tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7562452369822564012024-03-18T20:26:03.914-07:00Pop PsychologyWhere The Irony Is In The NameJesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-2623750672959396462012-05-04T19:12:00.003-07:002012-05-04T19:12:22.647-07:00New LocationI've decided to move my writings to a more official site. The new home can be found at <a href="http://popsych.org/">http://popsych.org/</a>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-80072907549613457882012-04-22T09:31:00.001-07:002012-04-22T12:39:56.722-07:00Depressed To ImpressReflecting on this morning's usual breakfast cake brought to mind a
thought that only people like myself think: the sugar in my breakfast is
not sweet. Sweetness, while not a property of the sugar, is an
experience generated by our mind when sugar is present on the tongue. We
generally find the presence of sugar to be a pleasant experience, and
often times find ourselves seeking out similar experiences in the
future. The likely function of this experience is to motivate people to
preferentially seek out and consume certain types of foods, typically
the high-calorie variety. As dense packages of calories can be very
beneficial to an organism's survival, especially when they're rare, the
tendency to experience a pleasant sweetness in the presence of sugar was
selected for; individuals who were indifferent between eating sand or
honey were no one's ancestors.<br />
<br />
On a related note, there's nothing intrinsically painful
about damage done to your body. Pain, like sweetness, is an important
signal; pain signals when your
body is being damaged, in turn motivating people to stop doing or get
away from whatever is causing the harm and avoiding making current
injuries worse. Pain feels so unpleasant because, if it didn't, the proper motivation would not be provided. However, in order to feel pain, an organism must have
evolved that ability; it's not present as a default, as evidenced by the
rare people born <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=1386322#.T5L5xdUZvNs" target="_blank">without the ability to feel pain</a>.
As one could imagine, those who were indifferent to the idea of having
their leg broken rarely ended up reproducing as
well as others who found the experience excruciating. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Walk it off</i></span><br />
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Sensations like pain or sweetness can be explained neatly and satisfyingly through these functional accounts. With these accounts we can understand why things that feel pleasant - like gorging myself on breakfast cake - are not always a good thing (when calories are abundant), whereas unpleasant feelings - like sticking your arm in a wood-chipper - can be vital to our survival. Conversely, lacking these functional accounts can lead to poor outcomes. For instance, treating a fever as a symptom of an infection to be reduced, rather than a body's adaptive response to help <i>fight</i> the infection, can actually lead to a prolonging and worsening of said infection (Nesse & Williams, 1994). Before trying to treat something as a problem and make it go away just because it feels unpleasant, or not treat a problem because it might be enjoyable, it's important to know what function those feelings might serve and what costs and benefits of reducing or indulging in them might entail. This brings us to the omnipresent subject of unpleasant feelings that people want to make go away in psychology: depression.<br />
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Depression, I'm told, is rather unpleasant to deal with. Most commonly triggered by a major, negative life event, depression leads to a loss of interest and engagement in almost all activities, low energy levels, and, occasionally, even suicide. Despite these apparent costs, depression continues to be a fairly prevalent complaint the world over, and is far more common among women than men. Given its predictability and prevalence, might there be a function behind this behavior? Any functional account of depression would need to both encompass these known facts, as well as purpose subsequent gains that would tend to outweigh these negative consequences. As reviewed by <a href="http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/%7Ehagen/papers/Dahlem.pdf" target="_blank">Hagen</a> (2003), previous models of depression suggested that sadness served as a type of psychic pain: when one is unsuccessful in navigating the social world in some way, it is better to disengage from a failing strategy than to continue to pursue it, as one would be wasting time and energy that could be spent elsewhere. However, such a hypothesis fails to account for major depression, positing instead that major depression is simply a maladaptive byproduct of an otherwise useful system. Certainly, activities like eating shouldn't be forgone because an unrelated social strategy has failed, nor should one engage in otherwise harmful behaviors (potentially suicidal ones) for similar reasons; it's unclear from the psychic pain models why these <i>particular</i> maladaptive byproducts would arise and persist in the first place. For example, touching a hot pan causes one to rapid withdraw their hand, but it does not cause people to stop cooking food altogether for weeks on end. <br />
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Hagen (2003) puts forth the idea that depression functions primarily as a social bargaining mechanism. Given this function, Hagen suggests the following contexts should tend
to provoke depressive episodes: a person should experience a perceived
negative life event, the remedy to this event should be difficult or
impossible to achieve on their own, and there must be conflict over
other people's willingness to provide assistance in achieving a remedy. Conflict is ubiquitous in the social realm of life; that much is uncontested. When confronted with a major negative life event, such as the death of a spouse or the birth of an unwanted child, social support from others can be its most important. Unfortunately for those in need, others people are not always the most selfless when it comes to providing for those needs, so the needy require methods of eliciting that support. While violence is one way to make others do what you'd like, it is not always the most reliable or safest method, especially if the source you're attempting to persuade is stronger than you or outnumber you. Another route to compelling a more powerful other to invest in you is to increase the costs of not investing, and this can be done by simply withholding benefits that you can provide others until things change. Essentially, depression serves as a type of social strike, the goal of which is to credibly signal that one is not sufficiently benefiting from their current state, and is willing to stop providing benefits to others until the terms of their social contract have been renegotiated. <br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"What do we want? A more satisfying life. When do we want it? I'll just be in bed until that time...whatever"</span></i><br />
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Counter-intuitive as it may sound, despite depression feeling harmful to the person suffering from it, the function of depression would be to inflict costs on <i>others </i>who have an interest in you being productive and helpful. By inflicting costs on yourself (or, rather, failing to provide benefits to others), you are thereby motivating others to help you to so they can, in turn, help themselves by regaining access to whatever benefits you can provide. Then again, perhaps this isn't as counter-intuitive as it may sound, taking the case of suicide as an example. Suicide definitely represents a cost to other people in one's life, from family members, to spouses, to children, to friends, or trade partners. It's much more profitable to have a live friend or spouse capable of providing benefits to you than a dead one. Prior to any attempt being made, suicidal people tend to warn others of their intentions and, if any attempt is made, they are frequently enacted in manners which are unreliably lethal. Further still, many people, whether family or clinicians, view suicidal thoughts and attempts as cries for help, rather than as a desire to die per se, suggesting people have some underlying intuitions about the ultimate intentions of such acts. That a suicide is occasionally completed likely represents a maladaptive outcome of an evolutionary arms race between the credibility of the signal and the skepticism that others view the signal with. Is the talk about suicide just that - cheap talk - or is it actually a serious threat? <br />
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There are two social issues that depression needs to deal with that can also be accounted for in this model. The first issue concerns how depressed individuals avoid being punished by others. If an individual is taking benefits from other group members, but not reciprocating those benefits (whether due to depression or selfishness), they are likely to activate the cheater-detection module of the mind. As we all know, people don't take kindly to cheaters and do not tend to offer them more support to help out. Rather, cheaters tend to be punished, having further costs inflicted upon them. If the goal of depression is to gain social support, punishment is the last thing that would help achieve that goal. In order to avoid coming off as a cheater, a depressed individual may need to forgo accepting many benefits that others provide, which would help explain why depressed individuals often give up activities like eating or even getting out of bed. A more-or-less complete shutdown of behavior might be required in order to avoid coming off as a manipulative cheater.<br />
<br />
The second issue concerns the benefits that a depressed individual can provide. Let's use the example of a worker going on strike: if this worker is particularly productive, having him not show up to work will be a genuine cost on the employer. However, if this worker either poorly skilled - thus able to deliver little, if any, benefits to the employer - or easily replaceable, not showing up to work won't cause the employer any loss of sleep or money. Accordingly, in order for depression to be effective, the depressed individual needs to be socially valuable, and the more valuable they are seen as being, the more of a monopoly they hold over the benefits they provide, the more effective depression can be in achieving its goal. What this suggests is that depression would work better in certain contexts, perhaps when population sizes are smaller and groups more mutually dependent on one another - which would have been the social contexts under which depression evolved. What this might also suggest is that depression may become more prevalent and last longer the more replaceable people become socially due to certain novel features of our social environment; there's little need to give a striking worker a raise if there are ten other capable people already lined up for his position.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">You should have seen the quality of resumes I was getting last time I was single. </span></i><br />
<br />
That depression is more common among women would suggest, then, that depression is a more profitable strategy for women, relative to men. There are several reasons this might be the case. First, women might be unable to engage in direct physical aggression as effectively as men, restricting their ability to use aggressive strategies to gain the support of others. Another good possibility is that, reproductively, women tend to be a more valuable resource (or rather, a limiting one) relative to men. Whereas almost all women had a valuable resource they could potentially restrict access to, not all men do. If men are more easily replaceable, they hold less bargaining power by threatening to strike. Another way of looking at the matter is that the costs men incur by being depressed and shutting down are substantially greater than the costs women do, or the costs they are capable of imposing on others aren't as great. A depressed man may quickly fall in the status hierarchy, which would ultimately do more harm than the depressive benefits would be able to compensate for. It should also be noted that one of the main ways depression is alleviated is following a positive life change, like entering into a new relationship or getting a new job, which is precisely what the bargaining model would predict, lending further support to this model.<br />
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So given this likely function of depression, is it a mental illness that requires treatment? I would say no to the first part and maybe to the second. While generally being an unpleasant experience, depression, in this model, is no more of a mental illness than the experience of physical pain is. Whether or not it should be treated is, of course, up to the person suffering from it. There are very real costs to all parties involved when depression is active, and it's certainly understandable why people would want to make them go away. What this model suggests is that, like treating a fever, just making the symptoms of depression go away may have unintended social costs elsewhere, either in the short- or long-term. While keeping employees from striking certainly keeps them working, it also removes some of their ability to bargain for better pay or working conditions. Similarly, simply relieving depression may keep people happier and more productive, but it may also lead them to accept less fulfilling or supportive circumstances in their life. <br />
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<b>References: </b>Hagen, E.H. (2003). The bargaining model of depression. In: <i>Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation</i>, P. Hammerstein (ed.). MIT Press, 95-123<br />
<br />
Nesse, R.M., & Williams G.C. (1994). <i>Why We Get Sick: The New Science Of Darwinian Medicine. </i>Vintage books. <br />
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<br />Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-25861836194513742942012-04-12T08:13:00.003-07:002012-04-22T12:40:23.687-07:00No, Really, Group Selection Doesn't WorkGroup selection is kind of like the horror genre of movies: even if the movie was terrible, and even if the main villain gets killed off, you can bet there will be still be a dozen sequels. Like the last surviving virgin among a group of teenage campers, it's now on my agenda to kill this idea once again, because it seems the first couple dozen times it was killed, the killing just didn't stick. Now I have <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/11/somebody-elses-problem.html" target="_blank">written about this group selection issue</a> before, but only briefly. Since people seem to continue and actually take the idea seriously, it's time to explicitly go after the fundamental assumptions made by group selection models. Hopefully, this will put the metaphorical stake through the heart of this vampire, saving me time in future discussions as I can just link people here instead of rehashing the same points over and over again. It probably won't, as some people seem to like group selection for some currently unknown reason, but fingers crossed anyway.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Friday the 13th, part 23: At this point, you might as well just watch the first movie again, because it's the same thing.</i></span><br />
<br />
Recently, <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-storytelling-animal/201204/selfless-genes-new-revolution-in-biology" target="_blank">Jon Gotschall </a>wrote an article for Psychology Today about how E.O. Wilson thinks the selfish gene metaphor is a giant mistake. As he didn't explicitly say this idea is nonsense - the proper response - I can only assume he is partially sympathetic to group selection. Et tu, Jon? There's one point from that article I'd like to tackle first, before moving onto other, larger matters. Jon writes the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In effect, this defined altruism-real and authentic selflessness--out of
existence. On a planet ruled by selfish genes, “altruism” was just
masked selfishness</i>.</blockquote>
The first point is that I have no idea what Jon means when he's talking about "real" altruism. His comments there conflate proximate and ultimate explanations, which is a mistake frequently cautioned against in your typical introductory level evolutionary psychology course. No one is saying that other-regarding feelings don't exist at a proximate level; they clearly do. The goal is explain what the ultimate function of such feelings are. Parents genuinely tend to feel selfless and act altruistically towards their children. That feeling is quite genuine, and it happens to exist in no small part because that child carries half of that parent's genes. By acting altruistically towards their children, parents are helping their own genes reproduce; genes are benefiting copies of themselves that are found in other bodies. The ultimate explanation is not privileged over the proximate one in terms of which is "real". It makes no more sense to say what Jon did than for me to suggest that my desire to eat chocolate cake is <i>really</i> a reproductive desire, because, eventually, that desire had to be the result of an adaptation designed to increase my genetic fitness. <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-working-together-cooperation.html" target="_blank">Selfish genes really can create altruistic behavior</a>, they just only do so when the benefits of being altruistic tend to outweigh the costs in the long run. <br />
<br />
Speaking of benefits outweighing the costs, it might be helpful to take a theoretical step back and consider why an organism would have any interest in joining a group in the first place. Here are two possible answers: (1) An organism can benefit in some way by entering into a coalition with other organisms, achieving goals it otherwise could not, or (2) an organism joins a group in order to benefit that group, with no regard for its own interests. The former option seems rather plausible, representing cases like reciprocal altruism and mutualism, whereas the latter option does not appear very reasonable. Self-interest wins the day over selflessness when it comes to explaining why an organism would bother to join a group in the first place. Glad we've established that. However, to then go on to say that, once it has joined a coalition, an organism converts its selfish interests to selfless ones is to now, basically, endorse the second explanation. It doesn't matter to what extent you think an organism is designed to do that, by the way. Any extent is equally as problematic.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">If you want any hope of being a millionaire, you will need a final answer at some point: selfish, or selfless? </span></i><br />
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But organisms do sometimes seem to sometimes put their own interests aside to benefit members of their group, right? Well, that's going to depend on how you're conceptualizing their interests. Let's say I'm a member of a group that demands a monthly membership fee, and, for the sake of argument, this group totally isn't a pornography website. I would be better off if I could keep that monthly membership fee to myself, so I must be acting selflessly by giving it to the group. There's only one catch: if I opt to not pay that membership fee, there's a good chance I'll lose some or all of the benefits that the group provides, whatever form those benefits come in. Similarly, whether through withdrawal of social support or active punishment, groups can make leaving or not contributing costlier than staying and helping. Lacking some sort of punishment mechanism, cooperation tend to fall apart. The larger point there here is that if by not paying a cost, you end up paying an even larger cost, that's not exactly selfless behavior requiring some special explanation. <br />
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Maybe that example isn't fair though; what about cases like when a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers? Well, there are a couple of points to make about the grenade-like examples: first, grenades are obviously an environmental novelty. Humans just aren't adapted to an environment containing grenades and, I'm told, most of us don't make a habit of jumping into dangerous situations to help others, blind to the probably of injury to death. That said, if you had a population of soldiers, some of which had a heritable tendency to jump on grenades to save others, while other soldiers had no such tendency, if grenades kept getting thrown at them, you could imagine which type would tend to out-reproduce the other, all else being equal. A second vital point to make is that every single output of an cognitive adaptation need not be adaptive; so long as whatever module led to such a decision tended to be beneficial
overall, it would still spread and be maintained throughout the population, despite
occasional maladaptive outcomes. Sometimes a peacock's large tail spells doom for the bird who carries it as it is unable to escape from a predator, but that does mean, on the whole, any one bird would be better suited to just not bother growing their tail; it's vital for attracting a mate, and surviving means nothing absent reproduction. <br />
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Now, onto the two major theoretical issues with group selection itself. The first is displayed by Jon in his article here:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Let’s run a quick thought experiment to see how biologists reached this
conclusion. Imagine that long before people spread out of Africa there
was a tribe called The Selfless People who lived on an isolated island
off the African coast. The Selfless People were instinctive altruists,
and their world was an Eden. </i></blockquote>
The thought experiment is already getting ahead of itself in a big way. In this story, it's already assumed that a group of people exist with these kind of altruistic tendencies. Little mind is paid to how the members of this group came to have these tendencies in the first place, which is a rather major detail, especially because, as many note, within groups selfishness wins. Consider the following: in order to demonstrate group selection, you would need a trait that conferred group-level fitness benefits at individual-level fitness costs. If the trait benefited the individual bearer in any way, then it would spread through standard selection and there would be no need to invoke group-level selection. So, given that we're, by definition, talking about a trait that actively hinders itself getting spread in order to benefit others, how does that trait spread throughout the population resulting in a population of 'selfless people'? How do you manage to get from 1 to 2 by way of subtraction?<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Perhaps it's from all the good Karma you build up?</span></i><br />
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No model of group selection I've come across yet seems to deal with this very basic problem. Maybe there are accounts out there I haven't read that contain the answer to my question; maybe the accounts I have seen have an answer that I've just failed to understand. Maybe. Then again, maybe none of the accounts I read have actually provided a satisfying answer because they <i>start</i> with the assumption that the traits they're seeking to prove exists already exists in some substantial way. That kind of strikes me as cheating. Jon's thought experiment certainly makes that assumption. The frequently cited paper by Boyd and Richardson (1990) seems to make that assumption as well; people who act in favor of their group selflessly just kind of exist. That trait needs an explanation; simply assuming it into existence and figuring out the benefits from that point is not good enough. There's a chance that the trait could spread by drift, but drift has, to the best of my knowledge, never been successfully invoked to explain the existence of any complex adaption. Further, drift only really works when a trait is, more or less, reproductively neutral. A trait that is actively harmful would have a further hurdle to overcome.<br />
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Now positing an adaptation designed to deliver fitness benefits to others at fitness costs to oneself might seen anathema to natural selection, because it is, but the problems don't stop there. There's still another big issue looming: how we are to define the group itself; you know, the thing that's supposed to be receiving these benefits. Like many other concepts, what counts as a group - or a benefit to a group - can be fuzzy and is often arbitrary. Depending on what context I currently find myself in, I could be said to belong to an almost incalculably large number of potential groups, and throughout the course of my life I will enter and leave many explicitly and implicitly. Some classic experiments in psychology demonstrate just how readily group memberships can be created and defined. I would imagine that for group selection to be feasible, at the very least, group membership needs to be relatively stable; people should know who their "real" group is and act altruistically towards it, and <i>not</i> other groups. Accordingly, I'd imagine group membership should be a bit more difficult to just make up on the spot. People shouldn't just start classifying themselves into groups on the basis of being told, "you are now in this group" anymore than they should start thinking about a random woman as their mother because someone says, "this woman is now your mother" (nor would we expect this designated mother to start investing in this new person over her own child). That group membership is relatively easy to generate demonstrates, in my mind, the reality that group membership is a fuzzy and fluid concept, and, subsequently, not the kind of thing that can be subject to selection. <br />
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Now perhaps, as Jon suggested, the selfless people will always win against the selfish people. It's an possible state of affairs, sure, but it's important to realize that it's an assumption being made, not a prediction being demonstrated. Such conditions can be artificially created in the lab, but whether they exist in the world, and, if they do, how frequently they appear, is another matter entirely. The more general point here is that group selection can work well in the world of theory, but that's because assumptions are made there that define it as working well. Using slightly tweaked sets of assumptions, selfless groups will always lose. They win when they are defined as winning, and lose when they are defined as losing. Using another set of assumptions, groups of people with psychic abilities win against groups without them. The key then, is to see how these states of affairs hold up in real life. If people don't have psychic abilities, or if psychic abilities are impossible for one reason or another, no number of assumptions will change that reality. <br />
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Finally, the results of thought experiments like the foot-bridge dilemma seem to cut against the group selection hypothesis: purposely sacrificing one person's life to save the lives of five others is, in terms of the group, the better choice, yet people consistently reject this course of action (there, B=5, C=1). When someone jumps on a grenade, we praise them for it; when someone <i>throws</i> another person on a grenade, we condemn them, despite this outcome being <i>better</i> from the group perspective (worst case, you've kill a non-altruist who wouldn't jump on it anyway, best case, you helped an altruist act). Those outcomes conflict with group selection predictions, which, I'd think, should tend to favor more utilitarian calculations - the ones that are actually better for a group. I would think it should also predict Communism would work out better than it tends to, or that people would really love to pay their taxes. Then again, group selection doesn't seem to be plausible in the first place, so perhaps result like these shouldn't be terribly surprising. <br />
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<b>References:</b> Boyd, R., & Richerson, P.J. (1990). Group selection among alternative evolutionary stable strategies. <i>Journal of Theoretical Biology, 145,</i> 331-342.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-67313669293997301232012-04-09T09:35:00.000-07:002012-04-22T12:40:44.985-07:00You've Got Some (Base)BallsSince Easter has rolled around, let's get in the season and consider very briefly part of the story of Jesus. The Sparknotes version of the story involves God symbolically sacrificing his son in order to in some way redeem mankind. There's something very peculiar about that line of reasoning, though: the idea that punishing someone for a different person's misdeed is acceptable. If Bill is driving his car and strikes a pedestrian in a crosswalk, I imagine many of us would find it very odd, if not morally repugnant, to then go an punish Kyle for what happened. Not only did Kyle not directly cause the act to take place, but Kyle didn't even intend for the action to take place - two of the criteria typically used to assess blame - so it makes little sense to punish him. As it turns out though, people who might very well disagree with punishing Kyle in the previous example can still quite willing to accept that kind of outcome in other contexts.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Turns out that the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II was one of those contexts.</i></span><br />
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If <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment" target="_blank">Wikipedia is to be believed</a>, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a large number of people of Japanese ancestry - most of which were American citizens - were moved into internment camps. This move was prompted by fears of further possible Japanese attacks on the United States amidst concerns about the loyalty of the Japanese immigrants, who might act in some way against the US with their native country. The Japanese, due to their perceived group membership, were punished because of acts perpetrated by others viewed as sharing that same group membership, not because they had done anything themselves, just that they might do something. Some years down the road, the US government issued an apology on behalf of those who committed the act, likely due to some collective sense of guilt about the whole thing. Not only did guilt get spread to the Japanese immigrants because of the actions of other Japanese people, but the blame for the measures taken against the Japanese immigrants was also shared by those who did not enact it because of their association.<br />
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Another somewhat similar example concerns the US government's response following the attacks of September 11th, 2001. All the men directly responsible for the hijackings were dead, and as
such, beyond further punishment. However, their supporters - the larger
group to which they belonged - was very much still alive, and it was on
that group that military descended (among others). Punishment of group members in this case is known as Accomplice Punishment: where members of a group are seen as contributing to the initial transgression in some way; what is known typically as conspiracy. In this case, people view those being punished as morally responsible for the act in question, so this type of punishment isn't quite analogous to the initial example of Bill and Kyle. Might there be an example that strips the moral responsibility of the person being punished out of the equation? Why yes, it's turn out there is at least one: baseball.<br />
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In baseball, a batter will occasionally be hit by a ball thrown by a pitcher (known as getting beaned). Sometimes these hits are accidental, sometimes they're intentional. Regardless, these hits can sometimes cause serious injury, which isn't shocking considering the speed at which the pitches are thrown, so they're nothing to take lightly. Cushman, Durwin, and Lively (2012) noted that sometimes a pitcher from one team will intentionally bean a player on the opposing team in response to a previous beaning. For instance, if the Yankees are playing the Red Sox, and a Red Sox pitcher hits a Yankee batter, the Yankee pitcher would subsequently hit a Red Sox batter. The researchers sought to examine the moral intuitions of baseball fans concerning these kinds of revenge beanings. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Serves someone else right!</i></span><br />
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The first question Cushman et al. asked was whether the fans found this practice to be morally acceptable. One-hundred forty five fans outside of Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium were presented with a story in which the the pitcher for the Cardinals intentionally hit a player for the Cubs, causing serious injury. In response, the pitcher from the Cubs hits a batter from the Cardinals. Fans were asked to rate the moral acceptability of the second pitcher's actions on a scale from 1 to 7. Those who rated the revenge beaning of an innocent player as at least somewhat morally acceptable accounted for 44% of the sample; 51% found it unacceptable, with 5% being unsure. In other words, about half of the sample saw punishing an innocent player by proxy as acceptable, simply because he was on the same team.<br />
