culture, the only thing about the father was the quality of his genes, nothing more. (Well, that and that your siblings were the kind of people that helped you out, so it selected for genes that encouraged strong kinship between siblings. Even more than normally, anyway).

Also, in a altruistic social animal like humans, nobody likes a jerk. So nobody, male or female, really wants to have kids with someone who is one.

Also, even if it was universally true that women genetically preferred rich guys, then so what? Just because it’s “natural” doesn’t mean that people should act that way, nor that they shouldn’t. It’s “natural” to kill someone and take their things, that doesn’t mean it’s moral. We have culture as well as genes, and they all interact in very complex ways.

TL;DR-version: There’s a grain of truth in these articles. Mostly they are way oversimplified. I hope it’s due to the fact that the media are more prone to report “Women are from venus men are from mars!” type of stories, and not that most evopsychpeople are sexist. (Well, more sexist than average, at least.)

(Interestingly, I saw a pretty funny article that had calculated the optimal [from a genetic standpoint] configuration for both parties in a society where the mother and father is expected to raise their kids together. The father benefits from staying with the mother and having her helping to raise his kids, but also benefits from any kids he might have out of wedlock by more fertile women. And the mother benefits from having the father around to help raise *her* kids, but benefits from having kids with other men because of the benefits of increased genetic variation amongst her kids, as well as having partner with better genes than her husband.

So both parties benefit from being unfaithful, but nobody wants the *other* partner to be unfaithful. The mother because the father might leave to raise those other kids, the father because he’d then be pouring effort on someone elses genes. )

DrD:
Your primate stuff fits with the Capuchin colony I took care of. It seemed like the dominant male was always catching the younger males trying to mate with the females. Of course captive animals will probably behave different than in the wild where maybe the dominant male could keep the females away from other males more easily.

As for the main topic I still think that at least in the US and most of the devoloped world “reproductice success” depends on how many kids you can father as survival rates are so high that you don’t need to expend a lot of effort to get kids to adulthood and how much money you have plays a small part in your ability to breed.

CM -

Perhaps the greatest flaw in EP studies is their basic assumption that we are in some sense puppets to some unitary set of inherited “instincts”.  In fact human beings are highly variable in this regard, characterized, like all primates, by a very high level of behavioral plasticity (even more than other primates).  We also have a wide variety of often conflicting “natural inclinations.”  We have tendencies to ward both selfishness and altruism, cooperation and conflict, monogamy and promiscuity, individualism and conformity.  These vary in their strength from one individual to another.  To a great extent, all societies encourage some and discourage others, though the mix varies greatly.  We also have free will and can make decisions on our own independent of either our biology or our cultures.

Amanda: I’m pretty sure women *are* wired for something, just as men are (or rather, that all humans are wired for certain things). But what that something *is* varies greatly from individual to individual, and what evo psych could hope to do, at most, is to give very very general trends. As in, they could say “here is *one* factor”, not that “this is THE factor”. Of course culture, gender roles, economic disparity, available technology, etc etc etc will also play a role, and many of them will have much greater effects than a genetic disposition towards wealthy males, or whatever. So, in short, Yeah I agree with you

DrDick: yeah, I agree, in a way. But the way we *form* cultures and behaviours and societies, are all affected by our genes. But I think that it’s way too complex to try to use genetic rasoning to explain things; akin to trying to use particle physics to explain a specific computer program. It could theoretically be done, but it would be much easier just talking about how C++ works, for instance.

CM -

The argument could just as easily inverted.  That our cultures select for the genes best suited to their needs.  That model might fit better with the truly mind boggling diversity of human cultural practice.

Humans are unique among animals in that we don’t have the same selection pressures as other animals. The aricle in question seems to assume that their is a lot of competition to spread ones man seed. When the reality is that almost any idiot can get his genes in the gene pool.
In a sense they are pretending humans are identical to animals when we live in a far less competitive world when it comes to reproducing.

In a sense they are pretending humans are identical to animals when we live in a far less competitive world when it comes to reproducing.

Have to say I disagree with that on the whole.  There may be exceptions, but the global prevalence of birth control and abortion, if anything make it harder for modern men to reproduce than it was for our ancestors.  It is also a mistake to assume that we are no longer subject to biological selection.  The selective forces have changed and many are now cultural, but natural selection is still going on.  The ability of adults to digest milk sugars only arose within the past 9,000 years (actually arose at least 3-4 different times in different places in Europe/Middle East and Africa).  I suspect that evolution is also selecting for a greater ability to deal with stress.

“Is it me, or is the entire field of evolutionary psychology being run by Nice Guys® with ulterior motivations?”

I’ve read plenty of posts on right-wing blogs that procalim the entire field of climate change is being run by ultra-liberal environmentalists, and the entire field of evolutionary biology is being run by atheistic communists. It’s a lame, uneducated argument there, and it’s no better here. I would expect members of this blog to be above that sort of behavior. If one wants to argue with the results from a scientific study, it’s best to confine criticism to the methodology or background - and the author of this blog appears to be aware of that, as she (eventually) engages in that type of discussion. But placing a higher priority on unfounded accusations about the sex life of the research scientist involved pretty much tarnishes everything afterwards. I doubt if I’m the only individual who will be turned off by the author’s petty personal attacks before I get past the first paragraph.

