The Science Of White Knighting

As 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!

                           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.
   
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 getting the girl than oppressing her by reinforcing the idea that women need men to save them. A worrying thought for you other sexist pigs, I know.  

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, McAndrew & Perilloux (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.   

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".

                       "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."

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.

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.  

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. 
     

                                                                 All the sudden, the plight of abused children just became a lot more real.  

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.

I say that because there are many men who bemoan how women always seem to go for "jerks", 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 less 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.

References: McAndrew, F.T. & Perillous, C. (2012). Is self-sacrifical competitive altruism primarily a male activity? Evolutionary Psychology, 10, 50-65

Van Vugt, M. & Iredale, W. (2012). Men behaving nicely: Public goods as peacock tails. British Journal of Psychology, Article first published online : 1 FEB 2012

Why Are Plumbers So Sexist?

By now, most people have surely heard of the dreaded wage gap between men and women. If I am to believe what I have heard around the internet, women in the US earn about 77 cents for every dollar a man does, and - here's the key part - this is because we live in a deeply sexist society that needs to be changed.

                                                                                  Oh yeah? Well my glass ceiling is still higher

I could point out that the wage gap only reflects gross earnings, not things like hours worked, education, or profession, but those factors alone don't explain the whole discrepancy. As for what percentage of the remaining is gap is due to sexism specifically, well, I can't say. What we could say, with a reasonable degree of certainty is that there is a gap in gross earnings which can be divided up into explained and unexplained variance. What we cannot say is that the unexplained variance equals sexist discrimination.

Now before you decide to label me a sexist for daring to consider an alternative hypothesis, let's consider some other gaps as presented by Susan Pinker (2008): In 1973, only 5% of lawyers in the US were women; in 2003 that number was 27%. That's a pretty impressive gain, and we see a similar one for Aerospace engineers; up from 1% to 11% over the same time period. But what about plumbers? In 1973, women represented approximately 0% of the plumbers in the US; by 2003, women represented a mighty 1%. Why were women able to make such vast inroads in the fields of law and engineering, but somehow couldn't break through the extremely sexist barriers put up by the field of plumbing?

                                                                  "I unclogged that drain for you. Also, women shouldn't be allowed to vote"

Perhaps plumbers and plumbing culture are just vastly more sexist against women compared to lawyers. Then again, perhaps that huge gap between male and female plumbers reflects something else, such as women not being particularly interested in the idea of becoming a plumber. Pinker - not to be confused with her brother, Steven - makes the case for underlying differences in male and female psychology being an important factor in some of these gaps we see, from choice of employment to the pay gap. I feel it can probably help account for a hefty portion of that variance. It's important to remember that when you see sex differences, like in the pay gap, you haven't found direct evidence of sexism. For instance, in Michigan women now outnumber men in terms of earning all types of degrees, but this doesn't mean colleges there are sexist against men.

So let's forget about plumbing and focus on comedy. Someone happens to think there's no difference between men and women in that area. Why, hello again Amanda. (I didn't even notice who the author was until I was well into writing, it's just a lucky coincidence that she's consistently bad at science)

                                                               My posts have pictures with hilarious captions; your posts do not. Point: Men.

The idea of innate sex differences can be a touchy subject for some, and is no doubt responsible for part of the opposition towards evolutionary psychology (Geher, 2010). Marcotte thinks men and women are identical in the humor department, it would seem. Why does she think this? She reports that a study found 16 men and 16 women (I presume, from some college) were rated about equally when it came to how funny captions they came up with for a cartoon were. Despite this, 90% of people rated men as funnier than women, to which Amanda can only conclude "sexism did it".

First of all, let me say that I'm happy to see Amanda has apparently gotten over her concerns about small, homogenous samples that she expressed about the hand grip research, at least temporarily; I suppose Amanda figures since the results sound nice, the work must be good enough to generalize to "men and women" everywhere.

Despite not knowing much about the research in the field of humor myself, the second point I'd like to make is that there's probably a ceiling effect here; there's only a certain range of possible captions to pre-drawn, pre-selected pictures that make sense and are funny. The claim was this helps "level the playing field", much like only having 10 pound weights available can make differences between men and women in muscle mass seem irrelevant when recording how much they can lift (which would clearly mean men only lift more weight outside the lab because of sexism). Most people would agree there's a lot more to humor than captioning pictures, but Amanda Marcotte is not most people. 