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But was the batter hit by the revenge bean <i>actually</i> viewed as innocent? To address this question, Cushman et al. asked a separate sample of 131 fans from online baseball forums whether or not they viewed the batter who was hit second as being morally responsible for the actions of the pitcher form their team. The answers here were quite interesting. First off, they were more in favor of revenge beanings, with 61% of the sample indicating the practice was at least somewhat acceptable. The next finding was that roughly 80% of the people surveyed agreed that, yes, the batter being hit was <i>not</i> morally responsible. This was followed by an agreement that it was, in fact, OK to hit that innocent victim because he happened to belong to the same team.<br />
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The final finding from this sample was also enlightening. The order in which people were asked about moral responsibility and endorsement of revenge beaning was randomized, so in some cases people were asked whether punishment was OK first, followed by whether the batter was responsible, and in other cases that order was reversed. When people endorsed vicarious punishment first, they subsequently rated the batter as having more moral responsibility; when rating the moral responsibility first, there was no correlation between moral responsibility and punishment endorsement. What makes this finding so interesting is that it suggests people were making rationalizations for why someone should be punished after they had already decided to punish; not before. They had already decided to punish; now they were looking to justify why they had made that decision. This in turn actually made the batter appear to seem more morally responsible.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"See? Now that he has those handcuffs on his rock-solid alibi is looking weaker already." </span></i><br />
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This finding ties in nicely with a previous point I've made about how notions of who's a victim and who's a perpetrator are <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-do-not-bite-my-thumb-at-you-sir-but-i.html" target="_blank">fuzzy concepts</a>. Indeed, Cushman et al. present another result along those same lines: when it's actually their team doing the revenge beaning, people view the act as more morally acceptable. When the home team was being targeted for revenge beaning, 43% of participants said the beaning was acceptable; when it was the home team actually enacting the revenge, 67% of the subjects now said it was acceptable behavior. Having someone on your side of things get hurt appears to make people feel more justified in punishing someone, whether that someone is guilty or not. Simply being associated with the guilty party in name is enough.<br />
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Granted, when people have the option to enact punishment on the actual guilty party, they tend to prefer that. In the National League, pitchers also come up to bat, so the option of direct punishment exists in those cases. When the initial offending pitcher was beaned in the story, 70% of participants found the direct form of revenge morally acceptable. However, if direct punishment is not an option, vicarious punishment of a group member seemed to still be a fairly appealing option. Further, this vicarious punishment should be directed towards the offending team, and not an unrelated team. For example, if a Cubs pitcher hits a Yankee batter, only about 20% of participants would say it's then OK for a Yankee pitcher to hit a Red Sox batter the following night. I suppose you could say the silver-lining here is that people tend to favor saner punishment when it's an option. <br />
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Whether or not people are adapted to punish others vicariously, and, if so, in what contexts is such behavior adaptive and why, is a question left untouched by this paper. I could imagine certain contexts where aggressing against the family or allies of one who aggressed against you could be beneficial, but it would depend on a good deal of contingent factors. For instance, by punishing family members of someone who wronged you, you are still inflicting reproductive costs on the offending party, and by punishing the initial offenders allies, you make siding with and investing in said offender costlier. While the punishment might reach its intended target indirectly, it still reaches them. That said, there would be definite risks of strengthening alliances against you - as you are hurting others, which tends to piss people off - as well as possibly calling retaliation down on your own family and allies. Unfortunately, the results of this study are not broken by gender, so there's no way to tell if men or women differ or not in their endorsement of vicarious punishment. It seems these speculations will need to remain, well, speculative for now.<br />
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<b>References: </b>Cushman, F., Durwin, A.J., & Lively, C. (2012). Revenge without responsibility? Judgments about collective punishment in baseball. <i>Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. (In Press) </i>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-46264223950006363502012-04-05T20:23:00.000-07:002012-04-05T21:12:17.467-07:00Tucker Max, Hitler, And Moral Contagion<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Disgust is triggered off not primarily by the sensory properties of an object, but by ideational concerns about <b>what it is,</b> or <b>where it has been</b>...The first law, <b>contagion</b>, states that "things which have once been in contact with each other continue ever afterwards to act on each other"...When an offensive (or revered) person or animal touches a previously neutral object, some essence or residue is transmitted, even when no material particles are visible. - </i><a href="http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/haidt.rozin.1997.body-psyche-culture.pub009.pdf" target="_blank">Haidt et al.</a><i> (1997, emphasis theirs).</i></blockquote>
Play time is over; it's time to return to the science and think about what we can learn of human psychology from the <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/04/tucker-max-v-planned-parenthood.html" target="_blank">Tucker Max and Planned Parenthood</a> incident. I'd like to start with a relevant personal story. A few years ago I was living in England for several months. During my stay, I managed to catch my favorite band play a few times. After one of their shows, I got a taxi back to my hotel, picked up my guitar from my room, and got back to the venue. I waited out back with a few other fans by the tour bus. Eventually, the band made their way out back, and I politely asked if they would mind signing my guitar. They agreed, on the condition that I not put it on eBay (which I didn't, of course), and I was soon the proud owner of several autographs. I haven't played the guitar since for fear of damaging it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This is my guitar; there are many like it, but this one is mine....and also some kind of famous people wrote on it once. </i></span><br />
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My behavior, and other similar behavior, is immediately and intuitively understandable by almost all people, especially anyone who enjoys the show Pawnstars, yet very few people take the time to reflect on just how strange it is. By getting the signatures on the guitar, I did little more than show it had been touched very briefly by people I hold in high esteem. Nothing I did fundamentally altered the guitar in anyway, and yet somehow it was different; it was distinguished in some invisible way from the thousands of others just like it, and no doubt more valuable in the eyes of other fans. This example is fairly benign; what happened with Planned Parenthood and Tucker Max was not. In that case, the result of such intuitive thinking was that a helpful organization was out $500,000 and many men and women lost access to their services locally. Understanding what's going on in both cases better will hopefully help people not make mistakes like that again. It probably won't, but wouldn't it be nice if did? <br />
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The first order of business in understanding what happened is to take a step back and consider the universal phenomenon of disgust. One function of our disgust psychology is to deal with the constant threat of microbial and parasitic organisms. By avoiding ingesting or contacting potentially contaminated materials, the chances of contracting costly infections or harmful parasites are lowered. Further, if by sheer force of will or accident a disgusting object is actually ingested, it's not uncommon for a vomiting reaction to be triggered, serving to expel as much of the contaminant as possible. While a good portion of our most visceral disgust reactions focus on food, animals, or bodily products, not all of them do; the reaction extends into the realm of behavior, such as deviant sexual behavior, and perceived physical abnormalities, like birth defects or open wounds. Many of the behaviors that trigger some form of disgust put us in no danger of infection or toxic exposure, so there must be more to the story than just avoiding parasites and toxins. <br />
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One way Haidt et al. (1997) attempt to explain the latter part of this disgust reaction is by referencing concerns about humans being reminded of their animal nature, or thinking of their body as a temple, which are, frankly, not explanations at all. All such an "explanation" does is push the question back a step to, "why would being reminded of our animal nature or profaning a temple cause disgust?" I feel there are two facts that stand out concerning our disgust reaction that help to shed a lot of light on the matter: (1) disgust reactions seem to require social interaction to develop, meaning what causes disgust varies to some degree from culture to culture, as well as within cultures, and (2) disgust reactions concerning behavior or physical traits tend to focus heavily on behaviors or traits that are locally abnormal in some way. So, the better question to ask is: "If the function of disgust is primarily related to avoidance behaviors, what are the costs and benefits to people being disgusted by whatever they are, and how can we explain the variance?" This brings us nicely to the topic of Hitler.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Now I hate V-neck shirts even more</i></span>.<br />
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As Haidt et al. (1997) note, people tend to be somewhat reluctant to wear used clothing, even if that clothing had been since washed; it's why used clothing, even if undamaged, is always substantially cheaper than a new, identical article. If the used clothing in question belonged to a particularly awful person - in this case, Hitler - people are even less interested in wearing it. However, this tendency is reversed for items owned by well-liked figures, just like my initial example concerning my guitar demonstrated. I certainly wouldn't let a stranger draw on my guitar, and I'd be even less willing to let someone I personally disliked give it a signature. I could imagine myself even being averse to playing an instrument privately that's been signed by someone I disliked. So why this reluctance? What purpose could it possibly serve?<br />
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One very plausible answer is that the core issue here is signaling, as it was in the Tucker Max example. People are morally disgusted by, and subsequently try and avoid, objects or behaviors that could be construed as sending the wrong kind of signal. Inappropriate or offensive behavior can lead to social ostracism, the fitness consequences of which can be every bit as extreme as those from parasites. Likewise, behavior that signals inappropriate group membership can be socially devastating, so you need to be cautious about what signal you're sending. One big issue that people need to contend with is that signals themselves can be interpreted many different ways. Let's say you go over to a friend's house, and find a Nazi flag hanging in the corner of a room; how should you interpret what you're seeing? Perhaps he's a history buff, specifically interested in World War II; maybe a relative fought in that war and brought the flag home as a trophy; he might be a Nazi sympathizer; it might even be the case that he doesn't know what the flag represents and just liked the design. It's up to you to fill in the blanks, and such a signal comes with a large risk factor: not only could an interpretation of the signal hurt your friend, it could hurt you as well for being seen as complicit in his misdeed. <br />
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Accordingly, if that signaling model is correct, then I would predict that signal strength and sign should tend to outweigh the contagion concerns, especially if that signal can be interpreted negatively by whoever you're hoping to impress. Let's return to the Hitler example: the signaling model would predict that people should prefer to publicly wear Hitler's actual black V-neck shirt (as it doesn't send any obvious signals) over wearing a brand new shirt that read "I Heart Hitler". This parallels the Tucker Max example: people were OK with the idea of him donating money so long as he did so in a manner that kept his name off the clinic. Tucker's money wasn't tainted because of the source as much as it was tainted because his conditions made sure the source was unambiguous. Since people didn't like the source and wanted to reject the perceived association, their only option was to reject the money. <br />
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This signaling explanation also sheds light on why the things that cause disgust are generally seen as, in some way, abnormal or deviant. Those who physically look abnormal may carry genes that are less suited for the current environment, or be physically compromised in such a way as it's better to avoid them than invest in them. Those who behave in a deviant, inappropriate, or unacceptable manner could be signaling something important about their usefulness, friendliness, or their status as a cooperative individual, depending on the behavior. Disgust of deviants, in this case, helps people pick which conspecifics they'd be most profitably served by, and, more generally, helps people fit into their group. You want to avoid those who won't bring you much reward for your investment, and avoid doing things that get on other people's bad side. Moral disgust would seem to serve both functions well. <br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Which is why I now try and make new friends over mutual hatreds instead of mutual interests.</span></i><br />
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Now returning one final time to the Planned Parenthood issue, you might not like the idea of Tucker Max having his name on a clinic because you don't like him. I understand that concern, as I wouldn't like to play a guitar that was signed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church. On that level, by criticizing those who don't like the idea of a Tucker Max Planned Parenthood clinic, I might seem like a hypocrite; I would be just as uncomfortable in a similar situation. There is a major difference between the two positions though, as a quick example will demonstrate.<br />
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Let's say there's a group of starving people in a city somewhere that you happen to be charge of. You make all the calls concerning who gets to bring anything into your city, so anyone who wants to help needs to go through you. In response to the hunger problem, the Westboro Baptist Church offers to donate a truck load of food to those in need, but they have one condition: the truck that delivers the food will bear a sign reading "This food supplied courtesy of the Westboro Baptist Church". If you dislike the Church, as many people do, you have something of a dilemma: allow an association with them in order to help people out, or turn the food away on principle. <br />
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For what it's worth, I would rather see people eat than starve, even if it means that the food comes from a source I don't like. If you're desire to help the starving people eat is trumped by your desire to avoid associating with the Church, don't tell the starving people you're really doing it for their own good, because you wouldn't be; you'd be doing it for your own reasons at their expense, and that's why you'd be an asshole. <br />
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<b>References:</b> Haidt, J., Rozin, P., McCauley, C., & Imada, S. (1997). Body, psyche, and culture: The relationship between disgust and morality. <i>Psychology and Developing Societies, 9, </i>107-131.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-38225551618615213642012-04-04T18:52:00.004-07:002012-04-05T19:15:44.536-07:00Tucker Max V. Planned Parenthood<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead. </i><b>-<a href="http://www.tuckermax.com/" target="_blank">Tucker Max</a></b><i> </i></blockquote>
It should come as no surprise that there are more than a few people in this world who don't hold Tucker Max in high esteem. He makes no pretenses of being what most would consider a nice person, and makes no apologies for his behavior; behavior which is apparently rewarded with tons of sex and money. Recently, however, this reputation prevented him from making a $500,000 donation to Planned Parenthood. Naturally, this generated something of a debate, full of plenty of moral outrage and inconsistent arguments. Since I've been thinking and writing about reasoning and arguing lately, I decided to treat myself and indulge in a little bit. I'll do my best to make this educational as well as personal, but I make no promises; this is predominately intellectual play for me.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sometimes you just have to kick back and treat yourself in a way that avoids going outside and enjoying the nice weather. </span></i><br />
<br />
So here's the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholiday/2012/04/03/why-wont-planned-parenthood-take-500000/" target="_blank">background</a>, as it's been recounted: Tucker find himself with a tax burden that can be written off to some extent if he donates money charitably. Enterprising guy that he is, he also wants to donate the money in such a way that it can help generate publicity for his new book. After some deliberation, he settles on a donation of $500,000 to Planned Parenthood, as he describes himself as always having been pro-choice, having been helped by Planned Parenthood throughout his life, and, perhaps, finding the prospect funny. His condition for the donation is that he wanted his name on a clinic, which apparently is something Planned Parenthood will consider if you donate enough money. A meeting is scheduled to hammer out the details, but is cancelled a few hours before it was set to take place - as Tucker is driving to it - because Planned Parenthood suddenly became concerned about Tucker's reputation and backs out of the meeting without offering any alternative options.<br />
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I'll start by stating my opinion: Planned Parenthood made a bad call, and those who are arguing that Planned Parenthood made the correct call don't have a leg to stand on.<br />
<br />
Here's what wasn't under debate: whether Planned Parenthood needed money. Their funding was apparently cut dramatically in Texas, where the donation was set to take place, and the money was badly needed. So if Planned Parenthood needed money and turned down such a large sum of it, one can only imagine they had some reasons to do so. One could also hope those reasons were good. From the various <a href="http://feministing.com/2012/04/03/tucker-maxs-planned-parenthood-publicity-stunt/" target="_blank">articles</a> and <a href="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/04/03/planned-parenthood-and-tucker-max/" target="_blank">comments</a> on the articles that I've read defending Planned Parenthood's actions, there are two sets of reasons why they feel this decision was the right one. The first set I'll call the explicit arguments - what people say - and the second I'll call the implicit motivations - what I infer (or people occasionally say) the motivations behind the explicit arguments are.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">...but didn't have access to any reproductive care, as the only Planned Parenthood near me closed.</span></i><br />
<br />
The explicit arguments contain two main points. The first thrust of the attack is that Tucker's donation is selfish; his major goal is writing off his taxes and generating publicity, and this taints his action. That much is true, but from there this argument flounders. No one is demanding that Planned Parenthood <i>only</i> accept truly selfless donations. Planned Parenthood itself did not suggest that Tucker's self-interest had anything at all to do with why they rejected the offer. This explicit argument serves only one real purpose, and that's character assassination by way of framing Tucker's donation in the worst possible light. One big issue with this is that I find it rather silly to try and malign Tucker's character, as he does a fine job of that himself; his self-regarding personality is responsible for a good deal of why he's famous. Another big issue is that Tucker <i>could</i> have donated that money to any non-profit he wanted, and I doubt Planned Parenthood was the only way he could have achieved his main goals. Just because caring for Planned Parenthood might not have been his <i>primary</i> motive with the donation, it does not mean it played <i>no</i> part in motivating the decision. Similarly, just because someone's primary motivation for working at their job is money, it does not mean money is the only reason they chose the job they did, out of all the possible jobs they could have picked.<br />
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The second explicit argument is the more substantial half. Since Tucker Max is a notable asshole, many people voiced concerns that putting his name on a clinic would do Planned Parenthood a good deal of reputational damage, causing other people to withdraw or withhold their financial or political support. Ultimately, the costs of this reputational damage would end up outweighing Tucker's donation, so really, it was a smart economic (and political, and moral) move. In fact, one author goes so far as to suggest that taking Tucker's donation could have put the future of Planned Parenthood as a whole in jeopardy. This argument, at it's core, suggests that Planned Parenthood lost the battle (Tucker's donation) to win the war (securing future funding).<br />
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There are two big problems with this second argument. Most importantly, the negative outcome of accepting Tucker's donation is purely imagined. It might have happened, it might not have happened, and there's absolutely zero way of confirming whether it would have. That does not stop people from assuming that the worst would have happened, as making that assumption gives those defending Planned Parenthood an unverifiable potential victim. As I've <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/02/when-is-it-useful-to-be-victim.html" target="_blank">mentioned before</a>, having a victim on your side of the debate is crucial for engaging the moral psychology of others, and when people are making moral pronouncements they do actively search for victims. The other big problem with this second argument is that it's staggering inconsistent with the first. Remember, people were very critical of Tucker's motivations for the donation. One of the most frequently trotted out lines was, "If Tucker <i>really</i> cared about Planned Parenthood, he would have made the donation anonymously anyway. Then, he could have helped the women out and avoided the reputational harm he would have done to Planned Parenthood. Since he didn't donate anonymously (or at least, I think he didn't; that's kind of the rub with <i>anonymous</i> donations), he's just a total asshole". <br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"I was going to go refill my birth control prescription here</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>, but if Tucker Max helped keep this clinic open, maybe I'll just get pregnant instead"</i></span><br />
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The inconsistency is as follows: people assume that other donors would avoid or politically attack Planned Parenthood if Tucker Max was associated with it. Perhaps some women would even avoid the clinic itself, because it would make them feel upset. Again, maybe that would happen, maybe it wouldn't. Assuming that it would, one could make the case that if those other supporters <i>really cared</i> about Planned Parenthood, then they shouldn't let something like an association of a single clinic with Tucker Max dissuade them. The only reason that someone who previously supported Planned Parenthood would be put off would be for personal, self-interested reasons. The very same kind of motivation they criticized Tucker for initially. Instead of bloggers and commenters writing well-reasoned posts about how people shouldn't stop supporting Planned Parenthood just because Tucker Max has his name on one, they instead praise excluding his sizable donation. One would think anyone who <i>truly</i> supported Planned Parenthood would err on the side of making arguments concerning why people should continue to support it, not why it would be justifiable for people to pull their support in fear of association with someone they don't like.<br />
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Which brings us very nicely to the implicit motivations. The core issue here can be best summed up by <a href="http://tuckermax.me/the-exhausting-process-of-trying-to-give-money-to-planned-parenthood/" target="_blank">Tucker himself</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b style="font-weight: normal;">Most charities are not run to help people, they are run because
they are ways for people to signal status about themselves to other
people...</b>I wasn’t the “right type” of person to take money from so they’d rather
close clinics. It’s the worst kind of elitism, the kind that cloaks
itself in altruism. They care more about the perception of themselves
and their organization than they care about its effectiveness at
actually serving the reproductive needs of women.</i></blockquote>
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People object to Tucker Max's donation on two main fronts: (1) they don't want to do anything that benefits Tucker in any way, and (2) they don't personally want to be associated with Tucker Max in any way. Those two motivations are implicitly followed by a, "...and that's more important to me than ensuring Planned Parenthood can continue to serve the women and men of their communities". It looks a lot like a <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/12/discount-engagement-rings.html" target="_blank">costly display</a> on the part of those who supported the decision. They're demonstrating their loyalty to their group, or to their ideals, and they're willing to endure a very large, very real cost to do so. At least, they're willing to let <i>other</i> people suffer that cost, as I don't assume all, or even most, of the bloggers and commenters will be directly impacted by this decision. <br />
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Whatever ideal it is that they're committed to, whatever group they're displaying for, it is not Planned Parenthood. Perhaps they feel they're fighting to end what they perceive as sexism, or misogyny, or a personal slight because Tucker wrote something about fat girls they found insulting. What they're fighting for specifically is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they're willing to see Planned Parenthoods close and men and women lose access to their services before they're willing to compromise whatever it is they're primarily fighting for. They might dress their objections up to make it look like they aren't self-interested or fighting some personal battle, but the disguise is thin indeed. One could make the case that such behavior, co-opting the suffering of another group to bolster your own cause, is rather selfish; the kind of thing a real asshole would do.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-84576854591712161512012-03-27T20:37:00.002-07:002012-04-05T19:15:54.880-07:00Communication As Persuasion<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span class="quote">Can you even win debates? I’ve never heard someone go, "My opponent makes a ton of sense; I’m out."</span></i><b> -Daniel Tosh</b></blockquote>
In my younger days, I lost a few years of my life to online gaming. Everquest was the culprit. Now, don't get me wrong, those years were perhaps some of the happiest in my life. Having something fun to do at all hours of the day with thousands of people to do it with has that effect. Those years just weren't exactly productive. While I was thoroughly entertained, when the gaming was over I didn't have anything to show for it. A few years after my gaming phase, I went through another one: chronic internet debating. Much like online gaming, it was oddly addictive and left me with nothing to show for it when it all ended. While I liked to try and justify it to myself - that I was learning a lot from the process, refining my thought process and arguments, and being a good intellectual - I can say with 72% certainty that I had wasted my time again, and this time I wasn't even having as much fun doing it. Barring a few instances of cleaning up grammar, I'm fairly certain no one changed my opinion about a thing and I changed about as many in return. You'd think with all the collective hours my fellow debaters and I had logged in that we might have been able to come to an agreement about <i>something</i>. We were all <i>reasonable</i> people seeking the <i>truth</i>, after all.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Just like this reasonable fellow. </span></i><br />
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Yet, despite that positive and affirming assumption, debate after debate devolved into someone - or everyone - throwing their hands up in frustration, accusing the other side of being intentionally ignorant, too biased, intellectually dishonest, unreasonable, liars, stupid, and otherwise horrible monsters (or, as I like to call it, suggesting your opponent is a human). Those characteristics must have been the reason the other side of the debate didn't accept that our side was the right side, because our side was, of course, <i>objectively</i> right. Debates are full of logical fallacies like those personal attacks, such as: appeals to authority, straw men, red herrings, and question begging, to name a few, yet somehow it only seems like the other side was doing it. People relentless dragged issues into debates that didn't have any bearing on the outcome, and they always seemed to apply their criticisms selectively. <br />
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Take a previously-highlighted example from Amanda Marcotte: when discussing the hand-grip literature on resisting <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/01/18/rape_genetic_adaptation_likely_not.html" target="_blank">sexual assault</a>, she complained that, "most of the studies were conducted on small, homogeneous groups of women, using subjective measurements." Pretty harsh words for a study comprised of 232 college women between the ages of 18 and 35. When discussing another study that found results Amanda liked - <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/10/20/study_shows_that_men_aren_t_funnier_than_women_but_that_people_g.html" target="_blank">a negligible difference in average humor ratings between men and women</a> - she raised no concerns about "...small, homogeneous groups of women, using subjective measurements". That she didn't is hypocritical, considering the humor study had only 32 subjects (16 men and women, presumably undergraduates from some college) and used caption writing as the only measure of humor. So what gives: does Amanda care about the number of subjects when assessing the results or not?<br />
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The answer, I feel is a, "Yes, but only insomuch as it's useful to whatever point she's trying to make". The goal in debates - and communication more generally - is not logical consistency; it's persuasion. If consistency (or being accurate) gets in the way of persuasion, the former can easily be jettisoned for the latter. While being right, in some objective sense, is one way of persuading others, being right will not always make your argument the more persuasive one; the resistance to evolutionary theory has demonstrated as much. Make no mistake, this behavior is not limited to Amanda or the people that you happen to disagree with; research has shown that this is a behavior <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/10/pop-psychology-i-read-it-so-it-must-be.html" target="_blank">pretty much everyone takes part in at some point</a>, and that includes you*. A second mistake I'd urge you not to make is to see this inconsistency as some kind of flaw in our reasoning abilities. There are some persuasive reasons to see inconsistency as reasoning working precisely how it was designed to, annoying as it might be to deal with.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Much like my design for an airbag that deploys when you start the car.</span></i><br />