DR D.
I agree people are still evolving but right now their are not many selection pressures on mutations and most mutations can in fact survive. Same with cultural adaptations people have a lot of stupid traditions but because their are no selection pressures they survive anyway. Humans and domestic dogs are the only animals I can think of that survive in spite of some undesirable mutations.

Regular Reader -

I agree that the personal lives of researchers are generally irrelevant.  However, the motivations behind research which consistently and exclusively serves to reinforce existing societal stereotypes and the existing social hierarchy are inherently suspect.  Anne Fausto-Sterling (a molecular biologist) has written extensively on the impact of gendered stereotypes and culturally based assumptions (largely unconscious) on the conduct and interpretation of scientific research relating to sex based differences.  These kinds of issues merit a close examination and are a normal and necessary part of the scientific process.  Until EP starts attempting to explain and demonstrate the adaptive significance of cultural patterns which differ from our own (and are more likely representative of human social behavior for most of our evolutionary history), their motivation remains suspect, just as that of the early 20th century “Race Scientists” was.

Carl -

Mutations are only desirable or undesirable in relation to a specific set of environmental conditions.  Because of our cultures, we are able to eliminate some selective pressures which operated on our ancestors (regarding myopia for instance).  That does not mean that we have not created a large number of new selective pressure (tolerance to heavy metals and other pollutants, ability to handle social stresses of interacting with larger numbers of people, resistance to epidemic diseases, etc.).  Selective pressure have not disappeared, they have just changed, but we have not had long enough to see the consequences.  Remember that evolution is a very slow process (absent extremely high selective pressures) over generations.

I bet people in sexier professions get laid more than people in more staid ones.  I’ll bet being a locally known musician or artist means you get a lot more attention than someone with a fatter wallet who works in computer consulting, but doesn’t have a “name”.  I bet you’d find that’s true of men and women, if they ever bothered to study anything that might have a chance of disproving Nice Guy® theories about irrational women and cynical men.

Amanda,

Agree with the larger point….though this may not necessarily hold in many areas where social values and priorities differ from the ones you or many others may hold. 

While being a locally known musician or artist may attract more positive attention in areas like my undergrad and areas where music and arts are highly appreciated and valued, there are also many other areas populated by those who feel a professional musician or artist has the same negative stigma as being unemployed….especially among many former co-workers in the corporate setting and excessively career-oriented undergrads(i.e. Aspiring i-bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc). 

Incidentally, up until about a century ago, being a musician or involved in the performing arts was regarded by the dominant Chinese elite culture as stigmatized as prostitution because they were associated with spiritual pollution and possible subversion of a stable social order.  It is a factor in why so many older generations of Chinese/Chinese-American parents in the recent past were so resistant to the idea of their children becoming musicians or actors.

Dr Dick-

Any scientist should be cognizant of the repercussions of the results from his or her published works, but that’s not my concern here. The problem is that in the author’s criticism of the scientist’s study, her first priority was to hyperbolize the study, make a personal attack on the author’s sex life, and demonize the entire field. That was a stupid thing to do, plain and simple, and it turned off at least one reader who was initially interested in the material. It’s hard to make a convincing argument when the opening material comes across as childish.

Regular Reader -
True.  Ad hominem attacks are not useful and tend to discredit the critic more than the target.  Also totally unnecessary with regard to EP, which has so many other methodological and theoretical problems going for it.  I do understand the frustration and exasperation which motivates such attacks.

DR D:
If we are going to count on hitting the genetic lottery with a mutation that enables are descendants to surive the next plague. Wouldn’t the best strategy be to produce as many off spring as possible as the chances of a good mutation increase with more off spring.

If we are going to count on hitting the genetic lottery with a mutation

That is not really what we do or the way the system works.  It is not about potential changes, but the existing variation and environmental conditions.  Paradoxically, while it determines the future, it is all about now.  As I indicated above, there are advantages to promiscuity for both males and females.  There are also benefits to monogamy/faithfulness for both.  It is not really about all or nothing, but rather striking a balance on the potential costs and benefits of a range of strategies.

A favorite example for me comes from a study of working class Londoners.  The data came from one of these genetic fingerprinting projects targeting children.  DNA samples were collected from both the children and their parents.  One thing they found is that 20% of the children were not fathered by the men to whom the women were married at the time of their conception.  This probably represents the normal human pattern of long term pair bonding with opportunistic infidelity.

Men in some situations prefer wealthy women or women with good jobs.

In pure patriarchal systems where women lose ownership of their own money brought into the marriage, wealthy women are regarded as valuable commodities by both the fathers of never-married women (if never-married women were considered legal minors) and by prospective husbands.

