Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire–Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do

by Miller, Alan S.

  While Muslim suicide bombers are collectively known as “the terrorists,” they are very different from traditional terrorist groups, such as the Irish Republican Army, ETA (Basque Fatherland and Liberty), the Japan Red Army, and other Marxist revolutionaries. Terrorists, traditionally, have clear political goals and are willing to resort to violence and destruction in order to achieve them. For traditional terrorists, what is most important are political goals, and violence and destruction are means to their goals. For example, while the IRA has assassinated many targeted individuals (mostly politicians and British soldiers), they do not aim to kill random civilians. That is why when the IRA sets explosive bombs on commercial targets in Britain, it usually gives a 45-minute advance warning, enough time for the occupants of the buildings to evacuate them safely, but not enough time to call the bomb squad to locate and defuse the bombs.35 While the members of Greenpeace and other “eco-terrorist” groups often endanger their own lives, they are not known to intentionally endanger the lives of others. Traditional terrorist groups let the whole world know that they are responsible for the violence and destruction and often court media attention, because such publicity helps spotlight their political agenda.

  Our enemies in the current “War on Terror” are very different. They aim to endanger as many lives as possible, including their own, and they do not seem to have clearly stated political goals.36 They do not give advance warnings of their attacks, and they do not even publicly claim responsibility for the violence after the fact.37 (Many of the claims of responsibility on various websites are usually false.) It appears that murder and destruction is the goal, rather than the means to political goals. This may be why, for example, the Palestinians did not stop their suicide bombings even when the Israeli government under Ehud Barak conceded virtually everything that the Palestinians demanded (the total withdrawal of Israelis from the West Bank and the control of Jerusalem).38

  Many of these puzzles begin to make more sense when you look at the situation from the evolutionary psychological perspective. Maybe these devastating suicide bombings are not “terrorist” acts, as the term is usually used. Maybe they have nothing to do with Israel or the American and British troops. Maybe they’re all about sex, as everything else in life is.

  Q. Why Is Ethnic and Nationalist Conflict So Per sis tent throughout the World?

  If you pay attention to the world news, you know that ethnic and nationalist conflict has unfortunately been a constant feature of human history. It is no exaggeration to say that there has not been a region or a historical period that has not been affected by some sort of ethnic and nationalist conflict, and this is unfortunately still true at the dawn of the third millennium of recorded human history. The history of human civilization has in large part been a history of ethnic and nationalist conflict.

  Why is this? Why is ethnic and nationalist conflict so persistent throughout history and the world?

  Nationalism and other forms of ethnic movement pose a puzzle—especially for a school of the Standard Social Science Model called the rational choice theory.39 All benefits of successful nationalist or ethnic movements, such as ethnic independence, political autonomy, and state recognition, are shared equally by everyone. So, for example, once ethnic independence is granted to a nation (say, Quebec in Canada), all members of the nation are equally in de pen dent, and no one can be excluded from enjoying the newly acquired ethnic independence. It means that those members of an ethnic group or a nation who did not contribute at all toward the cause (the “freeriders”) get to enjoy the benefits of successful ethnic movements as much as those who risked life and limb in order to achieve the success (the “zealots”).40 Freeriders and zealots enjoy the same level of freedom and independence. Why, then, would anybody risk injury and death in order to bring about the change? In any situation like this, it is always rational to freeride, and no rational actors will ever contribute.41 If everyone is rational, then no one will contribute to the cause, and it will not get off the ground, let alone succeed. How, then, can any ethnic and nationalist movement ever succeed?

  Evolutionary Psychology Is Rational Choice for the Genes

  Once again, evolutionary psychology can solve puzzles left unresolved by the Standard Social Science Model in general or the rational choice theory in particular.42 Joseph M. Whitmeyer was a student of Pierre L. van den Berghe, whom we have encountered a couple of times earlier. Whitmeyer argues, and mathematically proves, that any gene that inclines its carriers to help others whom they might marry, or those whose children their children might marry, or those whose grandchildren their grandchildren might marry, etc., will be favored by evolution and thus spread.43 By contributing toward the welfare of other members of such an “extended family” or tribe, so to speak, you are essentially providing benefits for your genetic offspring, both distant and near. Whitmeyer argues that what usually passes as an ethnic group is essentially such an extended family because members of ethnic groups tend to intermarry.

  Whitmeyer’s insight is that while it is economically irrational to contribute toward ethnic and nationalist movements, as the rational choice theorists point out, because the benefits of successful ethnic collective action cannot be excluded from freeriders, it is nonetheless evolutionarily and biologically rational. It is irrational from the individual’s perspective; it is rational from the genes’ perspective.44

  Whitmeyer’s solution to the problem of ethnic and nationalist conflict contains both good and bad news. The bad news is that our tendency toward ethnocentrism—our desire to help and promote others of “our own kind”—is probably innate. Because they assume that humans are born blank slates, social scientists have always argued that individuals are born entirely free of prejudice, but learn to be racist and ethnocentric through childhood socialization, usually by racist parents. Evolutionary psychology in general and Whitmeyer’s work in particular suggest that this is unlikely to be the case.45 Humans are instead born racist and ethnocentric, and learn through socialization and education not to act on such innate tendencies. Humans are innately ethnocentric because ethnocentrism—helping others of one’s group members at the cost of all others—was adaptive in the ancestral environment.

