Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Long
before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia
ago—women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in
Iran, where exposure to Western media and culture is limited, women are
actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more
weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to ascribe
the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and
21st-century Iran to socialization by media.
Women's
desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long
blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response
to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is
evolutionary logic behind each of these features.
Men
prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older
women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness;
another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the
hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly,
shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman's health status.
Men
also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip
ratio. They are healthier and more fertile than other women; they have
an easier time conceiving a child and do so at earlier ages because
they have larger amounts of essential reproductive hormones. Thus men
are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when they
seek women with small waists.
Until
very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men
prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts
has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard
anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier,
breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus
they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her
reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large
breasts more attractive.
Alternatively,
men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer
women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women
with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity,
indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and
progesterone).
Blond hair is unique in
that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with
light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to
mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger
(and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. It is no
coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe,
probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as
their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.
Women
with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or
brown eyes. Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and
undeniable—in males as well as females. One explanation is that the
human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she
likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men)
spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest
indicator of interest and attraction. And the size of the pupil is
easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed people are considered
attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine
whether they are interested in us or not.
The
irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts,
wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color
contact lenses, any woman, regardless of age, can have many of the key
features that define ideal female beauty. And men fall for them. Men
can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm, large
breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them
attractive because their evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by
modern inventions that did not exist in the ancestral environment.
Humans are naturally polygamous
The
history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous.
Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but
polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in
human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that
monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have
been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than
women.
Among primate and nonprimate
species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to
which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous
the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes.
Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier
than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been
mildly polygynous.
Relative to
monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance
between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among
males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize
all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males
creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates.
Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among
pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay
together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big
and tall males because they can provide better physical protection
against predators and other males.
In
societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and
their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half,
one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an
entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct
leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the
exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans
are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous
because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared
with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase
as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced
agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of
inequality.)
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
When
there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human
society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy
man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The
only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can
monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men
with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly
opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife.
True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but
that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men
in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under
polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not
extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are
lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under
monogamy.
Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions,
when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why?
The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do
with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with
sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.
What
distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates
polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether
excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates
shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each,
then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.
So
polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of
low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort
to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little
to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives.
Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes
such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious
factors as economic development, economic inequality, population
density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However,
polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies
in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than
the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do
have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a
long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.
The
other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for
any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may
not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which
strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite
appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a
complete reproductive loser.
It is the
combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in
heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings.
Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers
indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim
population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own
extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly
all suicide bombers are single.
Having sons reduces the likelihood
of divorce
Sociologists
and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son
face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only
daughters. Why is this?
Since a man's
mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and
power—whereas a woman's is largely determined by her youth and physical
attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit
his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of
these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a
father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more
physically attractive.
The continued
presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for
the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus
deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than
the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among
wealthy families.
Beautiful people have more daughters
It
is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is
up to random chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance.
The normal sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls. But the
sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and for different
families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an
offspring.
One of the most celebrated
principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis,
states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor
parents of low status have more daughters. This is because children
generally inherit the wealth and social status of their parents.
Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who would themselves
become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives, mistresses
and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas
their equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So
natural selection designs parents to have biased sex ratio at birth
depending upon their economic circumstances—more boys if they are
wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by
which this occurs is not yet understood.)
This
hypothesis has been documented around the globe. American presidents,
vice presidents, and cabinet secretaries have more sons than daughters.
Poor Mukogodo herders in East Africa have more daughters than sons.
Church parish records from the 17th and 18th centuries show that
wealthy landowners in Leezen, Germany, had more sons than daughters,
while farm laborers and tradesmen without property had more daughters
than sons. In a survey of respondents from 46 nations, wealthy
individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for sons if they
could only have one child, whereas less wealthy individuals are more
likely to indicate a preference for daughters.
The
generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis goes beyond a family's wealth
and status: If parents have any traits that they can pass on to their
children and that are better for sons than for daughters, then they
will have more boys. Conversely, if parents have any traits that they
can pass on to their children and that are better for daughters, they
will have more girls.
Physical
attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even
more to women's reproductive success than to men's. The generalized
hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents
should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is the case.
Americans who are rated "very attractive" have a 56 percent chance of
having a daughter for their first child, compared with 48 percent for
everyone else.
What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have
in common with criminals
For
nearly a quarter of a century, criminologists have known about the
"age-crime curve." In every society at all historical times, the
tendency to commit crimes and other risk-taking behavior rapidly
increases in early adolescence, peaks in late adolescence and early
adulthood, rapidly decreases throughout the 20s and 30s, and levels off
in middle age.
This curve is not
limited to crime. The same age profile characterizes every quantifiable
human behavior that is public (i.e., perceived by many potential mates)
and costly (i.e., not affordable by all sexual competitors). The
relationship between age and productivity among male jazz musicians,
male painters, male writers, and male scientists—which might be called
the "age-genius curve"—is essentially the same as the age-crime curve.
