Sunday, January 09, 2005
Anthropology in the Twilight Zone - The Mating Question
(updated) This is a twilight-zone anthropology discussion, that was spawned off the FuturePundit about difficulties intelligent women have to find a mate. Some participants make some nice comments, but the level of the participants doesn´t add too much to the subject. So I found the discussion interesting not because of the topic itself, but because of the cognitive selection dynamics of one participant in particular. Heavy duty cognitive selection.
I also kept asking myself the question, "Can you win an argument with a person who wipes out 99% of reality, simply on analyzing their faulty logic (as in the mathematical logic structure of their arguments)?" And without putting in a lot of effort also.
I´ve deleted the part that deals with numbers and stats in the original article, to concentrate on the culture x biology debate, where most of the cognitive selection occurs.
On a smaller and lighter side note, it was delightfully amusing to debate universalism with a few boys who have no knowledge of any other culture rather than their mainstream American one, and who think the rest of the world is molded after them (genetically, no less!). Modesty aside, I got a kick from one of my satires (bolded). It will make more sense if you read it in the sequence of the debate, but it´s a lot to go through.
Comments: Do Men Want Dumber Women As Mates Or Are Smart Women Too Choosy?
Men are still very socialized in the cave man/patriarchal model, although it keeps morphing into different variations.
Posted by Alessandra at January 4, 2005 01:37 PM
"Men are more driven to seek physical beauty and youth as a result of selective pressures to seek fertile mates."
As a result of a lot of sexism is a more accurate explanation. If the fanaticism with a neurotic stereotype of youth beauty for women were related to a fertility quest, a huge number of divorced men aged 50 and up who don´t want to have any more kids wouldn´t look for much younger women as mates.
On a related note, I´ve been wanting to do research on men´s mentalities regarding the age of women for relationships.
For example, take many guys who are 35, ask them what changes relationship-wise if he is with a woman who is 25, 30, 35, 40, 45.
Posted by Alessandra at January 4, 2005 01:48 PM
"In conversations brighter women may do better at raising the interest of men. They can be funnier and do a better job of picking up on cues about interests."
Re this other remark you made, I disagree. A lot of very intelligent people are not funny (that goes for both sexes). The ability to "pick up cues about interests" has little to do with IQ, it´s in the emotional intelligence arena.
I think nowadays, only men who are intelligent AND very supportive of women´s advancement, will consider a very intelligent woman as a partner. A not very intelligent guy will never want a more intelligent woman for a partner, because, although he may not have a high IQ, he will not put up with the subordination that less intelligent women gladly are conditioned into accepting in the reverse picture.
Also, there is a lot of paternalism built in how many men relate to women but not the reverse. For example, if a not very intelligent woman, who is a nice kind of person, shows she has some very stupid views on a subject, the more intelligent man may think, "Well, she is still cute and nice, so I am satisfied." An intelligent woman in the reverse picture, would probably think, "What a stupid guy, I get no satisfaction from this."
Also, I haven´t seen any studies, but from life experience I have observed that men are much, much more intollerant at being shown that they are wrong on any subject than women, in a mating context. A conversation between an intelligent woman with a not very intelligent man will undoubtedly run into several of these situations quickly and will usually ruin any chances for any developments.
Posted by Alessandra at January 4, 2005 02:15 PM
Alessandra,
You say about my comment about how men are attracted to women who are young and pretty:
As a result of a lot of sexism is a more accurate explanation.
No, you are completely wrong. Do not believe the Leftists who deny that human nature is a product of Darwinian natural selection. Male desires are a product of evolution, not patriarchal manipulation by other males, not TV advertisement images, not parental upbringing, not silly teachings in school. It is ideological nuttiness to deny this, it is so obvious.
There is no benefit to women from denying the truth. The problems that result from reality can not be better managed by denying their causes. Human nature as a product of evolution has got to be accepted in order to be able to understand and deal with the consequences. Sexuality is too important in reproduction to be anything other than a product of our genes,
Men are socialized into a caveman patriarchal model? By who? Their mothers?
Look, men want to dominate. More masculine men want to do so more strongly. You can find less masculine men who have less a drive to do so. But your problem with men is a result of what they innately are wired up to be like. They want young women. They are attracted to signs of female fertility such as oily skin, big breasts, curves, youthful hair and the like. Telling them that they have been socialized into it just annoys them and deceives yourself. Most won't tell you that. Why should they? You are just going to give them abuse in response. A chorus of voices that agree with you might make you feel less alone. It might make a lot of men to silent on the subject or give totally insincere agreement. But it is not changing men to make the more like you want them to be. Feminists are fantasizing if they believe otherwise.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 4, 2005 03:00 PM
I think that IQ is just a proxy for status in this case.
It has long been observed that rising status increases the pool of potential mates for males but shrinks it for females. Males seek out mates of equal or lesser social status whereas females seek out mates of equal or greater status. Social status is a powerful factor in a females assessment of male attractiveness.
I recall reading a study back in college that correlated a woman's income from inheritance with her likelihood to marry. The more money she inherited, the less likely she was to marry. Other studies have measured how woman gauge the attractiveness of males as potential mates and found that women find men of perceived equal or higher status as the woman herself more attractive than those of perceived lesser status.
Posted by Shannon Love at January 4, 2005 03:03 PM
Randall,
First, your comment: Note that some people really took issue when I advanced the argument that smarter women are at a disadvantage in finding a mate. Here is social science data that really proves the common intuition. Anyone still want to dispute this argument?
Posted by p at January 4, 2005 07:41 PM
As for "finding a mate": I'm using common parlance for finding someone to marry and have kids. Of course not all people who marry have kids or vice versa. But the correlation between the two behaviors is farily high among whites in most Western countries still. White women (and these British were probably close to all white given the start of the study) are far less likely to have children if they are not married.
A desire to marry: A lot of women do not think they can find a suitable man (and suitable includes expectations about status) to marry to have kids with. That, to them, is finding a mate. There are lots (millions) of desperate women in their 30s who hear their biological clocks ticking and who can't find a willing man who they deem minimally acceptable for marriage.
Nature versus nurture and the desire to marry: Well certainly a woman's desire for the man to stick around and help raise the kids is typically both genetic and social. A woman can intellectually understand the advantage of having the man stick around while at the same time have instinctive urges to find a man who wants to stick around. She can want marriage for long term love to feel more emotionally satisfied. So it can seem like a consciously arrived at goal. But the wiring of the mind that makes the desire for the emotional bond is something that was put in place by natural selection.
Differences in attitudes: Men and women have different reproductive strategies. The causes of those strategies are obvious and those differences in strategies are seen in many other species which do not have methods of nurturing or cognitive capacities that would allow passing down complex social beliefs.
Has anything been absolutely proved by this latest study by itself? No. But if you look at it and at what else we know about human nature at this point I think some conclusions can be drawn with a high degree of confidence. I'm looking at this from the standpoint of natural selection. Surely being a high IQ woman in today's society makes a woman less reproductively fit while the opposite might be the case with men.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 5, 2005 01:40 AM
"Men are socialized into a caveman patriarchal model? By who? Their mothers?"
Usually mothers play a big part (just as fathers and others that make up the most important socializing figures) in a person´s socialization and conditioning history. Who does socialize children? Who socialized you in such a cave man type mentality? :-)
This is too funny...
"patriarchal manipulation by other males, not TV advertisement images, not parental upbringing, not silly teachings in school."
By the way, these are all examples of socializing actors in society. If advertising had no effect on people´s brains and behavior and it wouldn´t be a multi-million dollar industry, because it would have failed a long time ago to change attitudes and behavior one way or another. I suggest an intro to psychology course would be good for you to discover how parents affect their children´s development, attitudes and behaviors differently. And please read up on the history of education and how different shool systems affect thinking and behavior in human beings diferently. A course in anthropology showing how humans turn out very differently depending on how they are socialized would also be a suggestion. Patriarchy is just too complicated a subject to make snippy comments here to summarize everything.
I didn´t know men like you who want to see their entire sexist attitudes and behaviors be blamed on biology still existed. In case you have not noticed, there are other men in the world who have been socialized differently than you or have outgrown some of the nonsense they were socialized in and have evolved a bit more regarding theirs attitudes and behaviors towards women.
Posted by Alessandra at January 5, 2005 01:54 AM
Randall,
What was your childhood family enviroment that you were socialized in like? (I am presuming you had a family, obviously).
Was it, by any chance, a dominant father and a submissive mother? Do you have the same attitudes your father does about women?
Posted by Alessandra at January 5, 2005 02:17 AM
Men don't socialize other men to want hot young women with no previous kids. If I could trick (socialize) other dudes, I'd socialize them to be homosexuals. More hot girls for me.
Advertising serves to attach desires we already have (tasty food, hot girls, healthy kids, status, etc) to things we don't naturally have a desire for (cars, iPods, y'know) McDonald's tries to influence your behavoir, but they don't say the food tastes like dog feces, and no car company will do well with ads that convince you their car will make everyone think your a loser and that you'll get lots of old ugly women. If you can find me successful ad campaigns that link a product to something people don't want, maybe you have a point.
Posted by rob at January 5, 2005 10:31 AM
Alessandra,
I didn´t know men like you who want to see their entire sexist attitudes and behaviors be blamed on biology still existed. In case you have not noticed, there are other men in the world who have been socialized differently than you or have outgrown some of the nonsense they were socialized in and have evolved a bit more regarding theirs attitudes and behaviors towards women.
I am quite aware that millions of people like yourself who deny the biological basis of the sexes exist. I am quite aware that there are millions who believe the tripe you are spouting. But it is nuts. It is intellectually inexcusable to still believe the nonsense. The weight of evidence against it has gotten so enormous that the belief that males and females do not have innately different sexual desires and attractions is not intellectually defensible.
You ought to start to read what has been discovered about human nature. A good place to start is Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, the Modern Denial of Human Nature. You suffer from this denial and you need to treat your mind to the empirical evidence.
Oh, and picture me rolling my eyes at your questions about my parents. Why not read scientific results rather than trying to cherry pick anecdotes that support our irrational beliefs. I'm talking about group average differences. You can always find effeminate or submissive men and more aggressive and dominating women. But there are large innate group average differences between men and women.
Also, as Rob states, the ads for products sold with sexy women wouldn't work if men were not attracted to sexy women in the first place. Ditto for ads for food with salt, meat, and fat in them. Humans are wired up to like certain kinds of things and advertisements are designed to tap into deeply seated innate desires. No advert can convince the vast majority of men that fat women or old women are attractive. No advert is going to convince people that broccoli tastes as good as a hamburger.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 5, 2005 01:02 PM
Randall,
The inferences that you are making are just not substantiated by the facts.
The study relates marriage and IQ. Not reproduction and IQ. Also note that while there is a correlation between reproduction and marriage, the number of out of wedlock births in the US is very high (Britain also has a high number of out of wedlock births). Thus your evolutionary-like theory that you have espoused is not really substantiated by anything more than your use of anecdotes. The same ones you have taken others to task for invoking (and rightfully so).
Thus we get back to the real issue that I have with this study and the last one that you posted - the causal explanations are not substantiated from the study. They rely upon anecdotes to explain the phenomena. At best this study gives us a fact to ponder. For a theory to be meaningful it must be cast in a series of variables that can be mapped back to the theory via a set of hypotheses. That is, we theory test through variable-based hypotheses.
Here we have IQ = Intelligence, and Marriage = (?, reproduction, happiness, etc.). What is the theory that connects the variable to variable relationship when one articulates the H: High IQ men -> High Married; and H: High IQ female -> Low Married? The conclusion that men prefer X versus women prefer Y is not in the logic. To infer that intelligence may not be selected for is no where in the data. This are nothing more than wild speculation.
Your continued insistence to include other correlated variables that you find acceptable but you appear only to accept those correlations that support your world view. The Correlation between IQ and Income is material and you are dismissing it. The percent differences in income and marriage is quite a bit smaller than the IQ relationship (in this study). This calls into question the magnitude of the effect.
In summary, I see this a pop psych that's used to feed the masses.