In modified patriarchal systems in which adult never-married women can own property, work, and give unrestricted consent to marriage, both lazy poor ne’er-do-wells and ambitious men pursue women with money. Anecdatum: John McCain.

OK, I can certainly understand why evoPsych presents problems as it has been practiced as a way to reinforce stereotypes .  However, seeing as you have disavowed the existence of a deity, then what theory of psychology do you actually espouse?  Do you deny evolution?

There is this organ we have called a brain, and it’s development must also have an explanation that is rooted in the theory of evolution.

You might not like the current EvoPsych establishment, but is there any other kind of Psych in a worldview that denies the existence of god?

NancyP -

Interestingly, I have a friend who is a Medieval English historian who studies women through court and other public records.  One of her findings is that wealthy widows were considered highly desirable marriage partners, but also used their wealth to gain a greater degree of autonomy and power than generally available to women and the time.  Part of the secret is that they actually had at least some control over their marriage arrangements.

Leah Cim -

If EP actually did reputable Darwinian evolutionary studies of the mind, there would not be a problem.  Unfortunately they do not, rather they engage in evolutionary just so stories which justify existing social arrangements.

This is a great article by Amanda.  I have also reflected upon Echidne’s stuff and written my own reflection (as the building blocks for a presentation to the Humanist society) here:

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2008/12/nietzsche-social-darwinism-darwinism.html

Dr D:
I think that is about the same percentage for birds that mate for life.

It doesn’t seem that Evo Psych seeks to promulgate a comprehensive, unified field theory of sexual attraction and mate selection.  It is possible that wealth is one cultural expression of status, and it is status, howsoever expressed that factors heavily in human mate selection.  It so happens, however, that most modern forms of high status carry a corresponding remunerative element, at least for men.  Also, it is rather apparent that simply “reproducing” might not be the goal of the modern male, but rather having access to/relationships with women who are deemed culturally “desirable.”  Therefore, it might be said that the “evo” part has encountered a dead end, or is the vestigial tail that wags the dog. 

Perhaps we could just presume that in dating, if you are a man, it is better to have disposable income than not, and more money is better than less.  It doesn’t mean that all a man needs to do is to crudely tell a woman that he has money - just that it is a healthy advantage and indicator of high status.  Perhaps being in a local band constitutes similar status, but of a limited flavor, because it might not translate into an attraction advantage with women who are either not local or into a different scene.

Many seem to be ignoring the fact that at the early stages of dating, women just might enjoy a man who can afford to show her a good time, whether either or both has long term expectations or not.  Sure, you can have fun on a $10 date, but having money opens up your possibilities, and having fun early on in dating tends to translate into more dates.  Same goes for a guy with a Porsche over the guy with the ten year old civic - its just a fun experience for a woman to have in casual dating, over and apart from the status qua financial security for the babies thing.  I’m not sure how you approach dating, but for me, I think “gee, she’s cute, it would probably be fun to spend some time with her.”  I sure hope that women aren’t reverse-engineering a marriage when deciding whether to take me up on my invitations.   

Amanda, I’m not certain where you got the notion that unemployed/underemployed women are categorically undesirable, but I would tend to differ with that conclusion, assuming the woman is attractive.  I’m a young professional, and I really don’t care what a woman does for a living, or, more accurately, if a woman is attractive, affectionate, warm, thoughtful, etc., I don’t really care that she’s a cocktail waitress or working her way through college with menial jobs at twenty-six.  Having come from a working class background, and having attended some “elite” institutions, I’ll always believe that the difference between many people is the ability of their parents to foot a tuition bill, and I think it is plain silly to discount someone because of that.  To be quite honest, I probably have more in common with the woman whose parents couldn’t punch her college ticket for four years.

Karl -
I believe you are correct on that.  Again, the advantages go both ways for both sexes.  The primary reproductive strategy among all primates is fewer, higher quality offspring with higher parental investment from both parents.  That is accompanied by opportunistic infidelity (even among the harem keeping gorillas).

a high income in a male can be just as much a sign of his eternal dedication to bootlicking, as it can be a sign of health?  Which is it really?  What are the circumstances in which it is more likely to be one rather than the other?

Come to think of it, Ev Psych shouldn’t necessarily predict that women get all hot at the prospect of a man with a fat wallet. Prior to the invention of the shotgun (and the marriage named after it) the biggest consideration for a woman would have been whether a man would stick around and add resources for child care, in which case someone with portable status and independent means would be a bad bet. Unless of course you had some kind of extended family situation (as has been true for all of history but the past century) in which case you’d focus on a whole different set of characteristics, many of them to do with exogamy.

“a high income in a male can be just as much a sign of his eternal dedication to bootlicking, as it can be a sign of health?”

I suppose that it would depend upon your definition of “high income.”  In many high income fields you have a great deal of autonomy in how you make $X for the firm/company/practice/whatever.  What matters is that you do make the $X.  Once you become good at making $X, and you know it, you have a great deal of leverage with your superiors, with the implicit threat that you can make a lateral move and take your $X with you.

