Atomic Nerds

Over the last thirty years or so, something has happened to psychology: one of their major models, that of the blank slate, has been crumbling. Biological psychologists have gone from a suspect pack of social Darwinists to having, for the most part, proved that they were right all along and your genes and neurochemistry have as much to do with who you are and how you feel as your upbringing, your culture, and your attitude. Just how much they have to do with it is still in doubt- and the answer is probably “a lot more than sociologists would like to admit, and a lot less than genetic determinists and pharmaceutical companies would like to admit”- but they have won their battle for the paradigm that biology plays as much of a role in psychology as environment does.

With the playing field thus opened, the “evo psychs” or evolutionary psychologists have come into their own- advancing many ideas that would previously be seen as severe heresies as psychological consequences of our evolutionary past. While I am very much on board with the general idea of evolutionary psychology- while I am no determinist, I definitely agree that the way our minds work must have been heavily influenced by evolution- I have a very big problem with a certain group of “evo psych” people, whom I have dubbed the Status-Quo Just-Sos.

To back up for a moment, let me explain where the “Just So” term came from. One of the dynamic tensions in evolutionary theory is the push and pull between the influence of selection- and direct adaptation- and other forces of evolutionary change, including genetic drift, sexual selection, sexual antagonism, and more recently, the need to remain generally flexible. Until Motoo Kimura came along and fixed neutral selection- the idea that many if not actually most mutations are neither deleterious nor advantageous, giving a much more powerful role to genetic drift*- the adaptationists basically owned the battlefield, attributing great power to selection and adaptation in species change. The worst excesses of the adaptationist- which primarily take the form of looking at a trait, concocting a plausible scenario for its role as an adaptation, and then treating that as though it were obvious truth rather than an ad-hoc speculation- are generally derisively referred to as “Just-so storytelling”, after Rudyard Kipling’s whimsical children’s stories “explaining” odd features of animals.

The Status-Quo Just-So’s are those in evolutionary psychology who have used the concept to attack “PC” orthodoxies and explain uncomfortable features of human behavior in terms of evolutionary inevitability. Sometimes, they’re right- but entirely too often, the practice is used as a vehicle for taking the un-PC personal beliefs of the scientist and constructing a Just-So story as a “take that” at what they see as the liberal orthodoxies of psychology. The most egregious example I can come up with is Thornhill and Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape**, which asserts that rather than the social-constructionist theory that rape is an entirely learned behavior, rape is actually an evolved evolutionary strategy for low-status men to guarantee their reproduction. The problem is that while they’re right about the learning-only explanation being completely inadequate for explaining the existence of rape, their adaptationist argument crumbles pretty badly when subjected to serious evolutionary scrutiny. In order to be adaptive, rape would have to provide a reproductive advantage to the male great enough to be worth the costs- which mainly include retribution from the rest of the group, especially any other males related to the female or regarding her as their mate.

The reason this is a serious problem for their theory is that human females have one feature that isn’t found among all the species the authors point to when pointing to examples of adaptive rape in nature (and there are many): concealed ovulation. Not being able to tell when the female is fertile makes the potential reproductive benefits plummet steeply for a potential rapist, because the chance that she will actually become pregnant- let alone care for the child, and human children need A LOT of care- are very low. The authors acknowledge this to some extent, but point to the much more widespread number of rapes and resulting pregnancies during wartime to save their argument.

The problem with this is that while massive wars in which most or all of the men leave their homes and leave their women vulnerable to mass rape should their enemy gain ground into the homeland is a feature of reality that modern humans take for granted, it’s really only a phenomenon that appeared fairly recently in human history, relative to the much longer period we spent the vast bulk of our evolution in. In order to be able to move most or all of the men that far away from their homes, you need more modern- think “within written history” when I use that word- technology in order to feed, clothe, and otherwise support an army that you can expect to be able to go out, conquer some distant land, and possibly set up another modern structure in the form of a government- and unless you think you can keep the territory, there’s not much other reason to mount an offense on that scale. Warfare as it was experienced for the vast majority of human evolutionary history looks much more like what we see on the scale of the few modern hunter-gatherer societies left on Earth; a few men go out, stab a few of the other guys, and then scoot back to their own territory, no expeditions or mass looting, pillaging, and rapine involved.

Granted, this has plenty of devastating effects- the cycle of revenge can go on for multiple generations, and at those population levels the loss of a few men can be pretty serious. Still, it looks nothing like the kind of scenario required for the rape of the Sabine women, and this is the environment for which humanity is primarily adapted just for the sheer weight of time scales. Humans have continued to evolve since this time- most of our newest adaptations look like defenses against epidemic disease, which also didn’t appear until a more “modern” scenario- but a psychological predilection for human men to rape under certain circumstances is a far more complex adaptation than a resistance to tuberculosis. None of these objections in and of themselves represent a truly fatal blow to Thornhill and Palmer’s theories as they presented them in the books, but when you consider one other thing that is vastly more common in the kind of hunter-gatherer societies that represent the general model for how we spent most of our time evolving- infanticide of infants that represent any threat to the carrying capacity of the tribe and its environment, such as one severely damaged by warfare- it looks as though the idea has suffered enough serious wounds to bleed to death in short order***.