Posted by p at January 5, 2005 06:05 PM
So intelligence in women is selected against, while in men, it is strongly favoured. Our descendants will have to live in a society where the men are intelligent, competent in abstract thinking and complex machines, dominating the professions and management, and the women are those cute little dumb things typing the letters, serving the tea, caring for the babies. I wonder, future is already here and now?
Posted by jaimito at January 5, 2005 10:08 PM
The above (the our descendants thing) does not refer to Alessandra and other intelligent, educated women. They will not replace themselves (2.2 babies) or have zero children, so their kind will be absent or few in populations of the future.
Posted by jaimito at January 5, 2005 10:21 PM
This seems obvious and unremarkable. Women can basically do two things with their lives: have a family, or do something else (ie have a career). If IQ makes the latter more attractive, but not the former, then of course increased IQ will shift the likelihood that the latter is chosen and decrease the proportion of the former.
I didn't like this phrasing: "many smarter women find it beneath them to be wives".
Why use the loaded term "beneath them" instead of just saying that they are choosing other options?
Also, I think its foolishly pessimistic about genetic engineering technology to find this alarming in any way. It's like worrying that a commercial program is getting a little buggier when its going to be open-sourced any day now. Evolution takes a long time, and whatever miniscule effects demographic trends like this have (even much larger trends like: high IQ is correlated with high income, high income is correlated with low birth rates) will be dwarfed by genetic manipulation.
Posted by Patri Friedman at January 6, 2005 01:12 AM
Randall wrote: "No advert can convince the vast majority of men that fat women or old women are attractive"
I dunno what EvBio you read, but the stuff I read is quite clear that liking thin women is *not* evolutionarily programmed. Rather, we tend to like thin or fat women depending on whether the culture has too much food or too little. Now, it may be programmed early enough that advertisements can't change it in adults, but it *is* set by culture.
Posted by Patri Friedman at January 6, 2005 01:14 AM
Patri,
I think culture plays a small role in determining what is attractive (leaving aside jewelry and clothes and other ornaments), especially once societies industrialize. In some primitive society they might argue that someone ought to marry some really fat woman so that she'll survive famines. But once those survival issues become less important I think obesity becomes less desirable. Some points:
First of all, the genetic component of what is attractive to men is probably not constant across all populations in the world. It makes sense that in different regions selective pressures exerted different forces in terms of what will be found to be attractive. So examples of what is attractive in other regions have to be considered in light of genetic differences in preferences.
Second, the correct typology is not between fat and skinny women. It is probably between skinny, curvaceous, and fat women (where the fat women are further broken down into scaled up skinny women and scaled up curvaceous women). In America women's fashion mags and ads aimed at women push far more skinniness and flatness in women than men like in women. Men like curves that are the product of the action of female sex hormones. BTW, Curvaceous women are more fertile than very skinny flat-chested women.
Large-breasted, narrow-waisted women have the highest reproductive potential, according to a new study, suggesting western men's penchant for women with an hourglass shape may have some biological justification.
Women with a relatively low waist-to-hip ratio and large breasts had about 30 per cent higher levels of the female reproductive hormone estradiol than women with other combinations of body shapes, found Grazyna Jasienska, at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and colleagues.
Two of the team, Peter Ellison and Susan Lipson at Harvard University in the US, have previously shown that higher levels of estradiol are indeed related to higher fertility in women trying to get pregnant.
The male preference for that sort of curviness is incredibly unsurprising. Though I wonder whether the same result would be found in Japan for instance. What level of curviness in Japanese women would achieve maximum fertility?
Third, men, on average, like bigger breasts in spite of flat models and lots of elite verbiage about how we shouldn't be attracted to big breasts. This preference is not getting into us from advertisements.
Fourth, I note that you push back on me about skinniness. But you didn't push back at me on age. So then do you accept that men are innately physically more attracted to women who are younger?
Fifth, Attractive Men Have Healthier Sperm. Obviously the innate programming of women for attraction is attuned to detecting which men would be good breeding material.
Sixth, Part of what humans find attractive is based on body symmetry. Higher body symmetry increases physical attractiveness. This is not surprising because symmetry is also a sign of healthier embryonic development and signals a better chance of healthy offspring from mating with such a person.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 6, 2005 02:42 AM
Patri,
I have known women who definitely saw marriage as beneath them. I had a female neighbor who had a seriously hostile attitude toward marriage and saw it as akin to a kind of slavery.
Genetic engineering technology for boosting offspring IQ: Yes, eventually. But when? 10 years? 20 years? 30 years?
In the mean time natural selective forces are still acting on humans. Also, contrary to popular belief natural selection can and sometimes does cause large changes in allele frequencies in a small number of generations.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 6, 2005 02:47 AM
And for the res tof you, do you even know what IQ tests are for, they were developed to test learning disabilities and not for testing intelligence, thus they are not suited and not good methods of coming to conclusions about intelligence.
Anyways... the comment, "women with high iq would think it is beneath them to marry"
assuming you are saying iq is intelligence then your comment is completely biased in terms of marriage. With that statement you are saying that anyone who is smart will think getting married is a low form of being. I think it is so much more than that, but I do hope you never marry since you think it's such a low form of institutionalized love.
ugh.
Posted by Magda at January 6, 2005 09:07 AM
IQ tests are pretty good at measuring intelligence. They are not perfect, and if anyone has better methods, I'm sure the psychological community would welcome it.
They weren't created to measure learning disabilities, unless by learning disability you mean stupidity, and they were made to diagnose dumb.
Just because something was created for one purpose does not mean it is worthless for all other purposes. Thermometers can measure air temperature, do you think they can measure body or water temperature too?
On fat vs thin women, has the preference ever been for more than pleasantly plump? A fat hunter-gatherer is not morbidly obese.
Posted by Rob at January 6, 2005 01:35 PM
rob:"Men don't socialize other men to want hot young women with no previous kids."
You must live in a cave then. Men always socialize other people. So do women, so do parents.
Incidentally, outside your cave, there are a bunch of other societies where beauty or attractive standards are completely different than the only one you have been socialized to think it´s biological. There are cultures where very fat women are the equivalent of what you call "hot young women." Why do men in those societies have the same reactions for those obese women as you do for the "hot young women?" Because they were socialized to think/feel that way. And the socialization process was similar to yours, they´ve been getting messages from people around them, which includes their parents and other men, about who/what´s "hot."
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 11:55 AM
"I am quite aware that millions of people like yourself who deny the biological basis of the sexes exist."
hello? where did I say there is no biological differences between men and women? Nowhere.
What these differences are is where you are mistaken. Men can be socialized into being submissive, and women can socialized into being dominant. All result of socialization, not biology. What I did say is that you can socialize a baby into different personalities and gender attitudes, which can vary according to how dominant or submissive they are.
also, people can be socialized into neither being dominant, nor submissive, a more mentally healthy middle of the road too.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 12:01 PM
"Oh, and picture me rolling my eyes at your questions about my parents. Why not read scientific results rather than trying to cherry pick anecdotes that support our irrational beliefs."
Yes, but just for the sake of anecdotal evidence, do you not have the same attitudes towards women your father does?
Is your mother the submissive type? Is that the model you had while growing up?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 12:04 PM
Alessandra, since you are outside the cave, please give me references to ethnographic accounts of societies where morbidly obese women are actually considered attractive by most men (fetishists are everywhere), where women actually commit more violent crimes than men (besides towards children, where there probably are tons)
Were you socialized to all your preferences? If you were socialized differently, could you enjoy being sexually assaulted, being chronically sleep deprived? Being a slave? No, people are not so easily fooled, the same reasons why I can't socialize girls into thinking pudgy, introverted, balding guys are attractive, it just doesn't work.
Alessandra, where you raised by a single mother? Or did boys give you very little attention as a teenager?
Please, describe how you were so optimally socialized.
Oh yeah, is there anything that patriarchy doesn't explain? How did patriarchs allow women to become feminists, why weren't they socialized to never leave the submissive role?
Posted by Rob at January 8, 2005 12:21 PM
"Alessandra, since you are outside the cave, please give me references to ethnographic accounts of societies where morbidly obese women are actually considered attractive by most men (fetishists are everywhere),"
I am even tempted to do this work of listing it all here for you, but if you (ahem) lift your little fingers off the keyboard, go to your college library, and type in the right searches, and look them up, the books will surely be there. (actually I don´t think I should do other people´s homework, that´s why I decline). There is not one example, but a variety, in the Middle East, in Asia Pacific, etc. Even from memory, I think one of them became famous through Margaret Mead. I am sure you never heard of Mead, she is something called an anthropologist, they study all these different societies you have yet to discover exist! I don´t think you will do this reading, but if you ever do, I would be interested to then know what you think, if you find your theories still fit and how.
You also ask some really good questions - I´ll take one: Can you be socialized into being a slave?
Of course!!! Man! where are your history books?
All in all, though, I see a serious problem creeping and lurching in this discussion, which is: have you noticed no one has defined what each participant think is meant by socialization/to socialize/to be socialized?
Are you sure we are using the words meaning the same thing? I am getting the feeling we are definitely not.
Over to you.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 02:00 PM
have you noticed no one has defined what each participant thinkS is meant by socialization/to socialize/to be socialized?
(an "S" was missing)
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 02:03 PM
[FuturePundit had to edit down this post because he suspects the size of the excerpted article may violate copyright law. Please limit your quoting of copyrighted text and supply a URL to the original text in the future.]
Perceptions of female beauty and desirability can differ between societies (time periods, and social classes). Consider the article excerpted below that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 29th:
New Obesity Boom In Arab Countries Has Old Ancestry
By GAUTAM NAIK
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- Jidat Mint Ethmane grew up in a nomad family in this impoverished nation in the western Sahara. When she was 8, she says, her mother began to force-feed her. Ms. Ethmane says she was required to consume a gallon of milk in the morning, plus couscous. She ate milk and porridge for lunch. She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk, followed by a pre-breakfast feeding at 6 a.m.
If she threw up, she says, her mother forced her to eat the vomit. Stretch marks appeared on her body and the skin on her upper arms and thighs tore under the pressure. If she balked at the feedings, her mother would squeeze her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable. "I would devour as much as possible," says Ms. Ethmane. "I resembled a mattress."
Today, Ms. Ethmane, 38 years old, is slender because her family ran out of money to continue the force-feeding technique, known as gavage. The term stems from the French word for the process used to force-feed geese to make foie gras. Yet in a recent interview in her family's one-room house, Ms. Ethmane says she still believes in the practice. "Beauty is more important than health," she says. Her husband, Brahim, agrees: "It is thin women who are not healthy."
The belief that rotund women are more desirable as wives helps explain why much of the Arab world -- which stretches from the Persian Gulf in the east to Mauritania in North Africa -- is experiencing an explosion of obesity. About half of women in the Middle East are overweight or obese, according to the United Nations' World Health Organization. In some communities, many of which were nomadic until a few decades ago, oil wealth has dramatically improved living standards. The resulting urbanization has introduced some Western habits: high consumption of sugar, fat and processed foods and more sedentary lifestyles. ...
Mauritania is the only nation today where force-feeding of girls is systematically practiced, mostly in rural areas. Efforts by women's groups and the government to stamp it out have largely been ignored. In a land that suffers from a constant shortage of food, plump women are assumed to be both wealthy and more likely to bear healthy children. "It has long been totally acceptable for women to be not just rotund, but voluminous," says Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force. ...
....
Charlotte Abaka, a Ghanaian advocate for women's rights in Africa, says gavage also encourages women to marry young because their rapid weight gain makes them appear older.
End excerpt
Consider the term "Rubenesque" with the following definition: of, relating to, or suggestive of the painter Reubens or his works; especially: plump or rounded usually in a pleasing or attractive way. e.g., a Rubenesque figure. Reuben’s paintings are sometimes cited as evidence that the female "beauty ideal" has shifted over time in some western countries. Of course, it is an oversimplification to assume homogeneity in perceptions of beauty even with within a single society. The term BBW refers to “big beautiful women” and is used as a compliment by individuals attracted to larger body shapes.