  The good news is that we can easily overcome our innate ethnocentric tendencies. A recent experiment with an incredibly ingenious design—conducted by Robert O. Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides—demonstrates that while we are born with fixed categories for sex and age, we are not born with fixed categories of what constitutes a race or ethnic group, or what defines “us” versus “them.”46 We will never be able to eliminate our innate ethnocentric tendencies, but we can lessen hostility and conflict between any particular set of ethnic, religious, national, or cultural groups. How? Whitmeyer’s mathematical model provides the answer: intermarriage. Our brain is designed to perceive anybody within an “extended family” of intermarrying individuals as “us,” and anybody outside of it as “them.” If members of hostile groups began intermarrying, we could eventually eliminate the hostility itself.

  Of course, this is far easier said than done. It would be very difficult to convince members from different ethnic and national groups in conflict to marry each other. But at least there is hope. Kurzban, Tooby, and Cosmides’ experiment shows that humans will never be able to stop treating men and women differently, or the young and the old differently, but they will be able to stop treating Catholics and Protestants differently in Northern Ireland; Muslims and Jews differently in Israel; or Serbs, Croats, and Muslims differently in Bosnia. While some may think there is a chicken-and-egg problem here—does ethnic conflict lead to a lack of intermarriage, or does a lack of intermarriage lead to ethnic conflict?—Whitmeyer’s mathematical model points to the latter answer and suggests that it is possible to reduce ethnic and nationalist conflict via increased intermarriage.

  Q. Why Are Single Women More Likely to Travel Abroad—and Why Are Young Single Men More Likely to Be Xenophobic?

  Ask
a group of friends what their hobbies are. If you have many young, unmarried friends of both sexes, chances are that many of your female friends would mention traveling as one of their hobbies, while very few of your young unmarried male friends would. Alternatively, you may find that many of your young single female friends have recently been to a foreign country on a vacation, but few of your young single male friends have. Why is this?

  Make a completely different observation. Pay close attention to the news coverage of the most recent Ku Klux Klan rally in the United States or the convention of the British National Party or any other gathering of an expressly xenophobic organization. You will notice that most participants in such xenophobic organizations are young, unmarried men; there are comparatively few women or older men in the membership of such organizations. Why? It turns out that the reason why more young single women vacation abroad may be the same as why most neo-Nazis are young single men. It may have to do with a zoological phenomenon called lekking.

  Lek is a Swedish word for “play” and refers in zoology to a complex of behavior whereby members of one sex, almost always male, strut and display their genetic quality in a contest, in front of an audience consisting of members of the other sex, almost always female. At the end of the lek, the females choose the winner and exclusively mate with him. The winner of lekking monopolizes all of the mating opportunities, and none of the others get any.

  At first sight, humans appear to be an exception in nature. Among most species, males are gaudy, colorful, decorated, and ornamented, while females are drab in appearance. (Compare peacocks with peahens.) Males of lekking species display their physical features in order to attract mates, and females choose their mates on the basis of the males’ physical appearance; the gaudier and more colorful, the better. In contrast, among humans, it is women for whom physical appearance is more important for their mate value, and it is men who choose their mates mostly for their physical appearance. (See “Why Do Men Like Blonde Bombshells [and Why Do Women Want to Look Like Them]?” in chapter 3.) And, at least in industrial societies, women tend to be more decorated and ornamented than men, although men in many preindustrial societies often wear more elaborate ornamentation than do women.

  The female of most species in nature does not receive any material benefit from her mates; the male does not make any parental investment beyond the sperm deposited inside the female body during copulation. This is why the male’s genetic quality is especially important for the female; in fact, nothing else matters. So among these species, males display their genetic quality in lekking, and the females choose their mates solely on the basis of their genetic quality. Human males are exceptional in nature in this regard; they make a large amount of material investment in their offspring, even though they don’t make as much parental investment as women do (see “Why Are There So Many Deadbeat Dads but So Few Deadbeat Moms?” in chapter 5). This does not mean, however, that their genetic quality is not important to women; men’s genetic quality can predict their future ability to acquire resources and attain status, hence their ability to make parental investment.47 For humans, because of high male parental investment, what is important is not the male’s genetic quality per se but earning potential. His genetic quality is important only to the extent that it predicts or correlates with his potential to earn and accumulate material resources.