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As <a href="http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Mercier-Sperber-Why-do-humans-reason.pdf" target="_blank">Mercier and Sperber</a> (2011) point out, the question, "Why do humans reason?" is often left unexamined. The answer these authors provide is that our reasoning ability evolved primarily for an argumentative context: producing arguments to persuade others and evaluating the arguments others present. It's uncontroversial that communication between individuals can be massively beneficial. Information which can be difficult or time consuming to acquire at first can be imparted quickly and almost without effort to others. If you discovered how to complete some task successfully - perhaps how to build a tool or a catch fish more effectively - perhaps through a trial-and-error process, communicating that information to others allows them to avoid the need to undergo that same process themselves. Accordingly, trading information can be wildly profitable for all parties involved; everyone gets to save time and energy. However, while communication can offer large benefits, we also need to contend with the constant risk of misinformation. If I tell you that your friend is plotting to kill you, I'd have done you a great service if I was telling the truth; if the information I provided was either mistaken or fabricated, you'd have been better off ignoring me. In order to achieve these two major goals - knowing how to persuade others and when to be persuaded yourself - there's a certain trust barrier in communication that needs to be overcome. <br />
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This is where Mercier and Sperber say our reasoning ability comes in: by giving others convincing justifications to accept our communications, as well as being able to better detect and avoid the misinformation of others, our reasoning abilities allow for more effective and useful communication. Absent any leviathan to enforce honesty, our reasoning abilities evolved to fill the niche. It is worth comparing this perspective to another: the idea that reasoning evolved as some general ability to improve or refine our knowledge across the board. In this scenario, our reasoning abilities more closely resemble some <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-domain-general-does-not-equal.html" target="_blank">domain-general</a> truth finders. If this latter perspective is true, we should expect no improvements in performance on reasoning tasks contingent on whether or not they are placed in an argumentative context. That is not what we observe, though. Poor performance on a number of abstracted reasoning problems, such as the <a href="http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/wason/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Wason Selection Task</a>, is markedly improved when those same problems are placed in an argumentative context.<br />
<br />
While truth tends to win in cases like the Wason Selection Task
being argued over, let's not get a big-head about it and insist that it implies our reasoning abilities will always push towards truth. It's important to note how divorced from reality
situations like that one are: it's not often you find people with a
mutual interest in truth, arguing over a matter they have no personal
stake in, that also has a clearly defined and objective solution. While there's no doubt that reasoning <i>can</i> sometimes lead people to make better choices, it would be a mistake to assume that's the primary <i>function</i>
of the ability, as reasoning frequently doesn't seem to lead people
towards that destination. To the extent that reasoning tends to push us
towards correct, or improved, answers, this is probably due to correct
answers being easier to justify than incorrect ones.<br />
<br />
As the Amanda Marcotte example demonstrated, when assessing an argument, often "[people] are not trying to form an opinion: They already have one. Their goal is argumentative rather than epistemic, and it ends up being pursed at the expense of epistemic soundness...People who have an opinion to defend don't really evaluate the arguments of their interlocutors in search for genuine information but rather consider them from the start as counterarguments to be rebutted." This behavior of assessing information by looking for arguments that support one's own views and rebut the views of others is known as motivated reasoning. If reasoning served some general knowledge-refining ability, this would be a strange behavior indeed. It seems people often end up strengthening not their knowledge about the world, but rather their existing opinions, a conclusion that fits nicely in the argumentative theory. While opinions that cannot be sustained eventually tend to get tossed aside, as reality does impose some constraints (Kunda, 1990), on fuzzier matters for which there aren't clear, objective answers - like morality - arguments have gotten bogged down for millenia. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I'm not hearing anymore objections to the proposal that "might makes right". Looks like that debate has been resolved. </i></span><br />
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Further still, the argumentative theory can explain a number of findings that economists tend to find odd. If you have a choice between two products that are equally desirable, adding a third and universally less-desirable option should not have any effect on your choice. For instance, let's say you have a choice between $5 today and $6 tomorrow; adding an additional option of $5 tomorrow to the mix shouldn't have any effect, according to standard economic rationality, because it's worse than either option. Like many assumptions of economics, it turns out to not hold up. If you add that additional option, you'll find people start picking the $5 today option more than they previously did. Why? Because it gives them a clear justification for their decision, as if they were anticipating having to defend it. While $5 today or $6 tomorrow might be equally as attractive, $5 today is certainly more attractive than $5 tomorrow, making the $5 decision more justifiable. Our reasoning abilities will frequently point us towards decisions that are more justifiable, even if they end up not making us more satisfied.<br />
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Previous conceptualizations about the function of reasoning have missed the mark, and, as a result, had been trying to jam a series of square pegs into the same round hole. They have been left unable to explain vast swaths of human behaviors, so researchers simply labeled those behaviors that didn't fit as biases, neglects, blind spots, errors, or fallacies, without ever succeeding in figuring out why they existed; why our reasoning abilities often seemed so poorly designed for reasoning. By placing all these previously anomalous findings under a proper theoretical lens and context, they suddenly start to make a lot more sense. While the people you find yourself arguing with may still seem like total morons, this theory may at least help you gain some insight into why they're acting so intolerable. <br />
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*<span style="font-size: x-small;">As a rule, it doesn't apply to me, so if you find yourself disagreeing with me, you're going to want to rethink your position. Sometimes life's just unfair that way. </span><br />
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<b>References:</b> Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. <i>Psychological Bulletin, 108, </i>480-498.<br />
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Mercier, H. & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. <i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34,</i> 57-111.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-40071160561034478392012-03-23T15:15:00.000-07:002012-03-23T15:29:26.310-07:00I Do Not Bite My Thumb At You, Sir, But I Do Bite My Thumb<span style="font-size: small;">I'm not a parent, but I can only imagine being one is a largely <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=OJNc1VQIsE4" target="_blank">horrible affair</a> for all parties involved. While I am currently a fantastically successful and good-looking man, I also represent a multiple-decade old ball of need and demands that has more than likely ruined many years of life for my parents. So, my bad there, I suppose; that one's on me. Out of the many reasons that I've been able to gather as to why being a parent is generally a pain in the ass, one is that children are notoriously finicky eaters. Frustrated with their children's lack of desire to eat this or that, one line that many parents will resort to is, in one form or another, "Finish what's on your plate. You're lucky to even have food; there are people starving in the world who wish they were you right now." I'm sure those hungry kids of the world can take some solace in knowing that the food wasn't wasted; it was forced on an unwilling recipient. Much better. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Any child worth their salt, when faced with such an argument from their parents, would respond along the following lines: "It doesn't matter whether I eat the food or throw it away; either way, it won't have any impact on the starving children". They'd be right. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxMhTgzm3Z9UKlDl4tcXKSOPMrke9-4yLR1UZFN-MZSQvgEkQGtdeeCcj11I-OOsvst22-vED769JnhmtwIFYCpFpIesINcNVQ2r4IVbWJvPzaBwgbzptmoodrnnFQInSXB_-0RJozZjg/s1600/hungry-children.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxMhTgzm3Z9UKlDl4tcXKSOPMrke9-4yLR1UZFN-MZSQvgEkQGtdeeCcj11I-OOsvst22-vED769JnhmtwIFYCpFpIesINcNVQ2r4IVbWJvPzaBwgbzptmoodrnnFQInSXB_-0RJozZjg/s320/hungry-children.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Well, so long as you made them eat <b>all</b> that extra food they didn't want..."</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">I've been speculating lately about what examples like this one can tell us about the functioning of our moral psychology. Here's another: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had been reported to be spending about <a href="http://www.sodahead.com/living/suri-cruises-130000-christmas-list-rad-or-ridiculous/question-2351591/" target="_blank">$130,000 on their daughter's Christmas presents</a>. The comments section of the article reveals that many people seem to find such behavior downright morally disgusting, if not outright evil, complete with lots of pictures of thoroughly malnourished children. Not only do Cruise and Holmes get painted as awful people for not using that money for other purposes, there is also rampant speculation as to how their child is going to turn out in the future because of it. Few of the predictions appear optimistic, while most speculate that she's going to turn into an awful person. Why does the story take on that tone, rather than one of, say, parental affection, or of demonstrating value in personal freedom to spend money however one sees fit? You know, individual rights, and all that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">These examples make a very important point: if you're trying to convince someone to do something - anything, it doesn't matter what - it helps to have a victim on your side of the debate; someone who is being harmed by the action in question. Having one or more victims allows you to attempt and appeal to the moral psychology of others; it allows you to gain the support of latent coalitions in your social environment that <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/02/when-is-it-useful-to-be-victim.html" target="_blank">can help achieve your ends</a>. However, the term "victim" - much like the terms fairness or race - has a great deal of ambiguity to it. Victimhood is not an "out-there" type of variable capable of being easily measured or observed, like height or eye color. Victimhood is something that needs to be inferred. What cues people pick up on or make use of when assessing and generating such claims has gone largely unexamined. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Consider the victims that people outlined in the Tom and Katie example: first, they are hurting their daughter directly by spoiling her, as she will be unhappy in some way later in life because of it. Perhaps she won't value what she has very much because it comes easily. By extension, they're also hurting indirectly the people their daughter will come into contact with later in life, as she will turn out to be a nasty, entitled ass because of the treatment she received from her parents. Finally, Tom and Katie are hurting the starving children of world by choosing to spend some of their money in ways that aren't immediately alleviating their plight; they are hurting these children by not helping them. The issue comes to be viewed as their responsibility in some way because of their status and wealth, as if they are <i>expected</i> to do something about it. By acting as they are, they are shirking some perceived social debts they have to others, like not repaying a loan. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ulzf10JRT77_0Yiz8TbqyOQ2eu_3VSmOxzRyJ5vpKgjMXkmO0MDC55rh7cgwY-bFXosLz-6r5-i0L7eDxOjx3j3d6JxnhuMighyJqpb4YwSU_8EeIsx567mCQE34JIwhj8IqGH1tAuk/s1600/mission_impossible_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ulzf10JRT77_0Yiz8TbqyOQ2eu_3VSmOxzRyJ5vpKgjMXkmO0MDC55rh7cgwY-bFXosLz-6r5-i0L7eDxOjx3j3d6JxnhuMighyJqpb4YwSU_8EeIsx567mCQE34JIwhj8IqGH1tAuk/s320/mission_impossible_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Maybe he saved some lives from stopping that horrible new virus in MI-2, but he could have saved more lives by fighting hunger in Africa. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">As the initial example of the finicky child demonstrates, victimhood connections are also open to be questioned and dismissed. By spending money on their daughter, Tom and Katie do not intend to do any harm; quite the opposite. Perhaps their daughter may grow up to love her own children deeply. After all, they're trying to make their daughter happy, which most people wouldn't class as a particularly heinous act. Any argument that applies to <i>their</i> lavish spending would apply with equal force to <i>any</i> non-vital spending. Almost all people in first world countries are capable of lowering their own standard of living and comfort to save at least one starving child from death. The Christmas spending itself is also benefiting others: the businesses being patronized, the employees of those businesses, the families of those employees, generating taxes for the government, and so on.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Further, Tom and Katie are not, to the best of my knowledge, the cause of world hunger or the force maintaining it. I imagine you would be offended were you approached by a homeless man who insisted his being homeless was your responsibility and you owe him help to make up for your lavish lifestyle. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">What all this demonstrates is that, in the service of promoting their views, people appear highly motivated to find victims. These victims might come from across the globe or live next door; they might live in the present, the future, or even the past; they might be victims in ways that in no way relate to the current situation; they might be victims without a face, like "society". In fact, the victims may be the very people someone is trying to help. In the service of denying accusations of immorality, people are also highly motivated to deny victims. The shooting of Trayvon Martin was recently, in part, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203230002" target="_blank">blamed on how he was dressed</a>; because he was wearing a hoodie. A similar phenomena is seen when people suggest women who get raped were in part responsible for the act due to a proactive style of dress. Those who are seen as <a href="http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2012/03/10" target="_blank">causing their own misfortunes</a> are rarely given much sympathy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">This back and forth, between naming victims, assessing victimhood, and denying it, opens the way to what I feel are some sophisticated strategies on the parts of agents, patients, and third-parties. There's a very valuable resource under contention - the latent coalitions of the social world, and their capacity for punishment - and successfully harnessing that resource depends on manipulating the fuzzy perceptions of harm and responsibility. </span><span style="font-size: small;">It should go without saying that a victim also needs a victimizer, and you can bet people can be just as motivated to perceive victimizers in similar fashions.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Was that man biting his thumb at you, sir, or was he just biting his thumb? Will he bite his thumb at you in the future if you don't act to stop him now?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8uPq7ZApLPOGL9AWfXHgrF2NKprvoWVKqJuTcOuogdstlILLeoO4HCvKEH2u_fgBQC6rDTwK1G4aepPdXpxTxDeKqlyc237Mu1pUGsEqIvCCd_92QX3bDYpx7L_-r14tJuHxC_Fk65k/s1600/Shakespeare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8uPq7ZApLPOGL9AWfXHgrF2NKprvoWVKqJuTcOuogdstlILLeoO4HCvKEH2u_fgBQC6rDTwK1G4aepPdXpxTxDeKqlyc237Mu1pUGsEqIvCCd_92QX3bDYpx7L_-r14tJuHxC_Fk65k/s1600/Shakespeare.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The 16th century equivalent of "suck it". </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">As the social world we live in is a dynamic place, people must be prepared to assess these claims when made by others, defend against the claims when leveled against themselves, and generate and level these claims against others. As contexts change, we should be able to observe certain biases in information processing become more active or dormant within subjects. The same person who claims that Tom Cruise is a horrible person for spoiling his daughter will happily justify buying their own child a new iPad for Christmas. The child who asks for a new iPad but doesn't get it will <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57349373-501465/no-iphones-for-christmas-brings-out-worst-in-kids/" target="_blank">complain vocally</a> about how they're being mistreated, while third-parties judge these victimhood claims as lacking before going off to complain about how they're unappreciated at work by their asshole boss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">What makes a victim a <i>better</i> victim? What about a perpetrator? What are the costs and benefits to being seen as one or the other, and how does that interact with other factors, such as gender? How do these expectations of who <i>ought</i> to do what get formed? How do relationships and group affiliations play into the generation and assessment of these perceptions? There are many such questions currently lacking an answer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Like a water to fish or air to humans, our abilities in this realm often go unnoticed or unappreciated, despite our being constantly surrounded by them. While we many notice the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of others as their place in the social world changes, we rarely, if ever, notice them in ourselves. Noticing these habits in yourself would do you few favors if your goal is to persuade others. Besides, biases are those things that <i>other</i> people have. They lack <i>your</i> awesome powers of insight and understanding. Who are they to question your perceptions of the social world? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-22309818308254073662012-03-16T10:54:00.000-07:002012-03-16T10:54:44.021-07:00Why Domain General Does Not Equal Plasticity<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>"It is because of, and not despite, this specificity of inherent structure that the output of computational systems is so sensitively contingent on environmental inputs. It is just this sensitive contingency to subtitles of environmental variation that make a narrow intractability of outcomes unlikely" -</i> Tooby and Cosmides </blockquote>In my last post, I mentioned that Stanton Peele directed at evolutionary psychology the criticism of genetic determinism. For those of you who didn't read the last entry, the reason he did this is because he's stupid and seems to have issues engaging with source material. This mistake - of confusing genetic determinism with evolutionary psychology - is <a href="http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/apd.html" target="_blank">unnervingly common</a> among the critics who also seem to have issues engaging with source material. The mistake itself tends to take the form of pointing out that some behavior is variable, either across time, context, or people, and then saying, "therefore, genes (or biology) can't be a causal factor in determining it". For example, if people are nice sometimes and mean at others, it can't be the genes; genes can only make people nice or mean <i>at all times</i>, not contingently. This means there must be something in the environment - like the culture - that makes people differ in their behavior the way they do, and the cognitive mechanisms that generate this behavior must be general-purpose. In other words, rather than resembling a Swiss Army knife - a series of tools with specified functions - the mind more closely resembles an unformed lump of clay, ready to adapt to whatever it encounters. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbUIrI86e1AsOoYHzykw5-nxF_iavQzJMQJCcZ0Dib_k0J_f_7y5ysjmSLms4bTLEBskSgacbnkAzmAFGxlLHGoh5AwXwcg4Cl1oOm738WnGO3SYmkD_N6RsOVHVjVzdB5x29W6Tnjk0/s1600/clay.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbUIrI86e1AsOoYHzykw5-nxF_iavQzJMQJCcZ0Dib_k0J_f_7y5ysjmSLms4bTLEBskSgacbnkAzmAFGxlLHGoh5AwXwcg4Cl1oOm738WnGO3SYmkD_N6RsOVHVjVzdB5x29W6Tnjk0/s320/clay.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Unformed clay is known for being excellent at "solving problems" by "doing useful things".</span></i><br />
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There are two claims found in this misguided criticism of evolutionary psychology. The first is that environments matter when it comes to development, behavior, or anything really, which they clearly do. This is something that's been noted clearly and repeatedly by every professional evolutionary psychologist I've come across. The second claim is that to call a trait "genetic", or to note that our genes play a role in determining behavior, implies inflexibly across environmental contexts. This second claim is, of course, nonsense. The opposite of "genetic" is not "environmental" or "flexible" for a simple reason: organisms need to be adapted to <i>do</i> anything, flexibly or otherwise. (Note: that does not mean everything an organism does it was adapted to do; the two propositions are quite different)<br />
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A quick example should make this point clear: consider my experiments with cats. Not many people know this about me, but I'm a big fan of the field of aviation. While up in the air, I've been known to throw cats out of the airplane. You know, for things like science and grant money. My tests have shown the following pattern of results: cats suck at flying. No matter how many times I've run the experiment - and believe me, I've run it many, many times, just to be sure - the results are always the same. How should I interpret the fact that I'm quickly running out of cats?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxz9eYS1EHNAhPkiFH2hJ1JLlizkTyHXMZK9S2hziLRY7_jMEa9J9M-hPjTysK5ZKHiUEurX9eduE-mwPxdqObRTVnMTCCw7Fae1mHboUQGrk3NDEf3Y3pI5vzstEnNU19xSjwF6UoWY/s1600/catplane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxz9eYS1EHNAhPkiFH2hJ1JLlizkTyHXMZK9S2hziLRY7_jMEa9J9M-hPjTysK5ZKHiUEurX9eduE-mwPxdqObRTVnMTCCw7Fae1mHboUQGrk3NDEf3Y3pI5vzstEnNU19xSjwF6UoWY/s320/catplane.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Discussion: The previous results were replicated purrrrfectly. </span></i><br />
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One way would be to suggest that cats would be able to fly, were they not constrained against flight by their genes; in other words, the cat's behavior would be more "domain general" - even capable of flight - if genetics played <i>less</i> of a role in determining how they acted and developed. Another, more sane, route would be to suggest that cats were never adapted for flight in the first place. They can't fly because their genes contain no programs that allow for it. Maybe that example sounds silly, but it does well to demonstrate a valuable point: adaptions do not make an organism's behavior <i>less</i> flexible; it makes them <i>more</i> flexible. In fact, adaptations are what allows an organism to behave at all in the first place; organisms that are not adapted to behave in certain ways won't behave at all.<br />
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So what about domain general abilities, like learning? For the same reasons, simply chalking some behavior up to "learning" or "culture" is often an inadequate explanation by itself. Learning is not something that just happens in the same way that flight doesn't just happen; the ability to learn itself is an adaptation. It should come as no surprise then that some organisms are relatively prone to learning some things and relatively resistant to learning others. As Dawkins once noted, there are many more ways of being dead than being alive. On a similar note, there are many more ways of learning being useless or harmful than there are of learning being helpful. If an organism learns about the wrong subjects, it wastes time and energy; if an organism learns the wrong thing about the right subject, or if the organism fails to learn the right thing quickly enough, the results would often be deadly.<br />
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Cook and Mineka (1989) ran a series of experiments looking at how Rhesus monkeys acquired their fear response. The lab-raised monkeys with no prior exposure to snakes or crocodiles do not show a fear response to toy models of the two potential threats. The researchers then attempted to condition fear into these animals vicariously by showing them a video of another monkey reacting fearfully to either a snake or crocodile model. As expected, after watching the fearful reaction of another monkey, the lab-raised monkeys themselves developed a fear response to the toys. They learned quickly to be afraid when observing that fear reaction in another individual. What was particularly interesting about these studies is that the researchers tried the same thing, but substituted either a brightly-colored flower or a rabbit in place of the snake or crocodile. In these trials, the monkeys did not acquire a fear response to flowers or rabbits. In other words, the monkeys were biologically prepared to quickly learn fear to some objects (historically deadly ones), but not others.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTCyAObW7pRlshpn9nlZKJlSLszGgy2WBsBJz4oFDXGuKJoV63yFSIFPqi8qmP7bEynvCS-lBaaBxyC7uhBYgRohpTSbbegPTbJoSdtkPykYnqeISKfhsuSADDiLuq_TKePajjn-Ddxq8/s1600/Snakebite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTCyAObW7pRlshpn9nlZKJlSLszGgy2WBsBJz4oFDXGuKJoV63yFSIFPqi8qmP7bEynvCS-lBaaBxyC7uhBYgRohpTSbbegPTbJoSdtkPykYnqeISKfhsuSADDiLuq_TKePajjn-Ddxq8/s320/Snakebite.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Just remember, they're more afraid of you than you are of them. Also, remember fear can make one irritable and defensive. </i></span> <br />
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The results of this study make two very important points. The first is that, as I just mentioned, learning is not a completely open-ended process. We're prepared to learn some things (like certain fears, taste aversions, or language) relatively automatically, given the <i>proper</i> environmental stimulation. I can't stress the word "proper" there enough. For instance, there are also some learning associations that organisms are <i>unable</i> to make: rats will only learn taste aversion in the <a href="http://www.abacon.com/woodessentials/ch5.pdf" target="_blank">presence of nausea</a>, not light or sound, though they will readily associate shocks with light and sound. <br />
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The second point is that these results (should) put to bed the mistaken notion that biology and environment are two competing sources of explanation; they are not. Genetics do not make an organism less flexible and environments do not make them more flexible. Learning is not something to be contrasted with biology, but rather learning <i>is</i> biology. This is a point that is repeatedly stressed in <a href="http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2012/02/could-evolutionary-psychology%E2%80%99s-critics-pass-evolutionary-psychology%E2%80%99s-midterms/" target="_blank">introduction level classes</a> on evolutionary psychology, along with every major work within the field. Anyone who is still making this error in their criticisms is demonstrating a profound lack of expertise, and should be avoided. <br />
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<b>References:</b> Cook, M. & Mineka, S. (1989). Observational condition of fear to fear-relevant versus fear-irrelevant stimuli in Rhesus monkeys. <i>Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 98, </i>448-459. <br />
Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-84923617174089006622012-03-06T21:01:00.003-08:002012-03-06T22:45:08.548-08:00Is It A Paradox, Or Are You Stupid?Let's say you're an intellectual type, like I am. As an intellectual type, you'd probably enjoy spending a good deal of time researching questions of limited scope and even more limited importance. There's a high probably that your work will be largely ignored, flawed in some major way, or your results interpreted incorrectly by yourself or others. While you may not be the under-appreciated genius that you think you are, you may still be lucky enough to have been paid to do your poor work. Speaking of poor work that someone is getting paid for, here's a recent piece by <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/201203/the-paradox-getting-ahead-in-america-cheaters-win" target="_blank">Stanton Peele</a>, over at Psychology Today. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN8cx1gOYhOgCVnb_uO3MQJthWWWQoDd4FcQ0uJ-jgR9XcLuMT3AcTPxFmi2C-x1O9fUSD3IlGLpcGPVA8L8dEXDDds56Sw7-1nor06pOTcqY9GFwUn2gAp8BkFEd4vL9FAqUuaCRg3yU/s1600/Stanton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN8cx1gOYhOgCVnb_uO3MQJthWWWQoDd4FcQ0uJ-jgR9XcLuMT3AcTPxFmi2C-x1O9fUSD3IlGLpcGPVA8L8dEXDDds56Sw7-1nor06pOTcqY9GFwUn2gAp8BkFEd4vL9FAqUuaCRg3yU/s320/Stanton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I'm fairly certain he wrote his dissertation about his own smug sense of self-satisfaction. </i></span><br />
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The article itself is your fairly standard piece of moral outrage about how rich and/or powerful people are cheaters who should not be trusted. According to Stanton, research suggests that people who perceive themselves to be high in power are likely to be "deficient in empathy". This claim strikes me as a little fishy, especially coming from someone who feels so self-important that he links to other pieces he's written on <i>five</i> separate occasions in an article no longer than a few sentences. Such a display of ego suggests that Stanton thinks he's particularly high in power, and thus calls into question his empathy and honesty. It also suggests to me he's a <a href="http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=bill_oreilly" target="_blank">sock-sniffer</a>.<br />
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The title of his piece, "Cheaters Always Win - The Paradox of Getting Ahead in America", along with Stanton's idea that powerful people are "deficient in empathy" both work well to display the bias in his thinking. In the case of his title, there's only a paradox if one assumes that people who cheat would not win. We might not <i>like</i> when someone wins because they aren't playing by the rules, but I don't see any reason to think a (successful) cheater <i>wouldn't</i> win; they cheat because it tends to put them at an advantage. In the case of his empathy suggestion, Stanton seems to assume there is some level of empathy people high in power lack that they should otherwise have. However, one could just as easily phrase the suggestion in an opposite fashion: people low in power have <i>too much</i> empathy. How that correlation gets framed says more, I feel, about the preconceptions of the person making it, than the correlation itself.<br />