Posted by Garson Poole at January 8, 2005 03:05 PM
Thanks, Garson. And on the same lines, the "classic" example of foot binding in China, jeez.. completely did not even think about that.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 03:16 PM
Alessandra
Men can be socialized into being submissive, and women can socialized into being dominant. All result of socialization, not biology. What I did say is that you can socialize a baby into different personalities and gender attitudes, which can vary according to how dominant or submissive they are.
No, aggressive males can not be socialized into submissiveness. No, most shy and meek females can not be socialized into being outgoing and dominant. Males are, on average, innately more aggressive and dominating.
Sociallizing into personalities: No, that is completely wrong. The empirical evidence shows that the biggest cause of personality type is genetic. Another cause appears to be random noise in the development process. Judith Rich Harris argues in her book The NURTURE ASSUMPTION: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do that parents have very little influence on a child's development and that their peers have more influence than parents. But environment can not overcome strong genetic leanings.
Environment has more influence on people who have a mix of alleles that do not push them clearly in any one direction. But studies of twins reared apart show that environment's impact is limited by genetic factors.
BTW, Margaret Mead's work reporting on the Samoans was found after she died to have been fabricated. She's been discredited. See by Derek Freeman: The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research and Margaret Mead and the Heretic: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth.
You are missing Rob's point about slavery: Can you be socialized into enjoying slavery?
Posted by Randall Parker at January 8, 2005 03:47 PM
Randall, you didn´t even read the links you posted! this blog is like a study on cognitive selection!
Because Mead´s work has been challenged, does it mean there are no Samoa islands? :-))) does it mean the islands don´t exist? Certain aspects of her work were challenged, apparently, it has nothing to do with body weight.
Nowhere in the links you posted do these other anthropologists say women there are skinny. You don´t like to read, do you? :-) And how do you explain the women in Garson´s post? And the men?
I also found this:
Neville Rigby - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1681297.stm
Pacific islanders, especially women, are the fattest people in the world, according to latest figures published by the International Obesity Taskforce.
"The Pacific is the world's capital of obesity," said the taskforce's director for public affairs, Neville Rigby said.
The figures show that 55% of Tongan women, 74% percent of Samoan women and 77% of men and women living in Nauru are obese. " (please note 74%!!!)
"The prevention and treatment of obesity in the Pacific is also made difficult by the traditional cultural notion that 'bigness' is a sign of wealth and power," the report said. (please note **cultural notion**)
There are better examples, like the one Garson posted, and they are many more than one. But I guess you like not knowing about other cultures, more than knowing about them.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 05:08 PM
"You are missing Rob's point about slavery: Can you be socialized into enjoying slavery?"
What definition of "be socialized" are you using here? and why do you ask about enjoyment, since that was not his question?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 05:13 PM
Below is a link to the Wall Street Journal article entitled "New Obesity Boom In Arab Countries Has Old Ancestry" by Gautam Naik that is excerpted above. I suspect that it will not work for individuals without subscription access, but it might work for electronic subscribers. Click here to read it. I quoted large sections of the article because I thought it was relevant and because I suspected it was inaccessible to most blog readers. In the future I will attempt to adhere to the blog owner's preferences regarding limiting quotes.
On the topic of copyrights on the web: Interestingly, when Scientific American magazine ran a "hatchet-job" article about molecular nanotechnology in 1996 the researcher Ralph C. Merkle responded by quoting the entire article and interleaving it with a point-by-point rebuttal. The lawyers for Scientific American told Merkle to remove the article but he refused to comply. The material is still available here. (Of course, the excerpted material from the Wall Street Journal article given above did not contain extensive interleaved commentary so I am not claiming that it would withstand a copyright challenge. The legal area is in flux)
Posted by Garson Poole at January 8, 2005 05:13 PM
" The NURTURE ASSUMPTION: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do that parents have very little influence on a child's development "
HOw do you explain foot binding in China, since it was carried out primarily by the mothers?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 05:26 PM
Wow! We have a lot of wild speculation flying around without facts.
I want to make a couple of things clear.
- The study does not permit one to infer that men prefer dumber women. It supports the inference that females with high IQ marry at lower rates than Men with High IQ. The result is significant. We do not have info from the data provided to infer cause and effect.
- The vast amount of criticism directed at genetic disposition of males and females is not substantiated by data. Randall is absolutely correct in insisting that men on average are more aggressive than females based upon biological factors. The fact that men and women can be socialized to manage their behaviors up to a point is also true. And yes there are aggressive women and passive men. This does not mean there is a contradiction in the logic only that there is a distribution of the traits of aggressiveness in the population.
- Randall is correct in stating that Mead manipulated her findings concerning Somoan behavior. While all of Mead's work is not to be discounted, the thesis that humans are "nurture" products is completely FALSE. She lied to humanity in order to substantiate her ideological bent (very sad).
- Traits can in the short run and in certain societies be manipulated to signal desirable traits. The obesity example presented is one of many that we could find in the world. This does NOT mean that all traits are mutable. Again we have a distribution of traits with varying degrees of malleability.
- Science employs logic but cannot be reduced to logic. While in the world of logic we can negate a Universal by negation, the same is not always true in science. In science we have empirical observations that we must explain. That is, science seeks to explain patterns not single data points. Thus, in the nature-nurture debate that is now raging in this thread, we must list traits and then assign them to cells Nature vs Nurture). It is clear that both cells will contain examples. The secret is to let the facts fall in the correct place and not let ideology drive the facts.
Posted by p at January 8, 2005 05:46 PM
Alessandra,
Mead: You are telling someone to go read her to learn about anthropology. But her work presents an extremely misleading view of another culture. You are doing a disservice to anyone who you recommend to go read her.
A large percentage of American women are obese. Does this mean that most men find them sexually attractive? Even in poor countries where hunger is a problem obesity is more a mark of affluence and the ability to survive than it is a mark of sexiness.
As for bigness as a cultural notion: Why assume it is cultural? Different groups in the world due to genetic variations vary radically from each other in appearances, in average height, average width and thickness of bones, and in the genetic tendency to obesity. Given all these genetically variations in physical dimensions it would not be at all surprising that they differed genetically in what they found attractive.
Foot-binding: The women wanted their daughters to be suitably handicapped to be appealing to dominating upper class men who did not want their wives to go running around. Such was the difficulty of getting suitable husbands that the mothers were willing to cripple their daughters.
Socialized and slavery: Oh come on, the question is obvious enough. But the correct answer undermines your argument. You can't raise people to love to be slaves. Or do you think you could?
Do you think you could raise boys to find 60 year old women a greater sexual turn on than 17 and 18 year old girls? I don't think you could. Do you think you could?
Posted by Randall Parker at January 8, 2005 05:47 PM
Randall,
You´ve never read a single book on any other culture than your own (at least I hope you have read a few books :-). But it´s clear you certainly have never read a single book on any culture where obesity was the beauty and sexual standard. Discussion without knowledge is funny for 5 minutes, then it´s just like the looney house.
"A large percentage of American women are obese. Does this mean that most men find them sexually attractive? "
My point. Ignorance is bliss, is it not? Is Samoa in Ohio? Oh, you mean Samoa is on a different side of the global map?
Did you know there are other countries besides the US in the world?
And Samoa has a completely different culture than the American one? Gasp! Is it news to you, too?
Yes, men do find obese women in some other cultures sexually attractive. The culture mentioned in Garson´s post is one. In Samoa is another. (see, my memory was right, even it Mead wrote stuff about other aspects of their culture that was off). But if you are completely ignorant about every other single culture in the world, how would you know what the men think is sexy or not? You just make up any claim you want about any culture and put that forward as an argument. No basis in reality or any study.
I could say martians like women who are fat, too. It would have the same reality base as your statements about other cultures. Martians even like green fat women, how about that? ;-) Not your type, I gather. And if you asked me how I knew martians liked fat women, I would say just like you, "I assume, therefore it is. Reality does not matter, it matters that I am always right."
Randall, I am glad, with all her problems, that it was Mead that went to the Samoans and not you. I can picture your brilliant anthropology Samoan report: 95% of women are just fat slobs, they don´t even diet (can you believe it? I have found no evidence of a Samoan Weight Watchers). Even though the men kill to marry them, and they live very happy as a couple afterwards, it´s all because they have yet to see a Britney Spears music video. In short, I am profoundly inclined to think that Samoan men have an advanced type of myopia because only that can explain why they do not see women as I do. They are legally blind.
Brilliant, I would say!
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 08:21 PM
"Mead: You are telling someone to go read her to learn about anthropology. But her work presents an extremely misleading view of another culture. You are doing a disservice to anyone who you recommend to go read her."
Actually, no. You should read Mead, and then you should read her critics. And then you should a bunch other anthropologists. That will teach you more than if you don´t read her in the first place. Ah, but I forget, you simply don´t read... my bad... :-)
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 08:31 PM
Alessandra, if you honestly believe Randall doesn't read, you are an idiot.
Posted by Bob Badour at January 8, 2005 09:03 PM
Alessandra,
You have no idea what I've read. Your own reading recommendation is for an anthropologist who promoted one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of social science. You really ought to read Steven Pinker's Blank Slate so that you can begin to unlearn the wrong things you have apparently been taught. Pinker's book is a great starting point for those who are still so heavily invested in an excessive belief in the power of social environment in the development of the mind.
Sexual attraction and obesity: No, you do not know what you are claiming. A woman can be preferred as a mate without her being sexually more attractive. Ditto for a man. More most of history in many cultures sexual attraction between two people was not the only or main factor that determined who mated with who. Just as there were dynastic marriages among European royalty that were made based on other consideration so there were matchmakers and parents who chose who their children would mate with. These people were making decisions based on considerations other than sexual attraction.
There are methods of measuring sexual attraction objectively. For instance sensor devices are used to measure arousal in response to images. These devices have been used to study male and female sexual orientation. Would cultures that prize obesity show measures of sexual attraction by their 16 year old males with raging hormones that had 100 lb overweight women as more attractive than non-obese women? I'm open to being convinced on this point. Perhaps there are genetic variations that cause that response that are present in some groups. But I doubt that physical attraction that departs far from a healthy body shape can be learned. So, for example, I don't think attraction to prefer asymmetric bodies can be learned.
You seem wholly ignorant of (or in denial of?) a large body of research literature about the biological basis for human nature. I'm pointing you at it and you are telling me I do not read. Why don't you go thru the category archives of my web logs and see just how much I read. For example, read my Brain Development archives. You'd learn a lot in the process.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 8, 2005 09:34 PM
P.S. When you write "other cultures", I read "evolutionarily isolated groups with some measure of inbreeding." You claim culture as cause for what genes could just as easily cause.
Do european men or chinese men raised in the genetically isolated community of Somoa prefer morbidly obese women? What has anyone done to rule out genes?
Do you believe the difference between bonobos and chimpanzees is strictly cultural?
Your intellectual prejudice reminds me of the idea of the self-evident truth that the average male preference for women who resemble their mothers is due entirely to socialization or imprinting. The fact that every man's father picked a woman who resembles his mother and that at least one maternal grandparent did the same could not possibly have an influence as far as some folks are concerned. As time progresses, I see more and more psychological and sociological orthodoxy disproved at the same time as I see more and more evidence for strong genetic influence over behaviour--including my own.
Posted by Bob Badour at January 8, 2005 09:36 PM
Bob, sorry, what books did he read on Samoan culture? He didn´t mention any and I saw no evidence he had read anything on Samoan culture. Neither on Mead. Neither on any other anthropologist. I take it you´ve read even more books than he did on the subject? Which books did you read on Samoa that prove with the fact that women there are skinny? Or that Samoan women are fat, but that men think they are all horribly un-sexy that way?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 09:42 PM
"Sexual attraction and obesity: No, you do not know what you are claiming. A woman can be preferred as a mate without her being sexually more attractive."
How do you know what men in other cultures think is attractive sexually if you don´t know these men, you don´t read about them, you don´t study anything about them? You are dreaming about them. The basis for your claim is total ignorance of these other societies. You can´t claim men in Samoa think fat or skinny is sexually attractive if you have no knowledge about their culture. No reality basis. Just speculation. Day dreaming.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 09:51 PM
me:
But it´s clear you certainly have never read a single book on any culture where obesity was the beauty and sexual standard
Randall:
You have no idea what I've read.
