Today, a little Evo Psych Pop Quiz for you all!
5 of the following 6 statements are actual quotes from a 2007 article in the open access peer-reviewed journal Evolutionary Psychology. Can you spot the quote that isn’t from the article?
- “The section on intra-vaginal anti-cuckoldry tactics focuses on sperm competition, providing fascinating descriptions of the semen-displacement hypothesis (Gallup Jr. and Burch) and the psychobiology of semen (Burch and Gallup Jr.).”
- “[I]ntra-vaginal battles demand men to become aroused to situations that are actually unpleasant for them, for instance the suspicion of their partner’s infidelity.”
- “This section also includes discussions of the interesting notions that … women should not be motivated to have sex with their main partner right after an extra-pair copulation because of the possibility of sperm displacement (the penis appears to be shaped to do just that), [and] that a man may manipulate a woman’s mood via semen content (Rice, 1996, has experimentally shown something similar in fruit flies) … .”
- “One of the mating strategies examined as an early prevention method is violence against women within partnered relationships.”
- “Despite this scrutiny, a man can still gain from deliberately ejaculating in front of his partner from time to time. Choosing each occasion carefully so as to display a good ejaculation can be a powerful way to advertise his continuing good health.”
- “Affirmative feedback did not increase men’s likelihood to allocate resources to self-morphed images, but men were significantly less likely to allocate resources to self morphed images when told the morphed image did not resemble them … . “
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Answer: Number 5 is the ringer! But, lacking confidence in my own ability to come up with something as convincingly batty as the quotes from the real article, I cheated a little here, borrowing this quote from a real Evo Psych book — Sperm Wars, by Robin Baker, a popular title from a major publisher recommended on countless Pickup Artist and “Red Pill” reading lists. It’s a truly bizarre and often quite disturbing read. (If you have a bit of Google-fu you should be able to locate a pdf of it online with no trouble.)
And speaking of pdfs, if you want tp read the article in Evo Psych I got most of these quotes from, a book review by Kelly D. Suschinsky and Martin L. Lalumière titled The View From the Cuckold, you can find a pdf of it here. See, I really didn’t just make it up!
@titianblue
From that article:
What is wrong with these people?
So adolescent boys drew all those beautiful skillfull paintings? Without the usual graffetti of crudely drawn boobs & pricks. /rolls eyes
I should add that I know there are adolescent boys (and people of all genders & ages) who are awesome painters. But the idea that almost all cave art is the prehistoric equivalent of the art on the inside of the public toilet door? Not buying it.
Idk on that study, I have a short ton of questions, but I do know that “well, they’re animals, and drawn really exactly, so they must have been by the hunters, who were men, so the artists were men” is about six assumptions too many. The hand analysis? I have questions how accurate it is, but that women prepared the meat and thus knew what the animals looked like? That just makes bloody fucking sense.
I’m a bit amazed it’s taken this long, and some iffy extrapolation from modern hands, to go “you know, these really might’ em been done by women”.
As for the hand analysis, isn’t that one where we can study the people in question? Afaik hips are damned good for identifying sex, because of that whole childbirth thing, and if they have hands attached to them…shouldn’t we be able to formulate the algorithm from people from the actual time frame in question?
(Note, I’m having a wary of the technique itself, that they could’ em been done by women seems like a no shit Sherlock)
And cave are uninteresting to adults? Dangerous, ok, sure, it’s why spelunking isn’t my cup of tea, but uninteresting? Would spelunking be a word if that were the case?
Hand size isn’t perfect–but as with most differences between the sexes, it works better in average than it does on an individual.
So since we have a spectrum of cases to examine it goes from ‘well, this individual could be a small man or a woman’ into ‘hey, it’s unlikely all these examples were small men or adolescents.’
Oh, sure, it’s just that using modern hands for the basis seems less solid than using hand bones from that era. Of course, I’m not of the opinion that we should need to work towards saying some of them are probably women, but from saying that some are probably women (and men, and kids, etc, cuz really, only men do art?)
The only appropriate thing here is a quote from Melissa at Shakesville.