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Though that brings us to the matter of whether or not that claim is true. Are powerful people universally deficient in empathy in some major way? (Across-the-board, as Peele puts it) According to one of the papers Peele mentions, people who rate themselves high in their sense of power were less compassionate and experienced less distress when listening to a highly distressed speaker, relative to those who ranked themselves low in power (van Kleef <i>et al, </i>2008). See? The powerful people really are "turning a blind eye to the suffering of others" (which is, in fact, the subtitle of the paper). <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfWGT68lxmwer4bOF_jS52pHx6cnWFzeIUgKgmejSYC8jg2DomkPf5PZ7C4fao1ZV_g_wyCas0yveBwcSj57D9kg-cG6LAfzgw2FJtsgomekh0QqPTlySr8gCEc1x7sAZ7FjZ_xhUcDZY/s1600/Blind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfWGT68lxmwer4bOF_jS52pHx6cnWFzeIUgKgmejSYC8jg2DomkPf5PZ7C4fao1ZV_g_wyCas0yveBwcSj57D9kg-cG6LAfzgw2FJtsgomekh0QqPTlySr8gCEc1x7sAZ7FjZ_xhUcDZY/s320/Blind.jpg" width="240" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The next model will also cover the ears in order to block out the sound from all the people begging for their lives. </i></span><br />
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It would seem that van Kleef <i>et al</i> (2008) share Peele's affection for hyperbole. The difference they found in self-reports of compassion and empathic distress between those highest and lowest in power was about a 0.65 on a scale of 1 to 7, or about 9%. We're not talking about some radical difference in kind, just one of mild degree. However, that difference only existed in the condition where the speaker was highly distressed; when the speaker was low in distress, the effect was reversed, with the higher power subjects reporting <i>more</i> compassion and distress to the speaker's story, to the tune of about 0.5 on the same scale. What conclusion one wants to draw from that study about the compassion and distress of high and low power individuals depends on which part of the data one is looking at. If you're looking at a highly distressed speaker, those who feel higher in power are less compassionate and empathic; if you're looking at a speaker lower in distress, those who feel they have more about are more compassionate and empathic. That would imply Peele is either giving the data a selective reading, or he never even bothered to read it. <br />
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A second paper Peele mentions, by Piff <i>et al</i> (2012), found that self-reported social class was correlated with cheating behavior; the higher one was in social class, the more likely they were to cheat or otherwise behave like a asshole across a few different scenarios. However, this effect of class disappeared when the researchers controlled for attitudes towards greed. As it turns out, people who think greed is just dandy tend to cheat a bit more, whether they're low or high status. Further, asking those low in social status to write about three benefits of greed also eliminated this effect; those from lower social classes now behaving identically to those in the upper social class. It's almost as if these low status individuals experienced sudden onset empathy-deficiency syndrome. <br />
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I'm skimming over most of the details of these papers because there's another, more pressing, matter I'd like to deal with. These papers that Peele uses are notably devoid of anything that could be considered a theory. They present a series of findings, but no framework to understand them in: <i>Why</i> might people who have some degree of social power be more or less prone to doing something? What <i>cost and benefits</i> accompany these actions for each party and how might they change? Are the actions of those in the upper and lower classes deployed <i>strategically</i>? How might these strategies change as context does? This sounds like just the kind of research that could really be guided and assisted by embracing an evolutionary perspective. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuN7_kLtcxPPRITGl3oozuwyP-MxHFAyWXLBSHPySNIygOIStYJL7N0hoJVfrZYAnZniX2viXKHBVkZDpwvz8ncONj6NxiXMyCGQwqd-EQxBswtD4Oe0nCA-NrSbGAeGNXbQUWyLH8ws/s1600/jesus-and-darwin-fighting-again.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuN7_kLtcxPPRITGl3oozuwyP-MxHFAyWXLBSHPySNIygOIStYJL7N0hoJVfrZYAnZniX2viXKHBVkZDpwvz8ncONj6NxiXMyCGQwqd-EQxBswtD4Oe0nCA-NrSbGAeGNXbQUWyLH8ws/s320/jesus-and-darwin-fighting-again.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Sadly, some people don't take too kindly to our theoretical framework.</i></span><br />
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Unfortunately, because Peele is <a href="http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2010/12/dear-stanton-peele-i-would-like-to-cordially-invite-you%E2%80%A6/" target="_blank">stupid</a>, he has some harsh criticisms of genetic determinism that he directs at evolutionary psychologists:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>"They also seem inconsistent with evolutionary psychologists who have been arguing lately (following "The Selfish <a class="pt-basics-link" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=756245236982256401&postID=8492361717408900662&from=pencil" title="Psychology Today looks at Genetics">Gene</a>") that <a class="pt-basics-link" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=756245236982256401&postID=8492361717408900662&from=pencil" title="Psychology Today looks at Altruism">altruism</a> is a species-inherited <b>genetic destiny</b></i> [emphasis, mine]<i>.</i><i>...So, which is it? </i><i>Do humans progress by being kinder to others and understanding the plights of the downtrodden, or do they do better to ignore these depressing stories? Do societies advance by displaying empathy towards others outside of their borders and with different customs from their own?</i>"</blockquote>Such questions are about on the level of asking whether people are better off eating every waking moment or never eating again, followed by a self-congratulatory high-five. There are trade-offs to be made, and people aren't always going to be better served by doing one, and only one, thing at all times. This should not be a difficult point to understand, but, on the other hand, understanding things is clearly not Peele's strong suit; sock-sniffing is. I don't mind if, as he finishes writing his ramblings, Peele leans in to get a good whiff of his own odor after a long day battling positions held by legions of imaginary evolutionary psychologists. I just don't understand why Psychology Today feels the need to give his nonsense a platform.<br />
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<b>References: </b>Piff, P.K., Stancato, D.M., Cote, S., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Keltner, D. (2012). Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</i><br />
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van Kleef, G.A., Oveis, C., van der Lowe, H., LuoKogan, A., Goetz, J., Keltner, D. (2008). Power, distress and compassion: Turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. <i>Psychological Science,</i> <i>19</i>, 1315-1322 <i> </i>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-58950922088745061302012-02-27T10:44:00.004-08:002012-03-03T16:18:33.740-08:00What Causes (Male) Homosexuality?<span style="font-size: small;">My initial inspiration for starting this blog was a brief piece I had written about why Lady Gaga's song, "Born This Way", really got under my skin. The general premise of the song is, unless I'm badly mistaken, that homosexuality is genetic in nature, and, accordingly, should be socially accepted. The song is full of very selective logic and a poor grasp of the state of scientific knowledge, all of which is accepted in the service of furthering a political goal. For what it's worth, I agree with that goal, but the means being used to achieve it in this case were misguided because:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>"...I'm not so sure Lady Gaga - or any gay-rights supporter - wants to base their claims to equal rights on the supposition that homosexuality is a trait people are "born" with...If further research uncovers that people can come to develop a homosexual orientation for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with being "born like that", I wouldn't want to see the argument for equal rights slip away."</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">Today, I'm going to be stepping back into that same political minefield that I did on the topic of <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-are-we-to-make-of-term-race.html">race</a>, and discuss a hypothesis regarding the cause of male homosexuality that some people may not like. People will not like this hypothesis for reasons extrinsic to the hypothesis itself, but do your best to contain any moral outrage you may be feeling. My first task in presenting this hypothesis will be to convince you that male homosexuality is not genetically determined - despite what an eccentric young pop-star might tell you - and is also not an adaptation. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAzoqZ_I9v6_h6T1g2DnmTHhSdhHmjs9Q3sSb1bLim71ujbOXwSPrxJaG9WGUEs3DlAQ1BiR-driBBD1rexqCEeJuPpGUjf6Cc_JD3N3sDQ1s1IQ3hkt9oGh01KgjlK8EqG5lx7KjH7o/s1600/Hearnoevil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAzoqZ_I9v6_h6T1g2DnmTHhSdhHmjs9Q3sSb1bLim71ujbOXwSPrxJaG9WGUEs3DlAQ1BiR-driBBD1rexqCEeJuPpGUjf6Cc_JD3N3sDQ1s1IQ3hkt9oGh01KgjlK8EqG5lx7KjH7o/s320/Hearnoevil.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Convincing critics is always such a pleasure</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">For some, it might seem insulting that homosexuality requires an explanation, whereas heterosexuality does not. Aren't both just different sides of a very bisexual coin? There's a simple answer to that concern: heterosexual intercourse is the only means to achieve reproduction. An exclusive homosexual orientation is the evolutionary equivalent to sterility, and if three to five percent of the male population was consistently sterile - despite neither of anyone's parents being sterile, by definition - that would raise some questions as to how sterility persists. There would be an intense selective pressure away from sterility, and any genes that actively promoted it would fail to reproduce themselves. That homosexuality seems to persist in the population, despite it being a reproductive dead-end, requires an explanation. Heterosexuality poses no such puzzle. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The first candidate explanation for the persistence of homosexuality is that it's part on an adaptation for assisting the reproduction of one's kin. While homosexuals themselves may suffer a dramatic reduction in their lifetime reproduction, they activity assist other genetic relatives, delivering enough benefits to offset their lack of personal reproduction, similar to how ants or bees would assist the queen, forgoing reproduction themselves. This suggestion is implausible on three levels: first, it would require that homosexuals deliver enormous benefits to their relatives. For each one child a gay man wouldn't have, they would need to ensure a brother or sister would have an additional two <i>that they wouldn't otherwise have without those benefits.</i> This would require an intense amount of investment. Second, there's no theoretical reason that's ever been provided as to why homosexuals would develop a homosexual orientation, as opposed to, say, an asexual orientation. Seeking out intercourse with same-sex individuals doesn't seem to add anything to the whole investment thing. Finally, this explanation doesn't work because, as it turns out, homosexuals don't invest anymore in their relatives than heterosexuals do (Rahman & Hull, 2005). So much for kin selection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">A second potential explanation for homosexuality is that it's the byproduct of sexually antagonist selection; a gene that damages the reproductive potential of males persists in the population because the same trait is beneficial when it's expressed in female offspring (Ciani, Cermelli, & Zanzotto, 2008; Iemmola & Ciani, 2009). Another potential explanation is that a homosexual orientation is like sickle cell anemia: while it hurts the reproductive prospects of those who express it, it provides some unspecified benefit that outweighs that cost in some carriers, as sickle cell protects against malaria. Both explanations have a large issues to contend with but one of the most prominent shared issues is this: despite both hypotheses resting on rather strong genetic assumptions, half or more of the variance in male homosexual orientation <i>can't</i> be attributed to genetic factors (Kirk <i>et al.</i>, 2000; Kendler <i>et al., </i>2000). Identical twins don't seem to be concordant for their sexual orientation anymore than 30 to 50% of the time when one of the twins identifies as non-heterosexual. If homosexuality was determined solely by genes, there should be a near complete agreement. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlARAZ1vF4C5nqh_B4mTGJ3XtDE10JdfB2FK3GokKtHhc7lMMiUXNCNcJIZclxv2Gow30tIr7vxQy4KyEwmxYGUBupo57ZC8efPLHyYR-3XV6Hxb76Pbm8tT33UUvCXQTqPzY1QZkPI4Y/s1600/Decadent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlARAZ1vF4C5nqh_B4mTGJ3XtDE10JdfB2FK3GokKtHhc7lMMiUXNCNcJIZclxv2Gow30tIr7vxQy4KyEwmxYGUBupo57ZC8efPLHyYR-3XV6Hxb76Pbm8tT33UUvCXQTqPzY1QZkPI4Y/s320/Decadent.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>In fact, most of the variance appears to be due to our decadent Western lifestyle. Who knew, right?</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Accordingly, any satisfying explanation for homosexuality needs to reference environmental factors, as all traits do; the picture is far from as crude as there being some genes "for" homosexuality. While there clearly are some genetically inherited components in the ontogeny of a homosexual orientation, it's entirely unclear what those genetic factors <i>are</i>. It's also far from clear how those genetic factors interact with their environment - or when, for that matter. They would seem to act sometime before puberty, but beyond that the door is open. What seems to have been established so far is that an exclusive homosexual orientation is detrimental to reproduction in a big way, and these costs are not known to be reliably offset.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">There is one last hypothesis that may hold some potential, though, as I mentioned, I suspect many people won't like it: <a href="http://gc.homeunix.net/home/post/50">the "gay germ" theory</a>. The general idea is that some outside pathogen - be it a bacteria or a virus - manipulates development in some way, the end result being a homosexual orientation. This hypothesis seems to have potential for a number of reasons: first, it neatly deals with why homosexuality persists in the population, despite the massive reproductive costs. It could also account for why monozyogtic twins are often discordant for homosexual orientation, despite sharing genes and a prenatal environment. As of now, it remains an untested theory, but <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2010/microbes-and-mental-illness.shtml">other lines of research</a> suggest some preliminary success using the same basic idea to understand the persistence of disorders like schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder, among many others. Of course, such a theory does come with some political baggage and questions. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1F-Rh-lEbIHi4kIOZ5o27KQwn-yoGjtg-KP84EHIWmH0T5a5MXh7KMdY3-Yzyb4VmVfzJsXgMDcHPWBNQiKLLQjcVjhEMbyl2_cT9Gtn1NL536-JScZIanoQrWjTcnSLFuVzVsC3AAbI/s1600/Politics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1F-Rh-lEbIHi4kIOZ5o27KQwn-yoGjtg-KP84EHIWmH0T5a5MXh7KMdY3-Yzyb4VmVfzJsXgMDcHPWBNQiKLLQjcVjhEMbyl2_cT9Gtn1NL536-JScZIanoQrWjTcnSLFuVzVsC3AAbI/s320/Politics.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Like will two gay men ever be able to hold hands, post love-making, on top of an American Flag, just like straight couples do? </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The first set of questions concern the data speaking to the hypothesis: what pathogen(s) are responsible? When do they act in development? How do they alter development? Are those alterations an adaptation on the part of the pathogen or merely a byproduct? These are no simple questions to answer, especially because it won't be clear which children will end up gay until they have matured. This makes narrowing the developmental window in which to be looking something of task. If concordance rates for monozyogtic twins are similar between adopted and reared together twins, that might point to something prenatal, depending on the age at which the twins were separated, but would not definitively rule out other possibilities. Further, this pathogen need not be specific to gay men; it could be a pathogen that much of the population carries, but, for whatever reason, only affects a sub-group of males in such a way that they end up developing a homosexual orientation. </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The second set of questions concern potential implications of this theory, were it to be confirmed. I'll start by noting these concerns have zero, absolutely nothing, to do with whether or not the gay germ theory is true. That said, these concerns are probably where most of the resistance to the hypothesis would come from, as <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/10/pop-psychology-i-read-it-so-it-must-be.html">concerns for data</a> (or lack thereof) are often secondary to debates. Yes, the hypothesis cries out for supporting data so it shouldn't be accepted just yet, but I'm talking to those people who would reject it as a possibility out of hand because it sounds icky. In terms of gay rights and social acceptance, it shouldn't matter whether homosexuality is 100% genetically determined, caused by a pathogen, or just a choice someone makes one day because they're bored with all that vanilla heterosexual sex they've been having. That something may be, or is, caused by a pathogen should really have no bearing on it's moral status. If we discovered tomorrow that it was a virus that caused men to have larger-than-average penises, I doubt many people would cheer for the potential to cure the "disease" of large-penis. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>References:</b> Ciani, A.C., Cermilli, P., & Zanzotto, G. (2008). Sexually antagonistic selection in human male homosexuality. <i>PLosone.org, 3, </i>e,2282.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Iemmola, F. & Ciani, A.C. (2009). New evidence of genetic factors influencing sexual orientation in men: Female fecundity increase in the maternal line. <i>Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, </i>393-399</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kendler, K.S., Thornton, L.M., Gilman, S.E., & Kessler, R.C. (2000). Sexual orientation in a U.S. national sample of twins and nontwin sibling pairs. <i>American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, </i>1843-1846<i> </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kirk, K.M., Bailey, J.M., Dunne, M.P., & Martin, N.G. (2000). Measurement models for sexual orientation in a community twin sample. <i>Behavior Genetics, 30, </i>345-356</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Rahman, Q. & Hull, M.S. (2005). An empirical test of the kin selection hypothesis for male homosexuality. <i>Archives of Sexual Behavior, 234, </i>461-467<i> </i> </span><i> </i></span>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-69758023754665397682012-02-23T17:22:00.008-08:002012-02-25T08:10:30.481-08:00Do "Daddy Issues" Jumpstart Menstruation?Like me, most of you probably come from the streets. On the streets, it's common knowledge that "daddy issues" are the root cause of women developing interests in several activities. Daddy issues are believed to play a major role in becoming a stripper, developing a taste for bad boys, and getting a series of tattoos containing butterflies, skulls, and/or quotes with at least one glaring spelling mistake. As pointed out by almost any group in the minority at one point or another, however, that knowledge is common does not imply it is also correct. For instance, I've recently learned that drive-bys are not a legitimate form of settling academic disagreements (or at least that's what I've been told; I still think it made me the winner of that little debate). So, enterprising psychologist that I am, I've decided to question the following piece of folk wisdom: is father absence really a <i>causal</i> variable in determining a young girl's life history strategy, specifically with regard to the onset of menstruation?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEillPBBFajhJujhc04AA7jLBc8Yb_Vt3rBkcaSQWe6aO3ALN6h-3ePYL9TALiq7sBD2IWD1bjEYsKuQqMk8E_rfKhd0eRi2msBHxIOPJMD2e6yfpY30j8oU7oKKDjiBdcongku2RB_6MI4/s1600/Absent-father.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEillPBBFajhJujhc04AA7jLBc8Yb_Vt3rBkcaSQWe6aO3ALN6h-3ePYL9TALiq7sBD2IWD1bjEYsKuQqMk8E_rfKhd0eRi2msBHxIOPJMD2e6yfpY30j8oU7oKKDjiBdcongku2RB_6MI4/s320/Absent-father.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Watch carefully now; that young boy may start to menstruate at any moment...wait, which study is this? </span></i><br />
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First, a little background is order. Life history theory deals with the way an organism allocates its limited resources in an attempt to maximize its reproductive potential. Using resources to develop one trait precludes the use of those same resources for developing other traits, so there are always inherent trade-offs that organisms need to make during development. Different species have stumbled upon different answers as to how these trade-offs should be made: is it better to be small or large? Is it better to start reproducing as soon as possible or start reproducing later? Is it better to produce many offspring and invest little in each, or produce fewer offspring and invest more? These developmental and behavioral trade-offs all need to be made under a series of ecological constraints, such as the availability of resources or the likelihood of survival. For instance, it makes no sense for a convict to refuse a final cigarette before a firing squad executes him out of concerns for his health. There's no point worrying about tomorrow if there won't be one. On the other hand, if you have a secure future, maybe Russian roulette isn't the best choice for a past time. <br />
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So where do family-related issues enter into the equation? Within each species, different individuals have slightly different answers for those developmental question, and those answers are not fixed from conception. Like all traits, their expression is contingent on the interaction between genes and the environment those genes find themselves in. A human child that finds itself with severely limited access to relevant resources is thus expected to alter their developmental trajectory according to their constraints. This has been demonstrated to be the case for obvious variables like obtaining adequate nutrition: if a young girl does not have access to enough calories, her sexual maturation will be delayed, as her body would be unlikely to successfully support the required investment a child brings. <br />
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Another of these hypothesized resources is paternal investment. The suggestion put forth by some researchers (Ellis, 2004) is that a father's presence or absence signals some useful information to daughters regarding the availability of future mating prospects. The theory that purports to explain this association states that when young girls experience a lack of paternal investment, their developmental path shifts towards one that expects future investment by male partners to be lacking and not vital to reproduction. This, in turn, results in more sexual precociousness. Basically, if dad wasn't there for you growing up, then, according to this theory, other men probably won't be either, so it's better to not develop in a way that expects future investment. That father absence has been associated with a slightly earlier onset of menarche (first menstruation) in women has been taken as evidence supporting this theory. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAYbEF9BtZCeBgyOnI_IPYj2qPiX6ylVN3oIn7_tmkqzgz38XZrUJs7vwn9FhsPMDs6xY0qY-4SfFFhLzMsfmoR-YIs9BSz44KSCxRHDZoWs8NBqpZPgUWTgCe9u1-4dq5-3deG0BNFQ/s1600/teen+mom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAYbEF9BtZCeBgyOnI_IPYj2qPiX6ylVN3oIn7_tmkqzgz38XZrUJs7vwn9FhsPMDs6xY0qY-4SfFFhLzMsfmoR-YIs9BSz44KSCxRHDZoWs8NBqpZPgUWTgCe9u1-4dq5-3deG0BNFQ/s320/teen+mom.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The basic concept also spun off into a show on MTV. </i><i><br />
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The major problem with this suggestion is that no causal link has been demonstrated. The only thing that has been demonstrated is that father absence tends to correlate with an earlier age of menstruation, and the degree to which the two are correlated is rather small. According to some correlations reported by Ellis (2004), it looks as if one could predict between 1 to 4% of the variance in timing of pubertal development on the basis of father absence, depending on which parts of the sample is under discussion. Further, that already small correlation does not control for a wide swath of additional variables, such as almost any variables that are found outside the home environments. This entire social world that exists outside of a child's family has been known to have been of some (major) importance in children's development, while the research on the home environment seems to suggest that family environments and parenting styles don't leave lasting marks on personality (Harris, 1998).<br />
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As the idea that outside the home environments matter a lot has been around for over a decade, it would seem the only sane things for researchers to do are more nearly identical studies, looking at basically the same parenting/home variables, and finding the same, very small to no effect, then making some lukewarm claim about how it might be causation, but then again might not be. This pattern of research is about as tedious as that last sentence is long, and it plagues psychological research in my opinion. In any case, towards achieving that worthwhile goal of breaking through some metaphorical brick wall by just running into it enough times, Tither and Ellis (2008) set out to examine whether the already small correlation between daughter's development and father presence was due to a genetic confound. <br />
<br />
To do this, Tither and Ellis examined sister-pairs that contained both an older and younger sister. The thinking here is that it's (relatively) controlled for on a genetic level, but younger sisters would experience more years of father absence following the break-up of a marriage, relative to the older sisters, which would in turn accelerate sexual maturation of the younger one. Skipping to the conclusions, this effect was indeed found, with younger sisters reporting earlier menarche than older sisters in father absent homes (accounting for roughly 2% of the variance). Among those father absent homes, this effect was carried predominately by fathers with a high reported degree of anti-social, dysfunctional behavior, like drug use and suicide attempts (accounting for roughly 10% of the variance within this subset). The moral seems to be that "good-enough" fathers had no real effect, but seriously awful parenting on the father's part, if experienced at a certain time in a daughter's life, has some predictive value. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Rz0Yr9vVH0JXWnfNM2QKEpfoBEtDKijuZbA7mVXWpbvCajHV6uC4BoTFyqmSnXHTZLDP9-ivhfYddgGRAo_kNTIWI2RcTZ-K-FWBxHNC3VpOw3M09f3o2qtz2h24zv92hhuSjcL9MIY/s1600/Drugs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Rz0Yr9vVH0JXWnfNM2QKEpfoBEtDKijuZbA7mVXWpbvCajHV6uC4BoTFyqmSnXHTZLDP9-ivhfYddgGRAo_kNTIWI2RcTZ-K-FWBxHNC3VpOw3M09f3o2qtz2h24zv92hhuSjcL9MIY/s320/Drugs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">So you may want to hold off on your drug-fueled rampages until your daughter's about eight or nine years old.</span></i><br />
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First, let me point out the rather major problem here on a theoretical level. If the theory here is that father presence or absence sends a <i>reliable</i> signal to daughters about the likelihood of future male investment, then one would expect that signal to at least be relatively uniform <i>within</i> a family. If the same father is capable of signaling to an older daughter that future male investment is likely, and also signaling to a younger daughter that future male investment isn't likely, then that signal would hardly be reliable enough for selection to have seized on. <br />
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Second, while I agree with Tither and Ellis that these results are <i>consistent</i> with a casual account, they do not demonstrate that the father's behavior was the causal variable in any way whatsoever. For one thing, Ellis (2004) notes that this effect of father presence vs absence doesn't seem to exist in African American samples. Are we to assume that father presence or absence has only been used as a signal by girls in certain parts of the world? Further, as the authors note, there tend to be other changes that go along with divorce and paternal psychotic behavior that will have an effect on a child's life outside of the home. To continue and beat what should be a long dead horse, researchers may want to actually start to look at variables outside of the family to account for more variation in a girl's development. After all, it's not the family life that a daughter is maturing sexually for; it's her life with non-family members that's of importance. <br />
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<b>References</b>: Ellis, B.J. (2004). Timing of pubertal maturation in girls: An integrated life history approach. <i>Psychological Bulletin, 130, </i>920-958<br />
<br />
Harris, J.R. (1998). <i>The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out The Way They Do. </i>New York: Free Press <br />
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Tither, J.M., & Ellis, B.J. (2008). Impact of fathers on daughters' age at menarche: A genetically and environmentally controlled sibling study. <i>Developmental Psychology, 44, </i>1409-1420/Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-49101234727322907242012-02-17T22:14:00.000-08:002012-02-17T22:27:13.244-08:00Female Orgasm - This Time With FeelingI've written about female orgasm <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/10/case-of-female-orgasm-bias-in.html">on two</a> prior <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/10/pop-psychology-you-mad-bro.html">occasions</a>, but in those cases I used the subject more as a vehicle for understanding the opposition to evolutionary explanations rather than discussing orgasm itself. The comments section on a recent <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_19700_the-5-weirdest-reasons-we-have-sex-according-to-science.html">Cracked article</a> that concludes female orgasm is a byproduct - not an adaptation - attests to the issues I had discussed. There, we see dozens of comments made by people who's expertise consists of maybe having watched some documentary once they sort of remember. Believe it or not, as this part is shocking, these uninformed people also have very strong opinions about whether female orgasm has an evolved function. The most commonly hypothesized function for female orgasm found in the comments is that it motivates women to have sex, typically followed with a "duh". The two assumptions embedded in that idea are (1) women who orgasm during intercourse engage in more sex than women who do not and (2) having more sex means having more children. If either of those points turn out to be false, that hypothesis wouldn't work.<br />
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The first point may be true. According to Lloyd (2005), there is some evidence that suggests women want more sex the more frequently they orgasm. Sure, it's correlational in nature, but we'll not worry about that here. It's the second point that raises some more serious issues. As women can only become pregnant during a specific point of their cycle where an egg is available, having more sex during a non-fertile period will do approximately nothing when it comes to a shot at successful conception. Further, in principle - and many times, in practice - you only need to have sex once to become pregnant; having sex beyond or before that point will not make a woman any more pregnant. The heart of the issue, then, seems to concern proper timing. Having sperm present and ready to do some fertilizing at all points may increase the odds of conception, as neither the man or the woman know the precise moment ovulation will occur. However, at some point there will be diminishing returns on the probably of increasing conception from each additional act of intercourse. It's not a simple formula of "more sex = more babies".<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcNQuEbGyhfedCyAjHRRWl237GGRVhECaoZ9LEH8WcV3ov6QRldglV2c2s9auXOR0AByFuglTW9F1PCxVhDr_bIfSPkODnHPSR3u43DZqMBelaxiuC0wWtI86D_x4fuJyh8XfTh29t8A4/s1600/Takeanumber.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcNQuEbGyhfedCyAjHRRWl237GGRVhECaoZ9LEH8WcV3ov6QRldglV2c2s9auXOR0AByFuglTW9F1PCxVhDr_bIfSPkODnHPSR3u43DZqMBelaxiuC0wWtI86D_x4fuJyh8XfTh29t8A4/s320/Takeanumber.png" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I'm going to get soooo pregnant; you have no idea!</i></span><br />