Which book have you read that talks about a culture where obesity was/is the beauty and sexual standard?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 09:54 PM
You'd get a kick out of reading alessandra's blog. She hates homos.
Alessandra, could you se socialized into lesbianism? Who socialized you into all your opinions? I don't doubt that Samoans are grossly obese. I don't doubt that Samoa exists. A trait can be very common and still be considered unattractive. Whether Samoan men think fatter is sexier with no limit, or a very high limit, that's an empirical question, that's worth learning.
On not reading anthro-fic, I did read Gulliver's Travels, that should make up for not reading Coming of Age in Samoa.
Posted by Rob at January 9, 2005 03:42 AM
"No advert is going to convince people that broccoli tastes as good as a hamburger."
Given that you´ve never taken a walk outside your block, this reminded me about a country outside the US where this is the case. It has about gazillions of people, and there are huge regions where people love broccoli and would rather starve than kill a cow for a hamburger. Actually they hate the food you love, and love the food you hate. (why do you hate broccoli, btw? veggies are so good)
Discussing universalism with people who have no knowledge about any other culture is interesting because the arguments are so in the surreal zone. Reality is completely shunned everytime it contradicts dogma.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 04:51 AM
"You'd get a kick out of reading alessandra's blog. She hates homos. "
If you would read the blog, maybe one thing you could learn is that people who are anti-homosexual, anti-pedophilia, anti-prostitution, anti-p0rnography, have nothing to do with hate. But then, it seems reality is not something you want to have anything to do with. People who oppose all these sexuality problems are able to think about issues that don´t fit in your mind. Saying they "hate" is just a way to stifle discussion, you don´t have arguments, so there flies the ad hominen attack. Pro-homosexuals are too stupid to be able to argue or think about problems in sexuality. They can only call people names, trying to cover up for how stupid they are.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:03 AM
"I don't doubt that Samoans are grossly obese. I don't doubt that Samoa exists. A trait can be very common and still be considered unattractive. Whether Samoan men think fatter is sexier with no limit, or a very high limit, that's an empirical question, that's worth learning."
... that´s worth learning...
Apparently, that is the only thing we agree on. If you don´t know anything about another culture, making affirmations about it, without any knowledge or learning, is senseless. BTW, the reason I suggested for you to read books on anthropology, given how interested you all are in culture and biology, is that long before you were born, people wanted to know about cultural similarities and differences. And they have been going to study other cultures for eons and written thousand of books.
Now, given what I noticed about the discussion here, I would not be surprised if "reading on Samoa" for some participants here means:
a) there are 50 books on Samoa in the library
b) guy opens first book. Has no mention if Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: see, that means they probably thought skinny women were sexy.
c) opens seconds book: it says Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: this anthropologist doesn´t know what he is talking about.
d) opens third book: it says Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: this anthropologist must be a disgruntled feminist. Can´t be true.
e) opens 4th-49th book: it says Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: Anthropologists in general don´t know a thing.
f) opens 50th book: it says Samoan men thought brooms made with this yellow mesh were sexy. Conclusion: See, that´s really their primeval yearning for Britney Spears. I was right.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:16 AM
Alessandra,
India and cows: You want to bet that Indians who are given meat that is not religiously proscribed on average do not like it as much as they like vegetables? Humans do not need to be taught that meat tastes good. To most humans without conditioning meat tastes good. So does fat. So does sugar. You can look around and find cultures that place limits on what can be eaten. But the underlying biology of tastebuds can not be overridden to the point that most people are going to find fatty and sweet tastes to be revolting. The brain is wired up in such a way as to make us eat calories with lots of nutrients.
You continue to proclaim the supremacy of culture over biology and tell me if I just read enough books I will see the error of my ways. I keep pointing you toward more objective ways to study human brains and the evidence that has been found from those studies. But you will have none of that. You have your prejudices and are not interested in what biological science has to say about human nature.
As for anthropologists as disgruntled feminists: It is a real problem. Look at what Mead's ideological zeal did to corrupt her work. Marxists and others who want to remake humanity into forms incompatible with human nature have similarly helped to corrupt anthropology and sociology. Luckily the biological sciences are advancing and gradually undermining the arguments of the ideologues. Some ideologues seem to be unaware that their position is crumbling though. If you would trouble yourself to read The Blank Slate you'd begin to get an idea of just how far you are going to have to eventually retreat from your untenable positions about human nature.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 9, 2005 02:04 PM
Some sociology concepts - since we are talking about socialization:
Social Structure is basically the preexisting patterns of social reality that influence each of us on a daily basis. This structure is in place before we come into the world and has influenced generations before us. In essence, social structure is that framework of society that dictates to us appropriate behaviors and attitudes depending on our particular status (or position) within the overall structure of society. Social Institutions are those organized entities that are established to meet specific needs for the overall society. There are several social institutions that influence us all in unique ways. The five most obvious of these are (arguably all of equal importance): The Economy, which provides society with a monetary base and the means to produce and distribute goods; Politics, which is responsible for providing leadership and laws governing behavior; The
Family, which provides the means to reproduce and to socialize children; Education Systems, which provide
the means to teach members of society how to be productive and intelligent members, and Religion, which provides guidance for many issues, the most basic being the meaning of life and death.
One's social class is his/her relative position within the overall social structure and this, too, influences individual behaviors and attitudes. Social class consists of one's education level, occupational prestige, income, wealth, and may also include other factors such as race and gender. Research continues to demonstrate that individuals are greatly influenced by one's social class in many ways. For example, depending on one's social class there are distinct differences in attitudes and behaviors regarding work, religion, racial, and gender issues. Finally, social groups and social interaction are of interest to sociologists
as both influences individual behaviors. Within groups (two or more people sharing common interests who interact with one another on a regular basis), there is interaction (verbal and nonverbal communications) and the overall groups' structure as well as the interaction itself greatly influences the attitudes and behaviors of individuals within groups.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:07 PM
questions on socialization:
# What is meant by the social construction of reality? How, precisely, is "reality" socially constructed?
# How is culture transmitted from one generation to the next? What are the agents of socialization, and how do they differ - in terms of what kinds of things they socialize, and when they socialize them?
# What is acculturation? What is resocialization and how is it similar to acculturation?
Social Structure as a Negotiated Order.
* Structure arises out of the interactions of people who are operating from both a shared sense of reality (culture and socialization) as well as a individual and group oriented biography which produces particular definitions and interpretations.
* We attempt to make sense out of situations for "all practical purposes."
* We bargain, compromise, redefine and produce an emerging sense of order as a stable reality.
* Some situations allow for little negotiation, others more.
Culture forms the foundation of Social Structure:
* Some sort of shared reality: Language, Norms and Values.
* Out of this basis we attribute meaning and significance to others in terms of where they are placed in relation to ourselves and others.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:22 PM
I wanted to find a definition of socialization quickly and easy, but found this instead. still looking...
SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
This is a course which investigates the relationship between one's place in the social structure and one's own, individual personal growth. We will seek to gain some understanding of the impact of society on the individual. Recognizing that the development of the self is an ongoing dynamic process that does not stop with the onset of adulthood, we will be investigating the social aspects of individual growth and change throughout the life cycle.
The basic premise of this course is that people must learn how to be members of society. In that vein, one of society's major functions is to facilitate the assimilation of its constituents. Successful assimilation serves two goals: it encourages the maintenance and growth of the social system, and it gives each person a sense of his or her location within the social structure. In consequence, it is to the advantage of both society and the individual that the latter comes to adopt an understanding of the social system and one's place in it that is shared by all its members; this understanding not only includes a sense of personal identity, but also an appreciation of the roles one will take as a participating member of society. Part of our analysis will focus on this socialization process.
Beneath this grand design, however is a gnawing awareness that is disquieting: something is basically wrong. As people experience the life course, they realize (even if they do not admit to others) that they have neither a strong sense of personal identity nor a feeling of involvement in their social roles. Although society seems to be progressing in its development, it appears to do so only at the expense of the well-being of many of its members. The remainder of our analysis will examine the proposition that there is something inherent in the structure of our society that causes pain and alienation in people's everyday lives.
We will begin by examining some of the theories of personal growth developed by sociologists, including those pertaining to early socialization in childhood. Next, we will examine the development of the individual from infancy through adulthood, concentrating on the impact of family, school, occupation, and social class on personal growth and social opportunities for advancement. Finally, we will study the social antecedents to alienation.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:28 PM
nice example of socialization of babies:
Even seemingly insignificant actions of parents can have major impacts on the socialization of their children. For instance, what would you do if your baby cried continuously but was not ill, hungry, or in need of a diaper change? Would you hold your baby, rock back and forth, walk around, or sing gently until the crying stopped, even if it took hours. The answer that you give very likely depends on your culture. The traditional Navaho click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced Indian response usually was to remove the baby from social contact until the crying stopped. After making sure that the baby was not ill or in physical distress, he or she would be taken outside of the small single room house and left in a safe place until the crying stopped. Then the baby would be brought indoors again to join the family. Perhaps as a result, Navaho babies raised in this way are usually very quiet. They learn early that making noise causes them to be removed from social contact. In most North American families today, we would hold our baby in this situation until the crying stopped. The lesson that we inadvertently may be giving is that crying results in social contact. Is this wrong? Not necessarily, but it is a different socialization technique.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:36 PM
socialization - good simple definition
Human infants are born without any culture. They must be transformed by their parents, teachers, and others into social and cultural animals. The general process of acquiring culture is referred to as socialization . During socialization, we learn the language of the culture we are born into as well as the roles we are to play in life. For instance, girls learn how to be daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers. In addition, they learn about the occupational roles that their society allows them. We also learn and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization process. Norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. While socialization refers to the general process of acquiring culture, anthropologists use the term enculturation for the process of being socialized to a particular culture. You were enculturated to your specific culture by your parents and the other people who raised you.
Socialization is important in the process of personality formation.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:39 PM
Successful socialization can result in uniformity within a society. If all children receive the same socialization, it is likely that they will share the same beliefs and expectations. This fact has been a strong motivation for national governments around the world to standardize education and make it compulsive. Deciding what things will be taught and how they are taught is a powerful political tool for controlling people. Those who internalize the norms of society are not likely to break the law or want radical social changes. In all societies, however, there are individuals who do not conform to culturally defined standards of normalcy because they were "abnormally" socialized, which is to say that they have not internalized the norms of society.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:55 PM
Now back to Rob´s questions:
"Were you socialized to all your preferences? If you were socialized differently, could you enjoy being sexually assaulted, being chronically sleep deprived? Being a slave? No, people are not so easily fooled, the same reasons why I can't socialize girls into thinking pudgy, introverted, balding guys are attractive, it just doesn't work."
part of sociolization: We also learn and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization process. and also the values. So, to take the easiest question first, could you socialize girls into thinking that the male standard of beauty was fat, bald, introverted guys? Sure. If they were born into a culture where men like these were idolized, were considered "the catch", they would learn and internalize that beauty ideal.
Now the question, were you socialized to all your preferences? That´s why I wanted to get the definition of socialization. Socialization does not take away all human agency. the result of socialization will vary according to each individual. So, I was socialized according to the established preferences of my culture, and along with that I developed my individual set of preferences. the result is a mix. And this goes for all other humans socialized as well.
Re the violence questions, we can´t forget that people have a body and a psychological structure that demands care, survival. So the question is even better put like this, can you inflict so much violence on a person, that they develop a mental illness where they can no longer determine what is good or what is healthy pleasure? In many ways you can (unfortunately). Can you socialize (and condition) a person to enjoy slavery? Of course! every system of slavery tries to do exactly that. How much it succeeds, in part depends on how much violence it applies to achieve it (and I´m talking of psychological violence as well). So when a baby is born in this slavery category, they are going to be told that´s a natural state (no way out, shouldn´t be any different anyways), and that the masters/slavery are right. Obviously, since slavery is a violent system, you are asking how do human beings resist violence, which is a complex question, too. Aside from being a great question.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 06:08 PM
I also kept asking myself the question, "Can you win an argument with a person who wipes out 99% of reality, simply on analyzing their faulty logic (as in the mathematical logic structure of their arguments)?" And without putting in a lot of effort also.
