I was going to write about other thing completely, but then my sister, who is the ultimate reader of chick-flick and chick-lit and other girlie stuff sent me a story about a scientific paper that proves that beautiful women married to ugly men are happier than ugly women married to beautiful men.
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”The Tennessee study tested 82 couples for facial attractiveness and how they felt about their marriages. While women who were better-looking than their spouses reported contentedness, according to Univeristy of Tennessee professor Jim McNulty, men who were more attractive than their mates ‘demonstrated a tendency to offer less emotional and practical support to their wives’.”
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Ok, ok… As if it was not enough of an over simplification, there comes the unavoidable part.
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Yes, you guessed right: the evolutionary explanation!
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”McNulty adds that there is an ‘evolutionary explanation’ for this behavior: ‘Attractive men have available to them more short-term mating opportunities. This may make them less satisfied and less committed to the marital relationship’.”
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Why?
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God, why?
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Why they always have to put some evolution in these silly researches? Why they don’t even consider the possibility of culture and society playing a huge part in the conclusions? They investigate a specific group, from an specific culture, and then say that the conclusions prove “evolutionary pressures”?
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Some weeks ago I read an editorial of New Scientist about how students in an university associated black people to apes (I don’t remember the details, but the original is here)
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And then, guess what? The scientists concluded that the association was ingrained in their minds because of centuries of prejudice and racial stereotypes.
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Fair enough, I agree with that. But maybe if it wasn’t such a controversial topic, they might just have jumped to the conclusion that associating dark-skinned people to apes brought evolutionary advantages to our ancestors? I don’t doubt.
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What I’d like to know is why use evolution to explain everything? Beauty and marriage are highly culturally charged topics, and it’s obvious that social pressures towards marriage, beauty and youth are quite different for men and women.
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It is a lot like people using evolution to explain unfaithfulness of men. As if we were all animals, and not products of society, culture, education and so on, combined with biological factors.
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Sometimes it just feels that some scientists (not all of them) are too lazy to try to learn anything other than what they are working with. So, instead of studying a little bit of sociology, they just go for the easier explanation, using concepts that they have already learnt.
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PS: What happened to the line breaks? I had to put periods all around, otherwise the text would be a huge block, with no paragraphs.
I think the tendency to invoke evolutionary psychology must itself have an evolutionary explanation. Hypothesis: do evolutionary psychologists have a greater lifetime reproductive success than the population at large?
No idea what’s up with the line breaks, but I just copied your solution! Thanks!
This reminds me of a study in the early 2000s (naughties?). Researchers showed volunteers two faces from the opposite sex, and kept merging the favoured faces together until they came up with an “ideal” female face (looked like a Barbie doll) and male face (looked like Pierce Brosnan!). We were discussing the study at the start of one of our lab meetings, and one postdoc was trying to remember whether she’d read it in Nature or Science. I piped up with “I read it in Cosmo”, to which my supervisor replied “that seems like a mucm more suitable venue”. I would say that the same goes here!
This line-break thing is all over the network like a cheap suit! I’m blogging about it right this minute…
It makes sense to try and frame behavioral research in the context of evolution, especially behavior related to mating. I mean, it’s certainly not the only thing going on here, but it’s definitely relevant. That being said, McNulty’s analysis doesn’t totally make sense to me either, but I don’t know exactly how evolution and marriage relate to evolutionary advantage. Regarding the New Scientist article you mentioned, it reminds me of the recent Vogue cover that was controversial because of the way it depicted Lebron James relative to Giselle Bundchen. I understand your frustration about leaping to evolutionary conclusions, but as far as I understand you, the New Scientist article didn’t leap to that conclusion… Right? So why are you annoyed with it, exactly? (I wasn’t able to read the whole New Scientist article, so I may be missing something here)
Personally, I think the annoying part is when evolution is used as an excuse for unacceptable behavior (unfaithfulness, racism, etc.), and the borderline between a contextual explanation and an excuse can be unclear.
Jordan, I was NOT annoyed by the New Scientist article. I think that as it was a very controversial and serious topic (racism), they were careful enough not to jump to evolutionary pseudo-explanations. And I wonder why scientists are not always that careful with other topics as well.
Ah ok. Sorry for misreading that.
No problem at all. Once you couldn’t read the whole article, it’s perfectly reasonable you didn’t understand my point. (open access and free sites for all!)
Sometimes these evolutionary explanations tell a lot about those who suggest them (but not always). However, if there is an evolutionary explanation for a serious social problem, ignoring the evolved aspects is going to make finding solutions more difficult and perhaps impossible. That is what is going on with the failed “abstinence only” method for reducing teen pregnancy, the failed “war on drugs”, the “tragedy of the commons”.
One of the things I am working on trying to understand is acute psychosis which I see as an evolved “feature” to respond to life-threatening metabolic stress. When people are in desperate situations they will do desperate things. I think this is relevant to postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. I see some of it as insufficient metabolic capacity to sustain the metabolic load of lactation (I see this as primarily capacity of the liver for gluconeogenesis). The “obvious” evolutionary solution is to shed metabolic load and perhaps reproduce at another time.
Regarding the imputation of racism, my presumption would be that color similarity is sufficient to increase recognition speed. That would explain the effects being independent of the race of the observer. If they used false-color substitutions, perhaps similarities of color could be eliminated. Comparisons with other animals of similar and different colors might allow color effects vs. face morphology effects to be measured too. From the few details I saw, I think it is a reach to assume it occurs because of racism.
This is an interesting thought, David:
....”acute psychosis which I see as an evolved “feature” to respond to life-threatening metabolic stress. When people are in desperate situations they will do desperate things. I think this is relevant to postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. I see some of it as insufficient metabolic capacity to sustain the metabolic load of lactation (I see this as primarily capacity of the liver for gluconeogenesis).”
But acute psychosis isn’t the same as postnatal depression, is it? And people experience psychosis and depression at many other times (also men). I like the metabolic stress idea as our bodies certainly have not evolved on the same timescale as the products of our brains or even to deal with increased longevity bought about by medical developments. But the lactation link seems a bit of a stretch, to me.
MC, I see depression as the necessary aversive state between “normal” and acute psychosis brought about by life threatening metabolic stress. I see the euphoria of asphyxiation, near drowning, or the runner’s high as necessary states to allow survival under extreme stress, such as when being chased by a bear. To feel tired is to want to stop and rest which is certain death because the bear catches you. Better to drop dead of exhaustion while having the delusion that you are not tired and can run for ever. Near fatal injuries are infinitely better than being caught by the bear (which is 100% fatal).
I blogged about some of the details as it relates to postpartum psychosis
Some of the implications which relate to postpartum psychosis are quite disturbing. Glucose and lactose can only be made from 3-carbon precursors. The maternal brain can operate on ketone bodies made from fat (which have even numbers of carbon). She cannot make lactose from ketone bodies. If she cannot make sufficient milk of sufficient nutritive value to sustain her infant until that infant is weaned, what is the “evolutionary correct” thing to do? What is it that all other mammals do under those circumstances?
I think this idea is too controversial for many to consider in part because the (wrong) idea of the myth of homeostasis has blinded them to what is actually going on.