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If female orgasm evolved to motivate women to have sex with men, it does so rather inefficiently. When women masturbate, the vast majority do not do so in a manner that simulates penetrative intercourse alone, as penetration rarely provides the proper stimulation. When women do achieve orgasm with intercourse, which is often quite variable, most require additional manual stimulation of the clitoris; orgasm is not generally reached through the sex itself. In terms of providing some crucial motivation then, this accounts seems to take an odd do-it-yourself approach to reinforcement. This also raises the question of why so many women are unable to reach orgasm either frequently or at all from intercourse alone if it's supposed to provide some crucial motivation. Under this functional account, women who did not experience orgasms with intercourse would have been selected against, yet they persist in substantial numbers. In terms of taking home the coveted label of adaptation, this account doesn't fare so well.<br />
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There are many additional adaptive accounts of female orgasm, but I'd like to discuss only one other hypothesis here: the upsuck hypothesis. Though the account had been proposed prior to Baker and Bellis (1992), they were the first to attempt to empirically test the suggestion that female orgasm may serve a function manipulating the amount of sperm retained or ejected from copulation. To test this suggestion, Baker and Bellis found some very willing volunteers to first collect semen samples from sex using condoms in order to generate an estimate of sperm count in the ejaculate. After this period, the couples engaged in unprotected sex and collected the flowback - the secretions from the vagina following sex, including fluids from both the male and female. Sperm count was then obtained from the flowback samples to estimate how much sperm had been retained. The samples were finally assessed on scales of taste and presentation*. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcD4vrxPWEnLhOSx2eSq_brX5aqG7-XdD7jUdtO1jxNMmRYYUB547bUkESzjkH6HmKmoyu1c14sXbvY1HcM74q9llo0DEyT0oipW639L596gTHV6A8lhAdzDPa0JqDvI2-n0-0yTOZYo/s1600/Sample.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcD4vrxPWEnLhOSx2eSq_brX5aqG7-XdD7jUdtO1jxNMmRYYUB547bUkESzjkH6HmKmoyu1c14sXbvY1HcM74q9llo0DEyT0oipW639L596gTHV6A8lhAdzDPa0JqDvI2-n0-0yTOZYo/s320/Sample.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Don't worry; </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">taste testing was carried out using a double-blind procedure to avoid bias.</span></i><br />
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The results showed that female orgasm was unrelated to sperm retention in general. However, female orgasms that occurred from one minute prior to male ejaculation to forty-five minutes following ejaculation were associated with greater estimated sperm retention. Lloyd (2005) critiqued this study on statistical grounds, but I'm not currently in a position to evaluate her claims, so I'll ignore those for now (though I will say I'm always uncomfortable relying on median values without accompanying means). Lloyd also mentions that a later reexamination of the data found that female orgasms occurring one minute to ten minutes following male ejaculation actually did <i>not</i> show that effect of increased sperm retention, which would require the odd pattern of female orgasm having no effect prior to one minute before male ejaculation, then it would increase sperm retention, then decrease retention, then increase retention again. It seems more plausible that there's an issue with the data, rather than that such a peculiar pattern exists. <br />
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There is another concern of mine regarding Baker and Bellis's flowback data, though it has not been raised by other authors to my knowledge. Perhaps that is for a good statistical reason that escapes me, so bear in mind this may be a moot concern. Naturally, it's hard to recruit for this kind of research. As a result, Baker and Bellis had a small sample size, but did manage to collect 127 flowback samples across 11 couples. Now Lloyd mentions that, of these 127 samples, 93 came from just one couple. What she does not mention is that this couple also happened to have the second lowest median percentage of sperm retention of all the couples, and they were lower by a substantial margin. In fact, the couple providing most of the data retained only about half of the overall median number of sperm. For reference sake, the only couple to have a lower median retention rate was estimated to have retained a <i>negative</i> number of sperm. If most of the data is coming from an outlier, that would be a big problem. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7aGeXWly9f4oJ5SpmiY5d1gmFgpSHAskkz-Z8A3fGokDMXWFBt99oBQHZtHFCqfNHB-hIWfga47tDVdwmOMOZ_nqHeJEaGwlYuORzgh2__ZNJoZ8OVfUfOlA1do69SlCQnUmW4iSEPU/s1600/RichPoor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7aGeXWly9f4oJ5SpmiY5d1gmFgpSHAskkz-Z8A3fGokDMXWFBt99oBQHZtHFCqfNHB-hIWfga47tDVdwmOMOZ_nqHeJEaGwlYuORzgh2__ZNJoZ8OVfUfOlA1do69SlCQnUmW4iSEPU/s320/RichPoor.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">For example, the average income of these men is roughly ten-million dollars a year.</span></i><br />
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While these results are suggestive, they beg for replication before full acceptance. Nevertheless, let's take the results of Baker and Bellis at face value. While all women in the sample were estimated to be able to either nearly completely retain or expel all the sperm of an ejaculate, <i>regardless of whether they could orgasm during sex or not</i>, Baker and Bellis suggest that female orgasm may play some role in affecting the sperm retention process. To attempt and complete an adaptive account, it's time to consider two other points: first, it's unclear as to whether the additional sperm retention has any effect on conception rates, either between or within men. It might seem as though additional sperm retention would be useful, but that assumption needs to be demonstrated. Second, female orgasm does not reliably accompany intercourse <i>at all</i>, let alone with a specific timing (up to a minute before hand, but not from one to ten minutes afterwards, but then again after ten minutes, and only during ovulation). As most female orgasms require additional clitoral stimulation on the part of either the man or the woman, this would require ancestral humans to have reliably provided such stimulation, and whether they did so is an open-ended question. Even if female orgasm had this potential function of sperm retention, it does not follow that female orgasm was selected for; that potential function could be a byproduct. <br />
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There are certain adaptive hypotheses still to be tested, but what we need is more evidence that's less ambiguous. The case of whether female orgasm is an adaptation or not is still open to debate. At present, I find the evidence favoring the adaptation side of the debate lacking, much to the dismay of many people who determine the social and personal value of a trait on the basis of whether it's an adaptation or a byproduct. They seem to think tentatively labeling female orgasm as a byproduct somehow makes it less valuable and reflects a mean-spirited sexism towards women. On a redundant note, they're still wrong. <br />
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*<span style="font-size: x-small;">That sentence may or may not be true. I wasn't there. </span><br />
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<b>References: </b>Baker, R.R. & Bellis, M.A. (1993). Human sperm competition: Ejaculate manipulation by females and a function for female orgasm. <i>Animal Behavior, 46, </i>887-909<br />
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Lloyd, E.A. (2005). <i>The case of the female orgasm: Bias in the science of evolution.</i> Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-82322699512573813472012-02-16T16:25:00.000-08:002012-02-17T08:34:25.643-08:00The Game: Not Penetrating All That MuchIt's a dream of many men to achieve the same Herculean level of success with women as bands like Motley Crue and people like myself have had before them. The thought of being able to almost immediately attract female attention and command sexual arousal caters to certain evolved psychological preferences of men the same way my ravishing good looks and winning personality cater to the preferences of women. This fantasy of many men can be exacerbated by their severe to complete lack of sexual access to women. The most recent estimate I've heard is that <a href="http://www.psy.fsu.edu/%7Ebaumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm">we have about twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors</a>. That is to say, in a hypothetical population with equal numbers of men and women, if <i>every</i> woman had a child, only about <i>half</i> of the men would be fathers. This speaks to a point I made recently, that even promiscuous females are not indiscriminant in their mate choice, and many men are not able to adequately measure up to most women's standards. For instance, women on Okcupid rated <a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/">80% of men</a> as being below average in attractiveness. <br />
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Given that, it should come as no surprise that anyone promising they have a - or <i>the</i> - secret to help men, any man, become a success at picking up women is selling a potentially very valuable product to a lot of desperate people. The most pressing question on most people's minds when confronted with a product that claims to have miraculous proprieties is, naturally, "does it work?"<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGPHGalBlH6j8tocO25GjIOmuadll4u50XN98l7ExPAbydQiFpP9ocYiYEv6wTh7Y_ONkfvA_DGJIuySRJe1ciUR6vUQN2RcgyeOt6jLR0r_WmWAtu_WIP1unHXNIJUsT1_OIO4aVJFu4/s1600/compter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGPHGalBlH6j8tocO25GjIOmuadll4u50XN98l7ExPAbydQiFpP9ocYiYEv6wTh7Y_ONkfvA_DGJIuySRJe1ciUR6vUQN2RcgyeOt6jLR0r_WmWAtu_WIP1unHXNIJUsT1_OIO4aVJFu4/s320/compter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>It's just bulging with potential. It is, however, only held together by prayers and hot glue. </i></span><br />
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As I had recently run out of new reading material and decent video games, I deciding to evaluate a book that had been recommended to me several times online called <i>The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists </i>- and who could go wrong with random strangers on the internet? I didn't expect much out of it, which was fortunate. While the book isn't exactly a "how-to" guide for men looking to get women, the premise of the book is that it's written about groups of men who claim to be able to teach various methods in picking up, attracting, or otherwise seducing women. Throughout the story, the protagonist and author, Style (aka. Neil Strauss), goes from being a socially awkward writer to becoming a king among the pickup community, having many non-exclusive sexual partners over the course of two years, before finally settling into a long-term relationship and becoming dissatisfied with the state of the community.<br />
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How does he make this transformation? In no particular order, the following things happen: a change of hairstyle, a change in wardrobe, going tanning and exercising, paying far out-the-ass to attend a number of seminars, paying far-out-the-ass to travel constantly, buying and reading countless books on the subject, learning about body language and social cues, learning when to lie, learning when to bullshit people, moving into a mansion in Hollywood, and basically, spending every waking moment for two years either hitting on every woman in sight or talking about hitting on every woman in sight with the assistance of several men and a memorized series of routines. Strauss's newfound success at meeting women in turn seems to give him a reputation within the community and what sounded like one hell of an ego about the whole thing. Like many of the pickup artists in the book, Strauss seemed to feel he had some kind of power over women. Their self-esteem had never been higher. <br />
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While I feel there's a lot to be said for learning how to dress and groom yourself, approach people with confidence, and understanding body language and social cues when it comes to being successful in the dating world - basically, avoid coming off like the sociopathic shy slob you are - the question still looming is "how well does the game work?" I feel the majority of the method written about in <i>The Game</i> can be summed up nicely by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffOMSlc2ay8">David Cross</a> talking about the attitude of a garbage man trying to pick up women while on the job:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"<i>I make things happen; I go for it. Whatever, man. I'll ask a hundred chicks, maybe get ninety-nine "No"s. That's fine; slide it on, slide it on. Whatever. Maybe that hundredth chick...likes to fuck on a pile of trash". </i></blockquote><i>The Game</i> reads more like a sheer numbers game strategy at heart. For all of you out there who don't live in an area with a large enough population, this strategy would probably not serve you well. It seemed common for Strauss and his friends to go out each night to several different bars to talk to many, many different women at various stages of drunkenness at each. Sometimes they would end up with phone numbers (the vast majority of which never ended up going anywhere further, if the woman on the other end even remembered who they gave their number to), sometimes they'd get a kiss, and sometimes they'd even get sex eventually, provided they weren't too particular about who that sex was with. What this turns into is a case of counting the hits and not the misses. Any successes that an aspiring pickup artist meets with are chalked up to their masterful use of the game; the failures, which far outnumber the successes, are simply forgotten about. The failures aren't seen as failures in the method, just failures in its execution or part of the learning process. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX2mB4eTowqESzBDF9b8YPh1NU5uVQ_p-pWKOtKuhtEDfkXCSjAOeplX8ESCAFGir0LbNaQ3WtvSlWvjoWpAjmELljnNyQKRs26PX8PaO0OGAmIJoTKLa-j-XUL58UeQCDJvrVpXgAU_8/s1600/quarter-coin-head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX2mB4eTowqESzBDF9b8YPh1NU5uVQ_p-pWKOtKuhtEDfkXCSjAOeplX8ESCAFGir0LbNaQ3WtvSlWvjoWpAjmELljnNyQKRs26PX8PaO0OGAmIJoTKLa-j-XUL58UeQCDJvrVpXgAU_8/s320/quarter-coin-head.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">My trick coin; fifty-percent of the time, it lands on "heads" a hundred-percent of the time.</span></i><br />
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As a result, one should be hard-pressed to conclude that <i>The Game</i> holds any secrets for seducing any, or even most, women, nor should one conclude that it offers any revolutionary insights into female psychology. The sample is simply too biased. This should become even more apparent when one stops and thinks about the following: Strauss was successful with women and that <i>earned him a reputation</i> among the community. What that suggests to me is that the majority of these pickup artists were not being met with even close to the same degree of success, despite using what is described as an almost identical method to Strauss. If they were seeing the same results, Strauss wouldn't stand out. Indeed, one man mentioned in the book claims to had approached over 1000 women in a month without managing to seal the deal sexually with a single one. A thousand failures and not one success; if that doesn't reek of a numbers game, I don't know what does. <br />
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What's also worth pointing out is that many of the men who get involved in this community begin as either virgins or just-barely not virgins. They also tend to possess minimal levels of social skills and plenty of anxiety. These are typically men who have a great deal of frustration in their sexual life, earning them the nickname AFCs, or angry frustrated chumps. In short, for these men there is nowhere to go but up, and each success, no matter how minor, will likely take on a much greater importance. I feel this would only serve to deepen the issue of counting the hits and not the misses when trying to determine how successful the method actually was, or whether all that effort could have been more profitably spent elsewhere. <br />
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Further, there's no control group against which to compare the methods described in <i>The Game</i> with any kind of alternative treatments or placebos. Any good treatment should outperform an inert one, and throughout the book several different methods rise and fall, each claiming to be the tried and true way to success. To approximate a placebo, I'd like to contrast the approach outlined in <i>The Game</i> with simple cold-propositioning. The classic Clark and Hatfield (1989) research project had men and women approach total strangers on a college campus that they'd actually consider having sex with and say the following: "I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive." Following that, they'd close with one of three suggestions: going on a date, returning to an apartment together, or having sex. Unsurprisingly, women propositioned for sex by men universally rejected the offer. Also unsurprisingly, men propositioned for sex by women accepted about 75% of the time. However, of interest to the current comparison is the percentage that agreed to a date: about 50% for both sexes.<br />
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While we don't have precise numbers at our disposal to speak for how successful Strauss and his friends were, those numbers may help to add some perspective. Remember, the 50% of men who were able to get a woman to agree to a date had invested precisely zero time and money into buying books, attending seminars, or losing their job and failing out of school because they spent all your time talking with guys about meeting girls and trying to meet girls. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggmXg86k6aAj7BJrlM5hF3M_TeNY7rDB28-BtcwiM44WT0JWngrXZMUXbi7LrQwREaLsV9e1gZBpMINhLPTDRxWaO_R3d8rpb0hmrEYT1Uzf-91taLOjQDkqrnFwGD0hOm32lAXVNivFI/s1600/successful-man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggmXg86k6aAj7BJrlM5hF3M_TeNY7rDB28-BtcwiM44WT0JWngrXZMUXbi7LrQwREaLsV9e1gZBpMINhLPTDRxWaO_R3d8rpb0hmrEYT1Uzf-91taLOjQDkqrnFwGD0hOm32lAXVNivFI/s320/successful-man.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">It may have cost me my job, several thousand dollars, and a year of my life, but I finally had sex once! Totally better than seeing a prostitute. </span></i><br />
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Somewhat surprisingly, the book had been recommended by people who seemed to think highly of evolutionary psychology, though by my rough estimate the subject itself was mentioned in any context all of three to four times, at the rate of about a sentence each time. Dawkins, Ridley, and Baker are listed as required reading in the group, but that seems to be about the extent of it. If there were any particular insights draw from evolutionary theory, they aren't mentioned here. <i>The Game</i> speaks far more highly and more often of hypnosis than it does about evolutionary psychology, so take that as you will. <br />
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Rather than a "how-to" guide for seducing women, <i>The Game</i> reads more like a "how-to" guide for seducing <i>men</i>. It manages this by giving them the hope they would be able to pick up women left and right if they only buy these books (<i>The Game</i> comes in an attractive black exterior, with gold-edged pages and a built in bookmark for the low retail cost of $30), spend several hundred dollars to attend these seminars (which began in the book at $500 a head, an amount that roughly tripled by the end of the book), and invest staggering amounts of time that seems to lead frequently to the neglect of friends, family, and jobs. Strauss likened the community to a cult on at least one occasion, and, given his description of it, I'd have to agree there are some similarities.<br />
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For all you AFCs out there, don't waste your time and money on these false prophets of the pickup community. If you want to know the <i>real</i> secret to getting any girl you want quick and easy, send me an email, along with $2000 (cash or money order only), and I'll get you started on the path to being a hook up master. No refunds, by the way. <br />
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<b>References:</b> Clark, R.D. & Hatfield, E. (1989). Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers. <i>Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 21, </i>39-55.<br />
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Strauss, N. (2005). <i>The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists. </i>New York: HarperCollinsJesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-66124815892453025882012-02-10T20:48:00.000-08:002012-02-11T08:54:08.470-08:00When Is It Useful To Be A Victim?At one point or another, we have all had to deal with at least one person who behaved like a professional victim. Nothing is ever even partially their fault or responsibility, and they never seem to get what they think they deserve. Quite the opposite actually; they like to go on long and frustrated rants about how other people in the world are out to actively snub them. They're unable to be reasoned with, as to even suggest that things aren't really that bad is to question their victim status. It will be taken as a slight against them, one that will cause a deep mental wound and be used as just another example to demonstrate how hard their life is. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipK7BHDEvasFkisxh2i3Ct3PDDCkXR_qgghajkihRIeVp3FSESOuvslsWSHW0nPeqMentYpBvH5TajweD8N1exsg6djoGBgXucmOsn5MkKW0ozMnet-WKzj7ZPhlsOe_BqJGOtuRHiFvM/s1600/nine-inch-nails.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipK7BHDEvasFkisxh2i3Ct3PDDCkXR_qgghajkihRIeVp3FSESOuvslsWSHW0nPeqMentYpBvH5TajweD8N1exsg6djoGBgXucmOsn5MkKW0ozMnet-WKzj7ZPhlsOe_BqJGOtuRHiFvM/s320/nine-inch-nails.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">And the world already has one Trent Reznor for that job; it doesn't need more. </span></i><br />
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To some extent, all that has probably described you well at some points throughout your life; perhaps more than you would care to admit and definitely more than you realize. It, of course, has never described me, due to my virtue of consistently being spot-on-correct when it comes to everything. That little facet of my mind coincidentally leaves me in a good position to examine this rather annoying human behavior: specifically, what might the benefits be to being mantled in the label "victim", and why might some people compete for that label? We'll start this examination by asking a question that may well offend you, but keep that "I'm offended" card tucked away in your deck for now: <a href="http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2011/06/why-cant-we-have-a-straight-pride-parade.html">why do we have a gay pride parade, but no straight pride one</a>? Bear in mind, this question could apply equally well across a number of different domains (such as a degree in men's studies or white pride month), but we'll stick to the sexual orientation one. People have responded to that question in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osDckj0Dd3k">multiple ways</a>, but the answers seem to center around one common theme: you can be proud of your sexual orientation when it negatively impacts you. <br />
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What both those linked responses have in common is that they explicitly stress overcoming bigotry and hatred while fostering acceptance, which are certainly worthy goals and accomplishments of which to be proud. That raises the natural question of why we don't then just call it the acceptance parade, or the overcoming bigotry parade? What's not clear is where the link to being proud of your sexual orientation specifically - which most people would not class as an accomplishment - enters into the equation. What both answers also imply is that were homosexuals not discriminated against for their orientation, there would be no need for gay pride anymore. This further emphasizes the point that one's sexual orientation is not the deciding factor in pride despite the parade's namesake focusing on it. What the calling it gay pride seems to do is, perhaps unsurprisingly, suggest the notion that issues faced by certain groups of people, in this case homosexuals, are more hurtful, more legitimate, and overcoming them is a special accomplishment. Getting people to stop bullying you at school is an accomplishment, but if you get people to stop bullying you <i>for being gay</i>, then you get extra points. After that, they'll be left with just teasing you for one of the no doubt awkward features of your adolescent body or personality <br />
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One could be left wondering <a href="http://www.queerty.com/what-does-a-straight-pride-parade-look-like-ask-sao-paulo-20110803/">what a straight pride parade would even look like</a> anyway, and admittedly, I have no idea. Of course, if I didn't already know what gay pride parades do look like, I don't know why I would assume they would be populated with mostly naked men and rainbows, especially if the goal is fostering acceptance and rejection of bigotry. The two don't seem to have any real connection, as evidenced by black civil rights activists not marching mostly naked for the rights afforded to whites, and suffragettes not holding any marches while clad in assless leather chaps. Neither group even had the rainbow behind them; they marched completely in black and white. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxAH_FjurW5FMehsFhbuyryIytbsdegPoxSRPCiPWr7Hql1uZknvlDHDWgGY7_-TUUP5jEjwAFjNNNx_QEqdB0MBFyu59MpWhiLT3n6VTLCwA9Y5XCaP3cp4wBVsRKrTEDsPDY0WjeHRM/s1600/Sufferage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxAH_FjurW5FMehsFhbuyryIytbsdegPoxSRPCiPWr7Hql1uZknvlDHDWgGY7_-TUUP5jEjwAFjNNNx_QEqdB0MBFyu59MpWhiLT3n6VTLCwA9Y5XCaP3cp4wBVsRKrTEDsPDY0WjeHRM/s320/Sufferage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">There's a movement that I could really "get behind". See what I did there? It's because I'm clever</span></i>.<br />
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These groups, because of their socially disadvantaged status, were able to successfully demand and obtain social change from the advantaged groups. As I've mentioned before, people working to change society in some way never use the motto, <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/11/sense-of-entitlement-part-2.html">"Things are pretty good right now, but maybe they could be better"</a> for this very reason. What's even more impressive is that these groups were able to achieve change without initiating violence. Being seen as a victim legitimized their demands, eliminating a need for force. However, being seen a victim also has the power to help legitimize other behaviors that aren't quite on the level of demanding equal rights. Being seen a victim can assistant in legitimizing otherwise non-legitimate behaviors as well, so now it's time to abandon our discussion of pride for one's sexual orientation and turn our focus towards quasi-thievery.<br />
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A recent paper by Gray and Wegner (2011) examined the link between how much someone is to be blamed for a misdeed as a result of their being painted as either more of a hero or more of a victim. Heroes are those who otherwise do good deeds, whereas victims are people who have had bad things happen to them. In the first experiment, subjects read a story about a fictitious character, George. In one case, George gets $100 from his paycheck stolen each week by his boss (victim); in a second case George gives $100 to charity each week (her); in a final case, he spends that $100 on normal purchases (neutral). In all stories, George sees a woman drop $10 and picks it up. Rather than returning it to the owner, George opts to keep the money. Subjects were asked to assess how much blame George deserves for keeping the money. The results indicated that hero George was blamed the most, followed by neutral George, while victim George got the least blame.<br />
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Maybe those results aren't too surprising. Victim George got lots of money stolen from him, so maybe he deserved that money the woman dropped more than the other two. The second experiment in the paper looked at the question from a different angle. In this experiment, subjects read another story about two hypothetical people working as cooks. Among other things found in the story, one person was either described as having started a charity in college (hero), having been hit by a drunk driver in college, but had long since recovered (victim), or had worked in a hardware store (neutral). Later in the story, the cooks ignore a request for a peanut-free salad, almost killing a woman with an allergy to peanuts. The results indicated that people tended to blame heroes more than neutral parties, and blame neutral parties more than victims. It's important to note here that the status of hero, victim, or neutral, was derived from a completely unrelated incident that happened years prior, yet it still had an effect in determining who was to blame.<br />
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In the final experiment, subjects read yet another story about a fictitious person, Graham. In the story, he is described in a number of ways, but at one point, he is described as either a hero (having worked at a charity), victim (again, hit by a drunk driver), or neutrally. Graham is then described as going through his morning routine, doing many normal things, and also picking up and keeping $10 he watched a woman drop at some point. Following the story, subjects did an unrelated task for a few minutes to distract them, and were then asked to recall five things about Graham. When it came to hero Graham, 68% of the participants listed that he had kept the $10 among the five items However, people only listed the keeping of the money incident 42% of the time in the victim condition. The quasi-theft was also listed sooner in the recalled list of the hero or neutral condition, relative to the victim one, suggesting that the misdeed stuck out less when the victim did it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZLGqmuwLWrw55X4Cx0Mvbga757rKTfwjpEGqVk3Na0kLdZHyOEE5RMGIhIJ-bBqAguqpDLUbNijXjX27EgHkQ-s0cfoxNJ2PadNYecUhEoDT4cNgiCIB-BaVDv4QXJGvwqDrdoR7uhg/s1600/kickedinballs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZLGqmuwLWrw55X4Cx0Mvbga757rKTfwjpEGqVk3Na0kLdZHyOEE5RMGIhIJ-bBqAguqpDLUbNijXjX27EgHkQ-s0cfoxNJ2PadNYecUhEoDT4cNgiCIB-BaVDv4QXJGvwqDrdoR7uhg/s320/kickedinballs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Man; victim Graham has really been milking that car accident for all it's worth...</i></span><br />
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As part of the answer to the question posed by the title, it is useful to be seen as a victim to excuse a misdeed, even if you're considered a victim for reasons completely unrelated to the current situation. Of course, it probably would only magnify the effect were those reasons related to the situation at hand. I would predict further that the degree to which one is seen as a victim would also be an important variable. The more "victim-y" someone is, the most justified their behavior and demands become. What this further suggests to me is that people are going to be biased in their perceptions of victimhood; they're going to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl1ujzRidmU&sns=fb">tend to see themselves as being greater victims than others would</a>, and may go to great lengths to convince others of their victim status.<br />
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One point worth keeping in mind is that for a victim to exist, there needs to be a perpetrator. If the results of this research are any indication, that perpetrator will tend to be thought of - by the victim - as being relatively benefited in their life (being more hero-like). Indeed, we would probably expect to find a correlation between how privileged a perpetrator is seen as being and how victim-y their victim is. After all, if the perpetrator is also a victim, that would, to some extent, help excuse and justify their behavior; if the perpetrator's behavior is somewhat excused, the victim of their actions becomes less of a victim. The results surrounding the people classed as "heroes" also sheds some light on why the, "I have friends who are [X], so I can't be [X]ist" arguments don't work. Making yourself sound benevolent towards a group may actively make you look <i>worse</i>; at the very least it probably won't help make your case. It also helps explain oddities of other arguments, like why some people are quick to suggest that men are privileged in certain areas of society but will generally refuse to admit that anything resembling a female privilege exists. Some even going as far to suggest that women <a href="http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/sexism-definition/">can't be sexist, but men can</a>. To admit that being a female brings benefits and being a man brings costs, depending on the situation, would be to weaken one's victim status, and - by extension - your social sway. The same goes for admitting that one's social group is quite capable of being nasty themselves. (Quick note: some people will point out that men are relatively disadvantaged sometimes, but they are only allowed to do so in an accepted fashion by keeping the perpetrator constant. <a href="http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Patriarchy_hurts_men_too">"The Patriarchy hurts men too</a>" is the compromise.)<br />