Because why would anyone assume they weren’t?
Totally off topic you guys, but I’m studying Talmud right now, and I just read the Rambam’s (a 13th century Egyptian/ Spanish rabbi) commentary on why women shouldn’t be allowed to learn Torah. Basically it boils down to “a woman should only learn to pray because women tend to seek out jerks who plague them all day, even though they COULD have a totally sweet and saintly Nice Guy to marry.” One of our oldest and most venerated rabbis would fit right in on an MRA forum. This makes me both sad and I find it incredibly hilarious.
Andrew Johnston: @Viscaria: That’s the exact same standard used to gauge physical adaptations – we look at a certain trait, then try to figure out how it served the organism in a state of nature.
Which is rubbish. That’s the Kipling School, and he could do it because all he was doing was telling obvious fairy tales to children.
Do you also dismiss evolutionary biology out of hand?
Nope. The difference is the one can do experiment, and make testable, and falsifiable predictions. The other can’t. It’s possible EvPsych might be able to figure out a way to make testable hypothesis, but to date, it’s not able. Wny? Because the sample size is too small, the timelines too long and control is impossible.
Until (and unless) those can be addressed, it’s rubbish. Some of it is interesting, and might spark some interesting lines inquiriy in more legitimate areas, but all in all I’d say it sheds more heat than light, and does more harm than good.
The last in particular. Unless one is of the opinion that biology is destiny, and we have no ability to do anything other than that which is instinctual, then what the putative “reason” for some biological trait is no more than interesting trivia (from a social point of view, what it might mean for the study of other aspects of evolutionary theory is another subject altogether, and outside the scope of this critique).
Simple observation of known cultures give the lie to this idea. Compare the Dahomey to the Topkapi Throne, or the Heian Bakufu to the Tokugowa Shogunate, to the mores of Puritan New England as opposed to Restoration England, and you see that, “this is the way humans do things,” is pure bunkum. To pretend we can postulate from things like penile size in the present to mating behaviors in the distant past is ridiculous. To further pretend this is dispostive on the present is bullshit.
When the leading lights of the “discipline” spew nonsense like, “we are biologically inclined to like women blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin” we can see this is nonsense. There are damn near 5 billion people on the planet who don’t fit this model. If it were hardwired, then we’d all be blonde and blue eyed. The opportunity costs/penalties would be part of the way we live (just look at bower-birds, or the more elaborate birds of paradise, who accept; as a species, the cost of extra predation to pursue their mating strategies).
So no, EvPsych I can still dismiss out of hand, because it lacks the needed rigor to be considered more than people engaged in ‘what if”.
Binjabreel Which would seem to indicate that, yeah, humans had a point where the dominant mating strategy was women boning the crap out of every male they could get their hands on, and the one with the most come won. It’s a mating strategy that a few other primates use, so it’s not actually that far out of left field
Not to be more than mildly flip… this is premised on the same sort of reasoning Aristotle used to determine bees have kings; it looks good from the outside, as colored by culture.
Cattle have a fair bit of competition (they don’t, as do horses, drive off all other bulls). They don’t produce much sperm. About the same as humans (and we don’t really have large balls. We have larger pricks, smaller testes, than our near relatives).
Pigs, which have a pretty effective way of preventing other boars from siring piglets (they remain coupled with the sow for long enough to be sure the semen has gotten past the cervix) come in quarts (literally).
Horses are also pretty competitive. For a mare to get pregnant the glans of the stallion has to get past her cervix (which is why they are hung like horses). They also have a fair bit of competition (for all they try to keep other stallions from getting to their harem… there is only one stud, and lots of mares, and they know what they like).
So the actual evidence is that humans don’t really have a very competitive mating strategy. The animals which do (elk, wapiti, elephant seals, birds of paradise) all make large investments in obvious secondary sexual characteristics. We don’t.
Cassandra:(I’m not just picking on the guys here, any worship of bodily fluids always strikes me as a bit puzzling. Also, why only the sexualized body fluids? Or is there a group of people somewhere who think that snot is the most amazing thing ever and has semi-mystical powers?)