I´ve deleted the part that deals with numbers and stats in the original article, to concentrate on the culture x biology debate, where most of the cognitive selection occurs.
On a smaller and lighter side note, it was delightfully amusing to debate universalism with a few boys who have no knowledge of any other culture rather than their mainstream American one, and who think the rest of the world is molded after them (genetically, no less!). Modesty aside, I got a kick from one of my satires (bolded). It will make more sense if you read it in the sequence of the debate, but it´s a lot to go through.
Comments: Do Men Want Dumber Women As Mates Or Are Smart Women Too Choosy?
Men are still very socialized in the cave man/patriarchal model, although it keeps morphing into different variations.
Posted by Alessandra at January 4, 2005 01:37 PM
"Men are more driven to seek physical beauty and youth as a result of selective pressures to seek fertile mates."
As a result of a lot of sexism is a more accurate explanation. If the fanaticism with a neurotic stereotype of youth beauty for women were related to a fertility quest, a huge number of divorced men aged 50 and up who don´t want to have any more kids wouldn´t look for much younger women as mates.
On a related note, I´ve been wanting to do research on men´s mentalities regarding the age of women for relationships.
For example, take many guys who are 35, ask them what changes relationship-wise if he is with a woman who is 25, 30, 35, 40, 45.
Posted by Alessandra at January 4, 2005 01:48 PM
"In conversations brighter women may do better at raising the interest of men. They can be funnier and do a better job of picking up on cues about interests."
Re this other remark you made, I disagree. A lot of very intelligent people are not funny (that goes for both sexes). The ability to "pick up cues about interests" has little to do with IQ, it´s in the emotional intelligence arena.
I think nowadays, only men who are intelligent AND very supportive of women´s advancement, will consider a very intelligent woman as a partner. A not very intelligent guy will never want a more intelligent woman for a partner, because, although he may not have a high IQ, he will not put up with the subordination that less intelligent women gladly are conditioned into accepting in the reverse picture.
Also, there is a lot of paternalism built in how many men relate to women but not the reverse. For example, if a not very intelligent woman, who is a nice kind of person, shows she has some very stupid views on a subject, the more intelligent man may think, "Well, she is still cute and nice, so I am satisfied." An intelligent woman in the reverse picture, would probably think, "What a stupid guy, I get no satisfaction from this."
Also, I haven´t seen any studies, but from life experience I have observed that men are much, much more intollerant at being shown that they are wrong on any subject than women, in a mating context. A conversation between an intelligent woman with a not very intelligent man will undoubtedly run into several of these situations quickly and will usually ruin any chances for any developments.
Posted by Alessandra at January 4, 2005 02:15 PM
Alessandra,
You say about my comment about how men are attracted to women who are young and pretty:
As a result of a lot of sexism is a more accurate explanation.
No, you are completely wrong. Do not believe the Leftists who deny that human nature is a product of Darwinian natural selection. Male desires are a product of evolution, not patriarchal manipulation by other males, not TV advertisement images, not parental upbringing, not silly teachings in school. It is ideological nuttiness to deny this, it is so obvious.
There is no benefit to women from denying the truth. The problems that result from reality can not be better managed by denying their causes. Human nature as a product of evolution has got to be accepted in order to be able to understand and deal with the consequences. Sexuality is too important in reproduction to be anything other than a product of our genes,
Men are socialized into a caveman patriarchal model? By who? Their mothers?
Look, men want to dominate. More masculine men want to do so more strongly. You can find less masculine men who have less a drive to do so. But your problem with men is a result of what they innately are wired up to be like. They want young women. They are attracted to signs of female fertility such as oily skin, big breasts, curves, youthful hair and the like. Telling them that they have been socialized into it just annoys them and deceives yourself. Most won't tell you that. Why should they? You are just going to give them abuse in response. A chorus of voices that agree with you might make you feel less alone. It might make a lot of men to silent on the subject or give totally insincere agreement. But it is not changing men to make the more like you want them to be. Feminists are fantasizing if they believe otherwise.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 4, 2005 03:00 PM
I think that IQ is just a proxy for status in this case.
It has long been observed that rising status increases the pool of potential mates for males but shrinks it for females. Males seek out mates of equal or lesser social status whereas females seek out mates of equal or greater status. Social status is a powerful factor in a females assessment of male attractiveness.
I recall reading a study back in college that correlated a woman's income from inheritance with her likelihood to marry. The more money she inherited, the less likely she was to marry. Other studies have measured how woman gauge the attractiveness of males as potential mates and found that women find men of perceived equal or higher status as the woman herself more attractive than those of perceived lesser status.
Posted by Shannon Love at January 4, 2005 03:03 PM
Randall,
First, your comment: Note that some people really took issue when I advanced the argument that smarter women are at a disadvantage in finding a mate. Here is social science data that really proves the common intuition. Anyone still want to dispute this argument?
Posted by p at January 4, 2005 07:41 PM
As for "finding a mate": I'm using common parlance for finding someone to marry and have kids. Of course not all people who marry have kids or vice versa. But the correlation between the two behaviors is farily high among whites in most Western countries still. White women (and these British were probably close to all white given the start of the study) are far less likely to have children if they are not married.
A desire to marry: A lot of women do not think they can find a suitable man (and suitable includes expectations about status) to marry to have kids with. That, to them, is finding a mate. There are lots (millions) of desperate women in their 30s who hear their biological clocks ticking and who can't find a willing man who they deem minimally acceptable for marriage.
Nature versus nurture and the desire to marry: Well certainly a woman's desire for the man to stick around and help raise the kids is typically both genetic and social. A woman can intellectually understand the advantage of having the man stick around while at the same time have instinctive urges to find a man who wants to stick around. She can want marriage for long term love to feel more emotionally satisfied. So it can seem like a consciously arrived at goal. But the wiring of the mind that makes the desire for the emotional bond is something that was put in place by natural selection.
Differences in attitudes: Men and women have different reproductive strategies. The causes of those strategies are obvious and those differences in strategies are seen in many other species which do not have methods of nurturing or cognitive capacities that would allow passing down complex social beliefs.
Has anything been absolutely proved by this latest study by itself? No. But if you look at it and at what else we know about human nature at this point I think some conclusions can be drawn with a high degree of confidence. I'm looking at this from the standpoint of natural selection. Surely being a high IQ woman in today's society makes a woman less reproductively fit while the opposite might be the case with men.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 5, 2005 01:40 AM
"Men are socialized into a caveman patriarchal model? By who? Their mothers?"
Usually mothers play a big part (just as fathers and others that make up the most important socializing figures) in a person´s socialization and conditioning history. Who does socialize children? Who socialized you in such a cave man type mentality? :-)
This is too funny...
"patriarchal manipulation by other males, not TV advertisement images, not parental upbringing, not silly teachings in school."
By the way, these are all examples of socializing actors in society. If advertising had no effect on people´s brains and behavior and it wouldn´t be a multi-million dollar industry, because it would have failed a long time ago to change attitudes and behavior one way or another. I suggest an intro to psychology course would be good for you to discover how parents affect their children´s development, attitudes and behaviors differently. And please read up on the history of education and how different shool systems affect thinking and behavior in human beings diferently. A course in anthropology showing how humans turn out very differently depending on how they are socialized would also be a suggestion. Patriarchy is just too complicated a subject to make snippy comments here to summarize everything.
I didn´t know men like you who want to see their entire sexist attitudes and behaviors be blamed on biology still existed. In case you have not noticed, there are other men in the world who have been socialized differently than you or have outgrown some of the nonsense they were socialized in and have evolved a bit more regarding theirs attitudes and behaviors towards women.
Posted by Alessandra at January 5, 2005 01:54 AM
Randall,
What was your childhood family enviroment that you were socialized in like? (I am presuming you had a family, obviously).
Was it, by any chance, a dominant father and a submissive mother? Do you have the same attitudes your father does about women?
Posted by Alessandra at January 5, 2005 02:17 AM
Men don't socialize other men to want hot young women with no previous kids. If I could trick (socialize) other dudes, I'd socialize them to be homosexuals. More hot girls for me.
Advertising serves to attach desires we already have (tasty food, hot girls, healthy kids, status, etc) to things we don't naturally have a desire for (cars, iPods, y'know) McDonald's tries to influence your behavoir, but they don't say the food tastes like dog feces, and no car company will do well with ads that convince you their car will make everyone think your a loser and that you'll get lots of old ugly women. If you can find me successful ad campaigns that link a product to something people don't want, maybe you have a point.
Posted by rob at January 5, 2005 10:31 AM
Alessandra,
I didn´t know men like you who want to see their entire sexist attitudes and behaviors be blamed on biology still existed. In case you have not noticed, there are other men in the world who have been socialized differently than you or have outgrown some of the nonsense they were socialized in and have evolved a bit more regarding theirs attitudes and behaviors towards women.
I am quite aware that millions of people like yourself who deny the biological basis of the sexes exist. I am quite aware that there are millions who believe the tripe you are spouting. But it is nuts. It is intellectually inexcusable to still believe the nonsense. The weight of evidence against it has gotten so enormous that the belief that males and females do not have innately different sexual desires and attractions is not intellectually defensible.
You ought to start to read what has been discovered about human nature. A good place to start is Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, the Modern Denial of Human Nature. You suffer from this denial and you need to treat your mind to the empirical evidence.
Oh, and picture me rolling my eyes at your questions about my parents. Why not read scientific results rather than trying to cherry pick anecdotes that support our irrational beliefs. I'm talking about group average differences. You can always find effeminate or submissive men and more aggressive and dominating women. But there are large innate group average differences between men and women.
Also, as Rob states, the ads for products sold with sexy women wouldn't work if men were not attracted to sexy women in the first place. Ditto for ads for food with salt, meat, and fat in them. Humans are wired up to like certain kinds of things and advertisements are designed to tap into deeply seated innate desires. No advert can convince the vast majority of men that fat women or old women are attractive. No advert is going to convince people that broccoli tastes as good as a hamburger.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 5, 2005 01:02 PM
Randall,
The inferences that you are making are just not substantiated by the facts.
The study relates marriage and IQ. Not reproduction and IQ. Also note that while there is a correlation between reproduction and marriage, the number of out of wedlock births in the US is very high (Britain also has a high number of out of wedlock births). Thus your evolutionary-like theory that you have espoused is not really substantiated by anything more than your use of anecdotes. The same ones you have taken others to task for invoking (and rightfully so).
Thus we get back to the real issue that I have with this study and the last one that you posted - the causal explanations are not substantiated from the study. They rely upon anecdotes to explain the phenomena. At best this study gives us a fact to ponder. For a theory to be meaningful it must be cast in a series of variables that can be mapped back to the theory via a set of hypotheses. That is, we theory test through variable-based hypotheses.
Here we have IQ = Intelligence, and Marriage = (?, reproduction, happiness, etc.). What is the theory that connects the variable to variable relationship when one articulates the H: High IQ men -> High Married; and H: High IQ female -> Low Married? The conclusion that men prefer X versus women prefer Y is not in the logic. To infer that intelligence may not be selected for is no where in the data. This are nothing more than wild speculation.
Your continued insistence to include other correlated variables that you find acceptable but you appear only to accept those correlations that support your world view. The Correlation between IQ and Income is material and you are dismissing it. The percent differences in income and marriage is quite a bit smaller than the IQ relationship (in this study). This calls into question the magnitude of the effect.
In summary, I see this a pop psych that's used to feed the masses.
Posted by p at January 5, 2005 06:05 PM
So intelligence in women is selected against, while in men, it is strongly favoured. Our descendants will have to live in a society where the men are intelligent, competent in abstract thinking and complex machines, dominating the professions and management, and the women are those cute little dumb things typing the letters, serving the tea, caring for the babies. I wonder, future is already here and now?