It seems that opportunistic infidelity might lead to an advantage in that if you had five kids and one of them had a different father that one might avoid some genetic defect. Or get some advantage.
I think the randomness of evolution is what drives religous types nuts.

The studies or maybe just me seem to confuse reproducive success with dating success. For a male the best way to insure reproducive success is to become a sperm donor and I would guess women could become egg donors

Hehe, good point.  Actually, the best way to have reproductive success is to be infertile, have medical treatments, and end up with 8 kids when you only wanted 1.

can you let me know where in the world women enjoy safety from violence equal to the average man’s?

I’m not sure there is a place on Earth where anyone is particularly safe from violence.

Evo psychologists tend to think that it’s a given that men are more interested in spreading their seed than investing in individual children, even though most of our primate cousins, much less ourselves, favor individual children

Here’s something that’s relevant:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

These “researchers” think humans are mice.  We’re not.

Around here when we refer to “Nice Guys”, we are talking, specifically, about the type of guy who thinks that just because he’s “nice” he is OWED something from the woman he is attracted to.

And if you’ve ever met an actual human being who exhibits this behavior you’ll know what is meant.

“can you let me know where in the world women enjoy safety from violence equal to the average man’s?”

Perhaps we would be crediting Patriarchy too much, but isn’t one of it’s more noble purposes insulating women from the kind of violence that is visited upon men?  As a man, I’m quite certain that I’ve been the recipient of violence from strangers and near strangers with more frequency than an average woman.  Much has been by my own fault, or mutual fisticuffs, or even combat, but it is violence just the same.  I’m also far more likely to be a murder victim than a woman, at least in the United States.

Interestingly, I have a friend who is a Medieval English historian who studies women through court and other public records.  One of her findings is that wealthy widows were considered highly desirable marriage partners, but also used their wealth to gain a greater degree of autonomy and power than generally available to women and the time.  Part of the secret is that they actually had at least some control over their marriage arrangements.

DD, your friend must be quite elderly and impressively seminal, because that is very old news—well, in Feminism years, anyway.

Ranylt -
She is.  Her name is Sue Sheridan Walker and she was one of the first to pioneer this research more than 20 years ago.

I should add that I am also somewhat “mature” and have been doing this for about 20 years as well.

I’m pretty sure women *are* wired for something, just as men are (or rather, that all humans are wired for certain things). But what that something *is* varies greatly from individual to individual

Here’s one way to look at it:  Birds are wired to fly south for the winter.  Moths are wired to fly toward flames.  They can’t help it.  Further, it’s not like some moths choose to fly toward light and some don’t.  It’s the same across species.

Human beings don’t have “wires”.  There’s nothing we do that we can’t help.  If a woman sees a rich man and decides to cozy up to him, it’s because she knows he can buy her lots of stuff, not because she can’t help it. 

There is this organ we have called a brain, and it’s development must also have an explanation that is rooted in the theory of evolution.

Here’s my nominee:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

“Further, it’s not like some moths choose to fly toward light and some don’t.  It’s the same across species.”

You see the moths that made their way to the light because, well, you need the light to see moths at night.  Not all birds of migratory species migrate, and many migrate East-West - it is the weather and browse that does it.  Applying this circumstance to humans is like saying that a human has the choice to remain in the sub zero wilderness or enter the cabin and warm himself by the hearth.

If you see someone get hurt, you’ll most likely feel a kind of sympathetic reaction. That is hard wired.

If someone laughs heartily, you are likely to start laughing too. This is hard wired.

If someone yawns around you, you’re quite likely to yawn too. This is hard wired.

If you have a brother or sister, odds are you will feel obligated to help them, all else being equal. This is at least partly hard wired.

If your car breaks down or your computer crashes or your boats sinks, one of your first reactions will quite likely be to yell at it or plead with it. (“Come on now you damned car! Don’t do this to me!”) This is because we’re hard wired to see agency in things, even when it’s not there. As in, we know that the computer isn’t really doing anything on purpose. But it feels very natural to ascribe intent to it anyway. [“My computer hates me!] This is because we’re social tribe animals who have been fighting social fights for hundreds of generations.

Of course, we don’t have as simple and direct responses as moths or birds, because we’re more complex than that. But we *do* have biases that are direct consequenses of our evolutionary history, and most of the time we find them so completely normal that we don’t even notice that we have them. If you gave, say, a fly or other solitary creature intelligence, it still wouldn’t have the slightest inclination to form friendships with other flies, the way we automatically do with other humans. It wouldn’t feel empathy with other flies if they got hurt.

Hell, even the impulse to find puppes and kids cute is a hard wired thing that we share with so many mammals that quite often mammal predators won’t actually kill the youngest prey when they kill the parents. They see big eyes and big heads compared to small bodies, and their own “this is a child! Protect it!”-reflex kicks in. Not always, of course, since mammals are complex. But often.