Many races believe that the creation of the Universe involved some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being known as the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids live in perpetual fear of the time they call the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, somewhat similar to the Apocalypse.
From the great Galactic Ethnographer Douglas Adams.
tedthefed: But, we couldn’t go that extra step and say “the reason hugging increases oxytocin is because it makes people feel closer to their loved ones, which increases the desire to work on their behalf.” That requires evopsych.
Why should we go this extra step?
Me, I say we not only still can’t, but would be completely wrong to do so, because that can’t be science. It’s not a testable hypothesis.
We can certianly say it as a theory which allows us to form hypotheses and, in turn, collect evidence to see if the theory holds true. (“theory” in the sense that evolution itself is a theory.
Unh… no. Theory, as it relates to Evolution is more like saying, “The Known and Proven Rules; which might still have some bits which need explaining”.
Gravity has been proven a bit past that, so that we can say there are Laws of Motion.
But to take your argument… How do you test, “Oxytocin is there to make people feel closer to their loved ones”?
What is the negative result which would disprove it?
Humans have opposable thumbs. Humans manipulate tools with those thumbs. But without evolution (or, as I said before, assuming the presence of a mindful creator), we couldn’t say “those opposable thumbs are for manipulating tools.” It’s the same thing.
Again, you are wrong. We can’t say, “those opposable thumbs are for manipulating tools.
Because they aren’t. Evolution is contingent. We make do with what we have, and bend it to suit new purposes, because it happens doing so made it easier for our ancestors (as a group) to survive.
Take beaks. Crossbills have really specialised ones, good for opening pinecones. Those beaks were not “for opening pinecones” before, they are now. Crows also have beaks, which they use to manipulate tools. They are not, “for” they happen to be used to do that Though it may seem small, it’s a huge difference.
Evolution is opportunistic, no deterministic.
That’s because it’s a theory and not a conclusion. It’s induction. The theorized functionality of oxytocin then allows you to develop hypotheses which in turn may support the theory.
Again, no. 1: It’s inductive, but induction means that when all is said and done only one answer fits the facts. This “theory” doesn’t have that useful spareness. A number of other reasons could be propsosed to fit that set of facts.
2: Hypothesis are not developed to look for evidence to support, but to see if there are explnations which disprove. You don’t support a hypothesis, you test it. You test it to failure. If you can’t make it fail you decide that it is, at present, still sound.
CassandraSays: But we can’t study how anger works without a theory of what it’s for
Yes. Yes we can. What is, “evolution” for? What is “gravity” for? They aren’t “for” anything. They just are. The first is really important; and the root cause of failure in EvPsych.
EvPsych moves evolution from a blind process, to a driving engine. “Evolution” is the end result of how population pressure affects groups (individuals survive, populations evolve).
So, from an evolutionary standpoint “anger/love/fondness for mangos” have no purpose. They just are. What makes them important to us is that they have side-effects. What makes it so hard is that we are rational creatures; and we channel those side effects.
But we are also pattern seeking animals (which is an evolutionary artifact, and constraint). So we look at how our group uses it, and try to extrapolate it.
Let’s look as a Western truism, “everyone smiles in the same language”. It ain’t true. It’s not true intra-culture (I know people who smile when they are plotting mayhem. They may grin when something amuses them, but it’s tightlipped).
In parts of SE Asia smiling is seen as somethig done by simpletons. When Americans smile at all sorts of things they are seen as gullible. This isn’t really something people think about; they have a pattern and they match the world to it (that’s why I said constraint). So they adjust their sense of how to treat Americans to their subconcious sense that they aren’t all that smart.
So there is no way to assign a “purpose” to our emotions, because they are part of a complex system which is outside the pressures of evolution to control; and so cannot be “explained” by it. They are in the realm of the social sciences.
I’m curious, what is it you guys are imagining when i talk about evolutionary psychology? If I say “evolutionary psychology” and “oxytocin” in a sentence, what do you think people are doing? Why is this so resisted?
See above.