Posted by jaimito at January 5, 2005 10:08 PM
The above (the our descendants thing) does not refer to Alessandra and other intelligent, educated women. They will not replace themselves (2.2 babies) or have zero children, so their kind will be absent or few in populations of the future.
Posted by jaimito at January 5, 2005 10:21 PM
This seems obvious and unremarkable. Women can basically do two things with their lives: have a family, or do something else (ie have a career). If IQ makes the latter more attractive, but not the former, then of course increased IQ will shift the likelihood that the latter is chosen and decrease the proportion of the former.
I didn't like this phrasing: "many smarter women find it beneath them to be wives".
Why use the loaded term "beneath them" instead of just saying that they are choosing other options?
Also, I think its foolishly pessimistic about genetic engineering technology to find this alarming in any way. It's like worrying that a commercial program is getting a little buggier when its going to be open-sourced any day now. Evolution takes a long time, and whatever miniscule effects demographic trends like this have (even much larger trends like: high IQ is correlated with high income, high income is correlated with low birth rates) will be dwarfed by genetic manipulation.
Posted by Patri Friedman at January 6, 2005 01:12 AM
Randall wrote: "No advert can convince the vast majority of men that fat women or old women are attractive"
I dunno what EvBio you read, but the stuff I read is quite clear that liking thin women is *not* evolutionarily programmed. Rather, we tend to like thin or fat women depending on whether the culture has too much food or too little. Now, it may be programmed early enough that advertisements can't change it in adults, but it *is* set by culture.
Posted by Patri Friedman at January 6, 2005 01:14 AM
Patri,
I think culture plays a small role in determining what is attractive (leaving aside jewelry and clothes and other ornaments), especially once societies industrialize. In some primitive society they might argue that someone ought to marry some really fat woman so that she'll survive famines. But once those survival issues become less important I think obesity becomes less desirable. Some points:
First of all, the genetic component of what is attractive to men is probably not constant across all populations in the world. It makes sense that in different regions selective pressures exerted different forces in terms of what will be found to be attractive. So examples of what is attractive in other regions have to be considered in light of genetic differences in preferences.
Second, the correct typology is not between fat and skinny women. It is probably between skinny, curvaceous, and fat women (where the fat women are further broken down into scaled up skinny women and scaled up curvaceous women). In America women's fashion mags and ads aimed at women push far more skinniness and flatness in women than men like in women. Men like curves that are the product of the action of female sex hormones. BTW, Curvaceous women are more fertile than very skinny flat-chested women.
Large-breasted, narrow-waisted women have the highest reproductive potential, according to a new study, suggesting western men's penchant for women with an hourglass shape may have some biological justification.
Women with a relatively low waist-to-hip ratio and large breasts had about 30 per cent higher levels of the female reproductive hormone estradiol than women with other combinations of body shapes, found Grazyna Jasienska, at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and colleagues.
Two of the team, Peter Ellison and Susan Lipson at Harvard University in the US, have previously shown that higher levels of estradiol are indeed related to higher fertility in women trying to get pregnant.
The male preference for that sort of curviness is incredibly unsurprising. Though I wonder whether the same result would be found in Japan for instance. What level of curviness in Japanese women would achieve maximum fertility?
Third, men, on average, like bigger breasts in spite of flat models and lots of elite verbiage about how we shouldn't be attracted to big breasts. This preference is not getting into us from advertisements.
Fourth, I note that you push back on me about skinniness. But you didn't push back at me on age. So then do you accept that men are innately physically more attracted to women who are younger?
Fifth, Attractive Men Have Healthier Sperm. Obviously the innate programming of women for attraction is attuned to detecting which men would be good breeding material.
Sixth, Part of what humans find attractive is based on body symmetry. Higher body symmetry increases physical attractiveness. This is not surprising because symmetry is also a sign of healthier embryonic development and signals a better chance of healthy offspring from mating with such a person.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 6, 2005 02:42 AM
Patri,
I have known women who definitely saw marriage as beneath them. I had a female neighbor who had a seriously hostile attitude toward marriage and saw it as akin to a kind of slavery.
Genetic engineering technology for boosting offspring IQ: Yes, eventually. But when? 10 years? 20 years? 30 years?
In the mean time natural selective forces are still acting on humans. Also, contrary to popular belief natural selection can and sometimes does cause large changes in allele frequencies in a small number of generations.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 6, 2005 02:47 AM
And for the res tof you, do you even know what IQ tests are for, they were developed to test learning disabilities and not for testing intelligence, thus they are not suited and not good methods of coming to conclusions about intelligence.
Anyways... the comment, "women with high iq would think it is beneath them to marry"
assuming you are saying iq is intelligence then your comment is completely biased in terms of marriage. With that statement you are saying that anyone who is smart will think getting married is a low form of being. I think it is so much more than that, but I do hope you never marry since you think it's such a low form of institutionalized love.
ugh.
Posted by Magda at January 6, 2005 09:07 AM
IQ tests are pretty good at measuring intelligence. They are not perfect, and if anyone has better methods, I'm sure the psychological community would welcome it.
They weren't created to measure learning disabilities, unless by learning disability you mean stupidity, and they were made to diagnose dumb.
Just because something was created for one purpose does not mean it is worthless for all other purposes. Thermometers can measure air temperature, do you think they can measure body or water temperature too?
On fat vs thin women, has the preference ever been for more than pleasantly plump? A fat hunter-gatherer is not morbidly obese.
Posted by Rob at January 6, 2005 01:35 PM
rob:"Men don't socialize other men to want hot young women with no previous kids."
You must live in a cave then. Men always socialize other people. So do women, so do parents.
Incidentally, outside your cave, there are a bunch of other societies where beauty or attractive standards are completely different than the only one you have been socialized to think it´s biological. There are cultures where very fat women are the equivalent of what you call "hot young women." Why do men in those societies have the same reactions for those obese women as you do for the "hot young women?" Because they were socialized to think/feel that way. And the socialization process was similar to yours, they´ve been getting messages from people around them, which includes their parents and other men, about who/what´s "hot."
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 11:55 AM
"I am quite aware that millions of people like yourself who deny the biological basis of the sexes exist."
hello? where did I say there is no biological differences between men and women? Nowhere.
What these differences are is where you are mistaken. Men can be socialized into being submissive, and women can socialized into being dominant. All result of socialization, not biology. What I did say is that you can socialize a baby into different personalities and gender attitudes, which can vary according to how dominant or submissive they are.
also, people can be socialized into neither being dominant, nor submissive, a more mentally healthy middle of the road too.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 12:01 PM
"Oh, and picture me rolling my eyes at your questions about my parents. Why not read scientific results rather than trying to cherry pick anecdotes that support our irrational beliefs."
Yes, but just for the sake of anecdotal evidence, do you not have the same attitudes towards women your father does?
Is your mother the submissive type? Is that the model you had while growing up?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 12:04 PM
Alessandra, since you are outside the cave, please give me references to ethnographic accounts of societies where morbidly obese women are actually considered attractive by most men (fetishists are everywhere), where women actually commit more violent crimes than men (besides towards children, where there probably are tons)
Were you socialized to all your preferences? If you were socialized differently, could you enjoy being sexually assaulted, being chronically sleep deprived? Being a slave? No, people are not so easily fooled, the same reasons why I can't socialize girls into thinking pudgy, introverted, balding guys are attractive, it just doesn't work.
Alessandra, where you raised by a single mother? Or did boys give you very little attention as a teenager?
Please, describe how you were so optimally socialized.
Oh yeah, is there anything that patriarchy doesn't explain? How did patriarchs allow women to become feminists, why weren't they socialized to never leave the submissive role?
Posted by Rob at January 8, 2005 12:21 PM
"Alessandra, since you are outside the cave, please give me references to ethnographic accounts of societies where morbidly obese women are actually considered attractive by most men (fetishists are everywhere),"
I am even tempted to do this work of listing it all here for you, but if you (ahem) lift your little fingers off the keyboard, go to your college library, and type in the right searches, and look them up, the books will surely be there. (actually I don´t think I should do other people´s homework, that´s why I decline). There is not one example, but a variety, in the Middle East, in Asia Pacific, etc. Even from memory, I think one of them became famous through Margaret Mead. I am sure you never heard of Mead, she is something called an anthropologist, they study all these different societies you have yet to discover exist! I don´t think you will do this reading, but if you ever do, I would be interested to then know what you think, if you find your theories still fit and how.
You also ask some really good questions - I´ll take one: Can you be socialized into being a slave?
Of course!!! Man! where are your history books?
All in all, though, I see a serious problem creeping and lurching in this discussion, which is: have you noticed no one has defined what each participant think is meant by socialization/to socialize/to be socialized?
Are you sure we are using the words meaning the same thing? I am getting the feeling we are definitely not.
Over to you.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 02:00 PM
have you noticed no one has defined what each participant thinkS is meant by socialization/to socialize/to be socialized?
(an "S" was missing)
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 02:03 PM
[FuturePundit had to edit down this post because he suspects the size of the excerpted article may violate copyright law. Please limit your quoting of copyrighted text and supply a URL to the original text in the future.]
Perceptions of female beauty and desirability can differ between societies (time periods, and social classes). Consider the article excerpted below that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 29th:
New Obesity Boom In Arab Countries Has Old Ancestry
By GAUTAM NAIK
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- Jidat Mint Ethmane grew up in a nomad family in this impoverished nation in the western Sahara. When she was 8, she says, her mother began to force-feed her. Ms. Ethmane says she was required to consume a gallon of milk in the morning, plus couscous. She ate milk and porridge for lunch. She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk, followed by a pre-breakfast feeding at 6 a.m.
If she threw up, she says, her mother forced her to eat the vomit. Stretch marks appeared on her body and the skin on her upper arms and thighs tore under the pressure. If she balked at the feedings, her mother would squeeze her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable. "I would devour as much as possible," says Ms. Ethmane. "I resembled a mattress."
Today, Ms. Ethmane, 38 years old, is slender because her family ran out of money to continue the force-feeding technique, known as gavage. The term stems from the French word for the process used to force-feed geese to make foie gras. Yet in a recent interview in her family's one-room house, Ms. Ethmane says she still believes in the practice. "Beauty is more important than health," she says. Her husband, Brahim, agrees: "It is thin women who are not healthy."
The belief that rotund women are more desirable as wives helps explain why much of the Arab world -- which stretches from the Persian Gulf in the east to Mauritania in North Africa -- is experiencing an explosion of obesity. About half of women in the Middle East are overweight or obese, according to the United Nations' World Health Organization. In some communities, many of which were nomadic until a few decades ago, oil wealth has dramatically improved living standards. The resulting urbanization has introduced some Western habits: high consumption of sugar, fat and processed foods and more sedentary lifestyles. ...
Mauritania is the only nation today where force-feeding of girls is systematically practiced, mostly in rural areas. Efforts by women's groups and the government to stamp it out have largely been ignored. In a land that suffers from a constant shortage of food, plump women are assumed to be both wealthy and more likely to bear healthy children. "It has long been totally acceptable for women to be not just rotund, but voluminous," says Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force. ...
....
Charlotte Abaka, a Ghanaian advocate for women's rights in Africa, says gavage also encourages women to marry young because their rapid weight gain makes them appear older.
End excerpt
Consider the term "Rubenesque" with the following definition: of, relating to, or suggestive of the painter Reubens or his works; especially: plump or rounded usually in a pleasing or attractive way. e.g., a Rubenesque figure. Reuben’s paintings are sometimes cited as evidence that the female "beauty ideal" has shifted over time in some western countries. Of course, it is an oversimplification to assume homogeneity in perceptions of beauty even with within a single society. The term BBW refers to “big beautiful women” and is used as a compliment by individuals attracted to larger body shapes.
Posted by Garson Poole at January 8, 2005 03:05 PM
Thanks, Garson. And on the same lines, the "classic" example of foot binding in China, jeez.. completely did not even think about that.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 03:16 PM
Alessandra
Men can be socialized into being submissive, and women can socialized into being dominant. All result of socialization, not biology. What I did say is that you can socialize a baby into different personalities and gender attitudes, which can vary according to how dominant or submissive they are.
