Thought Exercise
Irradiated by LabRat
Twice in as many days now I have run into someone making the argument, either as part of a tongue-in-cheek science fiction story* or as part of a serious attempts to explain male psychology, that men and women shop differently because “men are hunters and women are gatherers”. Specifically, in both cases, this apparent obvious distinction is reflected in that men have one thing in mind when they shop and go in and get it directly without looking around much, and women linger and pick up other things unrelated to the original thing and spend a lot of time examining everything.
Rather than simply directly dissecting this premise, let’s do this as a series of questions. The first part is for everybody, the second part is for people who have actually hunted and/or gathered (wild mushrooms, shellfish, herbs, other wild foods that you don’t take with a rifle or bow).
When you are in charge of something- household meal planning, your family’s needs for clothing/supplies, your family’s vehicle/machine/infrastructure maintenance, your family/job’s IT needs, your family’s medical/veterinary needs- does this change how you shop for things that apply to that responsibility versus one-off items you are sent out for or discover a pressing need for at that moment?
When you have a broad responsibility for an aspect of your family’s/job’s needs, is it more efficient to only seek items as a pressing need for them is discovered, or is it more efficient to keep a running mental tally of things that are or will be needed in the future, including when you are seeking one thing that is needed right now?
Are there often gendered differences in who is responsible for meals and family clothing and childcare needs?
Are men famous for simply grabbing a tool for a technical job without lingering to compare and contrast costs and features, or browsing other options?
Are women famous for their long, lingering appraisals of their options and potential other purchases in Auto Zone?
Are their differences in the types of choices available, and market structure of, men’s clothing versus women’s and childrens’?
Part two, for the hunters and gatherers among us:
Is a hunt more like choosing to focus on a specific desired prey, then directly going to it and bagging it? Or is it more like a long search for something elusive that could be in many possible places?
Are environmental details relevant when judging where prey might be found? Is it better to focus exclusively on the thought of the prey and move forward, or to analyze the area before choosing a direction?
Are impatience or tunnel vision beneficial traits to a hunter?
When gathering, is it better to just go out into the wild and pick up whatever you find, or is it better to have a specific type of item, time, and place in mind and seek that directly?
Is a lack of focus a beneficial trait to a gatherer?
Are either hunting or gathering even really all that much like going to a store in the first place?
Bonus question: Should people arguing from an apparently simple premise, or using it as the foundation of speculative fiction, ask these sorts of questions before they argue it?
*This was a brouhaha in the science blogger community recently. The original story is a veritable lasagna of layered stupidity. Go here if you want to read all about it.
November 21st, 2011 at 5:22 pm
For women it’s shoes. For men it’s tools. Watch the crowd at Harbor Freight Tools any Saturday afternoon.
November 21st, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Since nobody else has answered, I guess I’ll be the guinea pig
When you are in charge of something- It changes your entire perspective- you have to think long term/big picture.
When you have a broad responsibility for an aspect of your family’s/job’s needs- Running tally and an option to get those in addition to the one thing that is needed right now
Are there often gendered differences in who is responsible for meals and family clothing and childcare needs?
Not so much today, with divorced families, both parents have to deal with these issues…
Are men famous for simply grabbing a tool for a technical job without lingering to compare and contrast costs and features, or browsing other options?
Most men who actually DO stuff realize the cheaper tool is usually NOT the best choice, and tend to stick with a particular brand if they trust it (Craftsman for me).
Are women famous for their long, lingering appraisals of their options and potential other purchases in Auto Zone?
Beats the hell outta me
Are their differences in the types of choices available, and market structure of, men’s clothing versus women’s and childrens’?
Beats the hell outta me…
Is a hunt more like choosing to focus on a specific desired prey, then directly going to it and bagging it? Or is it more like a long search for something elusive that could be in many possible places?