One assumption implicit in Thornhill and Palmer’s theory is far more widely accepted by society in general, but no less a Just-So for all that- the idea that human men are genetically hardwired to seek as many partners as possible and human women are equally wired to seek the most powerful, high-status male she can and settle down with that one superpartner. The problem with it is, once again, the relative uniqueness of human anatomical reproductive arrangements. First, humans have concealed or muted ovulation- not the only primates that do, by the way, and the others are monogamous- and second, human infants require staggering levels of care even to survive their first year, let alone to adulthood. In this, we resemble most species of birds rather than chimpanzees- in order to cope with young that require lengthy intensive care once they leave their mother’s body, most birds adopt a single partner either for life or for the breeding season. Neither bird can really afford to spend the whole breeding season chasing multiple partners; the young that they HAVE produced would die.

This would seem to argue for natural human monogamy, which also doesn’t fit- and as it turns out, it doesn’t fit for the birds either, who have been found to have high levels of infidelity, though they can suffer major consequences from their partner if caught out in the act. Both the male and the female benefit from a wider range of partners- the greater genetic diversity maximizes the chances of an especially successful combination for the females as well- and the tension between the need to remain “at home” and ensure the success of the young with the one partner and the advantages of infidelity is so great that for at least one species, the whole system has evolved into a tight game of brinksmanship in which one in three nests are totally abandoned, chicks and all, when one bird decides the likelihood of their mate’s unfaithfulness is high enough. Although humans are less likely to abandon children, the motivations of the male and the female to cheat are likewise equally strong in their reproductive advantages- and as the social double standard for infidelity with respect to men and women weakens and female honesty about it increases, we fnd that surveys on male infidelity versus female show that gap shrinking all the time.

Those of you who are thinking on your feet are no doubt eager to point out to me that I’ve only covered two opposite mating systems- promiscuity and monogamy- but ignored the one that gives the greatest mating advantage to the male, the harem, as our gorilla cousins and certain human groups practice. The mere fact of its existence in several cultures and religions shows that this too is part of our evolutionary heritage of mating systems. The problem with looking at it as evidence that men are wired to seek as many partners as possible is that the sheer existence of the sex ratio means that it is only possible for a relatively small number of males to successfully monopolize more than one female, and DNA data for humans and harem-having primates shows, the more females the male tries to monopolize, the higher the rate of female infidelity- her interest is in genetic variability too after all, and if she can get one powerful male to still give her his resources to raise those high-maintenance babies while she expands her childrens’ gene pool, all the better for her. All the more cost for him, too- more risk and cost with each woman he attempts to control in the harem.

The upshot of all of this is that the popular formulation that “men are wired to seek as many partners as possible and women are wired to seek a single powerful partner” is a half-truth at best. Men who stay faithful are also staying close to home and keeping an eye on their partners, and they are following a highly reliable and successful strategy of making sure both that his children are his and that they’ll not only survive to adulthood, but that they’ll come with all of the advantages that intense parental care can convey for human children- and therefore be likely to be reproductively successful themselves, which is just as important. Men who sleep with as many partners as they can are banking on a much riskier strategy, and they had better be so good at seduction that their behavior leads to enough fertilizations in females with concealed ovulation, and females that raise the child to adulthood successfully, that this strategy pays off. And, indeed, it does for some men- though recent research has shown that these males who ARE successful at it are significantly rarer than once believed. (Not everyone can be Genghis Khan.) The evolution of human sexuality is a blend of all three mating strategies, and therefore many temperaments and predispositions, all juggling the risks and rewards of fidelity, promiscuity, and infidelity within a monogamous or polygamous environment: there IS no one wiring, for men or for women.

So, what brought all this on? Well, yesterday Peter linked to what I regard as another incident of evo-psych Status-Quo Just-So storytelling, contained within an article at Psychology Today entitled “How To Be Happy”. Quoth the article:

Having said that, however, from my perspective as an evolutionary psychologist, I would say that the best thing for people to do to become happier is to get in touch with their animal nature, if not necessarily their inner fish then at the very least their inner ape. Recognize and accept that we are animals. We are all designed by evolution to be certain way, and no amount of denial or fighting will change our evolutionary legacy and its implications.