No, aggressive males can not be socialized into submissiveness. No, most shy and meek females can not be socialized into being outgoing and dominant. Males are, on average, innately more aggressive and dominating.
Sociallizing into personalities: No, that is completely wrong. The empirical evidence shows that the biggest cause of personality type is genetic. Another cause appears to be random noise in the development process. Judith Rich Harris argues in her book The NURTURE ASSUMPTION: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do that parents have very little influence on a child's development and that their peers have more influence than parents. But environment can not overcome strong genetic leanings.
Environment has more influence on people who have a mix of alleles that do not push them clearly in any one direction. But studies of twins reared apart show that environment's impact is limited by genetic factors.
BTW, Margaret Mead's work reporting on the Samoans was found after she died to have been fabricated. She's been discredited. See by Derek Freeman: The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research and Margaret Mead and the Heretic: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth.
You are missing Rob's point about slavery: Can you be socialized into enjoying slavery?
Posted by Randall Parker at January 8, 2005 03:47 PM
Randall, you didn´t even read the links you posted! this blog is like a study on cognitive selection!
Because Mead´s work has been challenged, does it mean there are no Samoa islands? :-))) does it mean the islands don´t exist? Certain aspects of her work were challenged, apparently, it has nothing to do with body weight.
Nowhere in the links you posted do these other anthropologists say women there are skinny. You don´t like to read, do you? :-) And how do you explain the women in Garson´s post? And the men?
I also found this:
Neville Rigby - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1681297.stm
Pacific islanders, especially women, are the fattest people in the world, according to latest figures published by the International Obesity Taskforce.
"The Pacific is the world's capital of obesity," said the taskforce's director for public affairs, Neville Rigby said.
The figures show that 55% of Tongan women, 74% percent of Samoan women and 77% of men and women living in Nauru are obese. " (please note 74%!!!)
"The prevention and treatment of obesity in the Pacific is also made difficult by the traditional cultural notion that 'bigness' is a sign of wealth and power," the report said. (please note **cultural notion**)
There are better examples, like the one Garson posted, and they are many more than one. But I guess you like not knowing about other cultures, more than knowing about them.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 05:08 PM
"You are missing Rob's point about slavery: Can you be socialized into enjoying slavery?"
What definition of "be socialized" are you using here? and why do you ask about enjoyment, since that was not his question?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 05:13 PM
Below is a link to the Wall Street Journal article entitled "New Obesity Boom In Arab Countries Has Old Ancestry" by Gautam Naik that is excerpted above. I suspect that it will not work for individuals without subscription access, but it might work for electronic subscribers. Click here to read it. I quoted large sections of the article because I thought it was relevant and because I suspected it was inaccessible to most blog readers. In the future I will attempt to adhere to the blog owner's preferences regarding limiting quotes.
On the topic of copyrights on the web: Interestingly, when Scientific American magazine ran a "hatchet-job" article about molecular nanotechnology in 1996 the researcher Ralph C. Merkle responded by quoting the entire article and interleaving it with a point-by-point rebuttal. The lawyers for Scientific American told Merkle to remove the article but he refused to comply. The material is still available here. (Of course, the excerpted material from the Wall Street Journal article given above did not contain extensive interleaved commentary so I am not claiming that it would withstand a copyright challenge. The legal area is in flux)
Posted by Garson Poole at January 8, 2005 05:13 PM
" The NURTURE ASSUMPTION: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do that parents have very little influence on a child's development "
HOw do you explain foot binding in China, since it was carried out primarily by the mothers?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 05:26 PM
Wow! We have a lot of wild speculation flying around without facts.
I want to make a couple of things clear.
- The study does not permit one to infer that men prefer dumber women. It supports the inference that females with high IQ marry at lower rates than Men with High IQ. The result is significant. We do not have info from the data provided to infer cause and effect.
- The vast amount of criticism directed at genetic disposition of males and females is not substantiated by data. Randall is absolutely correct in insisting that men on average are more aggressive than females based upon biological factors. The fact that men and women can be socialized to manage their behaviors up to a point is also true. And yes there are aggressive women and passive men. This does not mean there is a contradiction in the logic only that there is a distribution of the traits of aggressiveness in the population.
- Randall is correct in stating that Mead manipulated her findings concerning Somoan behavior. While all of Mead's work is not to be discounted, the thesis that humans are "nurture" products is completely FALSE. She lied to humanity in order to substantiate her ideological bent (very sad).
- Traits can in the short run and in certain societies be manipulated to signal desirable traits. The obesity example presented is one of many that we could find in the world. This does NOT mean that all traits are mutable. Again we have a distribution of traits with varying degrees of malleability.
- Science employs logic but cannot be reduced to logic. While in the world of logic we can negate a Universal by negation, the same is not always true in science. In science we have empirical observations that we must explain. That is, science seeks to explain patterns not single data points. Thus, in the nature-nurture debate that is now raging in this thread, we must list traits and then assign them to cells Nature vs Nurture). It is clear that both cells will contain examples. The secret is to let the facts fall in the correct place and not let ideology drive the facts.
Posted by p at January 8, 2005 05:46 PM
Alessandra,
Mead: You are telling someone to go read her to learn about anthropology. But her work presents an extremely misleading view of another culture. You are doing a disservice to anyone who you recommend to go read her.
A large percentage of American women are obese. Does this mean that most men find them sexually attractive? Even in poor countries where hunger is a problem obesity is more a mark of affluence and the ability to survive than it is a mark of sexiness.
As for bigness as a cultural notion: Why assume it is cultural? Different groups in the world due to genetic variations vary radically from each other in appearances, in average height, average width and thickness of bones, and in the genetic tendency to obesity. Given all these genetically variations in physical dimensions it would not be at all surprising that they differed genetically in what they found attractive.
Foot-binding: The women wanted their daughters to be suitably handicapped to be appealing to dominating upper class men who did not want their wives to go running around. Such was the difficulty of getting suitable husbands that the mothers were willing to cripple their daughters.
Socialized and slavery: Oh come on, the question is obvious enough. But the correct answer undermines your argument. You can't raise people to love to be slaves. Or do you think you could?
Do you think you could raise boys to find 60 year old women a greater sexual turn on than 17 and 18 year old girls? I don't think you could. Do you think you could?
Posted by Randall Parker at January 8, 2005 05:47 PM
Randall,
You´ve never read a single book on any other culture than your own (at least I hope you have read a few books :-). But it´s clear you certainly have never read a single book on any culture where obesity was the beauty and sexual standard. Discussion without knowledge is funny for 5 minutes, then it´s just like the looney house.
"A large percentage of American women are obese. Does this mean that most men find them sexually attractive? "
My point. Ignorance is bliss, is it not? Is Samoa in Ohio? Oh, you mean Samoa is on a different side of the global map?
Did you know there are other countries besides the US in the world?
And Samoa has a completely different culture than the American one? Gasp! Is it news to you, too?
Yes, men do find obese women in some other cultures sexually attractive. The culture mentioned in Garson´s post is one. In Samoa is another. (see, my memory was right, even it Mead wrote stuff about other aspects of their culture that was off). But if you are completely ignorant about every other single culture in the world, how would you know what the men think is sexy or not? You just make up any claim you want about any culture and put that forward as an argument. No basis in reality or any study.
I could say martians like women who are fat, too. It would have the same reality base as your statements about other cultures. Martians even like green fat women, how about that? ;-) Not your type, I gather. And if you asked me how I knew martians liked fat women, I would say just like you, "I assume, therefore it is. Reality does not matter, it matters that I am always right."
Randall, I am glad, with all her problems, that it was Mead that went to the Samoans and not you. I can picture your brilliant anthropology Samoan report: 95% of women are just fat slobs, they don´t even diet (can you believe it? I have found no evidence of a Samoan Weight Watchers). Even though the men kill to marry them, and they live very happy as a couple afterwards, it´s all because they have yet to see a Britney Spears music video. In short, I am profoundly inclined to think that Samoan men have an advanced type of myopia because only that can explain why they do not see women as I do. They are legally blind.
Brilliant, I would say!
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 08:21 PM
"Mead: You are telling someone to go read her to learn about anthropology. But her work presents an extremely misleading view of another culture. You are doing a disservice to anyone who you recommend to go read her."
Actually, no. You should read Mead, and then you should read her critics. And then you should a bunch other anthropologists. That will teach you more than if you don´t read her in the first place. Ah, but I forget, you simply don´t read... my bad... :-)
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 08:31 PM
Alessandra, if you honestly believe Randall doesn't read, you are an idiot.
Posted by Bob Badour at January 8, 2005 09:03 PM
Alessandra,
You have no idea what I've read. Your own reading recommendation is for an anthropologist who promoted one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of social science. You really ought to read Steven Pinker's Blank Slate so that you can begin to unlearn the wrong things you have apparently been taught. Pinker's book is a great starting point for those who are still so heavily invested in an excessive belief in the power of social environment in the development of the mind.
Sexual attraction and obesity: No, you do not know what you are claiming. A woman can be preferred as a mate without her being sexually more attractive. Ditto for a man. More most of history in many cultures sexual attraction between two people was not the only or main factor that determined who mated with who. Just as there were dynastic marriages among European royalty that were made based on other consideration so there were matchmakers and parents who chose who their children would mate with. These people were making decisions based on considerations other than sexual attraction.
There are methods of measuring sexual attraction objectively. For instance sensor devices are used to measure arousal in response to images. These devices have been used to study male and female sexual orientation. Would cultures that prize obesity show measures of sexual attraction by their 16 year old males with raging hormones that had 100 lb overweight women as more attractive than non-obese women? I'm open to being convinced on this point. Perhaps there are genetic variations that cause that response that are present in some groups. But I doubt that physical attraction that departs far from a healthy body shape can be learned. So, for example, I don't think attraction to prefer asymmetric bodies can be learned.
You seem wholly ignorant of (or in denial of?) a large body of research literature about the biological basis for human nature. I'm pointing you at it and you are telling me I do not read. Why don't you go thru the category archives of my web logs and see just how much I read. For example, read my Brain Development archives. You'd learn a lot in the process.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 8, 2005 09:34 PM
P.S. When you write "other cultures", I read "evolutionarily isolated groups with some measure of inbreeding." You claim culture as cause for what genes could just as easily cause.
Do european men or chinese men raised in the genetically isolated community of Somoa prefer morbidly obese women? What has anyone done to rule out genes?
Do you believe the difference between bonobos and chimpanzees is strictly cultural?
Your intellectual prejudice reminds me of the idea of the self-evident truth that the average male preference for women who resemble their mothers is due entirely to socialization or imprinting. The fact that every man's father picked a woman who resembles his mother and that at least one maternal grandparent did the same could not possibly have an influence as far as some folks are concerned. As time progresses, I see more and more psychological and sociological orthodoxy disproved at the same time as I see more and more evidence for strong genetic influence over behaviour--including my own.
Posted by Bob Badour at January 8, 2005 09:36 PM
Bob, sorry, what books did he read on Samoan culture? He didn´t mention any and I saw no evidence he had read anything on Samoan culture. Neither on Mead. Neither on any other anthropologist. I take it you´ve read even more books than he did on the subject? Which books did you read on Samoa that prove with the fact that women there are skinny? Or that Samoan women are fat, but that men think they are all horribly un-sexy that way?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 09:42 PM
"Sexual attraction and obesity: No, you do not know what you are claiming. A woman can be preferred as a mate without her being sexually more attractive."
How do you know what men in other cultures think is attractive sexually if you don´t know these men, you don´t read about them, you don´t study anything about them? You are dreaming about them. The basis for your claim is total ignorance of these other societies. You can´t claim men in Samoa think fat or skinny is sexually attractive if you have no knowledge about their culture. No reality basis. Just speculation. Day dreaming.
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 09:51 PM
me:
But it´s clear you certainly have never read a single book on any culture where obesity was the beauty and sexual standard
Randall:
You have no idea what I've read.