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While it may be annoying when people seem to actively compete for winner of the "biggest victim" award, or to be asked about obstacles you've overcome in life on college applications, understanding the relationship between victimhood status and legitimization of behavior helps to clarify why things like those happen. Being a victim can be a powerful tool in getting what you want when used successfully. <br />
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<b>References:</b> Gray, K. & Wegner, D.M. (2011) To escape blame, don't be a hero - be a victim. <i>Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, </i>516-519. <br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-90641515092439252452012-02-07T17:36:00.000-08:002012-02-08T08:57:26.365-08:00The Science Of White KnightingAs a male, it's my birthright to be a chauvinistic sexist, sort of like original sin. I still remember the day, though I was still very young, that some representatives from the Patriarchy approached me with my membership card. They extended their invitation to join the struggle to keep gender roles distinct, help maintain male privilege, and make sure the women got the short end of the social stick despite both genders being identical in every way. I'm proud to report that towards this end I've watched many movies and played many games where the male protagonist saves an attractive woman from the clutches of some evil force (typically another male character), and almost none where the roles have been reversed. Take that, 19th amendment!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhna8qMS3Z78-gYVg02Qt457vl-d6DiWkE8WTRFsFXDmTz8AhXe8QoVaZjT6RDeWAYHlRswprLiyDfPXGkrJlsf_QDfaqEk1ZYmnUCIdLI4-d9FC7VGz2z8eOTq6E9qHeL_JHmIKXw8rsc/s1600/PinkPS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhna8qMS3Z78-gYVg02Qt457vl-d6DiWkE8WTRFsFXDmTz8AhXe8QoVaZjT6RDeWAYHlRswprLiyDfPXGkrJlsf_QDfaqEk1ZYmnUCIdLI4-d9FC7VGz2z8eOTq6E9qHeL_JHmIKXw8rsc/s320/PinkPS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">While we haven't yet figured out how to legally bar women from playing video games, we can at least patronize them while they do. </span></i><br />
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I have some lingering doubts as to whether I, as a man, am doing enough to maintain my privileged position in the world. Are sexism and recurrent cultural accidents the only reasons that the theme of man-saves-woman is so popular in the media, but the woman-saves-man theme is far less common? While I certainly hope it is to maximize the oppression factor, there have been two recent papers that suggest the theme of a damsel in distress being rescued by their white knight (or Mario, if you're into short Italian plumbers) has more to do with <i>getting</i> the girl than <i>oppressing </i>her by reinforcing the idea that women need men to save them. A worrying thought for you other sexist pigs, I know. <br />
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While there's always an interest in studying heroic behavior, researchers can't put people into life-and-death scenarios for experimental purposes without first filling out the proper paperwork, and that can be quite tedious. The next best thing that we're able to do is to get subjects to volunteer for self-inflicted discomfort. Towards this end, <a href="http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP105065.pdf">McAndrew & Perilloux </a> (2012) brought some undergraduates into the lab under the pretenses of a "group-problem solving study", when the actual objective was to see who would volunteer for discomfort. The undergrads were tested in groups of three and given three minutes to assign each group member one of three jobs: astronaut, diver, and pitcher. The astronaut's job was to write down arguments in favor of taking three items from a hypothetical crashed spaceship. The diver was tasked with, first, submerging their arm in icy water for forty seconds, and then sit under a large water-balloon that the pitcher would attempt to break by throwing balls at a target (in keeping with the "3" theme, the pitcher had three minutes to accomplish this task). Needless to say, this would soak the diver, which was pretty clearly the worst job to have. Afterwards, the subjects decided how to split up the $45 payment privately. People who volunteered for the diver role were accordingly paid and liked more, on average. <br />
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If that's where the experiment ended there wouldn't be much worth caring about. The twist is that the groups were either made up of two men and one women, or two women and one man. In the latter groups, men and women ended up in each role at chance levels. However, when the group was made up of two men and a woman, the men ended up in the diver role 100% of the time, and the pitcher role almost as often (the one exception being a woman who was actually a pitcher for a softball team). It seemed to be that the presence of another man led the men to compete for the position of altruist, as if to show off for the woman and show-up the other man. If we were to translate this result into the world of popular movie themes, a close fit would probably be "male friend tries to convince a girl he really cares about her and he has has been the one for all along, not that jerk of a boyfriend she's had".<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglJlIUsgoum7vNkeT7oJ6VUg9jD365W58AvxDSQ83R_ZBy_J2jAKWlZ0TfWzDLVJQzEdwUn96qo33mBqBZ6SDihapwwfyQ_aOgJRQcqqjqhNm6CaQ_IziZi0yLEqJjsnvcP8umH6_jE0/s1600/Friends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglJlIUsgoum7vNkeT7oJ6VUg9jD365W58AvxDSQ83R_ZBy_J2jAKWlZ0TfWzDLVJQzEdwUn96qo33mBqBZ6SDihapwwfyQ_aOgJRQcqqjqhNm6CaQ_IziZi0yLEqJjsnvcP8umH6_jE0/s320/Friends.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> "<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Tell me more about all the men you date who aren't me. I'm selflessly concerned with all your problems and can take the pain, not like those Jerks." </i></span><br />
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Now it's worth pointing out that the mating motive I'm suggesting as an explanation is an assumed one, as nothing in the study directly tested whether the behavior in the two male groups was intended to get the girl. One could be left wondering why the two female groups did not universally have the male volunteering for the diver position as well, were that the case. It could be that a man would only feel the need to compete (i.e. display) when there's an alternative to him available; when there's little to no choice for the women (one man, take him or leave him), the motivation to endure these costs and show off might not be aroused. While that answer may be incomplete, it's at least a plausible starting point.<br />
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A second paper paints a broader picture of this phenomena and helps us infer sexual motives more clearly. In this study, Van Vugt & Iredale (2012) looked at contributions to public goods - sacrificing for the good of the group - rather than the willingness to get a little wet. In the first experiment, subjects played an anonymous public goods game with either no observer, an attractive observer of the same sex sitting close by, or one of the opposite sex. Across the three conditions, women were equally as likely to donate money to a group account. Men, however, donated significantly more to the account, but only when being observed by a member of the opposite sex. Further, the amount men donated correlated with how attractive they thought that observer was; the more attractive the men felt the woman was, the nicer the men were willing to behave. I'm sure this facet of the male psychology has not escaped the notice of almost any woman on Earth. To the infuriation of many girlfriends, their significant others will seem to take on a new persona around other women that's just so friendly and accommodating, leading to all manner of unpleasant outcomes for everyone. <br />
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The next experiment in the paper also looked at male-male competition for behaving altruistically in a public goods game. Male subjects were brought into the lab one at a time and photographed. Their photos were then added alongside two others so subjects could see who they were playing with. Feedback on how much money participants gave was made available after each of the five rounds. Additionally, some participants were led to believe there would be an attractive observer - either of the same or opposite sex - watching the game, and the photos of the fake observers were included as well. Finally, at the conclusion of the experiment, participants were asked to make a commitment to a charitable organization. The results showed that men tended to increase their contribution between the beginning and the end of the game, but only when they thought they were being observed by an attractive woman; when they weren't contributions steadily declined. Similarly, men also volunteered for more charity time following the experiment if they had been observed by an attractive woman. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3LUo4Zcl9mdRGT52Ll_whEw8XphRxoiz5zhMJts6Wzc5Ujz6k19CziK8SJwzZKoruO8PRlUuLj3MhJdwNKjF3V2DdJVrnmIJMCekCA7FBG0V9HlEjb4PK3ffB7dW16RPsJZQJDZYfKqg/s1600/Stripper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3LUo4Zcl9mdRGT52Ll_whEw8XphRxoiz5zhMJts6Wzc5Ujz6k19CziK8SJwzZKoruO8PRlUuLj3MhJdwNKjF3V2DdJVrnmIJMCekCA7FBG0V9HlEjb4PK3ffB7dW16RPsJZQJDZYfKqg/s320/Stripper.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">All the sudden, the plight of abused children just became a lot more real. </span></i><br />
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While male behavior was only studied under these two situations, I don't see any reasons to suspect that the underlying psychological mechanisms don't function similarly in others. Men are willing to compete for women, and that competition can take many forms, altruism being one of them. Everyone is familiar with the stereotypical guy who befriends a woman, is always there to help her, and is constantly looking out for her, with the end goal of course being sex (however vehemently it may be denied). Given that women tend to value kindness and generosity in a partner, being kind and generous as a way to someone's pants isn't the worst idea in the world. Demonstrating your ability and willingness to invest is a powerful attractant. That comes with a caveat: it's important for some frustrated men out there to bear in mind that those two factors are not the only criteria that women use to make decisions about who to hook up with.<br />
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I say that because there are many men who bemoan how women always seem to go for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfeys7Jfnx8">"jerks"</a>, though most women - and even some men - will tell you that most guys are pretty nice overall, and being nice does not make one exceptionally attractive. They'll also tell you that women, despite the stereotype and for the most part, don't like being with assholes. Real jerks fail to provide many benefits and even inflict some heavy costs than nicer men would. To the extent that women go for guys who don't really treat them well or care about them, it's probably due in large part to those men being either exceptionally good looking, rich, or high-status (or all three, if you're lucky like I am). Those men are generally desirable enough, in one way or another, that they are able to effectively play the short-term mating strategy, but it's worth bearing in mind their jerkiness is not what makes them more attractive generally; it makes them <i>less</i> attractive, they can just make up for it in other ways. Then again, denigrating your competition has a long and proud history in the world of mating, so calling other guys jerks or uncaring probably isn't a terrible tactic either. <br />
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<b>References:</b> McAndrew, F.T. & Perillous, C. (2012). Is self-sacrifical competitive altruism primarily a male activity? <i>Evolutionary Psychology, 10, </i>50-65<br />
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Van Vugt, M. & Iredale, W. (2012). Men behaving nicely: Public goods as peacock tails. <i>British Journal of Psychology,</i> Article first published online : 1 FEB 2012<i> </i>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-82405475132907221592012-02-01T20:09:00.000-08:002012-02-01T20:09:03.623-08:00The Science Of Being A Bitch To SlutsA while back, some of you may remember that an event called "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk">SlutWalk</a>" took place. For those in need of some background, a Canadian police officer suggested that women should avoid dressing like sluts to minimize their chances of being raped. In protest against these remarks and to fight back against "slut-shaming", marches of predominately young women took to the streets to announce that blaming the victim in rape cases because of how they were dressed was wrong. One would think, given the turn out of predominately young women, that these young women also believe that it should not be acceptable to be aggressive towards others or mistreat them because of how they dress or how "slutty" they behave sexually, no matter the context. One would be wrong. <br />
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There are some research papers that are such a breath of fresh air it's like falling in love with science all over again; this was one of those papers. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPnj2PlSapKy7_DTJoU2vFd_8goDpFKzDZpWyjvKYM5nkgY8SBzCasCLH2-Mo-RkLBD0F2FE4Q8_XYaIlWVGfMDT0lgNcG_eTVfGmLUuV9oUUR3NdCI6huDXOhOuhDHHHEgmwgfcuBK48/s1600/fresh-air-woman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPnj2PlSapKy7_DTJoU2vFd_8goDpFKzDZpWyjvKYM5nkgY8SBzCasCLH2-Mo-RkLBD0F2FE4Q8_XYaIlWVGfMDT0lgNcG_eTVfGmLUuV9oUUR3NdCI6huDXOhOuhDHHHEgmwgfcuBK48/s320/fresh-air-woman.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The feeling is similar to this, but without all the allergies and ticks. </span></i><br />
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The <a href="http://www.box.com/s/rdthllpbpfuk0g2lqtdt">paper</a>, by Vaillancourt and Sharma (2011), was examining intrasexual competition between women, specially the proposition that women would be relatively intolerant of other women they perceive as being sexually promiscuous. There are three delicious ironies to this paper, as it relates to Slutwalk: first, the authors are both working in Canadian universities. Second, the subjects being studied were all young women. Lastly, all the experimenters manipulated was the clothing that a female confederate was wearing; she was either dressed conservatively or, well, slutty (actual pictures of the clothing the confederate wore can be found in the study itself). To celebrate the return of Tosh.0 for its forth season, let's play a round of "guess what happens next". <br />
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Here's the setup: two women between 17 and 23 years of age are in the lab, sitting opposite each other for what they think is an unrelated experiment. The two women are either friends with each other or strangers. There's a knock on the door. It's the confederate, who happens to be an attractive young woman (independently rated as an 8.6 out of 10). She walks between the two subjects and asks them about the experimenter's whereabouts; the confederate then leaves with the experimenter. In the first condition, she walks in dressed conservatively. Can you guess what happens next?<br />
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If you guessed that there's next to no negative reaction, you'd be right on track. In the second condition, the confederate is dressed in a black mini-skirt and a low-cut top. Can you guess what happens next in this case? If you guessed that reaction of the two female subject's behavior would be classified as "bitchy" (including such behaviors as glares, looking the confederate up and down, saying something negative after she left the room, or laughing at her) by independent raters roughly 75% of the time, you probably weren't marching in any SlutWalks. If you further guessed that of the subjects who displayed true happiness at the confederate (11.6%), <i>all</i> were in the conservatively dressed group, and <i>all</i> the women who displayed anger at the confederate (12.6%) were in the sexy condition, I'll award you one genuine fake PhD in psychology.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiD5temV9F3keyB_P8U-RBg0L50FFxfx8NJ3BloxJnHm2I1iWhCOxjXw1sC4oZUudD7XX8PFRE_LxbL6iBLrQ82w64HDY7IJN_IBwsyCkkZL1PVtxMQ6rjw6YwzDnIBIZlZskrh1LA_6A/s1600/Dipolma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiD5temV9F3keyB_P8U-RBg0L50FFxfx8NJ3BloxJnHm2I1iWhCOxjXw1sC4oZUudD7XX8PFRE_LxbL6iBLrQ82w64HDY7IJN_IBwsyCkkZL1PVtxMQ6rjw6YwzDnIBIZlZskrh1LA_6A/s320/Dipolma.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>When you consider that most people waste years trying to get a similarly useless piece of paper, you'll realize you got the better deal. </i></span><br />
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While friend dyads were rated as slightly bitchier than strangers, the effect was small so there might not be too much to make of it. A second experiment was run. This time, there were three pictures of the same confederate as before: in one picture, she was dressed conservatively, in another she was dressed sexy, and in a third, she was dressed sexy, but the picture was manipulated to make her look overweight. A new sample of young women, ages 17 to 28, who were rating the pictures said they would be much less likely to introduce the confederate to their boyfriends, let their boyfriends spend time with her alone, or befriend her themselves when she was dressed proactively, and that effect remained even in the photos manipulated to make her look fatter.<br />
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It would seem the picture we're getting is that women don't seem to trust, much less like, other women that they perceive as being promiscuous. Cues for promiscuity appear to be threatening and unappealing. Why might this be the case? One part of that answer is male investment. The more freely available sex is, the less willing men will be to invest in obtaining it; simple supply and demand. Each additional promiscuous woman lowers the collective value of sex, in turn lowering the amount of investment a woman can demand. This suggest that women, regardless of whether they're sexually promiscuous themselves, would tend to be at least somewhat put-off by other women's sexual availability and actively work to restrict it through aggression. Indirect kinds of aggression, such as insulting and social exclusion, are the most common.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAQ8xoZ42rqQoH2qZHuBM_hVhcBDskpVycmT68inU5ulo7N0WuwbJ1YTrKECqkyYEMuffrZLxadHEtc6zol7DLGl-v00YXzeWFtYWB99c1GSOV3ygednM5-qGmHqXQJFnvaM76mMUcLQ/s1600/slutwalk_description.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAQ8xoZ42rqQoH2qZHuBM_hVhcBDskpVycmT68inU5ulo7N0WuwbJ1YTrKECqkyYEMuffrZLxadHEtc6zol7DLGl-v00YXzeWFtYWB99c1GSOV3ygednM5-qGmHqXQJFnvaM76mMUcLQ/s320/slutwalk_description.png" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>However, it's <b>not </b>a protest designed to stop other women from judging you, making fun of you, or excluding you for being a slut. </i></span><br />
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It would seem this effect is not limited to just sexual promiscuity, however, as attractive women are less likely to be hired, but <a href="http://www.ec.bgu.ac.il/monaster/admin/papers/1006_2.pdf">only when it's another woman doing the hiring</a>. For a woman, having other attractive and/or promiscuous women hanging around does you no favors when it comes to obtaining sustained male investment. Accordingly, those types of women who pose a threat do not seem to meet with warm welcomes. <br />
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In my <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2012/02/sexist-sexualization-of-fictional.html">previous post</a>, I mentioned an idea it's now time to return to:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Both articles above seem to equate sexualization with sexism, though precisely why that link is supposed to exist is left unexplained. It's almost as if their implicit proposition is that either (a) women can be sexually attractive, dressing and/or acting provocatively, or (b) be valuable and respected, but not both.</i> </span></blockquote>Female comic book characters are often depicted as being sexually attractive and dressed in a provocative manner, which is the aforementioned volatile combination that leads to female disdain. It might be hard for many women to identify with those characters or accept them because they're too busy hating them for what they represent. Now, I already hear someone saying, "But those two articles complaining about how it's wrong to sexualize fictional female characters were written by <i>men</i>, and this research paper talks about <i>women's</i> reactions. How can there be any connection?" There are two possible ways to make this connection that immediately come to mind.<br />
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The first is that not all men are equally desirable. If pair-bonding goes the way of the dinosaurs, the men at the lower ends of desirability spectrum lose out the most, while those at the top gain the most. Why? Just because a woman is promiscuous doesn't mean she's indiscriminant. If she's not getting the investment, she may as well go all-in for the good genes, effectively shutting most men out. This is the case in the majority of species without male investment. Because of this, men on the lighter end of the desirability scale have more of an incentive to attempt and encourage pair-bonding styles of mating. Since promiscuous women are a threat to maintaining pair-bonds, and generally out of the reach of those men anyway, the women are imposing costs with no associated gains and are looked down upon. <br />
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The second, perhaps more cynical, and by no means mutually exclusive, explanation is that some of the reason men look down on sluttier women is that they are trying to get in good with the more conservative women who are already looking down on the sluttier one. More succinctly, <a href="http://ohinternet.com/White_knighting">some men join in the derogation in the hopes of getting laid</a>. To what extent that's their proximate motivation is an open-ended question.<br />
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<b>References: </b>Vaillancourt, T. & Sharma. A. (2011). Intolerance of sexy peers: Intrasexual competition among women. <i>Aggressive Behavior, 37,</i> 569-577. Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-5412173815582974812012-02-01T10:03:00.000-08:002012-02-01T10:14:16.299-08:00The Sexist Sexualization Of Fictional Characters<span style="font-size: small;">People frequently complain that Disney movies gave them unrealistic expectations about love and relationships. While superficially it might sound plausible - after all, the relationships are portrayed as being a perpetual state of martial bliss and we do love to blame the media for things - it leaves one big question looming: why didn't Disney movies give people unrealistic expectations about animals, or inanimate objects, talking and breaking into dance and song? Surely, the two themes are approximately as common in the films, yet only one seems to cause a stir. I'm not sure if we're supposed to conclude that people are, on the one hand, perfectly capable of distinguishing fantasy from reality, and, on the other, far less able to separate fantasy from reality, contingent on the topic. "Of course animals don't talk, that's just silly, but love really is supposed to go on happily ever after, because that's romantic." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">I bring that question up because, in two articles I've come across lately, some people are <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-most-ridiculously-sexist-superhero-costumes/">complaining</a> about how <a href="http://kotaku.com/5868595/nerds-and-male-privilege">impractical and sexist</a> female costumes can be in a fantasy world where they already accept that people can fly, have superhuman strength, and can have a secret identity simply by changing clothes and putting on glasses (among other things, and that's just one guy). </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyG-S6Z9WKzxFJKQczOp3n6jHht0dRjWKjQbeD6YwHKSY3X3sA903DAQ72yk2OfXsvZXmwYZ_q4H5XLk6sbE71PsXk2f1jdBdWdembmXCxiwFmsjS3Z3gpTE4crrvFbEOXLrp6roVaAu0/s1600/Superman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyG-S6Z9WKzxFJKQczOp3n6jHht0dRjWKjQbeD6YwHKSY3X3sA903DAQ72yk2OfXsvZXmwYZ_q4H5XLk6sbE71PsXk2f1jdBdWdembmXCxiwFmsjS3Z3gpTE4crrvFbEOXLrp6roVaAu0/s320/Superman.jpg" width="204" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>You want impractical? According to that picture, Superman seems to tuck his cape into the back of his pants.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> </i><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Both articles above seem to equate sexualization with sexism, though precisely why that link is supposed to exist is left unexplained. It's almost as if their implicit proposition is that either (a) women can be sexually attractive, dressing and/or acting provocatively, or (b) be valuable and respected, but not both. While that's an interesting thought to tackle in its own right, it's not the main thrust of what I'm going after here. Both of the articles make another suggestion that I'd like to examine a little more closely, and it's this: the male characters in these games and comics are <i>not</i> sexualized, (or at least not <i>as</i> sexualized) while the female ones are.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> The natural question to be asking at this point is this: what does it mean for a man or a woman to be sexualized? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The authors are quick to suggest what it means for a woman to be sexualized: so long as she's attractive and wearing revealing clothing, that's about it. The primary focus of both articles is on the revealing amounts and styles of clothing that women are wearing, compared to the men. I'm not going to say that these female characters aren't being depicted in a sexually attractive way; they obviously are. However, what neither article touches on is what it means for a man to be sexualized, which you'd think would be important when making the claim that men aren't being sexualized. Granted, the percentage of body that's being covered by an average costume is higher for the men than for the women, but is that really all there is to it? As a go-to solution for making a character more sexually appealing, simply showing more skin won't work as well for both genders. What serves to sexualize a woman does not always have the same effect for a man. If you threw Batman into a belly shirt and short-shorts, that wouldn't make his character more sexually appealing by virtue of the fact that you get a better look at the skin of his rippling abs and toned legs. </span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqjsWSkbs1f8WFTK1us8kMxsBGTHbCKeH1N7qWXfhGSrr5xrvYKJhNB66lseulR50o7NkJtemIbViyWmTMqKNldu4GMcV7aKPp9CRNEFQfaZOEKT11nv6jcqM8GRVTPTlSFWB5kn22JiY/s1600/Sexualized.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqjsWSkbs1f8WFTK1us8kMxsBGTHbCKeH1N7qWXfhGSrr5xrvYKJhNB66lseulR50o7NkJtemIbViyWmTMqKNldu4GMcV7aKPp9CRNEFQfaZOEKT11nv6jcqM8GRVTPTlSFWB5kn22JiY/s320/Sexualized.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I don't know how those two are going to fit in time to fight each other with all those women they'd have to fight off. </i></span> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I would add that most male heroes are depicted in outfits so skin-tight they might as well have been painted onto their bodies; bodies which are so profoundly sculpted and muscled they give mine a run for its money. Sure, the female characters wear less than the men tend to, but in terms of showing off their hyper-fit forms it doesn't tend to matter that much. I would add that pretty much every hero, man or woman, is depicted as ludicrously symmetrical with near flawless skin. At this point, we can all take a minute to allow the critics to think, "not <i>all</i> women find symmetrical faces, unblemished skin, and muscular bodies sexually appealing, so therefore these male figures aren't being sexualized physically". </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Looks are only one side of the issue, though; actions are another. These male heroes are also depicted as, generally, being rather selfless, fighting to protect the innocent and the vulnerable at great personal risk for extended periods of time. On top of that, they almost universally <i>win</i> their fights, demonstrating their inability to be dominated by rivals. They are often highly loved, respected, or feared by the population, all potential signals of bearing high social status and power. Several of them are exceedingly rich, others are exceeding intelligent, and some are both. It's rare to find one that's short. They often have many other powerful friends and allies. As we all know, these are characteristics that are notoriously sexually unappealing to women. By "unappealing", I of course mean that these characteristics are actually extremely appealing to most women (Buss, 1994). </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">One of the articles points out that the kinds of women being depicted are a male fantasy <i>and </i>being the kind of person a hero is depicted to be is also a male fantasy. I'd say that statement is fairly accurate, but it overlooks a key point: the only reason a man would fantasize about being that kind of a guy in the first place is because that kind of guy <i>is</i> attractive to women. Men fantasize about being all sorts of people, but what almost none of them fantasize about is being perceived as sexually unattractive or having sexually unattractive partners. Being super-muscular, attractive, and fighting imposing villains is only a means to that end of fulfilling <i>women's</i> sexual desires. </span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFlEH57sGYgLpEmmzSiFDazIM9W-XLwTR1-ET4AeL3qze4k44ZE6qSaERgS9fbNd_kIyF9tPt9O9-erdblnuGYaKZjADsgLhzJXos3yX5A3IZ0rcrT1JUux2VqYrB-mkrNRk3_dQAA7o/s1600/CatwomanBane.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFlEH57sGYgLpEmmzSiFDazIM9W-XLwTR1-ET4AeL3qze4k44ZE6qSaERgS9fbNd_kIyF9tPt9O9-erdblnuGYaKZjADsgLhzJXos3yX5A3IZ0rcrT1JUux2VqYrB-mkrNRk3_dQAA7o/s320/CatwomanBane.png" width="315" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>"Tell me more about how women are portrayed in an unrealistic manner. I'm all ears, minus that 95% of me made of muscles where my neck should be"</i></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">What is interesting about the issue surrounding the women's costumes is the same interesting bit about the Disney example: of all the distortions of reality that <i>could</i> be complained about, (and in the world of superheroes there are many) why does this issue in particular get singled out as being the unrealistic and problematic one? It seems to speak more to the psychology and motives of those who are doing the complaining than anything else, I feel. The sexualization of men in these comics is rarely even noticed, or is casually dismissed as unimportant if it is; both articles flat out say that to even suggest men are sexualized alongside the women in these comics is ludicrous. The men are wearing more clothes, therefore they must not be being sexualized. QED.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It seems plausible that the sexualization of men is simply paid little mind because the sexualization of women is seen as either more demeaning or more threatening. The underlying assumption of both writers seems to be that if a woman is to be taken seriously, she needs to dress more modestly and avoid acting in sexually provocative ways. </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">They might not come out and say it directly, but that seems to be the angle they're approaching this issue from. Why people might care about the sexual proclivities and attractiveness of others - even fictional characters - will be explored in more detail next post. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>References: </b>Buss, D.M. (1994). <i>The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. </i>New York: Basic Books </span><i><br />
