Women rule and men, well just aren't as cool

I'm writing a paper on altruistic behavior in humans. Here's a bit of an abstract from my favorite article:

"We examined people's charity contributions while in the presence of an observer of the same sex, opposite sex, or no observer... We hypothesized that men would be more generous in the presence of a potential mate... Our results show that men contribute more to charity when observed by a member of the opposite sex than by a member of the same sex or no observer. Conversely, female charity donations did not significantly vary across the three observer conditions. Findings support the notion that men's generosity might have evolved as a mating signal."

The article goes on to talk about men tipping more especially when on a date, donating to pan-handlers more often when the beggar was female or if they were walking with a female, and other such statistics. Whereas females donate equally across all circumstances. My male readers may try to argue that while women donate equally, they probably donate less and therefore men are more generous. To you I say, check out this graph from the study:



The study tells us that the two groups contributed the same amount of money overall ($119). The point here, of course, is that women donate indiscriminately while men donate more when observed by the opposite sex. This was a study done in a lab, so whether in real life men and women wind up donating the same amount to charities is unknown.

So men donate to show off and get a good mate while women donate because they're... good people. (yes I'm purposefully imposing moral judgments on these poor subjects, but it's certainly more entertaining to read the data my way than some lame "we're all equal" sort of way!)

Science I can get behind!


Article citation:
Iredale, W., Van Vugt, M. & Dunbar, R., 2008. Showing Off in Humans: Male Generosity as a Mating Signal. Evolutionary Psychology 6(3): 386-392.

Demystifying the Unknown: Loss of Innocence or Knowledge as Power?

I shall not apologize for my reprehensible neglect of this blog. I've got work to do, and I'm sure you didn't really mind the hiatus! However now that not only my nose but also my mouth are above the proverbial water, I'll take the time to explore an idea that occurred to me last night as I read about facial attractiveness.

I'm researching a paper on the methodology used in studies investigating what makes a face attractive. To do said research, I'm reading a bunch of studies to critique their methodology. One article described the Multiple Fitness Model whereby female facial attractiveness is based on a combination of three types of features:
-neonate: large wide-set eyes, small nose, small chin
-mature: prominent cheekbones and narrow cheeks
-expressive: high eyebrows, large pupils, large smile



Being the girl that I am, I couldn't help but see if I had a facial feature from each category. Well, nothing out of neonate... or mature... possibly a large smile? Of course I haven't run the quantifying program on my face that the researchers use, but let's be real, you can make an ad-hoc judgment on each of those criteria.

My point (and no, it's not to wallow in self-pity!) is that it made me wonder if we need to know everything we now know. Did I need to know exactly why I'm not model-quality pretty? I could have gone on happily thinking that while not the ideal, I had aspects of beauty, before the Multiple Fitness Model quite thoroughly proved otherwise. (I'm operating under the assumption the MFM is correct in all its assumptions and effects, which of course it isn't, but go with me on this.)

Before humans had all the scientific knowledge they have, creation myths and just-so stories took their place in the realm of explanations. Why do elephants have trunks? Well one day a hippo sat on an elephant's nose and as he struggled to free himself, the elephant stretched out his trunk until it is the length we see it today. Why do women have pain during childbirth? Eve gave Adam the apple. Those events that cannot be explained are either given creative origins, or are simply wondered at. As each mystifying element of our environment is explained scientifically, we lose a bit of the magic of the universe. The awe and wonder of not knowing is replaced by the empirical knowledge that elephants evolved a long trunk to use as a sort of hand and to reach leaves and other foodstuffs; that women experience pain giving childbirth well, because they're forcing a rather large object through a rather small opening.

Of course, being a (light) scientist, I can't go too far down this train of thought before rejecting all the romance of naivete for its reality: knowledge and learning are the basis for human development. We couldn't have progressed to the point we have without being able to create scientific knowledge and learn. More importantly (and more applicable to today's society) knowledge is the only defense we have against prejudice via ignorance. I'm specifically thinking about how science is working towards nullifying the ill-informed ideas regarding peoples of different races and sexual orientations. Systematically, science is showing that there is no significant biological difference between races (more variation within a group than between groups) and is exploring the biological basis for homosexuality and bisexuality (rather than letting people continue to think it's a choice).

As long as people remain ignorant, they create stories to explain observed phenomenon: That man is less intelligent because he's black, Homosexuals choose to be gay to be different and get attention. And those stories are not romantic and entertaining. They're damaging to humanity. So, Go, Science, Go! and let us all be sure to disseminate true knowledge. That's the only way we can combat myths.

Oh, and is the knowledge of how things actually work any less mystifying? Consider the human body. We've got a pretty good grasp on how it works. Does that mean it's any less amazing that mitochondria help create energy? Why do they do that?! Those little things in my tiny cells power my body?! Surely the intricacies of the universe are still wonderful even as we understand them better and better. So while we may no longer be innocents, we can still find awe in everything around us.

Innately Innate Innateness

I have serious issues with the word "innate". Humans bandy it about as the bright and shiny difference between ourselves and everything else on the planet. We're different because we have "innately human" abilities--things we're born with that we needn't learn to do and that we do better than anything else that ever lived. Chimpanzees? Well they don't have any innate abilities except perhaps for poo slinging. It seems to be that this innate humanity is directly linked to our possession of a soul, language, and morality, qualities not existing in other animals. You know we're animals, right? I hope you do, reader, however I can't help but think proponents of this innately human thing would probably prefer to forget that link... we're human, bygad! not wild creatures! (oh and I also think it's ridiculous we think we're the only ones with souls/language... but another time)

In any case. Nothing is innate. You are not born knowing how to do things. And no, innate abilities are not propensities you are born with that you later develop, it is knowing how to do things out of the womb. I'll be lame and quote Merriam and Webster: "originating in or arising from the intellect or the constitution of the mind, rather than learned through experience". So unless we're talking about breathing or blinking, you're not born knowing how to do much.

Everything else is learned. Abilities like playing an instrument or sport, arguing theory, administering and interpreting research, judging morality and acting on those judgments are all learned! If you take away all of our fancy environment we've created for ourselves, if you strip us down to the bare essentials, we're not going to be highly moral creatures debating the meaning of life with an advanced language.

If you look at primates, they have hierarchies and behavior that appears to be moral (not going to use that word altruistic to describe it), but what it comes down to is trying to live in harmony in a social structure. Living in groups is beneficial to most primates' fitness, especially the higher order ones with large brains, like us. So we can look to their example to see what we'd be like without our technology, language, and culture. We'd form hierarchical societies where certain things were ok to do and others weren't, but those rights and wrongs would be dictated by the action's effect on the group's (and your own) fitness, not whether or not it adhered to the very cerebral concept of morality. If you steal a higher-up's food, he'll punish you. Not because it's immoral to steal, but because it's his food, he's bigger and stronger, and you taking his food harms his fitness, so back off!

Of course it's very hard to prove any of this. You can't steal a child away from its parents and raise it in a silent environment to see if it develops its own language or if it is mute (though you'd think deaf people who aren't taught to speak would be proof...), you can't maroon a bunch of infants on an island and see what kind of society would result, but you can think rationally about what would likely happen. Take away all of your personal bias for your own species and really think about what we'd be like if we didn't have all our little tricks. We'd be just another higher order primate. Give our current primates enough time, and a complete lack of human contact, and I wouldn't doubt that they'd eventually develop into some sort of species analogous to our own: with complicated language, elevated thought, and culture.

Humans. Really the world'd be much better off without us and our immeasurable self-conceit.