So saying that a woman will automatically want to mate with a guy because he’s rich is incorrect. The most you can say with evo psych is that on average, all other things being equal, a mate with money is more attractive than one without. This doesn’t of course mean that a woman will “trade up” as soon as she finds a wealthier man or that this is true for all women or anything, it’s simply a statistical statement about one single factor of human psychology.

<As a man, I’m quite certain that I’ve been the recipient of violence from strangers and near strangers with more frequency than an average woman.>

Perhaps. But then, you most likely haven’t been as cautious as the average woman is in attempting to avoid violence. Like not going out late alone at night, not taking graveyard shift jobs, avoiding public transportation at night, not walking around after sunset in unfamiliar or quiet places, or jogging in parks or on the street in early morning or evening hours, etc. And as cautious as I’ve been, I’ve had men grab me and threaten me countless times in my life on city streets - I suspect far more than you have. Even though I’ve tried within reason to be a “good girl” and not ask for it by not doing anything stupid like thinking I can wander around freely.

And yeah - if you’ve been in military combat, you’ve been under the threat of more actual violence than I have. Then again, a woman in the military is under more threat from her comrades at arms than a man is, and any girl or woman who is the resident of a war zone is at great risk of violence from even the “rescuing” troops.

And men are less likely to be killed by female lover or spouse. Or severely injured by one. And less likely to suffer any kind of sexual assault within the home, including acquaintance rape or incest.

Yup. Men have such an enormous fear of violence that effects their day to day lives. Like the horrible problems of dueling and fisticuffs.

Woah, where have I even implied anything of the sort? I even explictly said that “it’s natural!” is NOT a valid argument for any kind of behaviour. And usually when women reject me I simply shrug it off, I’ve never felt that “she’d go out with me if she just wasn’t so shallow” or any of the other stereotypes.

All I’m saying is that you can’t ignore that our present day genetic makeup depends on our evolutionary history, and it DOES affect how we think and our biases, as a species. It’s not the only factor or even the deciding factor, but it IS there somewhere

I’m explcitly NOT defending Nice Guy behaviour, and I’ve never to my knowledge engaged in it. (I might have when I was in my teens of course, but if so I don’t recall it.) I’m just saying that one shouldn’t discard the entirety of evolutionary psychology because there are people who publish bad papers in it.

And that last one was aimed at Amanda, if it wasn’t clear.

I found the following in my current reading interesting, though a bit inexplicable, and it does tend to argue against the EVO PSYCH POV:

Rare in traditional society, illegitimacy(in Europe) became more and more common after 1750:in some areas,  the number of illegitimate births per 100 live births grew from 2.5 before 1750 to 11.9 between 1780 and 1820; at the same time, pre-marital conceptions went from 13.4 to 23.8

German History 1770-1866, James J Sheehan, pages 88-89.

“No.  You’re misunderstanding the nature of patriarchal violence, which exists to enforce a hierarchy.”

I’m not certain that you’re giving men - whether they are the victims/perpetrators of Patriarchy or not - their due credit for actual sacrifice.  You can’t seriously deny the expectation that men will sacrifice themselves for the safety of women against violence and agression.  You might find it Patriarchy-reinforcing, but I’m not certain how “women and children first” isn’t a noble act, or one that places the safety and welfare of women above that of men.  I’d also note that your comment about soldiers and soldiering may be applicable only to a very narrow, modern period of history.  For example, in Rome, one needed to be a full Roman citizen with land to be considered a worthy recruit of the Legions until the Marian Reforms.  In Great Britain, the upper classes volunteered for service in the RAF - which was then the kind service most likely to result in combat death.  I’m not engaging you on the overall notion of Patriarchy, but rather noting that not all of the facts fit neatly within its framework.

“Perhaps. But then, you most likely haven’t been as cautious as the average woman is in attempting to avoid violence. Like not going out late alone at night, not taking graveyard shift jobs, avoiding public transportation at night, not walking around after sunset in unfamiliar or quiet places, or jogging in parks or on the street in early morning or evening hours, etc. And as cautious as I’ve been, I’ve had men grab me and threaten me countless times in my life on city streets - I suspect far more than you have. Even though I’ve tried within reason to be a “good girl” and not ask for it by not doing anything stupid like thinking I can wander around freely.”

Well, you’re discounting the fact that the threshold for what is “acceptable” violence against men is a good bit lower.  There is a difference social expectation if you say something offensive to a man, as opposed to when I say something offensive to a man.  If I accidentally “bump” a fellow in a crowded bar, it is an entirely different situation.  Yes, I can jog after dark - and not everywhere - but there is an expectation that I can and will defend my “manhood.”  However silly this may seem to you, it gets a bunch less silly when some offended drunk fellow takes a punch.

Like I wrote above, I do have a concern about my safety and tailor my behavior accordingly - maybe not to the degree that you do, but I do nonetheless.  I just don’t see the profit in arguing about who is and who isn’t a likely victim of violence.