? Because I guarantee all of those papers were written by people who assume that psychological phenomena have evolutionary bases. I… kind of can’t imagine that most people HERE don’t believe that psychological phenomena have evolutionary bases. Given that most professionals are careful about the appeal to nature, what’s the problem with evolution being part of the intellectual realm of psychology?
See above
Katz:I dunno about you, but I’ve never met someone who was naturally blond at age 20 and brunette a decade later. (In fact it would make more sense for blondness to be disadvantageous, since it makes it harder to see when you go gray.)
My mother and sister.
My sister’s hair was still blonde until she was about 17, and darkened until it was brownish by 25. My mother says the same thing happened to her.
Here’s the best example I can think of: Can anyone think of a theory wherein disgust and anger are discrete emotional states with discrete causes across the population (i.e. natural kinds) that DOESN’T have evolutionary processes as a reason for it?
If not, you’re stuck using evolutionary psychology.
Pecunium, what you seem to be suggesting is that we don’t need an underlying theory of cause; we can just be descriptive. But with that, why would you ever choose to ask the research question in the first place of anger and disgust being discrete? The only thing I can think of is subjective experience: They FEEL discrete. I am far, far less comfortable being in a field that entirely bases its hypotheses on subjective experience without stopping to think if they make sense within a validated, pre-existing scientific theory (and evolution is an example of that). It’s certainly not perfect, as the just-so-story idiocy proves, but it’s certainly better than the alternative. It’s the same reason why I’d want a physics experiment to be based on solid theory than lay-physics.
And it does matter about function. I’m actually not sure what you’re trying to argue, Pecunium, when you use your example with crossbills. Theorizing that those bills are “for opening pine cones” allows you to test hypotheses: Let’s go find a similar species that DOESN’T live near pine trees and see if they have those same beaks. Without that theorized causal link, you couldn’t do that study.
Similarly, if “part of the function of oxytocin is increasing pair bonds and motivating people to give resources to their loved ones,” then you could easily disprove that by injecting people with oxytocin and then seeing if they WITHHOLD resources from stangers… and look, they do.
Maybe the issue is, I’m using “function” in a different way from how you’re reading it, but… I’m not sure we disagree about anything.
Here’s the point, and here’s why I’m defending a stupid area of research that depends on just-so stories way way too much. What if you encountered a paper which found evidence disgust and anger were discrete, and, in its discussion section, suggested that evolutionary processes were the cause and proposed future experiments based on that? If you don’t care, then we’re not arguing about anything (but evolutionary psychology doesn’t mean what you think it does). If you DO care, then you’re closing your mind to potentially good research because some idiot guys tainted it, and that makes those guys suck even more.
Pecunium — three things —
One, the plural of hypothesis is hypotheses, it bugs me, sorry. Two, liking mangos totally has a purpose! It exists so I can tease you ^.^ (you’re awesome despite your hatred of the mango). Three, I HAVE THE RED HAIR GENE! Finding me strawberry blonde makes me very happy, should I reproduce, they might be redheads! (Everybody likes blondes? Nawh, I’m a redhead fan myself, not sexually, that’d make the above gross, but in general, I find it aesthetically pleasing)
Body fluids, in general, and TMI alert…I have a thing for blood, namely my own. A combination of the color (painting that is fucking hard, that color is not an easy one to reproduce), partly that it’s positively teeming with proof that we’re living organisms and, uh, partly cuz I like the taste. You may now all call me gross. (FTR, I’m not about to go drinking anyone else’s blood, I do get how dangerous that is)
As for snot, I think the gross factor is that it’s associated with ill health and the potential to make you ill.
Oh, I ninja’ed you on the wrong thread, never mind then.
I don’t want to get into the evo-psych stuff, but…
NULL HYPOTHESIS
Human plasticity is a feature, not a bug. Look at the spread of societies. Look at places that won’t eat what is a delicacy in another place.
Anything that you think has an evo-psych explanation has to grapple seriously with the question, could this be explained away by nurture? Could this be explained away by society?
Remember those stupid studies about pink berries and cooking and GirlBrains that never even asked the question ‘what about societies that don’t code pink as a girl color’?