Specific prey, with the ‘right’ license
Are environmental details relevant when judging where prey might be found? Is it better to focus exclusively on the thought of the prey and move forward, or to analyze the area before choosing a direction?
Environment is the driver, but prey patterns/reactions to environment weigh in the decisions.
Are impatience or tunnel vision beneficial traits to a hunter?
Oh HELL no… Patience IS a virtue, like it or not
When gathering, is it better to just go out into the wild and pick up whatever you find, or is it better to have a specific type of item, time, and place in mind and seek that directly?
Environmentally driven again, in my opinion…
Is a lack of focus a beneficial trait to a gatherer?
Not unless you like the ‘wrong’ kind of mushrooms…
Are either hunting or gathering even really all that much like going to a store in the first place?
Nope…
Bonus question: Should people arguing from an apparently simple premise, or using it as the foundation of speculative fiction, ask these sorts of questions before they argue it?
One would think, but then again…
November 21st, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Hm. If this was started by that mall map, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
November 21st, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Rick- I actually have no idea what you’re talking about, so no. The two things that inspired it was the asinine Rybicki piece and an old blog elsewhere.
November 21st, 2011 at 7:27 pm
“Are men famous for simply grabbing a tool for a technical job without lingering to compare and contrast costs and features, or browsing other options?”
Well, the stereotype of men is famous for that. I, on the other hand, often spend hours browsing tools in everything from Northern Tool & Equipment to Lowes. An appropriate stereotype in my case is He who dies with the most tools wins.
“Is a hunt more like choosing to focus on a specific desired prey, then directly going to it and bagging it? Or is it more like a long search for something elusive that could be in many possible places?”
Well, what are we hunting? Elk? Rabbit? Goose? The form the hunt takes depends on what has to be done to find the prey. Finding a box of #8×3″ deck screws is one thing, but finding the proper table saw blade for teak veneer is another.
“Are impatience or tunnel vision beneficial traits to a hunter?”
Nope. Impatience will cause you to try to stalk closer to an oncoming deer, rather than let it come to you. It will cause you to take the first deer that appears, rather than wait for the bigger deer in a group. Tunnel vision will cause you to focus on the first movement you see, such that you see only what moved, and so miss the herd it is with. No, patience and peripheral vision are traits of a good hunter.
“Are either hunting or gathering even really all that much like going to a store in the first place?”
Yup, they are. “Hunting” what you do when you don’t quite know what you want or need or when you don’t know where to find it. “Gathering” is what you do when you do know.
Is that backwards from what you might think? Well, don’t conflate “hunting” with “shooting”, and do conflate “gathering” with “harvesting”. One “hunts” to find something when one doesn’t know where it is or if it will be found at all. That’s why hunting is called “hunting” instead of “shooting”. And, one “gathers” or “harvests” something when one does know where it is, which is why one doesn’t have to hunt for a gallon of milk on the way home from work.
“Should people arguing from an apparently simple premise, or using it as the foundation of speculative fiction, ask these sorts of questions before they argue it?”
Of course they should. To do otherwise is known in the trade as “jumping to conclusions.”
November 21st, 2011 at 7:50 pm
It’s a stupid premise offered as explanation of a legitimate observation (observed: as distinct groups, that men and women tend to frequently display different shopping mechanisms). Personally, I attribute my and other men’s shopping habits to laziness; I don’t want to be there doing that in the first place and I’m certainly not going to put any more effort into it than I can help, so get in, get it over with as quickly as possible and get on to something I’d rather do instead.
I’ll make another trip later for something else anyway; I can always pick up whatever I missed then.
November 21st, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Yeah, but part of the point I was trying to make is that, in those scenarios, “shopping” is always suspiciously narrowly defined to “shopping for things I don’t view as interesting/important”, where the same speakers will often engage in exactly the same behavior when it IS something important to them. I know I’ve been really bored to death in Home Depot/Lowe’s while more or less on the heels of a number of different men. Same goes for Radio Shack (when it was still relevant), Best Buy, Sears…
November 21st, 2011 at 8:13 pm
I don’t buy the hunter/gatherer divide.