I’m hardly reassured. Making unsubstantiated claims about the sex life of the scientist of concern may have been “a joke” (albeit a very poor one), but calling all of evolutionary psychology a “pseudo-science of making up just so stories to put women in their place” certainly isn’t. Ultimately, I’m seeing the same behavior I see coming from global warming deniers and creationists - individuals who, after reading a fraction of a percent of the material published in a given field, feel they are fully accredited to disregard and criticise the entire field. As I said, it’s a lame and, frankly, uneducated stance to take, and we certainly don’t need it coming from individuals who are certainly smart enough to know better.

In Great Britain, the upper classes volunteered for service in the RAF - which was then the kind service most likely to result in combat death.

They did….along with many more folks from the middle and working-class folks as joining the RAF, especially as a pilot or aircraft technician required actual technical competence in flying/maintaining aircraft, not merely physical courage and an upper-class social pedigree….even when the RAF had to drastically reduce their training standards to get more pilots into the air during the Battle of Britain.  Also, don’t forget that there were enlisted men who were pilots which enabled many teens who lacked a formal education but who had some technical competence to take part. 

In fact, because of such technical requirements, the RAF was actually considered a less prestigious military institution by many within the British upper-classes during the early part of WWII….especially compared with the British Army where officer commissions and promotions to mid-senior commissioned ranks were still heavily influenced more by one’s social pedigree/class than by one’s professional competence.

“You can’t seriously deny the expectation that men will sacrifice themselves for the safety of women against violence and aggression.”

Though it must be said, generally against violence and aggression from other men.  Ah, well.

Personally, I see the study as perhaps <saying more about levels of male impulsivity or promiscuity (in all senses of the word, from (at least desired) sex to spending). Being able to compare actual behavior with self-reporting would be nice, too (but that’s how it goes . . .)  One sticking-point for me is whether (for example) the ‘conservative’ guys who are careful about spending & saving and also conservative in their (self-reported) # of past & desired future partners are adjusting their desires & expectations to reality or not?  How much of this is Joe Cheapskate can hardly get laid (compared to Brian Spendthift), (and so is self-reporting all sour-grape-ish about future possibilities) vs. whether Joe might have different results if he was hitting the bars more often?  In other words, how much of this is actually female mate choice on the basis of how attractive men’s big bulging . . . wallets are?

Granted, it ends up the same, I’m working off rapid skims of brief quotes from pop accounts of the study, am statistically illiterate with no real relevant background, and yes, evo-pysch kinda predicts these results (and that you wouldn’t find this sort of thing among women, though echidne raises some questions (which I can’t evaluate)  about what’s actually going on with the numbers there) . . .

I was in college just when ev-psych’s older brother, sociobiology was getting its legs under it.

On the NiceGuy™ question, it sure seemed that just as a bunch of capitalists jumped on Darwin as a way to justify treating their employees like crap (Spencer, not Darwin, coined “survival of the fittest,” for instance) it sure seemed like a bunch of self-identified “beta males” jumped on sociobiology to explain why they couldn’t get laid.

As for Ev-Psych itself, it’s not that humans aren’t selected for social or psychological characteristics.  Heck, it’s not even that humans might not have selected-for social or psychological characteristics related to reproduction.  It’s just that it’s almost impossible to distinguish the allegedly persistently selected for, highly sophisticated gendered behaviors these guys (and it’s mostly guys) claim they see from the very high background noise of learned social behavior.  It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that it can’t be done with what amounts to phone surveys conducted on minuscule sample sizes… by researchers bent on proving their preconceptions.

Cool post, Amanda. You rock.

figleaf

Bobby Vafanculo -

you aren’t properly balancing the risks and violence. i grant that, in general, you are more at risk to have a random guy take a swing at you. but women are more likely to suffer from institutionalized violence… we are MUCH more likely to be the victims of abuse. and that “women and children first!” mentality is not, i think, so common as you seem to feel it is. or rather, it is generally “MY women and children first!” which is a different thing. further, the chivalric ideal that you are espousing has two points: for a man to protect his woman/women from other men, and to keep women under control by causing them to FEAR all men but the men who own them.

i have never personally benefited from chivalry. in fact, i have had to fight against it - like when i had a boyfriend who attacked a friend of mine, because i was HIS girlfriend and wasn’y “allowed” to talk to other guys. took me MONTHS to get rid of the guy, he stalked me and threatened my friends and family, the police wouldn’t help me because i was 15 and he was 17 and so he wasn’t really a “threat”, etc. and his justification for attacking my friend? he claimed that NO guy could be friends with a girl, that they were ALL ONLY trying to get into a girl’s pants, and that he was “protecting” my “honor” and my “virtue”. because i am incapable of protecting myself, i guess.

THAT is what chivalry is, on a practical level. yes, there ARE some men who don’t view it that way. but how are we to tell? most do, to some extent or another, in my experience. which is why i am dating a guy who (literally) stands aside while i fight my own fights, and doesn’t jump in until/unless i invite him to. which ALSO means that i know he respects me.

And that sexual interaction with men who have more resources means improving your lifestyle in any number of ways.

You feminutzys can use all the big words and Fraudian psychology you want but facts still prove that all a man has to do is dangle the possible purchase of a Dyson vacuum in front of a woman and she’ll be like putty in his fingers.