All Evo-psych looks like that when it doesn’t even attempt to grapple with this question. ALL OF IT.
But I want to believe!
(Seriously – religion is what this conversation reads like, that and Star Wars. 85% of it is terrible, but there’s good in it, I’ve seen it!)
tedthefed: Here’s the best example I can think of: Can anyone think of a theory wherein disgust and anger are discrete emotional states with discrete causes across the population (i.e. natural kinds) that DOESN’T have evolutionary processes as a reason for it?
No, I’m not.
Unless it can give me a testable hypothesis, it’s not science.
It’s that simple.
Pecunium, what you seem to be suggesting is that we don’t need an underlying theory of cause;
Again no. What I am saying is that any thesis for cause which isn’t testable, quantifiable, falsifiable, isn’t science.
And it does matter about function. I’m actually not sure what you’re trying to argue, Pecunium, when you use your example with crossbills. Theorizing that those bills are “for opening pine cones” allows you to test hypotheses: Let’s go find a similar species that DOESN’T live near pine trees and see if they have those same beaks. Without that theorized causal link, you couldn’t do that study.
If you take it as a given that “bills exist for the purpose of opening pinecones” you are hosed.
Because they don’t. Crossbills have adapted bills to do that. Just as humans have adapted thumbs to make computers.
But there is no, “purpose” to the adaptation. It’s the end result of a lot of random chance. There are other animals which open pinecones without such bills (even birds).
Similarly, if “part of the function of oxytocin is increasing pair bonds and motivating people to give resources to their loved ones,” then you could easily disprove that by injecting people with oxytocin and then seeing if they WITHHOLD resources from stangers… and look, they do.
And what you have is not the reason/cause but the effect
You don’t have any way to test the underlying thesis (that the “reason for” oxytocin” is resource sharing in adults). It’s an unsupportable conclusion.
What if you encountered a paper which found evidence disgust and anger were discrete, and, in its discussion section, suggested that evolutionary processes were the cause and proposed future experiments based on that?
If it’s testable, quantifiable, and falsifiable, I care. If it’s not I don’t. because it’s not science.
If you DO care, then you’re closing your mind to potentially good research because some idiot guys tainted it, and that makes those guys suck even more.
I care because it’s not science. I care more because it’s dressed up as science, and confusses people about what science really is.
Mythbusters is science. EvPsych (as presently practiced) isn’t. There are people trying to do science in the framework, but the underlying paradigm is flawed.
Oops, lost a sentence:
Here’s the best example I can think of: Can anyone think of a theory wherein disgust and anger are discrete emotional states with discrete causes across the population (i.e. natural kinds) that DOESN’T have evolutionary processes as a reason for it?
If not, you’re stuck using evolutionary psychology.
No, I’m not stuck using EvPsych.
All else as above.
Bannister: So what do you think about the (in my opinion) impressive ability of children to acquire and manipulate language; to intuitively understand grammatical structures, which seem to happen in all known cultures. I think that is one of the best candidates for something that is genuinely hard-wired in the brain
Is acquiring language instinctual? Sure. So is pissing.
At root it’s not that impressive (most animals have some form of vocalisation; and the calls are semi-local). Some animals (many of the corvids) have large repetoires of calls and seem to have the means to pass along information, e.g.a farmer shot a couple of crows on their way home to the rookery (where crows sleep).
The next day not a single crow flew in that area; and they haven’t since (A href =http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780300100761>In the Company of Crows and Ravens Marzluff and Angell, Yale University Press 2005)
The interesting thing about people isn’t that we have language, but the level of our control. Why/when/how did we gain the ability to consciously control our breathing ( which is what makes our variety of vocalisations, as well as our absolute volition over them, possible).
Carp: (In the Company of Crows and Ravens Marzluff and Angell, Yale University Press 2005)
@talacaris:
That’s a good example of an area that we can make some headway studying because of universality–but did you ever study Chomsky’s whole ‘universal grammar’ thing? Or how widely reviled it was?
Basically, when you start going ‘but there must be an instinctual core to the learning’ and ‘there must be an instinctual part to all speech’ then suddenly things get hinky.