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Belief in Evolutionary Psychology May Be Hardwired, Study Says
Special to Creek Running North: Biologists have long assumed that evolutionary psychology, a controversial branch of psychology that ascribes many common social behaviors to genetics, is a muddled blend of half-understood evolutionary biology, selective data mining and resentment of women’s changing roles in society.
A new study, published in today’s issue of the German publication Unwirklichen Genetikjournal, does not challenge that assessment. But it does suggest that some men may be genetically predisposed to believe in evolutionary psychology, a finding that may well suggest future methods of treatment of the psychological malady.
Believers in evolutionary psychology maintain that feminism sets itself in opposition to millions of years of anthropoid evolution, and is thus futile and inhumane to men. Allegations made by believers include references to putative differences in math skills between men and women, a supposedly irresistible but entirely non-visually stimulated female attraction toward powerful and/or arrogant males, and the existence of a genetically preordained male right to multiple female sexual partners.
Many such men hold to these beliefs despite an absolute lack of supporting scientific evidence, says Dr. Ulrike Mann-Esser, chair of the sexual anthropology department at Universität Ulm and the study’s lead researcher. “But we had no way to determine why this was so until last year’s discovery of the locus taedius.”
The locus taedius, discovered accidentally last year by a graduate student working with David Gelernter, is a section of the human hindbrain that shows significant electrical activity when a person retrieves long-term memories that he or she does not find interesting.
In Mann-Esser’s study, 200 male subjects, who had small electrodes implanted in their locus taedius and glued to various places on the skin, were asked to stand outside the door of a glass cubicle and open the door for anyone trying to enter. Inside the cubicle was a male Pilates instructor posing as a researcher. A handful of highly attractive female graduate students were instructed to approach the cubicle, ignore the subjects while the door was opened, then proceed into the cubicle and place a hand on the chest of the “researcher.” Levels of locus taedius activity were recorded for each subject.
“By setting up a stimulus that often spurs EvPsych statements in the susceptible,” says Mann-Esser, “we hoped to be able to detect increased locus taedius activity among those men who had half-remembered bits of evolutionary biology come to mind from high school. The skin electrodes measured galvanic response and thus sexual arousal, which allowed us to determine which subjects were merely trying to recall female sexual anatomy from textbook figures so that we could exclude them from consideration.”
At first, approximately fifteen percent of male subjects showed significant locus taedius activity without sexual arousal. “We thought that seemed rather high,” says Mann-Esser, “until the Pilates instructor’s boyfriend showed up and two-thirds of that fifteen percent showed dramatic galvanic response changes.”
Further study by Mann-Esser’s team found a surprising commonality among the five percent of subjects showing clinical signs of susceptibility to evolutionary psychology, which the team refers to as “Desmond Morris Syndrome,” or DMS. Ninety percent of the DMS-positive subjects shared a single allele, first isolated by researchers at the University of Lucerne. The recessive allele, named luz-R, was absent from the remaining 95 percent of test subjects. (The corresponding dominant allele, luc-ID, has been tentatively linked to critical thought faculties and penis size.)
Mann-Esser admits that the existence of a “DMS gene” is confusing from an evolutionary standpoint. “Most genes persist because they contribute to reproductive success in one way or another. Sometimes this is in surprising ways, such as the gene for sickle-cell anemia, a crippling condition for those possessing two copies of the gene, but conferring resistance to malaria to heterozygous individuals with one normal gene. But the luz-R gene is strongly correlated with complete reproductive failure due to sexual selection against the gene by human females.
“It may be that early human populations carrying the recessive gene in their genome benefited from having certain individuals who were more likely to stand there and lecture the lion about how man is clearly the most fearsome predator on the savannah and then be eaten, thus allowing the rest to escape. It’s puzzling, though. We clearly need to study the issue further.”
One evolutionary psychology partisan maintains that evolutionary psychology itself holds the key to understanding the existence of the luz-R gene. “It’s ridiculously obvious, and has been proven time and again beyond the point where any rational person not swayed by politically correct feminism could dispute it,” says BigBoyBob87, a frequent commenter on a number of feminist blogs.
“You only need to look at sage grouse,” continues BigBoyBob87. “They reproduce by leks, in which a group of males converge in a spot to attract females and only the alpha males get to mate, while the others complain about the alpha males being big jerks. Anthropologists have proven that that very same evolutionary psychology observation is a major theme in Paleolithic art, as in for instance the Mousterian Pluvial cave painting Females of Breeding Age Always Mate With Damn Metro sapiens and Toss Us Nice Guys on Communal Trash Midden.” [See figure 1.]
When asked how any of the preceding actually supported his contention that DMS conferred selective fitness on men with the luz-R allele, BigBoyBob87 suggested that Creek Running North was only parroting the feminist line in order to get laid.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Has there been any work done linking the luz-R gene to the whin-R gene? Maybe you could give me Mann-Esser’s number so I could ask her myself.
By: By Rob G on 2007 10 17
Hmm: must we posit a recessive luz-R gene? Perhaps the inferior math skills of women constitute a more parsimonious explanation. Over the last 50 years, for example, I’ve shuddered to see entirely too many women accept some v. odd societal computations:
Male desire for female exclusivity = (demonize sexually-active women as whores) + (sanctify non-working women) + (erect direct and indirect barriers to adequately-paying work, including absence of acceptable childcare or leaves).
Male desire to escape monogamy and burdens of one-income family = divorce and children living in poverty.
Male desire to render first-wave feminists less pissed at men = (sexually-active women) minus (demonization) plus Virginia Slims ads.
Male desire to put kibosh on subsequent overt female ranking of male sexual performance = establish unreciprocated blow-job as ultimate act of female empowerment.
Luckily, most Ladies of the Lek retain both sufficient visual acuity to find feminist men in the gloaming and a vital vestigial instinct: glomming!
By: By jmartin on 2007 10 17
Chris, I’m feeling powerfully sexually attracted to you right now. This despite the fact that 1) I’ve never seen you, 2) I don’t know you, and 3) I haven’t even read your blog before.
Can evolutionary psychology explain this?
(Seriously: HAHAHAHAHAHA. Fantastic, and just what I needed to read after reading some dumbshit on ScienceBlogs defending this kind of arrant nonsense.)
By: By Leia on 2007 10 17
Chris, you rock like a giant rocking thing made of rocks. Locus taedius! Sage grouse! This piece is a thing of beauty, and it will come to mind every time I read one of those dumbass comments about group IQ differences or waist-to-hip ratios.
By: By Stephanie on 2007 10 18
*laughs*
Totally made my day, Chris.
By: By Magniloquence on 2007 10 18
“until the Pilates instructor’s boyfriend showed up and two-thirds of that fifteen percent showed dramatic galvanic response changes.”
Oh, I get it. They’re gay.
LUUUUULLLLLZZZ!!!!
By: By sly civilian on 2007 10 19
Brilliant!
By: By Rachel Shaw on 2007 10 19
I don’t usually like to do significant editing after posting, but I thought of a joke about a lion and had to add it. So I’ve updated the post.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 10 19
It’s an awesome joke!
By: By Mandolin on 2007 10 19
Funny, funny shit.
By: By Doctor Slack on 2007 10 19
Yes, the lion joke is wonderful. Every evo-psych piece makes up stuff about the savannah.
By: By Tree on 2007 10 19
“(The corresponding dominant allele, luc-ID, has been tentatively linked to critical thought faculties and penis size.)”
Is there a similar kind of correlation between critical thought faculties and the size of certain zones in females?
By: By bi on 2007 10 20
“a supposedly irresistible but entirely non-visually stimulated female attraction toward powerful and/or arrogant males”
No, it is being infected with toxo plasma that does that.
By: By sailor on 2007 10 20
This post has the highest concentration of awesome possible, I believe.
By: By MyaR on 2007 10 20
I love Figure 1.
The only thing that could amke this better is a Venn diagram showing the correlation, therefore causation, of Ev-psych spouters and cobaggish chundernozzles. QED!
By: By Pinko Punko on 2007 10 20
I call on the Spirits of the Internet to witness, that lo, I was in the act of ingesting a beverage, and reading this post did cause me to eject a portion of said beverage from my mouth, thereby inundating my keyboard/monitor. No, really.
The locus taedius, discovered accidentally last year by a graduate student working with David Gelernter,
Heh. The “liberal” university that rescinded a job offer to Juan Cole has provided David Effing Gelernter with a lifetime position. Every time I pass the CS building, I make a Gallic gesture in his general direction.
Oh, if Perfesser Gelernter is actually your beloved cousin, Chris, whom you were invoking in affectionate fun, then I take it all back. I have no idea what a “Gallic gesture” is, anyway.
Meanwhile:
I don’t usually like to do significant editing after posting, but I thought of a joke about a lion and had to add it.
Are you married? Wait, never mind: I’m married. Damn.
By: By mds on 2007 10 20
Like Leia, I find myself uncontrollably attracted to Chris. This post is perfect!
By: By Debbie Notkin on 2007 10 21
All of this is unutterably brilliant, but it was the caption to the photo that made me want to have your children. (or, you know, just shower you with the heaps of praise you so richly deserve.)
By: By Lomedet on 2007 10 21
Does it seem likely to you that the brains of men and women are absolutely identical? I would not be surprised if there were many statistical differences between the brains of men and the brains of women. I would not be greatly surprised if there were features that were found almost exclusively in one gender’s brains and not the other’s. I would not be surprised at all if someone were to claim that one or more such differences proved that one gender, _perhaps even their own_, was therefore superior to the other. But then there is the vexed question of nature versus nurture.
Take math skills, for instance. Perhaps men and women are roughly equal in potential, but women are less interested in that sort of stuff. Or maybe women have more math skill potential than men, but run into some sort of, well, bias (I remember when a local orchestra had their first “blindfold” auditions, selecting new members just from the sound of their playing; even the judges were shocked at the sudden preponderance of women chosen)(or was that _only_ the judges?). Or maybe women genuinely have lower math ability, due to those millions of years on the plains of Africa selecting, through evolution, for men who were better than women at algebraic equations.
Seriously, I think the idea that psychological gender differences evolve is obviously true. What these differences are, how big they are, and how much of fuss they are worth may have to wait until evolutionary psychology stops being today’s social Darwinism. Then we can seriously study, say, whether men are really more likely than women to commit violent crimes.
By: By Don Simpson on 2007 10 21
Seriously, I think the idea that psychological gender differences evolve is obviously true. What these differences are, how big they are, and how much of fuss they are worth may have to wait until evolutionary psychology stops being today’s social Darwinism. Then we can seriously study, say, whether men are really more likely than women to commit violent crimes.
Another thing that will have to happen is that:
“there are biologically-based differences in the neurology and/or psychology of men and women which are influenced by evolution”,
“all observable gender differences in behavior, demonstrated abilities, social roles, or socioeconomic circumstances are due to such factors”, and
“observable gender differences in behavior, demonstrated abilities, social roles, and socioeconomic circumstances are ‘natural’ or ‘inherent’ and thus probably immutable, or, at least, no effort should be made to change them”
must be recognized as completely separate claims not just by researchers but by all researchers, by public reporting on scientific findings, and by the public. Additionally, the fact that the last two are not only not implied by the first but are, to the best of my knowledge, flatly contradicted by an honest survey of the available data must be widely recognized.
By: By Azkyroth on 2007 10 21
I tried for quite a while to find a statistical woman, but ultimately realized that if I did find one, she would probably be looking for a statistical man. So I decided to settle for a series of individual women. Fortunately, it was a converging series, otherwise I might have been ripped apart by the shear.
I must admit that the statistician was very interesting, however.
By: By James Killus on 2007 10 21
The first person who makes a “long tail” comment gets banned.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 10 22
An additional thought, as a follow-up to my original comment: the irritating tendency towards seemingly deliberate de-emphasis, in popular science reporting, of the fact that the recorded (and often trumpeted) psychological differences between males and females represent averages, not absolutes, and in many if not most areas are on the order of a few percentage points, needs to be dragged outside and shot.
By: By Azkyroth on 2007 10 22
Mr. Killus, why restrict yourself to women? Many statistical men are binomial.
Oh, and, um, Darwinist statisticians do it with their long tails! (See, because they think they’re descended from monkeys, and the Gaussian distribution from statistics can have a standard distribution that…
[BANNED]
By: By mds on 2007 10 22
Oh, you’ve been banned for quite some time already, mds.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 10 22
Many statistical men are binomial.
Yeah, but those are non-standard deviations.
By: By Rob G on 2007 10 22
I find myself in complete agreement with Azkyroth (22 & 25), as I think claims 2 and 3 are as obviously false as I think claim 1 is obviously true (22), and claim 1 gets agenda-muddled (25).
Also, re James Killus (23), what I find most attractive in a woman is not her statistics….
By: By Don Simpson on 2007 10 25
Yeah I gotta agree, the whole idea of men and women being different is so stupid. I mean its almost like people think theres two different sexes or that we have two different sexes for a reason.
LOLZ
By: By RationalMadMan on 2007 10 26
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 10 26
For lasting truths, of course, we need recourse to religion. A friend’s pastor reportedly has sermonized on his observation that, “Men are pancakes, but women are waffles.”
Perhaps there is a sogy-R gene triggered by environmental exposure to luz-R carriers.
(Don’t beat me with the stick!)
(Or are you trying to distract commenters from this thread? Fetch!)
By: By jmartin on 2007 10 26
That was just a visual reminder of the baseline comment policy around these parts, j: you must be smarter than the above stick to comment here.
I looked at RationalStrawMan’s site to gauge his CRN comment worthiness. That is some weapons-grade stupid he’s got going on over there. He makes the stick look like a MacArthur fellow.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 10 26
I LOVE the stick.
Though this time it distracted me so much that I forgot what I was looking for (I’m reading blogs while doing lecture research.)
(That’s one powerful stick!)
By: By Rachel Shaw on 2007 10 26
RSM’s site reads like one of the florid pro se briefs that all litigators dread. Although awash in typos and impassioned froth of distinctions without differences, the dreck must still be combed for any shred of argument before your eyes lyse.
Luckily, here a click solves all.
Perhaps you should retire the stick, and haul out the box of rocks.
By: By jmartin on 2007 10 26
jmartin, why do you hate Regimental Sergeant Majors?
By: By Rob G on 2007 10 26
Rob: The rule is inexorable: write “typo” and commit one.
But thanks for the wonderful Regimental Sergeant Major trochees, which surely must be put to use.
By: By jmartin on 2007 10 26
RSM tried to take more than his one allowable bad-faith bite. He is gone.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 10 26
By: By Rob G on 2007 10 26
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