Regular Reader, I suggest that you aren’t—at least, not of this blog. Hyperbole, humor, and the ruthless unveiling of what lies beneath oppressive behavior is pretty much the hallmark of this blog, very definitely, of Amanda’s writing. I believe Haggard’s sexual proclivities were predicted here before the truth came out, which suggests that as mean-spirited as it may seem to call someone’s theories or bigotry the result of their hang-ups, it may very well also be the clear way to cut through bullshit and see the truth.

Of course, some readers will be put off by the bold attack on Evo Psych, but most of the regulars here come here specifically for posts like this.

DD, thanks for clarifying.  20 years is the figure I had in mind.

The attack on bad Evo Psych sounds plausible, but why the hate for people in computer consulting?

Now Montana, you should know that vacuum cleaners don’t get you anything but a trip to the doghouse. Didn’t you see the Penny’s ad?

EP would be worthwhile if they just got out of the gender game all together. Unfortunately, it seem to be the only way EP gets published. Especially weird is that while actual evolutionary biology is concentrating more and more on evolution AND development (which emphasizes the importance of environment on the genes of an organism), EP remains wedded to idiotic concepts like “hard wiring” even though the simple act of training an animal proves that behavior is not hard-wired.

The most you can say with evo psych is that on average, all other things being equal, a mate with money is more attractive than one without.

I am actually a big, big fan of well-done evo psych (which this is not.) The thing that evo psych does badly very, very often is it doesn’t begin to factor in the cultural elements.

My grandmother used to say “It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man.” I know of no such saying about a rich woman and a poor woman. Now, I personally am an outlier, in that I am a staunch feminist who actually thinks about power dynamics and who actively *sought* men who didn’t, at the time, make as much money as I did, and I used to get into arguments with my grandmother about it. But the majority of women who grow up with their grandmothers telling them that it’s better to love a rich man probably will find it easier to love a rich man, because that’s what they’ve been taught to do.

In order to determine whether the behavior is biological or not, you have to do massive cross-cultural studies, including historical and anthropological, to see if you can find any exceptions—any societies where men like rich women. And it turns out, it’s right there in frickin’ *Shakespeare!* The whole plot of “The Taming of the Shrew” is that the main character wants to marry a rich woman, but in order to get a rich woman he has to find one no one else wants to marry, so he seeks *out* a woman who is incredibly domineering and self-assured and then breaks her emotionally so she’ll be a typical Renaissance housewife. This pretty strongly implies that rich women were considered hot quantities by *someone*, and in fact enough someones that it made sense to Renaissance audiences that the guy who wanted a rich wife would have to take one who was otherwise unpleasant to deal with.

So you can prove, with a psychological study, that women are more likely to date rich men, but you *can’t* say whether this is evolved behavior that is wired into the brain, or accultured behavior that is taught, or logical behavior that is a response to the stressors of the specific culture, *just* from saying that it happens. The second step is to try to factor out culture, and it turns out, as soon as you look at culture you see that whenever rich women exist, men who want to date rich women exist. Which pretty strongly implies that it’s either accultured behavior or logical behavior, not evolved behavior.

And I mostly agree with Amanda that women do not get turned on by rich men; it’s more that they are willing to settle for rich men that they don’t find hot, because the perks are good. I will say, though, that I believe that women are more likely to genuinely find rich men hot than men are genuinely likely to find rich women hot, because our culture tells us, over and over and over, that older men are still sexy and older women are not. Part of our sexual tastes are shaped by what our culture tells us is sexy; that’s why American men want thin women and Polynesian men want fat women. So if we’re always seeing images of hot, young women with old, rich men, we are actually teaching our young women that old, rich men can be hot. But without ever seeing the converse, we are never teaching our young men that old, rich women can be hot. So, you know, if he’s Ross Perot then probably she’s dating him just for his money, and she doesn’t find him hot at all but she’s convinced herself that she could have a good life with him and that makes him more palatable, but if he’s Sean Connery, then maybe she really does think he’s hot.

(True story, BTW, to illustrate that when someone gives you money you actually find them more attractive: I worked in a company with a woman who had a harelip. She was responsible for Accounts Payable. I had almost no dealings with her at first, and I found her sheer ugliness shocking every time I saw her, because her face was deformed. Then I became a contractor working for the same company, so the Accounts Payable woman was the one who directly cut my paycheck, not HR. Very shortly, I found the Accounts Payable woman to be just slightly below average—yeah, her face was deformed by her harelip, but aside from that she was actually kind of cute. Now, it’s not like I would have slept with her because she was giving me my paycheck, but I did very rapidly become conditioned to find a face that I had earlier thought was shockingly ugly to be moderately pleasant to look at, just because I came to associate that face with getting money. Imagine that the face in question belongs to someone who is being actively kind to you, flattering you, calling you beautiful, giving you presents, and treating you in a loving way… it’s not hard to imagine how a person could come to love someone who is rich and treats them well, even if they never do actually find the person sexually stimulating.)

The most prolific male breeders are cooperative males who help out (aid in conflicts, groom, and share food with) females and their offspring (even when thos are not their own offspring).

The most prolific breeders in a species considered similar to humans sociologically are males who befriend women as a strategy to acquire sexual partners.  In other words, Nice Guys.

(We have much better statistical evidence to show how not true that is, which is why right wingers aren’t wrong to say that reproductive rights equals more sexual freedom.  They’re just wrong to be such whiny, resentful, begrudging babies about it.)

You couldn’t have obscured that with a few more double negatives?

@rvman: Hah! Mind you, we don’t know if they are resentful of the ones they help but don’t breed with them, or if they are pretending that they aren’t interested in a sexual relationship, or anything else NiceGuys(tm) do.

Maybe someday people will figure out that right and wrong don’t depend on biology.

The big problem with EvoPsych is that assumes we can inherit attitudes.  Bullshit.  We inherit the capacity to reason.  All things being equal, humans, men and women, will act in their own enlightened best self interest.  Now, depending on the culture, a woman may chose a rich man over a man that actually makes her nickers damp.  If she does, she does so for a reason, not because she is ‘driven’ to do so.

I think we all find competence and intelligence sexy but those aren’t necessarily with same as wealth and success.

my understanding of evolutionary psychology is that it does exist as a real, credible branch of science but that it doesn’t (credibly) get in to things like how genders behave in modern industrial societies.

evolutionary psychology is the reason why there exists in modern societies a small but significant portion of the population that carries phobias of things like snakes and spiders, even though death by snake or spider is a phenomenally rare occurrence in the world.  on the other hand, electricity kills lots of people all the time (relatively speaking) and noone has a phobia of it.  and by phobia i mean “an irrational terror” not “healthy respect for the danger of”.

those are the more commonplace areas of study of ev psych.  i understand most of the work is extremely esoteric, studying things like how and why our brains process the electrical signals received from the ocular nerve into the images that we perceive that our eyes are seeing.

who we choose to date or marry or want to sleep with?  nothing to do with it.  as pointed out above, the cultural influences are all too great too conclude that either men or women are “wired” for anything when it comes to reproductive activities.

It’s incorrect to say Echidne “demolishes” the stats in the study as her critique is 100% wrong (it would be correct for her to say that some of the modeling choices employed are awkward, but the model she proposes as an alternative is algebraically equivalent to the one that was published). 

That’s independent of whether the conclusions drawn are supported by the data in question, but it completely undercuts her central critique.

I like to bone poor women because they are grateful.

And also, they do more dirty stuff. Most accept anal.

Try getting some Jewish princess to do that.

“a man that actually makes her nickers damp.

hay, now . . .

Here is a totally unscientific (but not uninformed) hypothesis:

A women may actually settle down and have sprogs with a “provider-guy”—but for a scratch-that-itch throwaway shag she’d probably rather have a sexy “bad boy.”  In the long run she will shag the provider-guy a whole lot more.

In many cases, unless she feels continuously connected and supported by her chosen provider-guy, she’ll do both at the same time, and the probability of stepping out goes up close to ovulation.  But for birth control, the number of bad-boy kids unknowingly being raised by provider-guys would be much higher.

Evo-psych finds correlates of these behaviours throughout nature.

That said, fidelity for both men and women remains the norm and married partners taking on extracurriculars, while not rare, are in the minority.

Ref’s re: extra-pair bonding:

Reports of extra-pair copulations—henceforth, E.P.C.‘s—in animals previously thought to be monogamous have come hot and heavy during the last decade. Increasingly, biology journals have featured articles with titles such as “Behavioral, Demographic, and Environmental Correlates of Extra-Pair Fertilizations in Eastern Bluebirds,” “Extra-Pair Copulations in the Mating System of the White Ibis,” “Extra-Pair Paternity in the Shag, as Determined by DNA Fingerprinting,” “Genetic Evidence for Multiple Parentage in Eastern Kingbirds,” “Extra-Pair Paternity in the Black-Capped Chickadee,” “Density-Dependent Extra-Pair Copulations in the Swallow,” and “Patterns of Extra-Pair Fertilizations in Bobolinks.” We’ve even seen these oxymoronic reports: “Promiscuity in Monogamous Colonial Birds” and “Extra-Pair Paternity in Monogamous Tree Swallows.”

The situation has reached a point whereby a failure to find E.P.C.‘s in ostensibly monogamous species—that is, cases in which monogamous species really turn out to be monogamous—is itself reportable, leading to the occasional appearance of such reassuring accounts as “DNA Fingerprinting Reveals a Low Incidence of Extra-Pair Fertilizations in the Lesser Kestrel” or “Genetic Evidence for Monogamy in the Cooperatively Breeding Red-Cockaded Woodpecker.”

Nor have mammals been exempt. Gibbons, for example, were long thought to be lifetime monogamists. No longer. Ditto for essentially every species that has been investigated with any thoroughness.