                                                               Who's got two thumbs and thinks captioning pictures is hilarious? This guy.

                                                             
Did sexism play any role? Well, it seemed to. It's reported that people tended to remember the funny captions as coming from men and unfunny ones coming from women, but since the current study appears to not be available to read, I can't comment much further about that. I'm going to go ahead an guess that the effect wasn't terribly large, let alone able to account for why 90% of people agreed that men were funnier, as there wasn't much said about it other than "it exists". Why it exists would be another question worth examining. Spoiler alert: Marcotte probably thinks it's due to baseless sexism.  

References: Geher, G. (2010). Evolution is not relevant to sex differences in humans because I want it that way! Evidence for the politicization of human evolutionary psychology. The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium, 2, 32-47

Pinker, S. (2008). The sexual paradox: Extreme men, gifted women, and the real gender gap. Ontario, Canada: Random House Press

Pop Psychology: Smoke Detectors with Benefits

I hate my smoke detector. Right now it's laying disassembled on the table in my living room because it apparently thought my chicken was a fire hazard. That I'm talking about my smoke detector as having thoughts in the first place is rather odd, but it's just a metaphor that we all understand, right? It's not like people ever direct aggression, real or imagined, against tools that aren't working as you'd prefer.

                                                                   A man who may or may not understand the proper use of metaphor

 From computers, to cars, to imagined supernatural beings, people see agency where none exists - if not directly "see" it, then act as if they do. They will curse them, direct physical aggression towards them, and they will plead with them. Even though most people will tell you they understand begging their car to not run out of gas won't actually affect how far the car will eventually travel, one can imagine - has perhaps even experienced - the satisfaction some people get from breaking an old, less-than-functional piece of equipment because it was out to make their life miserable (the fax machine from Office Space comes to mind).


Part of what we see going on here is like my smoke detector problem (also known as Error Management Theory). The intended purpose of a smoke detector is to warn someone about an actual fire by using a typical cue that a fire would give off - the smoke. Needless to say, this also makes the smoke detector have the annoying habit of going off when something is cooking/burning - or in my case, having the stove on (my smoke detector is particularly annoying). One way to avoid this irritation would be to make smoke detectors less sensitive so they wouldn't go off during cooking dinner and all-night bong parties. However, doing so runs the risk of not making it sensitive enough to go off when there's a real fire, or not going off until it's too late. This doesn't mean that the best course of action is to turn up the sensitivity all the way, otherwise it would go off constantly, making the false alarms far too annoying; the key is finding that happy medium.


In the case of inanimate objects being labeled as enemies, part of the issue could be an agency-detection module in our brain getting triggered by an inappropriate stimulus because of the way it's calibrated: to be more sensitive to potentially important cues in order to avoid missing them. It's better to just be startled by what you thought was movement than to miss real movement that could mean real harm. In other cases, modules for aggression or negotiation could be triggered by the frustration of one of our goals, like being unable to fax a letter or view pornography quickly enough. While those behaviors might be useful ways of dealing with social creatures, they also get inappropriately recruited for some non-social ones. 


Something similar can be seen happening between men and women's perception of sexual interest. In the case of a smoke detector, both sexes are open to the same cost and benefits of false alarms and real fires; in the world of mating, this isn't always the case. It would be costlier for men - in terms of reproduction - to miss signals of potentially sexually interested women than the reverse. According to Buss (2003), this would explain why men are far more likely to infer sexual interest in women who are smiling at them or touching them (or talking to them, hanging out with them, sending them nude pictures, being alive, etc).  In case there are any women out there who haven't figured this out yet, almost all of your guy friends are waiting for you to come around and see things their way, they're just a bit more patient than the drunk guy at the bar.

                                                    "I couldn't help but notice I touched your ass while you were dancing. Do you have a phone number?" 

Perceptions of attractiveness are another area where the sexes would appear to differ. According to Okcupid - which is a reputable source of scientific data when I find it convenient - women tend to differ in their appraisals of male attractiveness, rating the vast majority of men as being below average in attractiveness (http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/). This statistical impossibility could be reflective of the fact that a "wrong" mating choice on the part of a woman is reproductively costlier on average than the wrong choice on the part of men.

Or maybe it's all because of this nasty "culture" going around. Yeah, let's go with that....

References: Buss, D.M. (2003). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (Revised Edition). New York, NY: Basic Books.