Which book have you read that talks about a culture where obesity was/is the beauty and sexual standard?
Posted by Alessandra at January 8, 2005 09:54 PM
You'd get a kick out of reading alessandra's blog. She hates homos.
Alessandra, could you se socialized into lesbianism? Who socialized you into all your opinions? I don't doubt that Samoans are grossly obese. I don't doubt that Samoa exists. A trait can be very common and still be considered unattractive. Whether Samoan men think fatter is sexier with no limit, or a very high limit, that's an empirical question, that's worth learning.
On not reading anthro-fic, I did read Gulliver's Travels, that should make up for not reading Coming of Age in Samoa.
Posted by Rob at January 9, 2005 03:42 AM
"No advert is going to convince people that broccoli tastes as good as a hamburger."
Given that you´ve never taken a walk outside your block, this reminded me about a country outside the US where this is the case. It has about gazillions of people, and there are huge regions where people love broccoli and would rather starve than kill a cow for a hamburger. Actually they hate the food you love, and love the food you hate. (why do you hate broccoli, btw? veggies are so good)
Discussing universalism with people who have no knowledge about any other culture is interesting because the arguments are so in the surreal zone. Reality is completely shunned everytime it contradicts dogma.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 04:51 AM
"You'd get a kick out of reading alessandra's blog. She hates homos. "
If you would read the blog, maybe one thing you could learn is that people who are anti-homosexual, anti-pedophilia, anti-prostitution, anti-p0rnography, have nothing to do with hate. But then, it seems reality is not something you want to have anything to do with. People who oppose all these sexuality problems are able to think about issues that don´t fit in your mind. Saying they "hate" is just a way to stifle discussion, you don´t have arguments, so there flies the ad hominen attack. Pro-homosexuals are too stupid to be able to argue or think about problems in sexuality. They can only call people names, trying to cover up for how stupid they are.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:03 AM
"I don't doubt that Samoans are grossly obese. I don't doubt that Samoa exists. A trait can be very common and still be considered unattractive. Whether Samoan men think fatter is sexier with no limit, or a very high limit, that's an empirical question, that's worth learning."
... that´s worth learning...
Apparently, that is the only thing we agree on. If you don´t know anything about another culture, making affirmations about it, without any knowledge or learning, is senseless. BTW, the reason I suggested for you to read books on anthropology, given how interested you all are in culture and biology, is that long before you were born, people wanted to know about cultural similarities and differences. And they have been going to study other cultures for eons and written thousand of books.
Now, given what I noticed about the discussion here, I would not be surprised if "reading on Samoa" for some participants here means:
a) there are 50 books on Samoa in the library
b) guy opens first book. Has no mention if Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: see, that means they probably thought skinny women were sexy.
c) opens seconds book: it says Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: this anthropologist doesn´t know what he is talking about.
d) opens third book: it says Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: this anthropologist must be a disgruntled feminist. Can´t be true.
e) opens 4th-49th book: it says Samoan men thought fat women were sexy. Conclusion: Anthropologists in general don´t know a thing.
f) opens 50th book: it says Samoan men thought brooms made with this yellow mesh were sexy. Conclusion: See, that´s really their primeval yearning for Britney Spears. I was right.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:16 AM
Alessandra,
India and cows: You want to bet that Indians who are given meat that is not religiously proscribed on average do not like it as much as they like vegetables? Humans do not need to be taught that meat tastes good. To most humans without conditioning meat tastes good. So does fat. So does sugar. You can look around and find cultures that place limits on what can be eaten. But the underlying biology of tastebuds can not be overridden to the point that most people are going to find fatty and sweet tastes to be revolting. The brain is wired up in such a way as to make us eat calories with lots of nutrients.
You continue to proclaim the supremacy of culture over biology and tell me if I just read enough books I will see the error of my ways. I keep pointing you toward more objective ways to study human brains and the evidence that has been found from those studies. But you will have none of that. You have your prejudices and are not interested in what biological science has to say about human nature.
As for anthropologists as disgruntled feminists: It is a real problem. Look at what Mead's ideological zeal did to corrupt her work. Marxists and others who want to remake humanity into forms incompatible with human nature have similarly helped to corrupt anthropology and sociology. Luckily the biological sciences are advancing and gradually undermining the arguments of the ideologues. Some ideologues seem to be unaware that their position is crumbling though. If you would trouble yourself to read The Blank Slate you'd begin to get an idea of just how far you are going to have to eventually retreat from your untenable positions about human nature.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 9, 2005 02:04 PM
Some sociology concepts - since we are talking about socialization:
Social Structure is basically the preexisting patterns of social reality that influence each of us on a daily basis. This structure is in place before we come into the world and has influenced generations before us. In essence, social structure is that framework of society that dictates to us appropriate behaviors and attitudes depending on our particular status (or position) within the overall structure of society. Social Institutions are those organized entities that are established to meet specific needs for the overall society. There are several social institutions that influence us all in unique ways. The five most obvious of these are (arguably all of equal importance): The Economy, which provides society with a monetary base and the means to produce and distribute goods; Politics, which is responsible for providing leadership and laws governing behavior; The
Family, which provides the means to reproduce and to socialize children; Education Systems, which provide
the means to teach members of society how to be productive and intelligent members, and Religion, which provides guidance for many issues, the most basic being the meaning of life and death.
One's social class is his/her relative position within the overall social structure and this, too, influences individual behaviors and attitudes. Social class consists of one's education level, occupational prestige, income, wealth, and may also include other factors such as race and gender. Research continues to demonstrate that individuals are greatly influenced by one's social class in many ways. For example, depending on one's social class there are distinct differences in attitudes and behaviors regarding work, religion, racial, and gender issues. Finally, social groups and social interaction are of interest to sociologists
as both influences individual behaviors. Within groups (two or more people sharing common interests who interact with one another on a regular basis), there is interaction (verbal and nonverbal communications) and the overall groups' structure as well as the interaction itself greatly influences the attitudes and behaviors of individuals within groups.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:07 PM
questions on socialization:
# What is meant by the social construction of reality? How, precisely, is "reality" socially constructed?
# How is culture transmitted from one generation to the next? What are the agents of socialization, and how do they differ - in terms of what kinds of things they socialize, and when they socialize them?
# What is acculturation? What is resocialization and how is it similar to acculturation?
Social Structure as a Negotiated Order.
* Structure arises out of the interactions of people who are operating from both a shared sense of reality (culture and socialization) as well as a individual and group oriented biography which produces particular definitions and interpretations.
* We attempt to make sense out of situations for "all practical purposes."
* We bargain, compromise, redefine and produce an emerging sense of order as a stable reality.
* Some situations allow for little negotiation, others more.
Culture forms the foundation of Social Structure:
* Some sort of shared reality: Language, Norms and Values.
* Out of this basis we attribute meaning and significance to others in terms of where they are placed in relation to ourselves and others.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:22 PM
I wanted to find a definition of socialization quickly and easy, but found this instead. still looking...
SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
This is a course which investigates the relationship between one's place in the social structure and one's own, individual personal growth. We will seek to gain some understanding of the impact of society on the individual. Recognizing that the development of the self is an ongoing dynamic process that does not stop with the onset of adulthood, we will be investigating the social aspects of individual growth and change throughout the life cycle.
The basic premise of this course is that people must learn how to be members of society. In that vein, one of society's major functions is to facilitate the assimilation of its constituents. Successful assimilation serves two goals: it encourages the maintenance and growth of the social system, and it gives each person a sense of his or her location within the social structure. In consequence, it is to the advantage of both society and the individual that the latter comes to adopt an understanding of the social system and one's place in it that is shared by all its members; this understanding not only includes a sense of personal identity, but also an appreciation of the roles one will take as a participating member of society. Part of our analysis will focus on this socialization process.
Beneath this grand design, however is a gnawing awareness that is disquieting: something is basically wrong. As people experience the life course, they realize (even if they do not admit to others) that they have neither a strong sense of personal identity nor a feeling of involvement in their social roles. Although society seems to be progressing in its development, it appears to do so only at the expense of the well-being of many of its members. The remainder of our analysis will examine the proposition that there is something inherent in the structure of our society that causes pain and alienation in people's everyday lives.
We will begin by examining some of the theories of personal growth developed by sociologists, including those pertaining to early socialization in childhood. Next, we will examine the development of the individual from infancy through adulthood, concentrating on the impact of family, school, occupation, and social class on personal growth and social opportunities for advancement. Finally, we will study the social antecedents to alienation.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:28 PM
nice example of socialization of babies:
Even seemingly insignificant actions of parents can have major impacts on the socialization of their children. For instance, what would you do if your baby cried continuously but was not ill, hungry, or in need of a diaper change? Would you hold your baby, rock back and forth, walk around, or sing gently until the crying stopped, even if it took hours. The answer that you give very likely depends on your culture. The traditional Navaho click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced Indian response usually was to remove the baby from social contact until the crying stopped. After making sure that the baby was not ill or in physical distress, he or she would be taken outside of the small single room house and left in a safe place until the crying stopped. Then the baby would be brought indoors again to join the family. Perhaps as a result, Navaho babies raised in this way are usually very quiet. They learn early that making noise causes them to be removed from social contact. In most North American families today, we would hold our baby in this situation until the crying stopped. The lesson that we inadvertently may be giving is that crying results in social contact. Is this wrong? Not necessarily, but it is a different socialization technique.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:36 PM
socialization - good simple definition
Human infants are born without any culture. They must be transformed by their parents, teachers, and others into social and cultural animals. The general process of acquiring culture is referred to as socialization . During socialization, we learn the language of the culture we are born into as well as the roles we are to play in life. For instance, girls learn how to be daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers. In addition, they learn about the occupational roles that their society allows them. We also learn and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization process. Norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. While socialization refers to the general process of acquiring culture, anthropologists use the term enculturation for the process of being socialized to a particular culture. You were enculturated to your specific culture by your parents and the other people who raised you.
Socialization is important in the process of personality formation.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:39 PM
Successful socialization can result in uniformity within a society. If all children receive the same socialization, it is likely that they will share the same beliefs and expectations. This fact has been a strong motivation for national governments around the world to standardize education and make it compulsive. Deciding what things will be taught and how they are taught is a powerful political tool for controlling people. Those who internalize the norms of society are not likely to break the law or want radical social changes. In all societies, however, there are individuals who do not conform to culturally defined standards of normalcy because they were "abnormally" socialized, which is to say that they have not internalized the norms of society.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 05:55 PM
Now back to Rob´s questions:
"Were you socialized to all your preferences? If you were socialized differently, could you enjoy being sexually assaulted, being chronically sleep deprived? Being a slave? No, people are not so easily fooled, the same reasons why I can't socialize girls into thinking pudgy, introverted, balding guys are attractive, it just doesn't work."
part of sociolization: We also learn and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization process. and also the values. So, to take the easiest question first, could you socialize girls into thinking that the male standard of beauty was fat, bald, introverted guys? Sure. If they were born into a culture where men like these were idolized, were considered "the catch", they would learn and internalize that beauty ideal.
Now the question, were you socialized to all your preferences? That´s why I wanted to get the definition of socialization. Socialization does not take away all human agency. the result of socialization will vary according to each individual. So, I was socialized according to the established preferences of my culture, and along with that I developed my individual set of preferences. the result is a mix. And this goes for all other humans socialized as well.
Re the violence questions, we can´t forget that people have a body and a psychological structure that demands care, survival. So the question is even better put like this, can you inflict so much violence on a person, that they develop a mental illness where they can no longer determine what is good or what is healthy pleasure? In many ways you can (unfortunately). Can you socialize (and condition) a person to enjoy slavery? Of course! every system of slavery tries to do exactly that. How much it succeeds, in part depends on how much violence it applies to achieve it (and I´m talking of psychological violence as well). So when a baby is born in this slavery category, they are going to be told that´s a natural state (no way out, shouldn´t be any different anyways), and that the masters/slavery are right. Obviously, since slavery is a violent system, you are asking how do human beings resist violence, which is a complex question, too. Aside from being a great question.
Posted by Alessandra at January 9, 2005 06:08 PM
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