One of the things that evolution has done is to make men and women very different. In some ways (though not in others), males of one species are often more similar to males of other species than to females of their own species, and vice versa. In some ways, in many ways, men are more similar to male chimpanzees or gorillas than to women. One of the ways that men and women are different is in what makes them happy.

Forget what feminists, hippies, and liberals have told you in the last half century. They are all lies based on political ideology and conviction, not on science. Contrary to what they may have told you, it is very unlikely that money, promotions, the corner office, social status, and political power will make women happy. Similarly, it is very unlikely that quitting their jobs, dropping out of the rat race, and becoming stay-at-home dads to spend all their times with their children will make men happy.

Money, promotions, the corner office, social status, and political power are what make men happy (as long as they win, of course, but then dropping out is by definition a defeat). Spending time with their children is what makes women happy. As Danielle Crittenden very eloquently argues in her book What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Women, it is very unlikely that women will be truly happy without having children, but, as Crittenden points out, there are ways to combine careers with motherhood. It’s not the way that the feminists have told us….

Men and women are very different, because they are designed by millions of years of evolution to be very different. Women cannot become happy by pretending to be men, and men cannot become happy by pretending to be women. Swedes have already tried that, and they have failed massively and spectacularly.

On the face of it, I agree with the author- men are women are different, evolution did create those differences, and the feminist bromide that, broadly speaking, men and women want exactly the same things and women will be more satisfied with a competitive career than with staying home and caring for children is wrong.

The problem I have with this formulation is not with any of that, but rather the formulation the author presents- going out and conquering will make men happy, whereas staying home will make women happy. The problem is this: the concept of a “stay at home mom” and a “career dad” is itself a relatively modern invention, in the same way that large same-sex armies of men going off for months or years at a time to conquer some distant land is. Nomadic hunter-gatherers- which is, as I’ve said, the way we spent the bulk of our biological evolution- don’t have a “home”. In that sort of society, even when hunting versus gathering are split down strictly gender-defined lines (they aren’t always, at least in modern hunter-gatherer societies- the Aeta are the most notable), gathering is neither a stay-at-home activity nor a particularly peaceful one. Foraging women have to be active and range far from wherever camp is- and they have to be prepared to convince large predators that they can defend themselves, especially if they have children with them. (And at some point they- and the bands of hunters- have to just to start teaching the kids how to hunt and gather themselves.)

As for the men spending time with the children, everyone does once at camp; except for nursing infants, child care is an occupation for both sexes, just as going out, facing the lions and tigers and bears, and “bringing home the bacon” (and eggs and potatoes) is. Even when you add agriculture, the concept of the men doing all the hard work (and leaving the home to do it) and the women staying put to care for the children is new- you don’t get that scenario until society advances enough for specializations beyond subsistence agriculture. Child care and labor are much more integrated until leaving the homestead is required by the job, and the compensation thereof is enough to justify the women devoting themselves fully to nurturing children rather than also doing other necessary work.

Men are women are different, and it’s no doubt evolution played a heavy role in this. But just because that’s true doesn’t necessarily mean that every trait we now perceive as a fundamental difference between the sexes truly is- modern humans live under conditions vastly different than those that influenced the vast bulk of our biological evolution. Cultural evolution is a pretty powerful force itself, and should never be discounted- even if doing so sticks a very satisfying thumb into the eye of liberal shibboleths. Just say no to “just so”.

*Exercise care when you see Kimura’s name mentioned- a lot of creationist/intelligent design folks are enamored of him as an “example of how you can attack neo-Darwinism and still be respected”. In actuality there is nothing incompatible about Kimura’s theory and evolutionary theory as a whole and there never was- it was an argument about exactly how it works, not WHETHER it can work. Only creationists are surprised when evolutionary biologists have a serious disagreement, since they assume it’s a conspirational cabal of people exercising deliberate denial and total “orthodoxy”. Evolutionary theorists actually fight like cats in a sack pretty much all the time, just not about anything the public cares about. In any case enough new understanding has emerged that even the neutral selection theory as Kimura presented it is now pretty seriously out of date.

**Note that it’s a book rather than, to my knowledge, having been published in the scientific literature anywhere. It’s a lot easier to convince a publisher to publish half-baked and/or highly controversial theories than journals. This doesn’t always mean those theories are *wrong*- journals really do lean toward enforcing orthodoxy- but it’s a red flag to pay very close attention to the arguments made.

***This is not to say that the social-constructionists are right and rape is a purely learned behavior. It’s far more likely to fall in with psychopathy, narcissism, and other damaging and exploitative psychologies and behaviors that are almost nonexistent in societies small enough for everyone to know each other, but become more prevalent the bigger and more anonymous the overall society- and system of punishment and reward- gets. Not an adaptive reproductive response, but one of a range of behaviors that share in common abusing others to indulge impulses and desires; a greater prediliction for *exploitative* behavior under the right social circumstances.

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