Their productivity—the expressions of their genius—quickly peaks in
early adulthood, and then equally quickly declines throughout
adulthood. The age-genius curve among their female counterparts is much
less pronounced; it does not peak or vary as much as a function of age.
Paul
McCartney has not written a hit song in years, and now spends much of
his time painting. Bill Gates is now a respectable businessman and
philanthropist, and is no longer a computer whiz kid. J.D. Salinger now
lives as a total recluse and has not published anything in more than
three decades. Orson Welles was a mere 26 when he wrote, produced,
directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.
A
single theory can explain the productivity of both creative geniuses
and criminals over the life course: Both crime and genius are
expressions of young men's competitive desires, whose ultimate function
in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive
success.
In the physical competition for
mates, those who are competitive may act violently toward their male
rivals. Men who are less inclined toward crime and violence may express
their competitiveness through their creative activities.
The
cost of competition, however, rises dramatically when a man has
children, when his energies and resources are put to better use
protecting and investing in them. The birth of the first child usually
occurs several years after puberty because men need some time to
accumulate sufficient resources and attain sufficient status to attract
their first mate. There is therefore a gap of several years between the
rapid rise in the benefits of competition and similarly rapid rise in
its costs. Productivity rapidly declines in late adulthood as the costs
of competition rise and cancel its benefits.
These
calculations have been performed by natural and sexual selection, so to
speak, which then equips male brains with a psychological mechanism to
incline them to be increasingly competitive immediately after puberty
and make them less competitive right after the birth of their first
child. Men simply do not feel like acting violently, stealing, or
conducting additional scientific experiments, or they just want to
settle down after the birth of their child but they do not know exactly
why.
The similarity between Bill
Gates, Paul McCartney, and criminals—in fact, among all men throughout
evolutionary history—points to an important concept in evolutionary
biology: female choice.
Women often
say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and
wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral
ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write
new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree
to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in
order to impress women, so that they might say yes.
The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
Many
believe that men go through a midlife crisis when they are in middle
age. Not quite. Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but
it's not because they are middle-aged. It's because their wives are.
From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man's midlife crisis
is precipitated by his wife's imminent menopause and end of her
reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger
women. Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman
would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married
to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man
married to a 50-year-old woman. It's not his midlife that matters; it's
hers. When he buys a shiny-red sports car, he's not trying to regain
his youth; he's trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal
wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.
It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)
On
the morning of January 21, 1998, as Americans woke up to the stunning
allegation that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with a
24-year-old White House intern, Darwinian historian Laura L. Betzig
thought, "I told you so." Betzig points out that while powerful men
throughout Western history have married monogamously (only one legal
wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers,
concubines, and female slaves). With their wives, they produced
legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards. Genes make
no distinction between the two categories of children.
As
a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained
very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring
(legitimate and otherwise), while countless poor men died mateless and
childless. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor
of Morocco, stands out quantitatively, having left more
offspring—1,042—than anyone else on record, but he was by no means
qualitatively different from other powerful men, like Bill Clinton.
The
question many asked in 1998—"Why on earth would the most powerful man
in the world jeopardize his job for an affair with a young woman?"—is,
from a Darwinian perspective, a silly one. Betzig's answer would be:
"Why not?" Men strive to attain political power, consciously or
unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number
of women. Reproductive access to women is the goal, political office
but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have
a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who
worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it.
What
distinguishes Bill Clinton is not that he had extramarital affairs
while in office—others have, more will; it would be a Darwinian puzzle
if they did not—what distinguishes him is the fact that he got caught.
Men sexually harass women because they
are not sexist
An
unfortunate consequence of the ever-growing number of women joining the
labor force and working side by side with men is the increasing number
of sexual harassment cases. Why must sexual harassment be a necessary
consequence of the sexual integration of the workplace?
Psychologist
Kingsley R. Browne identifies two types of sexual harassment cases: the
quid pro quo ("You must sleep with me if you want to keep your job or
be promoted") and the "hostile environment" (the workplace is deemed
too sexualized for workers to feel safe and comfortable). While
feminists and social scientists tend to explain sexual harassment in
terms of "patriarchy" and other ideologies, Browne locates the ultimate
cause of both types of sexual harassment in sex differences in mating
strategies.
Studies demonstrate
unequivocally that men are far more interested in short-term casual sex
than women. In one now-classic study, 75 percent of undergraduate men
approached by an attractive female stranger agreed to have sex with
her; none of the women approached by an attractive male stranger did.
Many men who would not date the stranger nonetheless agreed to have sex
with her.
The quid pro quo types of
harassment are manifestations of men's greater desire for short-term
casual sex and their willingness to use any available means to achieve
that goal. Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is "not about
sex but about power;" Browne contends it is both—men using power to get
sex. "To say that it is only about power makes no more sense than
saying that bank robbery is only about guns, not about money."
Sexual
harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex
differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or
"hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have
been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by
their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered
the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive,
intimidating, and degrading treatment.
Abuse,
intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of
tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not
treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination,
under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men
harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men
and women.
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