</i></span>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-212364666551878832012-01-25T17:51:00.000-08:002012-01-25T18:02:57.315-08:00The Lacking Standards Of Philosophical ProofRecently, I've reached that point in life that I know lots of us have struggled with: one day, you just wake up and say to yourself, "I know my multimillion dollar bank account might seem impressive, but I think I want more out of life than just a few million dollars. What I'd like would be more money. Much more". Unfortunately, the only way to get more money is to do this thing called "work" at a place called a "job", and these jobs aren't always the easiest thing to find - especially the cushy ones - in what I'm told is a down economy. Currently, my backup plan has been to become a professor in case that lucrative career as a rockstar doesn't pan out the way I keep hoping it will. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs2fN5aAvOFWN9aLjjTaDNP5w1sOPwSGOPVGPtoJCxE40meHuddCQ5dyMWc7LP65FQzNBr-tAO5gjYxbqSc_D6ORaRy0OruMh2ZNIIeqp6WCKSR8jU_30QQjOoEzHJZ0lSTmh6vcOvKfo/s1600/Money.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs2fN5aAvOFWN9aLjjTaDNP5w1sOPwSGOPVGPtoJCxE40meHuddCQ5dyMWc7LP65FQzNBr-tAO5gjYxbqSc_D6ORaRy0OruMh2ZNIIeqp6WCKSR8jU_30QQjOoEzHJZ0lSTmh6vcOvKfo/s320/Money.jpg" width="213" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Unfortunately, working outside of the home means I'll have less time to spend entertaining my piles of cash. . </i></span><br />
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I've been doing well and feeling at home in various schools for almost my entire life, so I've not seen much point in leaving the warmth of the academic womb. However, I've recently been assured that my odds of securing such a position in one as a long-term career are probably somewhere between "not going to happen" and "never going to happen". So, half-full kind of guy that I am, I've decided to busy myself with pointing out why many people who already have these positions don't deserve them. With any luck, some universities may take notice and clear up some room in their budgets. Today, I'll again be turning my eye on the philosophy department. Michael Austin recently wrote <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201201/rejecting-moral-relativism">this horrible piece</a> over at Psychology Today about why we should reject moral relativism in favor of moral realism - the idea that there are objective moral truths out there to be discovered, like physical constants. Before taking his arguments apart, I'd like to stress that this man actually has a <i>paid </i>position at a university, and I feel the odds are good he makes more money than you. Now that that's out of the way, onto the fun part.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>First, consider that one powerful argument in favor of moral realism involves pointing out certain objective moral truths. For example, "Cruelty for its own sake is wrong," "Torturing people for fun is wrong (as is rape, genocide, and racism)," "Compassion is a virtue," and "Parents ought to care for their children." A bit of thought here, and one can produce quite a list. If you are really a moral relativist, then you have to reject all of the above claims. And this an undesirable position to occupy, both philosophically and personally. </i></blockquote>Translation: it's socially unacceptable to not agree with my views. It's a proof via threat of ostracism. What Austin attempts to slip by there is the premise that you cannot both think something is morally unacceptable <i>to you</i> without thinking it's morally unacceptable objectively. Rephrasing the example in the context of language allows us to see the flaw quickly: "You cannot think that the word "sex" refers to that thing you're really bad at without also thinking that the pattern of sounds that make up the word has some objective meaning which could never mean anything else". I'm perfectly capable of affirming the first proposition while denying the second. The word "sex" could have easily meant any number of things, or nothing at all, it just happens to refer to a certain thing for certain people. On the same note, I can both say "I find torturing kittens unacceptable" while realizing my statement is perfectly subjective. His argument is not what I would call a "powerful" one, though Austin seems to think it is. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXgJBqeaOMmoUp_0g8OMMnbuRwPW9ANQ8C5RiFUPfWA9X8IXclo3zy1F01N1J3mbCDwzI7LiTB6VdlySDisKAeqGIBkInpJFae0UM_UyVkBF5kKo3xHFBNm2LoKVzZ-MAZbGH7lyxzu58/s1600/BadSex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXgJBqeaOMmoUp_0g8OMMnbuRwPW9ANQ8C5RiFUPfWA9X8IXclo3zy1F01N1J3mbCDwzI7LiTB6VdlySDisKAeqGIBkInpJFae0UM_UyVkBF5kKo3xHFBNm2LoKVzZ-MAZbGH7lyxzu58/s320/BadSex.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>It wasn't the first time that philosophy rolled off my unsatisfied body and promptly fell asleep, pleased with itself.</i></span><br />
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Moving on:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i> Second, consider a flaw in one of the arguments given on behalf of moral relativism. Some argue that given the extent of disagreement about moral issues, it follows that there are no objective moral truths...But there is a fact of the matter, even if we don't know what it is, or fail to agree about it. Similarly for morality, or any other subject. Mere disagreement, however widespread, does not entail that there is no truth about that subject.</i> </blockquote>It is a bad argument to say that just because there is disagreement there is no fact of the matter. However, that gives us no reason to either accept moral realism or reject moral relativism; it just gives us grounds to reject that particular argument. Similarly, Austin's suggestion that there <i>is</i> definitely a fact of the matter in any subject - or morality specifically - isn't a good argument. In fact, it's not even an argument; it's an assertion. Personal tastes - such as what music sounds good, what food is delicious, and what deviant sexual acts are fun - are often the subject of disagreement and need not have an objective fact of the matter.<br />
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If Austin thinks disagreement isn't an argument against moral realism, he should probably not think that agreement is an argument for moral realism. Unfortunately for us, he does:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>There are some moral values that societies share, because they are necessary for any society to continue to exist. We need to value human life and truth-telling, for example. Without these values, without prohibitions on murder and lying, a given society will ultimately crumble. I would add that there is another reason why we often get the impression that there is more moral disagreement than is in fact the case. The attention of the media is directed at the controversial moral issues, rather than those that are more settled. Debates about abortion, same-sex marriage, and the like get airtime, but there is no reason to have a debate about whether or not parents should care for the basic needs of their children, whether it is right for pharmacists to dilute medications in order to make more profit, or whether courage is a virtue.</i><i> </i> </blockquote>If most people agreed that the Sun went around Earth, that would in no way imply it was true. It's almost amazing how he can point out that an argument is bad, then turn around and use an identical argument in the next sentence thinking it's a killer point. Granted, if people were constantly stealing from and killing each other - that is, more than they do now - society probably wouldn't fare too well. What the existence of society has to do with whether or not morality is objective, I can't tell you. From these three points, Austin gives himself a congratulatory pat on the back, feeling confident that we can reject moral relativism and accept moral realism. With standards of proof that loose, philosophy could probably give birth and not even notice.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0W8wbJWHr9_0636I0tz6Tpq417IDYuSQD8_1lWtHke6TdJA5zb9c3RXqVqxTTw1SEbqC-DxKU3jqn23RYF1kkIXP9DBFV8FxvS3Ae-5Jaum9yONmDITX7g59BpKudSvknXnp6fsEF0sk/s1600/baby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0W8wbJWHr9_0636I0tz6Tpq417IDYuSQD8_1lWtHke6TdJA5zb9c3RXqVqxTTw1SEbqC-DxKU3jqn23RYF1kkIXP9DBFV8FxvS3Ae-5Jaum9yONmDITX7g59BpKudSvknXnp6fsEF0sk/s320/baby.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Congratulations! It's a really bad idea.</span></i><br />
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I'd be curious to see how Austin would deal with the species questions: are humans the only species with morality; do all animals have a sense of morality, social or otherwise; if they don't, and morality is objective, why not? Again, the question seems silly if you apply the underlying logic to certain other domains, like food preferences: is human waste a good source of nutrients? The answer to that question depends on what species you're talking about. There's no objective quality of our waste products that either has the inherent property of nutrition or non-nutrition.<br />
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Did I mention Austin is a professor? It's worth bearing in mind that someone who makes arguments that bad is actually being paid to work in a department dedicated to making and assessing arguments - in a down economy, no less. Even Psychology Today is paying him for his blogging services, I'm assuming. Certainly makes you wonder about the quality of candidates who <i>didn't </i>get hired.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-33973861120098199312012-01-20T13:31:00.000-08:002012-01-20T13:53:56.831-08:00Free Will Doesn't Matter Morally, But We Think It Does<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The study of the world around is dubbed </i><i>science, and in order to pursue it, you first need to purchase several large, expensive doohickeys in order to conduct experiments, hire scientists, and the like. The study of the theoretical world is dubbed </i><i>mathematics, and you need only paper, a pencil, and a trashcan within reasonable distance. In comparison, the study of nothing in particular may be dubbed </i><i>"philosophy", and all you have to do is keep talking. It may be noted that working on philosophical matters is generally very cheap to do. That may very well be because it isn't worth a penny to anyone anyway </i><i><span style="color: black;"></span></i>- <a href="http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Philosophy">Uncyclopedia</a></blockquote>Academic xenophobe that I am, I don't care much for philosophers. One reason I don't much care for them is that they, as a group, have a habit of getting stuck in arguments that remain unresolved - or are even unresolvable - for centuries about topics of dubious importance. One of those topics that tends to evade clear thinking and relevance is that of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will">free will</a>. The definition of the term itself often avoids even being nailed down, meaning most of these arguments are probably not even being had about the same topic.<br />
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There's been a lot of hand-wringing over whether determinism precludes moral responsibility. Today, I'm going to briefly step foot into the world of philosophy to demonstrate why this debate has a simple answer, and hopefully, when we reach that point, we can start making some actual progress in understanding human moral psychology. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0cH0ev7qck_8ZllOMV8Nvw1q2nn3QLVTFJNzL8aXSsK-0-9HbT0znHb-2oi1fpR2aY2i8kShnqx6_oj_IYYxXLKbfudaPvtaqAGpOrkeMctUb8JcqIelzaM2Yw9U9d10dLWJTfXdprNg/s1600/Philosophy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0cH0ev7qck_8ZllOMV8Nvw1q2nn3QLVTFJNzL8aXSsK-0-9HbT0znHb-2oi1fpR2aY2i8kShnqx6_oj_IYYxXLKbfudaPvtaqAGpOrkeMctUb8JcqIelzaM2Yw9U9d10dLWJTfXdprNg/s320/Philosophy.jpg" width="248" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">An artist's depiction of a philosopher; notice how it does nothing important and goes nowhere. </span></i><br />
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Let's take a completely deterministic universe in which the movement and action of every single bit of matter and energy is perfectly predictable. Living organisms would be no exception here; you could predict every single behavior of an organism from before the moment of its conception till the moment of death. Every thought, every feeling, every movement of every part of its cellular machinery. People seem to worry that in this universe we would be unable to justifiably condemn people for their actions, as they are not seen as having a "choice" in the matter (choice is another one of those very blurry concepts, but we'll forget about what it's supposed to mean here; just use your best guess). What most people fail to realize about this example is that it in no way precludes making moral judgments ("he ought not to have done that") or holding people responsible for their actions. "But how can we justify holding someone responsible for a predetermined action?" I already hear someone missing the point objecting. The answer here is simple: you wouldn't need to justify those moral judgments or punishment in some objective sense anymore than a killer would need to justify why they killed.<br />
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If the killer was predetermined to kill, others were also predetermined to feel moral outrage at that killing; nothing about determinism precludes feelings, no matter their content. Additionally, those who feel that moral outrage are determined to attempt and convince others about the content of that outrage, which they may be successful at doing. From there, people are likewise determined to attempt and punish the person who committed the crime, and so on. Suffice it to say, a deterministic world would look no different than the world we currently inhabit, and determinism and moral responsibility get to live hand-in-hand. However, I already feel dirty enough playing philosopher that I don't feel a need to continue on with this example.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS62nsSGrx-QLnF_KaGfBs5gxai1r84CfMRjlvCK7uMbNdNJ90la5A-_0oMlw-NEsv4MaWX8L_kXUDKDM0WtMKWG2jR0VwmdbsLdOxAm18mw3TpugS1iqbvzSc1X3BwyiTeHFk8SyI1fI/s1600/Santa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS62nsSGrx-QLnF_KaGfBs5gxai1r84CfMRjlvCK7uMbNdNJ90la5A-_0oMlw-NEsv4MaWX8L_kXUDKDM0WtMKWG2jR0VwmdbsLdOxAm18mw3TpugS1iqbvzSc1X3BwyiTeHFk8SyI1fI/s320/Santa.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">I feel even dirtier than I did last Christmas. The reaction of those children - and that jury - was priceless though...</span></i><br />
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After successfully resolving centuries of philosophical debate in the matter of a few minutes (you're welcome), it's time to think about what this example can teach us about our moral psychology. Refreshingly, we will be stepping out of the realm of philosophy into that of science for this part. What I think is the most important lesson to take away from this example is the idea that if we can fully <i>explain</i> a behavior, we must also <i>condone</i> it (or, at the very least, not condemn others for it). Evolutionary psychology tends to get a fair share of scorn directed its way for even proposing that certain traits - typically politically unpalatable ones, such as sex differences or violence - are adaptations, and that ire typically comes in the form of, "well you're just trying to justify [spousal abuse/rape/sexism/etc] by explaining it". It's also worth noting that those claims will be tossed at evolutionary psychologists even if those same psychologists say, "We aren't trying to justify anything". <br />
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I cited a figure a while back about how <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-in-eye-of-beholder.html">86% of people viewed determinism as incompatible with moral responsibility</a>, so this sentiment appears to be a rather popular one. There are two papers that have recently come across my desk that expand on this point a little further. The first comes from Miller, Gordon, and Buddie (1999), who basically demonstrated the effect I mentioned above. Subjects were presented with a vignette of a story involving a perpetrator causing some harm and asked to either try and explain that behavior first and then react to it, or react to it first and then explain it. The results showed that those who explained the behavior first took a significantly more forgiving and condoning stance towards the perpetrator. Additionally, when other observers read these explanations, the observers rated the attitudes of those doing the explaining as even more condoning of the harm than the explainers themselves had predicted.So while the explainers were slightly more condoning of the behavior of the perpetrator in the story, observers who read those explanations thought they were more condoning still. Sounds like the perfect mix for moral outrage.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvm5rnWX1TED_f31-I5QwiWdSoq2Cu33Xj_88ldsGZXeMl4u29PoqZ-FTk91tDectSigfYLrIHtu6BvwMADz8WpsTY8087yRX32npA8X9oCY4B-JPkfCKTZi15WFCDZVnUpHEt4F2GVxw/s1600/angry-mob-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvm5rnWX1TED_f31-I5QwiWdSoq2Cu33Xj_88ldsGZXeMl4u29PoqZ-FTk91tDectSigfYLrIHtu6BvwMADz8WpsTY8087yRX32npA8X9oCY4B-JPkfCKTZi15WFCDZVnUpHEt4F2GVxw/s320/angry-mob-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> "<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">We'd like to respectfully disagree with your well-articulated position, and, if that fails, burn you and your books." </span></i><br />
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Miller et al. (1999) went on to examine how different types of explanations might effect the explaining-condoning link. The authors suggest that explanations that portray the perpetrator as low in personal responsibility (it was the situation that made him do it) would be viewed as more condoning than those referencing the perpetrator's disposition (he acted that way because he's a cruel son-of-a-bitch). Towards this end, they presented subjects with the results of two hypothetical experiments: in one, the presence of a mirror dramatically affected the rates of cheating (5% cheating in the mirror condition, 90% cheating in the no mirror condition) or had no effect (50% cheating in both situations). The first experiment served to emphasize the effect of the situation, the second de-emphasizing the effect of the situation, as being the important explanatory factor. <br />
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The results here indicated that those who read the results stating that the situation held a lot of influence were more condoning of the cheating behavior when compared to those who read the dispositional explanations. What was more interesting, however, is that these same participants also rated their judgments of the cheater's behavior as being significantly more negative than what they thought the hypothetical researcher's judgments were. The subjects seemed to think the researchers were giving the perpetrators a pass. <br />
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The second experiment was conducted by Greene and Cahill (2011). Here, the researchers tested, basically, the suggestion that neuroscience imaging might overwhelm participant's judgment with flashy pictures and leave them unable to consider the evidence of the case. In this experiment, participants were given the facts of a criminal case (either a low-severity or a high-severity case) and were presented with one of three conditions: (1) the defendant was labeled as psychotic by an expert; (2) in addition, results of neurological tests that found deficiencies consistent with damage to the frontal area of the defendants brain were presented ; and (3) in addition to that, colorful brain scans were presented documenting that damage.<br />
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The results of this study demonstrated that participants were about as likely to sentence the defendant to death across all three conditions when the defendant was deemed to be low in future dangerousness. However, when the defendant was high in future dangerousness they were overwhelmingly more likely to be sentenced to death, but only by group (1). In groups (2) and (3), they were far, far less likely to be sentenced to death (a drop from about 65% likely to be sentenced to death down to a low of near 15%, no different from the low-dangerousness group). Further, in conditions (2) and (3), the mock jurors rated the defendant as more remorseful and less in control of his behavior. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1mAtzLs_o770wrjg8pFXyW-O6zb3WobFhKgoqoECapDrZWRCV5HNFrDTGSXSoGHVQrNQ_KEUvcpKTq8MwJoCK492IEEY62CpKqIJ87Cjn8anRZPtAKnER3Q0QEtbdtdwInhN7E4NvtSA/s1600/BrainScan.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1mAtzLs_o770wrjg8pFXyW-O6zb3WobFhKgoqoECapDrZWRCV5HNFrDTGSXSoGHVQrNQ_KEUvcpKTq8MwJoCK492IEEY62CpKqIJ87Cjn8anRZPtAKnER3Q0QEtbdtdwInhN7E4NvtSA/s320/BrainScan.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Unable to control his behavior and highly likely to be violent again? Sounds like the kind of guy we'd want to keep hanging around.</i></span><br />
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These two papers provide a complementary set of results, demonstrating some the effects that explanations can have both on our sense of moral responsibility and our perception of the explainer. What those two papers don't do, however, is explain those effects in any satisfying manner. I feel there are several interesting predictions to be made here, but placing these results into their proper theoretical context will be a job for another day. In the mean time, I'm going to go shower until that sullied feeling that philosophy brings on goes away. <br />
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(One thought to consider is that perhaps terms like "free will" and "choice" are (sort of) <i>intentionally</i> nebulous, for to define them concretely and explain how they work would - like Kyrptonite to Superman - sap them of their ability to imbue moral responsibility) <br />
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<b>References: </b>Greene, E. & Cahill, B.S. (2011). Effects of neuroimaging evidence on mock juror decision making. <i>Behavioral Sciences & the Law, </i>DOI: 10.1002/bsl.1993<br />
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Miller, A.G., Gordon, A.K., & Buddie, A.M. (1999). Accounting for evil and cruelty: Is to explain to condone? <i>Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, </i>254-268.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-59092984400829594722012-01-18T09:47:00.000-08:002012-01-18T10:07:06.034-08:00Was Freud Right? Are You Sexually Attracted To Your Parents?No, you probably are not.<br />
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Well, that was easy. Given that sexual reproduction evolved specifically to introduce some genetic diversity to future generations in order to remain ahead of the more quickly evolving parasites (Ridley, 1993), the suggestion that humans would also have some adaptations that predisposed them to breed with their immediate relatives seems misguided. Freud - I'm told - had suggested that children really did want to have sex with their parents, and it was only through imposition of a cultural taboo against incest that such drives were thwarted. It's just one of the many things he was wrong about.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikklI3lvEanYRMkgQu7WRKi6ksUK5jdJfYY0K7FP4o_sBKF3Xc3fo4s53ZSCIcPGxWWibVkGw9SwSxQViKC0ZSmqLAflwmY4Z-bchItjMnWJXcjHehhUEMtJcztLqfqutv2mXfNd20bts/s1600/Freud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikklI3lvEanYRMkgQu7WRKi6ksUK5jdJfYY0K7FP4o_sBKF3Xc3fo4s53ZSCIcPGxWWibVkGw9SwSxQViKC0ZSmqLAflwmY4Z-bchItjMnWJXcjHehhUEMtJcztLqfqutv2mXfNd20bts/s320/Freud.jpg" width="212" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"I don't always talk about your mother, but when I do....wait, never mind; I <b>do</b> always talk about your mother"</span></i><br />
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Might there have been something to that notion of Freud's though? No. Go read the introduction again if you're still confused on that point. However, there is at least one recent research paper in which the authors suggest that there may in fact be some forces at work that generate sexual attraction to closely related family members that a societal taboo is needed to stand in the way of. In a series of three experiments, Fraley & Marks (2010) attempt to demonstrate that possibility. <br />
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In the first experiment, subjects were either primed with a picture of their opposite sex parent, or were controls that were unrelated to that parent. Subjects were then asked to rate a few pictures of opposite sex strangers for their sexual attractiveness. The results showed a slight tendency for those who saw a picture of their parent to rate others as more attractive (a difference of about 0.2 on a scale of 1 to 7). The second study went a bit deeper. This time, participants had their own face morphed from 0 to 40% with those of opposite sex strangers and rated the new photos for attractiveness; the control group rated the same pictures, but were not the person being morphed into the photos. The results showed a similar pattern: there was a slight tendency for people who's faces had been morphed into the photos to rate them as more attractive (a difference of about a 0.4 on the same scale), relative to the controls. Finally, in the third experiment, the researchers lied to the participants about how much of their face had been morphed into the photos and mentioning the study was examining incestuous tendencies. This time, the effect reversed; participants rated the pictures with self-morphs as being slightly less attractive, relative to controls.<br />
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So where does that leave us?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLNBcysuoB1XimU3TGi1ZCeellwSxKR5_rmOfXsn5sLsCn1hD43wqEez45CImxR3Tmpy0n1ecjlYhIQOyvhbWwwFPDAgZ8AA4Fv80egSrpfDQlslzcnBcHhAz6ls0zRUjXzVV1HCsQtzQ/s1600/hiding-in-a-closet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLNBcysuoB1XimU3TGi1ZCeellwSxKR5_rmOfXsn5sLsCn1hD43wqEez45CImxR3Tmpy0n1ecjlYhIQOyvhbWwwFPDAgZ8AA4Fv80egSrpfDQlslzcnBcHhAz6ls0zRUjXzVV1HCsQtzQ/s320/hiding-in-a-closet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hiding in our closet, aka "The Shame Cave"? </span></i><br />
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Are we to admit Freud was onto something? No, and stop asking that silly question. Since I'm a big fan of theory, naturally my first question was: what was theory guiding this research? According to Fraley & Marks, the following findings need an explanation: (1) people tend to enter into relationships with others who are similar physically on a variety of traits, (2) that people tend to enter into relationships with those who live around them and are familiar, and (3) people find those who they are exposed to more frequently more attractive than those they're exposed to less frequently. However, those three findings do not a theory make; they need a theory to explain them, preferably one that doesn't cut again incest avoidance. Here's a simple and probable one that accounts for at least part of the picture here: sexual selection.<br />
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Take any species; since I like peacocks, I'll use them. When mating season roles around, the peacocks flaunt for the peahens, they have steamy bird sex, and soon after a new generation of birds are hatched into this world. The peacocks will inherit their father's sexy tails, and the peahens will inherit something else: their mother's preferences for those sexy tails. If those sexual preferences weren't inherited, mating in the next generation would be random with respect to the tails. Since it isn't, we can safely assume that, to at least some extent, the preferences are hereditary.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyhNQW-YihSelOA7rpOdeso7_godEakLR4Y9qapZDlEPhM6Q0a0tSh-ip2UmcoM3XwPPiEb9Bokw1pwJF8oqYIMJ-qZLm-fx9C-hidvQD08vrxbrqI-0AkcaY5I0RFOyTwebZc71_PODk/s1600/awkard+family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyhNQW-YihSelOA7rpOdeso7_godEakLR4Y9qapZDlEPhM6Q0a0tSh-ip2UmcoM3XwPPiEb9Bokw1pwJF8oqYIMJ-qZLm-fx9C-hidvQD08vrxbrqI-0AkcaY5I0RFOyTwebZc71_PODk/s320/awkard+family.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Just like the preference for hunting equipment is. I'm a shotgun man myself. </i></span><br />
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So let's return to the facts in need of an explanation. Picture your mother and father having sex to conceive you - make Freud proud. Whatever physical traits your parents had will be passed onto you. Additionally, whatever preferences your parents had for those traits that attracted them to each other will be passed on as well. That would seem to be able to explain (1) and the results of the photo manipulation study fairly well. By morphing in your own traits to the picture to some degree, you're morphing in those same traits that you're going to tend to have a preference towards. The result? You find those pictures slightly more attractive. <br />
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How about the first experiment that primed pictures of the parents? It seems at least plausible that if one truly found their opposite sex parent attractive, ratings of strangers would go <b>down</b> by comparison, not up. Concluding that one found strangers more sexually appealing because of that sexual aversion to their parents would be just as consistent with the data; at the very least, it can't be ruled out by the results found here. As for the third experiment, admitting a sexual attraction to one's own family can be quite socially damning, so it hardly seems surprising that people would avoid doing so. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZEUx0GVqTkU8Y7JzIbFgpLW5z2oVb1zRkxQ-SU-7slsuor3_9lyghxx6H5sWN1wnymB2J3pDyQpjm6UQAi3pNOoG0zjRY8PJZEaDfH5m0AU3fdoYe4ppEnbvOQrNse8qTosUS_oEgbDQ/s1600/couple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZEUx0GVqTkU8Y7JzIbFgpLW5z2oVb1zRkxQ-SU-7slsuor3_9lyghxx6H5sWN1wnymB2J3pDyQpjm6UQAi3pNOoG0zjRY8PJZEaDfH5m0AU3fdoYe4ppEnbvOQrNse8qTosUS_oEgbDQ/s320/couple.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"You look <b>just</b> like my sister and that is so hot! Would you mind wearing her clothes?"</span></i><br />
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Now I want to look at how the authors explain their results. Fraley & Marks (2010) suggest the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>...the mechanisms that promote familiarity, bonding, and attraction are most likely to operate on inputs experienced in the early family environment. For example, if sexual imprinting really takes place in humans, then one’s early interactions with primary attachment figures can play an influential role in shaping the “ideal” for what kinds of people one will find attractive...</i></blockquote>A tempting suggestion for some, no doubt, until one asks some perfectly relevant questions, like: why would the sexual imprinting take place during early interactions in childhood? Why would the stimulus that the imprinting responds to be the caregivers in the house (especially them, given the costs of inbreeding), as opposed to the environment outside the family? Combining the two questions gives us the following: Why would anyone suppose evolution had designed our psychology to become sexually attracted (in the long term) to the physical traits of our close genetic relatives at a time that we are pre-reproductive? Frankly, I can't think of a reason we would expect that to happen, and one isn't suggested in the paper. <br />
<br />
On the same token, Fraley & Marks (2010) go on to suggest that the aversion to incest is simply a matter of habituation - as opposed to the Westermarck effect - but again offer no reason as to why habituation would have this particular effect. At the same time, habituation would also seem to make people more attractive the more familiar they were, according to the author's interpretation of their work, and while Fraley & Marks (2010) note this contradiction, they don't do a good job of explaining it away. They try to draw on some kind of distinction between the conscious and unconscious recognition of the familiar, but I don't think they make a case for it. <br />
<br />
On the whole, that is a very unsatisfying explanation, especially compared to other models of incest aversion. Point: Westermark. Freud is still wrong. <br />
<b> </b><br />
<b>References: </b>Fraley, R.C. & Marks, M.J. (2010). Westermarck, Freud, and the incest taboo: does familial resemblance activate sexual attraction? <i>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, </i>1202-1212<br />
<br />
Ridley, M. (1993). <i>The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. </i>Harper: New York.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-84288173322735178012012-01-15T08:34:00.000-08:002012-01-15T08:34:50.410-08:00What Are We To Make Of The Term "Race"?In the language of biology, race has no hard definition. The most basic taxonomic classification that we as humans get without resorting to "eyeballin' it" is species, the most frequently referred to definition being: a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. All races of humans definitely fall into the same species category (if they didn't, we'd hardly be calling ourselves humans). Additionally, in terms of our cognitive functioning, it's unlikely that people were ever selected to encode the races of other people, given that they were not likely to travel far enough to ever really encounter someone of a different race (Kurzban, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2001), not to mention the matter of what selective advantages the coding of other races would bring being unanswered.<br />