I have noticed that men tend to more goal oriented, and women tend to be more socially oriented. These are tendencies, not hard rules.
There are plusses and minuses to both of these orientations.
November 21st, 2011 at 8:14 pm
It is always dangerous to make a generalization from a single example, but I have never know that to stop me. I often will spend considerable shopping for items. I compare many different feature and brands, but when I’ve made up my mind, I simply buy it. I don’t spend hours looking at all the alternatives again once I get to store.
It maybe stretching the point, but you could compare this to hunting. You don’t simply pick a weapon and set out one morning, at least not it you want to be successful. You scout the area, look for sign of your chosen game as having been in the area. You often draw on the knowledge of other’s who have hunted that area before.
While you can argue about the cause the fact is for my wife shopping is a very pleasurable past time. She can shop for hours with out even making a purchase. My Daughter feels much the same way.
For me extended shopping expeditions are comparable to getting a root channel. My son feels that same way. Over twenty-five years of marriage we have learned to cope. She shops and I find a nice bench to sit down on read. She has come to realize that my “spur of the moment” purchases actually have taken considerable time and effort at researching different alternatives.
November 22nd, 2011 at 2:53 am
As DJ said, depends on what I am hunting and both options are on the table. Stalking birds is the elusive search but hunting with dog, decoys or someone scaring the prey towards you is concentrating on an area waiting for specific prey.
I think that for many hunter-gatherers the hunting bit has been driving scared animals to traps, bogs, down a cliff or chasing them to exhaustion as well as chucking spears at them.
November 22nd, 2011 at 4:17 am
I agree with dismissing the “hunter/gatherer” argument. From what I’ve seen, the length and intensity of any person’s shopping traits is directly tied to their interest in the shopping process and desire for the final product….and not much else matters after that….
November 22nd, 2011 at 9:01 am
Isn’t there a difference between modern hunting and hunting durring the hunter/gather period in our prehistory? I’m not talking about tools and such but rather the underlying pychology and methodology. Looking in the comments I see mention of tags and deciding to hunt particular animals but wouldn’t our hunter/gatherer ancestors be more interested in any food animal that crossed their path?
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I’ve usually seen the “hunter/gatherer” comparison made in reference to clothes shopping. In that sense, there are (from what I’ve observed) a far greater number of variables to take into account in women’s clothing compared to men’s clothing. Styles are just one issue. The range of styles, cuts, and (especially) colours and patterns available to men is fairly limited compared to what women have to choose from. Sizing is another issue. Two women may wear a size 12 dress but have slightly different proportions that mean they can’t wear the same dress. This creates a larger number of clothing choices to start with. Throw in the fact that women’s clothing sizes are not always consistent, even among different styles of the same product by the same manufacturer, and that you can’t tell what those variations are without actually trying on at least 3 or 4 different items, and you can see where the stereotype comes into play. As an additional factor, men are generally discouraged by societal norms from showing “too much” interest in clothing - it often leads to accusations of homosexuality or being “girly” and the accompanying peer disapproval of such that has only recently begun diminishing - and that leads to the “find something that fits and get out” attitude.
The other area I’ve seen that comparison made in is grocery shopping, which has fallen under the “who is mainly responsible” area of effect. “Traditionally” (i.e., the now generally defunct - and possibly never really existent - model of “the man goes to work and the woman stays home and cooks and cleans”), it was the woman who was in charge of grocery shopping and planning, whereas the man was either given a list and went under protest, or did the “pick this up on the way home” quick trip. In both cases with men, there’s little to no thought or examination needed - he knows what he is after and wants to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Tl;dr version: The comparison came about due to physical differences between men and women and traditional gender roles observed in limited circumstances, or the effects of societal pressures regarding those same traditional gender roles.
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:23 pm
When I go for groceries, clothing, or shoes, I shop like a man. When I’m in a hardware store or bookstore, I shop like a woman. Hardware clerks tend to hinder this by following one around and offering unsolicited, unwanted “help.”
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:51 pm
If we’re going to put on our serious anthropology faces, there is now and certainly was massive variation in approach, style, and target for hunting and gathering both. Primitive human groups probably varied as much in their lifestyle as modern hunter-gatherer societies do, which means everything from mixed-gender net-hunting to solitary pursuit of deer-sized game to driving herds off cliffs to spear-hunting groups of men.
I.e. another reason this analogy is stupid is there isn’t really an ancestral “hunting” or “gathering” mindset at all. The activities vary too much.
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Is a lack of focus a beneficial trait to a gatherer?
Depends what you’re gathering. There’s a significant difference between gathering razor clams or picking berries. In the case of the berries, we gather three or four or five different kinds that come ripe all at once and live in similar environments, so a wide focus works best. I suspect that if I knew a little more about wild foods, I’d also be picking a lot of greens as we walked past, rather than just focusing on the berry plants, and maybe grubbing up a root or two while I was at it. Miner’s Lettuce is yummy, but can hardly be the only edible green in the berry fields.
Come to think of it, razor clams don’t require all that much focus either — or they wouldn’t, were it not for the game laws. Some beaches offer a dozen different types of shellfish during the same tide, plus you can always use the offal to bait your hook for real fish. But laws artificially limit the amount of food you can gather during a clam season, which rewards a much tighter focus on what you’re there for.
And why am I quibbling about this when I agree with your main point? Simply because I do agree with your main point, and think it’s brilliantly stated (asked?). So of course I have to dig in and help you refine it for the next presentation, whenever and wherever you do that!
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Pah! You made the exact point I was trying to make, while I was busy typing my last post… No fair!
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Wait, that’s how smart people argue on that forum? Thank GOODNESS I’m an ignorant american.
PS I got a blog and it sucks.
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:58 pm
I imagine there is a difference between the way people shop for essential items and the way they shop for frou frou-y crap. There is more frou frou aimed at women. They like all of it but presumably they don’t really NEED any of it, hence the dithering. I would bet that a young guy buying stuff at a comics convention would display shopping patterns similar to that of a girl buying clothes.=p
November 22nd, 2011 at 2:57 pm
I wonder how much of one’s shopping style correlates with one’s misanthropy. Stores are (by design) places where people can often be found, so if dealing with other people is a significant cost to me (this happens to be the case) I have a strong incentive to spend as little time in a store as possible. This is true even when I’m shopping for things I like (books, tools, nerd toys, beer).
November 22nd, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Hmmm, compare and contrast:
Man goes shopping in the Nordstrom Shoe Department. Everyone thinks he’s gay, because he’s violated The Norm.
Woman goes shopping at the Gun Show. “Hey, Little Lady, why don’t you come back with your husband?” She’s violated The Norm.
But as to enjoying shopping? Hard to say who likes it more. Men like shopping, just in their own, err, milieu.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:58 am
Personally, I’ve never really noticed any difference in the way men and women shop. I have noticed a difference in types of shopping: goal oriented and what I like to describe as “long periods of wasted time without any clear goal of success”. The goal oriented method has a predicted outcome. The time wasting method can only be described as retail sight-seeing.
November 24th, 2011 at 7:57 am
The actual question has been answered enough, but man, after seeing that wankfest and assorted others, it’s enough to tempt a person to close all comments on their blog. Yeesh.
November 24th, 2011 at 8:32 am
As someone who will sometimes dash into the store and grab One Thing and other times will linger for hours fingering things I have no intention of purchasing, I heart this post so much.
I wonder if there really are that many people who live in simple little stereotypical binary sociobiological worlds. And for so many of them to claim to be in academia, where are they hiding whenever I’m passing through the freak show menagerie that is the modern college campus?