10 Politically Incorrect Truths, Psychologia ewolucyjna
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TEN POLITICALLY INCORRECT TRUTHS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are
naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.
By:
Alan S. Miller Ph.D.
,
Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D.
Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely.
Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into
our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique
evolved nature—human nature.
This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our
individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our
ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a
large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.
Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience
and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human
behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck
and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast,
evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that
often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by
predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved
psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste
good to us.
The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or
offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence.
Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.
Adapted from
Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters,
by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi
Kanazawa, to be published by Perigee in September 2007.
1.
Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Long before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago—
women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in Iran, where exposure to
Western media and culture is limited, women are actually more concerned with their body
image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to
ascribe the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and 21st-century Iran
to socialization by media.
Women's desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond
hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to
mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these
features.
Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women.
One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women
have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair
grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman's health status.
Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. They are
healthier and more fertile than other women; they have an easier time conceiving a child
and do so at earlier ages because they have larger amounts of essential reproductive
hormones. Thus men are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when
they seek women with small waists.
Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women
with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to
lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence
heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make
it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight—
suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.
Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer
women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large
breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two
reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).
Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with
light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with
blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average,
healthier and more fecund) women. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in
Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to
advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.
Women with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or brown eyes.
Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable—in males as well as
females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to
something that she likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men)
spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest indicator of interest
and attraction. And the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed
people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine
whether they are interested in us or not.
The irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts, wigs,
liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color contact lenses, any woman,
regardless of age, can have many of the key features that define ideal female beauty. And
men fall for them. Men can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm,
large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their
evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by modern inventions that did not exist in
the ancestral environment.
2.
Humans are naturally polygamous
The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a
marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one
man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-
Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know
that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than
women.
Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the
degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the
species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10
percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history,
humans have been mildly polygynous.
Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between
the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among
females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The
greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with
each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-
bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their
children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide
better physical protection against predators and other males.
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children)
are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a
wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The
maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive
possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous,
most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in
their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to
increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian
societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
3.
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most
women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they
are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can
monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less
desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy
guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less
desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What
they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means
no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could
get under monogamy.
4.
Most suicide bombers are Muslim
According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of
Making Sense
of Suicide Missions
, a comprehensive history of this troubling yet topical phenomenon,
while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it
is
always
Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers
to commit suicide missions?
The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim
suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in
it). It may have nothing to do with the religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity,
the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a
lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the
absence
of sex.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By
allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from
reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent
of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status.
It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access
to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who
already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes
such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic
development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and
political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-
Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in
the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-
Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide
bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in
Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who
has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the
prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a
complete reproductive loser.
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven
that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with
this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger
than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their
own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide
bombers are single.
5.
Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son
face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?
Since a man's mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas
a woman's is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has
to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how
much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a
father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically
attractive.
The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the
son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and
departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this
effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families.
6.
Beautiful people have more daughters
It is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is up to random
chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance. The normal sex ratio at birth is 105
boys for every 100 girls. But the sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and
for different families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an offspring.
One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard
hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents
of low status have more daughters. This is because children generally inherit the wealth
and social status of their parents. Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who
would themselves become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives,
mistresses and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas their
equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So natural selection designs
parents to have biased sex ratio at birth depending upon their economic circumstances—
more boys if they are wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by
which this occurs is not yet understood.)
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