<br />
So surely that means race is simply an arbitrary social construct with no <i>real</i> underlying differences between groups, right? Well...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Tnqg8iouKWrxWCZAgCWAVAQZtKUXBw6yH8N2fEw-8va2sFRi_vjvWBrUdty5YaIfmc-pNWGBq5u-MYZMf_nHpKYVNyphnwSVdWG8FVK0BrC3KmztUATC4BOUCrKoj8UmqmHx4-f2ejQ/s1600/minefield.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Tnqg8iouKWrxWCZAgCWAVAQZtKUXBw6yH8N2fEw-8va2sFRi_vjvWBrUdty5YaIfmc-pNWGBq5u-MYZMf_nHpKYVNyphnwSVdWG8FVK0BrC3KmztUATC4BOUCrKoj8UmqmHx4-f2ejQ/s320/minefield.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>"Have fun with that, buddy. I'm going to sit this one out."</i></span><br />
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The answer is both a "yes" and a "no", but we'll get to that in a minute. Let's return to that definition of a species first. There is a hypothetical population of mice (A1), all from the same area of the world. Half of that population is randomly selected and moved to a new area (A2), so the two groups are reproductively isolated. It's unlikely to two groups of mice will evolve in the same direction, as each group will have to deal with different selection pressures and drift. Let's further say that each generation, you took a sample of mice from A1 and A2 and attempted to breed them, to see if they produced viable offspring. Turns out they do, leaving you quite unsurprised and able to publish your results in "who cares?" monthly . If you continued this experiment long enough, eventually you'd find that some percentage of the mice from the two groups would probably fail to successfully produce viable offspring. <br />
<br />
In the span of a single generation then, two groups that used to be the same species would then not (all) be the same species anymore. That wouldn't happen because of any one sudden change, but would occur because of genetic differences that had been accumulating over time. This suggests that while there is less agreement over what counts as a race, relative to a species, the concept itself need not be discarded despite its fuzziness; it may actually refer to something worth considering, as evolution doesn't share our penchant for neat and tidy categorization. The example also demonstrates that the term species is not without ambiguity itself, despite it's clear definition. Consider that all the mice in A1 could successfully reproduce with all the other A1 mice (A1 = A1), all the A2 mice with other A2 mice (A2 = A2), but only a certain percentage of A1s could reproduce with A2s (<i>some </i>A1 = A2 <i>and</i> <i>some other</i> A1 =/= A2). This means that some of the A1 mice could be considered an identical and/or separate species from the A2 mice, depending on your frame of reference. (Another way of putting this would be that the difference between statistically significant and not statistically significant itself is not significant.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRbAmXtHPYxvzRANKC5v1RNgaKPO0CC4v62oJhobRjkLWPeeY5t0FIJ71I3QvePaq_7Ndxpi_M9ozkMGrkgh6sgEgIEY8jNHF4TpHor3pFaNZkiR_niBZF-quLOJ7FcE9xeFKLdZGvspc/s1600/ColorIQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRbAmXtHPYxvzRANKC5v1RNgaKPO0CC4v62oJhobRjkLWPeeY5t0FIJ71I3QvePaq_7Ndxpi_M9ozkMGrkgh6sgEgIEY8jNHF4TpHor3pFaNZkiR_niBZF-quLOJ7FcE9xeFKLdZGvspc/s320/ColorIQ.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Try to organize these by color, then tell me the exact moment one color transitions to another. </i></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
Now, obviously, it hasn't even come close to that point when it comes to race in people. All humans are still very much the same species, and the degree of genetic diversity between individuals is rather small compared to chimps (Cosmides, Tooby, and Kurzban, 2003). The more general point is that just because that is true, and just because the definition of race generally amounts to an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it">"I know it when I see it"</a>, it doesn't mean there are <i>no</i> genetic differences between races worth considering (contingent, of course, upon how one defines race, in all its fuzziness). <br />
<br />
It is also important to keep in mind that percentage of genetic difference <i>per se</i> does not determine the effect those differences will have. For instance, Cosmides, Tooby, and Kurzban (2003) note:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"> <i>Within population genetic variance was found to be [approximately] 10 times greater than between-race genetic variance (i.e. two neighbors of the same ‘race’ differ many times more, genetically speaking, than a mathematically average member of one ‘race’ differs from an average member of another).</i></blockquote>On the same token, the variance in height between the average man and the average women (a few inches) is less than the variance in height within genders (a few feet). I don't find such statements terribly useful. Sure, the statements may be matters of fact and they may tell us we share a lot more than we don't, but they in no way speak to the differences that <i>do</i> exist. Men are taller than women overall, and that needs an explanation. Put another way, humans share more - much more - of their DNA with chimpanzees, relative to the amount they do not share. However, the amount they don't share does not cease to be relevant because of that fact. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHV4tDsxZMV0Cac4U2Rp3LzB9QvXxKYE5GazHCDaNiB_PDbqjA47gan0UNRfCxbu1JLQneBidY6NBFl3Ls_oVj_exbTugdW4ehXg-zErRhtitZfPy-ey27kPRMrw7DU_6kWCra0goDh18/s1600/98_chimp_tshirt-p235755926081094150z8nqd_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHV4tDsxZMV0Cac4U2Rp3LzB9QvXxKYE5GazHCDaNiB_PDbqjA47gan0UNRfCxbu1JLQneBidY6NBFl3Ls_oVj_exbTugdW4ehXg-zErRhtitZfPy-ey27kPRMrw7DU_6kWCra0goDh18/s320/98_chimp_tshirt-p235755926081094150z8nqd_400.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>*This product has been tested on animals we only share 93% of our DNA with. </i></span><br />
<br />
The real question is in what domains do different groups tend to differ from each other and what are the extent of those differences? Are those differences in terms of mean values or variances of a trait? Are they confined to non-psychological factors, like skin and hair color? I will admit near complete ignorance of what an answers to those questions would look like, nor do I feel they'd be particularly easy to obtain in many cases. Some examples could include issues of lactose intolerance among certain populations, sickle cell anemia in others, and the odd fact that while rates of identical twinning tend to be constant across races, the rates of dizyogtic twinning can range from as low as 1/330 in Asian populations to 1/63 among African populations (Segal, 2000). However, the point of this post was not to answer those questions; rather, the point was to demonstrate that such questions need not be immediately shunned because of the definitional issues (of which there are, to restate, plenty of) and political implications that come with the term race.<br />
<br />
So while race may be a term that gets an arbitrary or subjective definition across different contexts and people, and while individuals differ more than races do, that does not imply that such a term is useless in all situations. People may disagree on precisely what colors should be considered blue, red, or purple, but that doesn't mean we should stop thinking about different colors altogether in favor of one single color. It should go without saying that just because differences might/do exist between groups of people in whatever form they do, that's no justification to treat any person as a representative member of their group rather than an individual, but it's probably something that should be said more often anyway. So there it is. <br />
<br />
<b>References: </b>Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., & Kurzban, R. (2003). Perceptions of race. <i>Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, </i>173-179.<br />
<i> </i><br />
<i></i>Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 98, </i>15387-15392<br />
<br />
Segal, N.L. (2000). <i>Entwined Lives: Twins, and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior.</i> Plume.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-61584239125062247742012-01-12T20:06:00.000-08:002012-01-12T21:51:28.072-08:00I Meme You No Harm<blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/01/06/is-robert-trivers-deceiving-himself-about-evolutionary-psychologys-flaws/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20120109">.<i>..[T]he evidence strongly suggests that war is not a primordial instinct that we share with chimpanzees but a cultural innovation, a virulent meme that began spreading around the world about 10,000 years ago and still infects us. - John Horgan</i></a></blockquote>What a hopeful thought: humans have no <i>innate</i> predisposition for coalitional violence - the large scale version of which we would call war. No. Violence, you see, is a <i>meme</i>; it's an <i>infection</i>; part of this mysterious "culture" thing, which is not to be conflated in any way with biology. Apparently, it's also a meme that humans were capable of spreading to chimps, via the introduction of <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=quitting-the-hominid-fight-club-the-2010-06-29">bananas</a> to make naturalistic observations easier. Who knew that fruit came with, basically, a meme of the plot to 28 Days Later?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuHMLHiLQ3r_OKs7m6sBOxGgk7YAUb5syKlfNC0oyi7a9SGIN6g-nxS8wApZYx15urGeUt4ZSecezVdKOAcHhQAdlgEiRe-POlWDvMKMFBrIwBy6D65r8h4EA7u5jDMq4du4qoFVtomQI/s1600/Bananawar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuHMLHiLQ3r_OKs7m6sBOxGgk7YAUb5syKlfNC0oyi7a9SGIN6g-nxS8wApZYx15urGeUt4ZSecezVdKOAcHhQAdlgEiRe-POlWDvMKMFBrIwBy6D65r8h4EA7u5jDMq4du4qoFVtomQI/s320/Bananawar.jpg" width="258" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bananas: the ultimate catalyst of war?</span></i><br />
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While this notion of "violence as a meme/infection, not anything innate" may sound hopeful to those who wish to see an end to violence, the babies that they are, it's also an incredibly dim view. For starters, you know those <a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/5189416049_167ecd30be.jpg">big canine teeth</a> chimps have? They don't have them for eating. Rather than being utensils, they're the biological equivalent of having four mouth-daggers, used mainly to, you guessed it, seriously injure or kill other conspecifics (Alba et al., 2001). Given that for the vast majority of chimpanzee evolution there haven't been humans consistently handing out bananas - in turn prompting memes for fighting that lead to the evolution of large canine teeth - we can rightly conclude that the origins of coalitional violence go back a bit further than Horgan's hypothesis would predict.<br />
<br />
However, perhaps handing out concentrated resources, in form of bananas, <i>did</i> actually increase violence in some chimp groups (as opposed to allowing researchers to simply observe more of it). This brings us to a question that gets at part of the reason memetics runs into serious problems explaining anything, and why Horgan's view of innateness seems lacking: why would handing out food increase <i>violence </i>in chimps over any other behavior, such as cooperation or masturbation? Once researchers provided additional food, that meant there were more resources available to be shared, or additional leisure time available, leading idle hands to drift to the genitals. So to rephrase the question in terms of memes: why would we expect additional resources to successfully further the reproduction of (or even create) memes for violence specifically, when they could have had any number of other effects?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjjmoE4y8GkChxdJcNe1gInxi02gBb7Q2nQhMGZZuxP7aU2ex5cstUy-ZochC6u4VfxScJHJPrqShyM3oMyHfdPb4S07gzKpoWHLKEYPowC9gECV4SAZ_CLAXBEdW5at0JrkBHJmmt-fU/s1600/Bananamasterbatiokn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjjmoE4y8GkChxdJcNe1gInxi02gBb7Q2nQhMGZZuxP7aU2ex5cstUy-ZochC6u4VfxScJHJPrqShyM3oMyHfdPb4S07gzKpoWHLKEYPowC9gECV4SAZ_CLAXBEdW5at0JrkBHJmmt-fU/s320/Bananamasterbatiokn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bananas, free time, genitals; do you see the picture I'm painting here?</span></i><br />
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Before going any further, it would be helpful to clarify what is meant by the term "meme". I'll defer to Atran's (2002) use of the term: "<i>Memes are hypothetical cultural units, an idea or practice, passed on by imiation. Although nonbiological, they undergo Darwinian selection, like genes. Cultures and religions are supposedly coalitions of memes seeking to maximize their own fitness, regardless of the fitness costs for their human hosts".</i> As a thought experiment for understanding how evolution could work in a non-biological setting, the term works alright; when the idea runs up against reality, there are a lot of issues. I'd like to focus on what I feel is one of the biggest issues: the inability of meme theory to differentiate between the structure of the mind and the structure of the meme.<br />
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Memes aren't supposed to reproduce and spread randomly. For starters, they're generally species-specific: if you put a songbird in the same room as cat, provided the bird doesn't end up dead, the "meme" of birdsong will never transfer to the cat no matter how much singing the bird does. You can show chimpanzees pictures of LOLcats their entire life, and I don't think you'll ever get so much as a chuckle from the apes, much less any imitation. Even within species, the spread of memes is not random. Let's say I read something profoundly stupid about evolutionary psychology and, out of frustration, slam my head onto the keyboard to momentarily distract myself from the pain. The head-slam will generate a string of text, but that text won't inspire people to replicate it and pass it along. What makes that bit of text less likely to be passed around then a phrase like, "Tonight. You"? <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBu2A-7RLp97WUA4E7offKVRqPIipvQrVvxwZBHr43X0gSNqJt9xr1-vyLi9unj2g12tyTxeROYCVJEpa8WrZxGUBQl2CKOHXQGbWNsVqHlK9D0GkUTGAyWjAqGopgtpUnEFUFTlKG6RY/s1600/bananahand.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBu2A-7RLp97WUA4E7offKVRqPIipvQrVvxwZBHr43X0gSNqJt9xr1-vyLi9unj2g12tyTxeROYCVJEpa8WrZxGUBQl2CKOHXQGbWNsVqHlK9D0GkUTGAyWjAqGopgtpUnEFUFTlKG6RY/s320/bananahand.png" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sometimes, bananas get tired of waiting for idle hands. </span></i><br />
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An obvious candidate answer would be that one phrase appeals to our particular psychology in some way, whereas the other doesn't. This tells us that both within- and between-species, what information gets passed on is going to be highly dependent on the existing structure of the mind; specifically, what kind of information the existing modules are already sensitive towards. To explain why a meme for violence - specifically violence - spreads throughout a population, you'd need to reference an organism already prepared for violence. Memes don't <i>create</i> violence in a mind not already <i>prepared</i> for violence in certain situations; some degree of violence would need to be <i>innate</i>. Similarly, viruses don't <i>create</i> the ability of host cells to reproduce them; they use the preexisting machinery for that job. In the same fashion, you'd need to reference an organism already prepared for birdsong to explain why such a meme would catch on in birds, but not cats or chimps. <br />
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I'm reminded of a story that's generally used to argue against the notion of the universe, or our planet, being "fine-tuned" for life, but I think it works well to torpedo Horgan's suggestion further. It goes something like this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>One day, a puddle awoke after a rainstorm. The puddle thought to itself, "Well, isn't this interesting? The hole I find myself laying in seems remarkably well-suited to me; in fact, the hole seems to fit my shape rather perfectly. It seems incredibly improbable that I would end up in a hole that just happens to fit me, of all the possible places I could have ended up. Therefore, I can only conclude the hole was designed to have me in it".</i></blockquote>The shape of the water, obviously, is determined by the shape of its container - the hole. Likewise, the shape that information takes in a mind is determined by the shape of that mind - its modules, that all perceive, process, manipulate, and create information in their own fashion, rather than simply reproduce a high-fidelity copy (Atran, 2002). If you take away the container (the mind) you'll quickly discover that the water (memes) have no shape of their own, and that a random string of words is as good of a meme as any. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://0.gvt0.com/vi/Y4yBvvGi_2A/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y4yBvvGi_2A&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y4yBvvGi_2A&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A good example of both a meme and the depth of thought displayed by puddles. </span></i><br />
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Further, I don't see the concept of a meme adding anything above and beyond what predictions can already be drawn from the concept of a modular mind, nor do I think you can derive already existing states of affairs from meme theory. If the human mind has evolved to respond violently towards certain situations, contingent on context, we're in a stronger position to predict when and why violence will occur than if we just say, "there's a meme for violence". As far as I can tell, the latter proposition makes few to no specific predictions, harking back to the <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-description-explanation.html">illusion of explanatory depth</a>. ("Norms, I'd like you to meet Memes. No one can seem to figure out much about either of you, so I'm sure you two can bond over that.")<br />
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Though I have yet to hear any novel or useful predictions drawn from meme theory, I have heard plenty of smug comments along the lines of, "religion is just harmful meme, parasitizing your weak mind (and mine is strong enough to resist)", or the initial quote. Until I hear something useful coming from the field of memetics, it's probably best to pull back on the non-explanations passed off as worthwhile ones. <br />
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<b>References: </b>Alba, D.M., Moya-Sola, S., & Kohler, M. (2001). Canine reduction in Miocene hominid <i>Oreopithecus bambolii. </i>behavioral and evolutionary implications. <i>Journal of Human Evolution, 40, </i>1-16 <i> </i><br />
<i> </i><br />
Atran, S. (2002). <i>In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. </i>New York: Oxford University Press.Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-28856215166629315102012-01-08T13:56:00.000-08:002012-01-08T13:56:23.081-08:00So Drunk You're Seeing Double (Standards)Jack and Jill (both played by Adam Sandler, for our purposes here) have been hanging out all night. While both have been drinking, Jill is substantially drunker than Jack. While Jill is in the bushes puking, she remembers that Jack had mentioned earlier he was out of cigarettes and wanted to get more. Once she emerges from the now-soiled side of the lawn she was on, Jill offers to drive Jack to the store so he can buy the cigarettes he wants. Along the way, they are pulled over for drunk driving. Jill wakes up the next day and doesn't even recall getting into the car, but she regrets doing it. <br />
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Was Jill responsible for making the decision to get behind the wheel?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwO16LLU0tBpWEl2RuICW6NZWYD0cJRpe4EXcjwTqIk3qE-evnGvcxctvIYjfTCQQ8-71G8GlDb7CPHQzccVurCuEpjPaQ2X_V9tLvUIXbCADJaxZISCG0CWuNueB1REHiUE-ZzGT_Xw4/s1600/Jack-and-Jill-Movie-Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwO16LLU0tBpWEl2RuICW6NZWYD0cJRpe4EXcjwTqIk3qE-evnGvcxctvIYjfTCQQ8-71G8GlDb7CPHQzccVurCuEpjPaQ2X_V9tLvUIXbCADJaxZISCG0CWuNueB1REHiUE-ZzGT_Xw4/s320/Jack-and-Jill-Movie-Poster.jpg" width="214" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>More importantly, should the cop had let them off in the hopes that the drunk driving would have stopped this movie from ever being made?</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> </i></span>Jack and Jill (again, both played by Adam Sandler, for our purposes here) have been hanging out all night. While both have been drinking, Jill is substantially drunker than Jack. While Jill is in the bushes puking, she remembers that Jack had mentioned earlier he thought she was attractive and wanted to have sex. Once she emerges from the now-soiled side of the lawn she was on, Jill offers to have sex with Jack, and they go inside and get into bed together. The next morning, Jill wakes up, not remembering getting into bed with Jack, but she regrets doing it.<br />
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Was Jill responsible for making the decision to have <a href="http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123253614">sex</a>?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2J3jrnVQHRg1MsA1pXO2DrSi4DI2BqWUaX3NSjmU97SFFwWAhcGZHQensbBJh2eugnG7dBs9Mcmw6Q0Jlwo0mhJQN7gswyZfJN_Lhk1hIfmtpX_lupkA5QQxJhjsqZtNekact3Cx83ko/s1600/JackJill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2J3jrnVQHRg1MsA1pXO2DrSi4DI2BqWUaX3NSjmU97SFFwWAhcGZHQensbBJh2eugnG7dBs9Mcmw6Q0Jlwo0mhJQN7gswyZfJN_Lhk1hIfmtpX_lupkA5QQxJhjsqZtNekact3Cx83ko/s320/JackJill.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">More importantly, was what happened sex, incest, or masturbation? Either way, if Adam Sandler was doing it, it's definitely gross. </span></i><br />
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According to my completely unscientific digging around discussions regarding the issue online, I can conclusively state that opinions are definitely mixed on the second question, though not so much on the first. In both cases, the underlying logic is the same: person X makes decision Y willingly while under the influence of alcohol, and later does not remember and regrets Y. As seen previously, <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/10/pop-psychology-blame-and-intent-edition.html">slight changes in phrasing can make all the difference</a> when it comes to people's<a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-in-eye-of-beholder.html"> moral judgments</a>, even if the underlying proposition is, essentially, the same. <br />
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To explore these intuitions in one other context, let's turn down the dimmer, light some candles, pour some expensive wine (just not too much, to avoid impairing your judgment), and get a little more personal with them: You have been dating your partner - let's just say they're Adam Sandler, gendered to your preferences - who decided one night to go hang out with some friends. You keep in contact with your partner throughout the night, but as it gets later, the responses stop coming. The next day, you get a phone call; it's your partner. Their tone of voice is noticeably shaken. They tell you that after they had been drinking for a while, someone else at the bar had started buying them drinks. Their memory is very scattered, but they recall enough to let you know that they had cheated on you, and, that at the time, they had offered to have sex with the person they met at the bar. They go on to tell you they regret doing it. <br />
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Would you blame your partner for what they did, or would you see them as faultless? How would you feel about them going out drinking alone the next weekend?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrDmLyBTYNRkRT989KuV0lAmwcN0Hbr9UFaiQKxmBwBc-yglRIWLdd3eZeteoRckIAjw7K2a0HVKlQIIK47HHgeiZPNuBvu4vHmfDhLfXsjoI_Ha4xy0L8XKz7lUNOQ6hZfumQ5c0HqmI/s1600/cheating.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrDmLyBTYNRkRT989KuV0lAmwcN0Hbr9UFaiQKxmBwBc-yglRIWLdd3eZeteoRckIAjw7K2a0HVKlQIIK47HHgeiZPNuBvu4vHmfDhLfXsjoI_Ha4xy0L8XKz7lUNOQ6hZfumQ5c0HqmI/s320/cheating.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you assumed the <b>Asian</b> man was the <b>Asian</b> woman's husband, you're a racist asshole. </i></span><br />
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Our perceptions of the situation and the responsibilities of the involved parties are going to be colored by self-interested factors (Kearns & Fincham, 2005). If you engage in a behavior that can do you or your reputation harm - like infidelity - you're more likely to try and justify that behavior in ways that remove as much personal responsibility as possible (such as: "I was drunk" or "They were really hot"). On the other hand, if you've been wronged you're also more likely to try and lump as much blame on others as possible on the party that wronged you, discounting environmental factors. Both perpetrators and victims bias their views on the situation, they just tend to do so in opposite directions.<br />
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What you can bet on, despite my not having available data on the matter, is that people won't take kindly to having either their status as "innocent from (most) wrong-doing" or a "victim" be questioned. There is often too much at stake, in one form or another, to let consistency get in the way. After all, being a <i>justified</i> victim can easily put one into a strong social position, just as being known as one who slanders others in an <i>unjustified</i> fashion can drop you down the social ladder like a stone.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/f--u_puzhGs/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/f--u_puzhGs&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/f--u_puzhGs&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">There's only one way to solve these problems once and for all. </span></i><br />
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<b>References: </b>Kearns, J.N. & Fincham, F.D. (2005). Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal transgressions: Self-serving or relationship-serving biases? <i>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, </i>321-333 Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-756245236982256401.post-84937520936891578772011-12-31T11:19:00.000-08:002011-12-31T11:19:27.254-08:00Performance Enhancing Surgery<div>In the sporting world - which I occasionally visit via a muted TV on at a bar - I'm told that steroid use is something of hot topic. Many people don't seem to take too kindly to athletes that use these performance enhancing drugs, as they are seen as being dangerous and giving athletes an <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18299098">unfair advantage</a>. As I've written <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-in-eye-of-beholder.html">previously</a>, when concerns for "fairness" start getting raised, you can bet there's more than just a hint of inconsistency lurking right around the corner. </div><div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STQFDb-wgdM/Tv6DVbnH5MI/AAAAAAAAAOo/XHF8NNGSoMI/s1600/carbike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STQFDb-wgdM/Tv6DVbnH5MI/AAAAAAAAAOo/XHF8NNGSoMI/s320/carbike.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>It starts with banning steroids, then, before you know it, I won't be able to use my car in the Tour de France.</i></span><br />
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</div><div>On the one hand, steroids certainly allow people to surpass the level of physical prowess they could achieve without them; I get that. How that makes them <i>unfair</i> isn't exactly obvious, though. Surely, other athletes are just as capable of using steroids, which would level the playing field. "But what about those athletes who don't want to use steroids?" I already hear you objecting. Well, what about those athletes who don't want to exercise? Exercise and exercise equipment also allows people to surpass the level of physical prowess they could achieve without them, but I don't see anyone lining up to ban gym use.<br />
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Maybe the gym and steroids differ in some important, unspecified way. Sure, people who work out more may have an advantage of those who eschew the gym, but those advantages are not due to the same underlying reason that come with steroid use. How about glasses or contacts? Now, to the best of my provincial knowledge of the sporting world, no one has proposed we ban athletes from correcting their vision. As contact lenses allow one to artificially improve their natural vision, that could be a huge leg up, especially for any sports that involve visual acuity (almost all of them). A similar tool that allowed an athlete to run a little faster, throw a little faster, or hit a little harder, to makeup for some pre-existing biological deficit in strength would probably be ruled out of consideration from the outset.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-glkEllv1RR4/Tv6NCSIOYlI/AAAAAAAAAPA/mVjZE4B_AVc/s1600/jetpack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-glkEllv1RR4/Tv6NCSIOYlI/AAAAAAAAAPA/mVjZE4B_AVc/s320/jetpack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>"Just try and tackle me now, you juiced up clowns!"</i></span></div> <br />
I don't think this intuition is limited to sports; we may also see it in the animosity directed towards plastic surgery. Given that most people in the world haven't been born with my exceptional level of charm and attractiveness, it's understandable that many turn to plastic surgery. A few hundred examples of people's thoughts surrounding plastic surgery can be found <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/misc/latestqotd.bml?qid=3131">here</a>. If you're not bored enough to scroll through them, here's a quick rundown of the opinions you'll find: I would definitely get it; I would never get it; I would only get it if I was disfigured by some accident - doing it for mere vanity is wrong.<br />
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Given that the surgery generally makes people more attractive (Dayan, Clark, & Ho, 2004), the most interesting question is why <i>wouldn't</i> people want it, barring a fear of looking better? The opposition towards plastic surgery - and those who get it - probably has a lot to do with the sending and receiving of <a href="http://popsych.blogspot.com/2011/12/discount-engagement-rings.html">honest signals</a>. In order for a signal to be honest, it needs to be correlated to some underlying biological trait. Artificially improving facial attractiveness by normalizing traits somewhat, or improving symmetry, may make the bearer more physically attractive, but those attractive traits would not be passed on to their future offspring. It's the biological equivalent of paying for a purchase using counterfeit bills.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xw-An9MN3cc/Tv6VKUAWTwI/AAAAAAAAAPM/kgLQ3Mm6Wgs/s1600/Plastic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xw-An9MN3cc/Tv6VKUAWTwI/AAAAAAAAAPM/kgLQ3Mm6Wgs/s320/Plastic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>"I couldn't afford plastic surgery, so these discount face tattoos will have to do"</i></span><br />
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Similar opposition can sometimes be seen even towards people who choose to wear makeup. Any attempts to artificially increase one's attractiveness have a habit of drawing its fair share of detractors. As for why there seems to be a difference between compensating for a natural disadvantage (in the case of contacts) in some cases, but not for surpassing natural limits (in the case of steroids or plastic surgery) in others, I can't definitively say. Improving vision is somehow more legitimate than improving one's appearance, strength, or speed (in ways that don't involve lifting weights and training, anyway).<br />
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Perhaps it has something to do with people viewing attractiveness, strength, and speed as traits capable of being improved through "natural" methods - there's no machine at the gym for improving your vision, no matter how many new years resolutions you've made to start seeing better. Of course, there's also no machine at the gym for improving for your facial symmetry, but facial symmetry plays a much greater role in determining your physical attractiveness relative to visual acuity, so surgery could be viewed as form of cheating, in the biological sense, to a far greater extent than contacts. <br />
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<b>References: </b>Dayan, S., Clark, K., & Ho, A.A. (2004). Altering first impressions after plastic surgery. <i>Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 28, </i>301-306. </div>Jesse Marczykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05528467206826018008noreply@blogger.com2