Echidne and Figleaf are both posting on a study by Daniel Kruger that supposedly proves that women can’t help it, but our very genes tell us to rip off our clothes and hop on someone’s cock the second we realize that he’s in a higher tax bracket than average. Nothing gets the motor of deceitful, shallow females running like a jerk with cash, don’t you know? Is it me, or is the entire field of evolutionary psychology being run by Nice Guys® with ulterior motivations? Maybe it would be a more respectable field if they were able to get rid of the Nice Guys®.
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. Figleaf points out that this study and most like it use “reproductive success” as a scientific-sounding stand-in for “more sexual partners”, which glosses over the fact that contraception might make more sexual partners available for rich men than there would be in the past. Of course, this is evo psychology, so we have to assume that women are thoughtless animals whose sexual choices are all instinctual, and therefore who can’t be assumed to increase their own sexual activity when protected by contraception. (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.) They both have good points, but I want to make another one that I think is more basic and will demonstrate why these sorts of conclusions about instinct over rational choices made in environments are doomed from the beginning. From the first page of the study: