I spent some time checking out new blogs today and stumbled across this article from the Psychology Today website. Now, I’ve spent my share of time in the company of therapists and psychologists. I don’t mean to denigrate the profession. The profession has helped me a lot. There’s a lot of good work being done there, but articles like this, which purport to explain human nature and all the fucked up things that we do from a natural, or evolutionary basis always rubs me the wrong way. What strikes me as bad science is bad science. It’s not an attack on the science of psychology itself any more than my calling out bad modernist literary criticism is an attack on the entire profession of literary criticism.
This gem is titled Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. Ok, I’m turned off from the beginning. Mention “politically incorrect truths” and I will almost always hold you suspect. I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you fall on. It’s almost always a way of saying, “you won’t like what you read and any arguments against me are moot, not because I can back up my claims, but because you’re being politically correct.” Mention that along with “human nature,” whatever the hell that means, and it’s almost guaranteed that I’m not going to like what I’m about to read. So. let’s take a brief look at this article that seeks to explain “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.”1.
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.
Um, perhaps no one can define human nature precisely because it’s a myth. Oh, and now you just gave every bigot who hates immigrants a pass. It’s just human nature, right? Damn. First paragraph, two sentences, and I’m already sensing massive bullshit.
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.
Pay attention to that last sentence. The universalism talk is coming, and if you’re starting to wonder how heteronormative, ablist, and racist this article can get, you’re right on track.
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
I have two problems with this statement. First, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of an innate human nature2. Second, I just can’t make myself believe that most of our decisions in life are based on trying to get laid (there’s that heteronormativity raising it’s ugly head again, too.).
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.
Ugh, there we go again. Those two phrases in the same damn sentence! I shoulda stopped reading there.
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.
WTF? This one really threw me for a loop. Someone please explain to me what the practices of 15th and 16th century Italian women have to do with any thing today. And unless you’re going to point me to the supposed “study” of Iranian women, I’m not buying it.
Then, I have to ask; this article constantly talks about how men have a universal preference for this and that. Really? Seems to me that 3/4s of the world would be at a reproductive disadvantage if all the het men preferred, and were pushed by their genes, beyond their control, towards the hawt women (read: blonde and blue-eyed women with big breasts). Last time I checked, there weren’t too many blonde, blue-eyed women running around Africa or South America. What on Earth are they doing over there? How do they keep reproducing when their evolutionary drives are telling them that all of the women are not worthy of reproducing with?
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.
I bet all you women of color out there didn’t know that you secretly long to look like Barbie? It’s biology, damnit! It’s “realistic, and sensible.” Get with the program will ya and start dying your hair like those 15th century Italian women. And if you happen to be a lesbian, well damnit you should still want to secretly look like Barbie, because you…um…well, there was this study back in the day that proved that lesbians don”t really exist because biology says that all women want nothing more than to get it on with the rich and powerful dudes. Or something like that.
Yeah, not so much, huh?
The article goes on and on and traffics in every stereotype you can think of. It’s an apology piece for every heteronormative and racist stereotype you can imagine. Reading this article, you would think that everyone in the world is a heterosexual white male, except for those strange creatures called women that want nothing else but the undying attention of heterosexual white males. And science has just proven that everything that heterosexual white males do is fair game because evolutionary biology proves that is it natural for them to act like asses.
Uh, wow. How on earth does garbage like this get published?
Ewwwww.
For some reason, that reminded me of this. Where do people come up with these things?
And, okay… they do realize that Barbie wouldn’t be able to reproduce, right? Well, I guess she probably could if they immobilized her prone for her entire life, because otherwise she’d snap in half like a twig. In that case, I’d imagine her lovely assets would a) stop signaling health, b) not be slim and big-boobied for long, and c) be fairly rarely seen.
Sure, I’d like to be a tall, big-tittied white woman with long hair. But I’d also like to be a curvy latina with short spikes, a slim asian man with wavy bleached hair, a human-sized cat with crazy fur, or a dragon. Because, well, I think it’d be neat to be able to look different. I love the way I look now, but if I had a transmogrifier, I’d use it just for fun.
And sure, I’d like the attention of heterosexual white men. My boyfriend is a heterosexual white man. I like the attention of pretty much anyone who’s capable of being attracted to me. My current girlfriend is pinay, my previous girlfriend was black, and so on and so forth. Having people be attracted to you is fun!
But… neither of those things are goals in and of themselves. I don’t want to look a certain way to attract certain people, I want to look a certain way (or a number of certain ways) because I like looking like that… and likewise, I like attracting people because I like attracting people. They’re both things for me, not things for each other.
Magniloquence – Exactly. The problem isn’t wanting or enjoying being attractive to other people. You’re right, it *is* fun. The problem I have with this article is that it ignores the fact that beauty standards change over time and vary across cultures and ethnicities and are indeed influenced by society, preferring to instead try to justify the (Western) Barbie look as a universal standard of beauty that can easily be justified by evolutionary psychology. That’s pure rubish.
You know, I’m really glad there are people like you who are willing to go to the trenches and read this crap so that people like me (prone to anger and bouts of excessive shouting) don’t have to. Thank you. You should be caped for your services to humanity
Hear, hear!
I can’t tackle that whole article because… wow. But, yeah, to say that it’s full of drek is an understatement.
And while some 15th/16th century Italians may have been dying their hair blonde, they’re hardly the only people in history. What about the Greeks and the Romans, whom scientists have discovered regularly dyed their hair black or red (and sprinkled with gold dust)? What about the Native Americans or the Egyptians or most of the rest of the African continent, where there’s little or no evidence that they dyed their hair blonde at all?
The fad of dying hair blonde in Italy was largely a class issue. It was an outward display of wealth to be able to display blond hair amogst a population familiar with blond hair, but who did not, themselves, tend to have blond hair. In 16th century England, though, red hair was all the rage, not blond. Why? Simple: Queen Elizabeth. Her red hair and pale complexion were copied by society women of the time.
How does the article justify the love of blond hair? Because it’s unique in that it “changes dramatically with age”. Really? Blond hair is the only color that changes “dramatically” as you get older? So, all those people with black or brown hair that, you know, turns grey as they age- that’s not dramatic? Or, those people with red hair that turns brown, and then grey? I’d love to see the study that shows that blond hair changes more dramatically than any other hair color. That’s news to me, and seems counterintuitive- it seems to me that black to grey is a more dramatic change than blond to light brown. But, what do I know?
This was great, too:
Or, it could be that people in Scandinavia and northern Europe, you know, have less melanin. It seems to me that having a predisposition to blond hair would actually be harmful to the whole mating game. Blond hair is a recessive trait, and it’s only a tiny tiny portion of the world’s population that has naturally had blond hair. Roughly 2% of the world’s population have blond hair, with the majority of that 2% being white Europeans and Americans. Outside of Europe, almost nobody would have had blond hair until very recently. The further away from Europe you get, the less and less likely you’d be to find blond hair naturally occuring. This means that native Asians, Americans, and Africans would have had almost no blonds to choose from. But, of course, if they did they’d have preferred them, right?
What’s sad here is that this ‘pop-psychology’ magazine actually touts itself as being representative of the psychology field itself. I haven’t found any legitimate person in the field who reads this smut.
It’s sad that many lay people are probably reading this and thinking that it’s truthful and substantive.
Yeah, the Scandanavian thing about blonde being evolved b/c of lots of clothing…uh…what? So, if I we all start wearing big coats all the time, eventually our population will be blonde? B/c men won’t be able to tell how old we are? And, if humans are naturally disinclined towards monogamy, then why would a man stick around long enough to be able to tell how much my breasts had sagged over time? If you see a woman with DD breasts at the age of 23, chances are her breasts have already begun to sag quite a bit, which says nothing about her supposed fertility, b/c most 23 year old women are quite fertile. Also, lots of women just naturally have saggy breasts. Even women who wear an AA cup are capable of having very saggy breasts at a very young age. It says nothing about your fertility. And, aiming for 15 year old girls? Eww much? Besides, I had barely begun menstruation at 15.
Aside from being a giant pile of horse puckey, most of that doesn’t even make logical sense.
These are the same two idiots who wrote “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire — Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do.” Miller is actually dead, and the book has been slammed in comments on Amazon and other places. And deservedly so.
I posted on this awhile ago, and a lot of psychologists in comments pointed out that PT is not considered a reputable magazine. It’s a reactionary rag that puts “psychology” in its title to smuggle reactionary beliefs under a guise of “science”. If you look at it on a regular basis, you’ll see what I mean. It’s always publishing this insane crap.
My favorite part of this crazy article is their conclusion of why Most suicide bombers are Muslim. Its not so much the culture or social elements, its the lack of sex. Yeah, I don’t know about you guys but back in high school when I couldn’t get laid the first thing I though about was blowing myself up on a bus.
If I remember my Danish history correctly, Denmark (and probably also the rest of Scandinavia, but I only know about Denmark) weren’t always as cold as it is today. After the ice receded there was a fairly warm period, during the stone and bronze age and the weather turned for the worse in the iron-age. Thus we have not always needed all those heavy coats.
Besides, the people who live in the coldest climates, for instance the eskimos, have a dark complexion and black hair. So this whole clothing theory is really quite stupid.
Psychology Today also have articles on “alternative medicine” which shows that their standards are low. However, they do have an interessting article on their site now and then.
Funny, I think the person who wrote the “study” on why men prefer blondes was actually doing it as a joke – check out V.S. Ramachandran’s book A brief tour of human consciousness. He talks about how he bullshitted a paper (that reads remarkably like the above section on the evolutionary attraction to blondes) and submitted it for publishing as a joke, only to have it lauded as a great breakthrough. Funny how willing people are to latch on to anything that affirms their deep seated discrimination.
Hi everyone! I’m extremely busy today and can’t comment at length until much later tonight, but I noticed several new faces here and wanted to say welcome and thanks for stopping by.
I agree with the above, as far as trends in earlier European societies being interested in blonde hair. It was a class thing, for sure. Blonde wigs made from the hair of conquered Germans, used by the Romans, were exotic and expensive. The other thing is, if you read love poetry from earlier ages, dark black lustrous hair is seen as the pinnacle of beauty, because IT WAS PROOF OF YOUTH – ie. no gray hairs yet (as mentioned above in previous comment). This guy knows NOTHING about history or culture.
My absolute favorite evo psych line is the one about how all men are attracted to 15 year old girls. Women aren’t even at their reproductive peak until their twenties. Also, I can’t get past the whole creepiness surrounding the blonde-hair-signifies-youth thing. I am a 20-year-old brunette who was born blonde, but I was only blonde until I was TWO YEARS OLD. If this author would like to profess his SEXUAL ATTRACTION TO TODDLERS, then he can be my guest.
kevin, thanks for this awesome breakdown of this incredible bullshit. when i first saw this article, i was livid. it’s so blithely racist (among other things), it struck me dumb.
Ok, I just read the pile of tripe and had to comment further. First of all, it is PAINFULLY unscientific. The part about divorce, for example, assumes that only men instigate divorce!!!! Anyone else notice that? WTF? And as far as the “suicide bomber” thing: I think that phrase is a political scare tactic, along the lines of “illegal alien”. What are we really talking about here? If we’re really talking about mass murder and suicide, well, then, Xian America has that in abundance! the Virginia Tech guy, the guy in Omaha (probably at least was brought up Xian, but don’t know.) – just to name the most recent ones! Why don’t we call that stuff terrorism? Because it clearly is. Whether they use an assault rifle or a bomb is a technicality, and not the main point, I would think. This article is a racist, sexist screed. Vile indeed.
One more:
“Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.”
Again, WTF? So women don’t do creative things – only men do? and when men do, they’re only trying to impress women? And “men have had to conquer foreign lands”? REALLY? Men (and only men) are genetically disposed to being imperialists? ugh. SO MANY THINGS WRONG WITH THAT. Ok. I’ll let someone else get a word in now.
[...] The article is entitled “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature,” and as Kevin at Slant Truth 2.0 observes, labeling something “politically incorrect” is “almost always a way of [...]
I read this a while ago and it pissed me off so bad–there is NOT one standard of beauty for the entire world. Furthermore, there has NOT been one standard of beauty throughout the entire history of the world. If there was, then you’d have all of these African, Asian, and Native American men crowding northern Europe since the beginning of time attempting to have sex with young blond women with boobs. Had this ’scenario’ happened, then the African, Asian, Native American, Latino, and every other race would have DIED OUT and the world (or just Europe, who knows what would’ve happened to the rest of the world) would be populated exclusively with white people. Obviously, this is not the case. Our world is incredibly diverse, and this is because people from different races and cultures have different beauty standards and are therefore able to continue reproducing.
And further more, what is with all of this blond-haired Scandinavian bullshit? Have these guys never HEARD of the Sami? They live just about as northernmost as you can get in Norway, and they have brownish-tan skin and dark hair. They’re so hellbent on justifying everything in their racist worldview that they don’t even do their homework.
*headdesk*
That will be all.
Research psychologists (of which I am one) know that Psychology Today is BS. Their mission is selling subscriptions, not furthering knowledge. Real research that makes these claims, submitted to real peer-reviewed journals, would get shot down in an instant.
It’s sort of like taking Wired Magazine, and their claims about what the future will be like, too seriously.
Anyone who is interested in reading a really great book debunking many of the underlying assumptions of evolutionary psychology, including the one mentioned above about men preferring much younger women, should check out Adapting Minds by David J. Buller. It’s a little dense, but very thorough and worth reading if only to get some anti-evo psych talking points.
This is why sociology > psychology.
Yes, that article was mostly rubbish. I always get suspicious of authors who put ‘Phd’ after their names, as if you wouldn’t be able to tell from their writing whether they were experts in their subject.
But, don’t write off E.P. as a whole. We know that it has a kernel of truth. That’s why it doesn’t work to bring up a little boy as if he were a girl, or vice versa. Or do people here think little boys and girls are interchangeable?
Proper E.P. is not wholly and blithely universalist. It says that the mind is set up to learn certain things, make certain connections, calibrate behaviour to the environment, etc.. It’s obvious that every person will turn out differently, since they learn different things and train themselves in different ways.
For a universal example, you will never find a culture where people eat faeces. We have a universal disgust reaction to the smell (and, I imagine, taste). But you can bring up kids in one culture eating goat testicles, and they’ll end up not minding the taste — don’t give them to kids in another culture, and they’ll react in a very different way. That’s how E.P. allows and supports cultural differences.
Universality and diversity are the products of how the mind works and learns. The discipline which wants to understand the how and the why is E.P..
Yes, that article was mostly rubbish. I always get suspicious of authors who put ‘Phd’ after their names, as if you wouldn’t be able to tell from their writing whether they were experts in their subject.
But, don’t write off E.P. as a whole. We know that it has a kernel of truth. That’s why it doesn’t work to bring up a little boy as if he were a girl, or vice versa. Or do people here think little boys and girls are interchangeable?
Proper E.P. is not wholly and blithely universalist. It says that the mind is set up to learn certain things, make certain connections, calibrate behaviour to the environment, etc.. It’s obvious that every person will turn out differently, since they learn different things and train themselves in different ways.
For a universal example, you will never find a culture where people eat faeces. We have a universal disgust reaction to the smell (and, I imagine, taste). But you can bring up kids in one culture eating goat testicles, and they’ll end up not minding the taste — don’t give them to kids in another culture, and they’ll react in a very different way. That’s how E.P. allows and supports cultural differences.
Universality and diversity are the products of how the mind works and learns. The discipline which wants to understand the how and the why is E.P..
Check out this primer in E.P. to see what it’s really about:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
“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.”
I join the many calling bullshit, in general on this PT article and on the specific, above.
Uh, a basic knowledge of *evolution* (you know, the purported first half of your field of evolutionary psychology) would tell you that blonde hair evolved in those countries where light was scarcer and weaker; lighter hair allows for more heat and light absorption as opposed to darker hair. Conversely, darker and “kinky” hair evolved in Africa as a protection against the very strong and hot rays of the sun; the darker hair blocks more heat and light than does light hair, and the thickness of the hair provides some protection for the scalp against the sun.
Yeah, I learned that in Anthropology 1.
Terms like “heterosexist” don’t really do justice to the fact that this article is not only covering up, but is actually justifying, under the guise of “science,” things like the vicious colonial oppression of darker-skinned peoples and the resulting cultural preference for blonde, European features over Non-European features. I call way worse than bullshit.
(P.S, has everyone read Jared Diamond’s excellent book Guns, Germs, and Steel ? That provides an actual scientific understanding of why Europe ended up developing the ability to economically and militarily dominate over much of the rest of the world — and that it was due to not much more than an accident of geography, zoology, and botany — nothing about the superiority of European bloodlines, to say nothing of this supposed “human nature.” )
Man, I can’t seem to figure out how to close up my italics tags. Only the book title (Guns, Germs and Steel) was supposed to be italicized.
Oh well, I guess being a woman I am naturally hard-wired to be flummoxed at computer stuff. You know, from all those millenia of working with computers that shaped the brains of my ancestors.
Wow. By the logic of this article, my boyfriend and I wouldn’t exist. Me = Latina Brunette, Boyfriend = Jamaican; Mmm interracial relationships that don’t include white anglo-saxons at all! Because why should white people have all the fun? /snark
But seriously. Idiotic.
[...] Kevin over at Slant Truth wrote a great post about a truly horrible article from Psychology Today, Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. He does a great job at calling bullshit on the impressive amount of bullshit in it, so check it out. [...]
“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.)”
Seriously!!! They even say they don’t understand it, but they believe it?
This article is absolute BS!
@JWill: as a research psychologist, could you recommend a good news-source for this type of news? I know PT is low standard, so it would be nice for me, as a laywoman in this interesting field, to know where to get the high standard news.
Great post!
The more I read of evo-psych ruminations, the more I get convinced that the discipline is a prank. But a dangerous one. Utter nonsense coupled with persuasive rhetoric can get pretty influential, unfortuantely. The “Ph.D.” after the authors’ names are — as someone rightly pointed out in their comment — like a defense strategy: the article is blatantly stupid and racist, but our Ph.D.’s make it sort of valid… Right…
It just goes to show that having a doctorate doesn’t mean that you’re actually intelligent. It’s just a pity that it also points to a lack of moderation: these people just flaunt their ignorance as if they were actually sharing great discoveries. Pitiable, indeed.
Incidentally, I am a pale blond European and I find their hypotheses concerning attractiveness not only ludicrous and unfounded, but very offensive.
[...] to Denise for linking to Slant Truth’s analysis of an outrageously inane piece on “human [...]
Kevin, I think that it’s very important that you and anyone else else who was offended by the article click on the authors’ names to Email a complaint to Psychology Today. I’ll do it myself after my finals are over. Seriously, the standards-of-beauty bit was offensive… but as you know from reading the rest of the article, it just gets more ridiculous: men who sexually harass women are “just treating them the same as men,” male midlife crises are purely a reaction to their wives’ menopause (because all men are married, straight, and desperate to spread seed), Muslim men are just sexually frustrated.
Articles like this SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED. And I think that if they got enough negative feedback they might withdraw it.
Scandinavian/European women “developed” fair hair and skin because their bodies were concealed by heavy clothing?
Well that is still the case in Russia and those women there really take care to look sexy even in heavy ankle-long fur coats.
Besides hair colour depends on melanin production which is why the old conclusion dark skin = dark hair and fair skin = fair hair is about true.
Sometimes hair looks like dark brown but is actually a type of “dark blonde”. Same with eye colour: fair skinned people tend to have rather grey or green or blue eyes whereas dark skinned people tend to have rather “darker” eyes: brown.
Maybe there is a preference to like women who are able to have babies. So maybe some husbands of 15-years-marriages tend to look at female college students. But that does not mean that they will immediately divorce their wives and leave their children. If a “preference” for women who are able to have babies turns into a justification or into an acceptable excuse for degrading all the other women society is in danger.
Even anthropologically this is quite a stretch and anthropologists can make something out of nothing believe me.
That rag publishes some of the funniest things. I go their for things to make fun of. It’s scary because people grab it thinking they are getting something authoritative when what they are getting pop culture psychology written for entertainment.
A lot of them were the same old same old randomness that …
sigh.
but #4: Most suicide bombers are Muslim.
As proof of that, they reference Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta saying when religion is involved, it is always Muslim.
err. first, that “fact” doesn’t automatically led to point number 4. If I only ever eat lettuce at dinner, it doesn’t mean that most of my dinners are lettuce.
but second – it’s just not true – the Tamil Tigers are not muslim, and until 2000 could take credit for more than half the suicide bombers out there. Granted, a lot has changed since then, but their “most” implies something significantly larger than is true.
but having Hindi suicide bombers kinda blows their theory about why people become suicide bombers out of the water.
That what they get for following propoents of selective adaptation….i don eel denigrated at all
Tanglethis – I’m feeling ya. I’ll write an email tomorrow. There’s a couple of emails that folks sent posted over at Feministing as well, so maybe there’s some traction here.
Kevin, I enjoyed watching you ripping up this evolutionary psychology nonsense. Most of your post was awesome, but I’m not so sure about ‘heteronormative’
I minored in genomics and I’ve been increasingly horrified to see ‘evolution’ used to justify the most hateful nonsense, like the article you found. I usually have to put up with the male superiority myths, but I given the men I know… well, they need something to believe in.
Sexual selection no longer works on humans. Beautiful people marry beautiful people and have beautiful children. Ugly people marry ugly people, and have ugly children. There’s nobody too ugly to have children, and this has been true for thousands of years.
The article was obviously wrong anyway – the prettiest girls are redheads with green eyes. Blondes are just redheads in whom the fire has faded.
“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.)â€
I read that male embryos and infants are less robust than female embryos and infants, I think in one of my early uni classes. Poor economic status is perhaps more likely to correlate with poorer maternal health and poor/absent antenatal and postnatal health care, which might make it harder for less robust male embryos/infants to survive. That seems more like a comment on how crap and classist health systems in even the most wealthy developed nations are, than anything about wealth = evolutionary advantage.
[Having said that, this statement is based on a dim memory. The “less robust” part may relate to the male XY chromosomes, the male carrying an affected X, and being the expresser of a lot of recessive conditions that the female XX can carry but not express due to the healthy X).
Either way, stupid article, loved the analysis and discussion.
I’d just like to thank you as well Kevin because I seriously couldn’t get to the end of the article. The hinge of my laptop is already on its way out and I can’t afford my head to hit it again!
“I bet all you women of color out there didn’t know that you secretly long to look like Barbie?”
All I can say about that is (my favorite phrase at the moment)… “Oh my sweet curly head !”
oh my stars.
kevin, your breakdown was hilarious and totally right on. you should be paid for this.
while the article was yet another fake science, “defending dominant hegemony” pile of poo, it makes me very happy to read folks’ intelligent, thoughtful replies. thank goodness there are spaces like this. i take comfort in knowing that there are other people out there who also have bruises on their foreheads from banging their heads on their desks.
Double-definitely in house research commissioned by Mattel.
[...] Slant Truth’s Reply to the Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. – This is a great response to one of the most racist, homophobic and anti-women articles I’ve read in a while. And one that claims to be scientific at that. It’s basically a rundown of why straight white men are so much better than the rest of us. [...]