  This is why when men lek, they display their earning potential and accumulated wealth in addition to their genetic quality. And unlike other lekking species, like the sage grouse or the antelope, men lek mostly by nonphysical means. They drive luxury cars, wear expensive watches and designer suits,48 carry electronic gadgets like cell phones and PDAs, and brag about their achievements in casual conversations.49 Young men also advertise their genetic quality and earning potential by “cultural displays”—excelling in such “quantifiable, public, and costly” activities as music, art, literature, and science.50

  In one study, for example, researchers covertly observed patrons of a bar in central Liverpool in the late 1990s, when cell phones were still relatively rare and expensive. The researchers discovered that men’s tendency to place their cell phones on the table in clear view of others, unlike women’s tendency to do the same, increases with the number of men in their group and its ratio of men to women.51 The researchers’ interpretation is that men do this, consciously or unconsciously, in order to compete with other men in their group for the attention of the women, and to display their wealth and status and hence their genetic quality and earning potential. So men lek via social and cultural, rather than physical, ornamentation.52

  A Not-So-Universal Language

  Such social and cultural ornamentation, however, presents men with one problem that males of other species, who lek via physical ornamentation, do not face: It does not travel well. Social and cultural ornamentation is, by definition, socially and culturally specific. Men cannot brag about their achievements in conversations with women unless they speak the same language. Yanomamö women in the Amazon rain forest would not be able to tell the difference between a BMW and a Hyundai or the difference between an Armani suit and a Burger King uniform, and their status implications; a Grammy or a Nobel Prize will not impress them at all. (Has any Nobel Prize winner ever had massive head scars, indicating their experience in club fights?) Conversely, Western women are unlikely to be impressed by body scars and large penis sheaths. Signs of men’s status and mate value are specific to societies and cultures, and they lose meaning outside of them.

  This is in clear contrast to women’s status and mate value. Standards of youth and physical attractiveness, the two most important determinants of women’s status and mate value, are culturally universal53 because they are innate54 (see chapter 3, “Why Is Beauty Not in the Eye of the Beholder or Skin-Deep?”). Men in preliterate and innumerate cultures without any concept of fractions or the decimal point will be able to distinguish between women with 1.0 and 0.7 waist-to-hip ratios. Yanomamö men will see that a Victoria’s Secret lingerie model is extremely moko dude (a Yanomamö phrase meaning “perfectly ripe”).55

  A Sure Sign That Someone Wanted You

  If men’s status and mate value are specific to their own society and culture, then they should avoid different cultures, where a completely different set of rules, of which they are ignorant, may apply. In contrast, women should not avoid foreign cultures to the same extent that men do, because rules applicable to them are cross-culturally universal.

  However, this sex difference should disappear once men marry, for a couple of reasons. First, married men who have achieved reproductive success should have less of an urgent need to attract mates by social and cultural ornamentation than do unmarried men.56 Second, and more important, mates are probably the only ornamentation or lekking device men can display that is cross-culturally meaningful. There is evidence that females of species as varied as guppies,57 Japanese medaka,58 black grouse,59 and Japanese quail60 prefer to mate with males who have recently mated. Females use other females’ choice of males as evidence of their genetic quality; in other words, they copy each other. And some suggest that human females might do the same.61

  The idea is simple: If a woman meets a strange man, she has no basis on which to form an opinion of him. He can be a high-quality man, or he can be a low-quality man; she just doesn’t know. However, if he has a wife, that means that at least one woman, who presumably closely inspected his quality before marrying him, found him good enough to marry. So he couldn’t be that bad after all; at least one woman found him desirable. So being married (the presence of a wife) is one cross-culturally transportable ornamentation or lekking device that signifies men’s superior mate value, and married men should not avoid foreign cultures.[62]

  Dislike of foreign cultures can be measured by the likelihood of travel to foreign countries or by the expressions of xenophobic attitudes. One empirical study with a large European sample shows that, controlling for age, education, and income (factors that ar
e expected to, and in most cases do, affect people’s ability to travel), unmarried women are significantly more likely to vacation abroad than unmarried men.63 The same study also demonstrates that, controlling for age and education, unmarried women are significantly less likely to express xenophobic attitudes than unmarried men toward individuals of other nationalities, races, and religions. The pattern is similar among Americans as well.64 In all cases, the sex difference disappears once the respondents are married; married women are no more likely to travel to foreign countries (probably because married couples tend to vacation together) or no less likely to express xenophobic attitudes than married men.

  Both the likelihood of travel abroad and expressions of xenophobia reflect men’s need to attract women using social and cultural ornamentation. Men’s status and mate value, unlike women’s, are socially and culturally specific, and they cannot successfully attract women outside of their own society and culture. Married men, on the other hand, can use their wives as cross-culturally meaningful social ornamentation to signify their mate value. In sharp contrast, the standards and criteria by which women are judged for their mate value are socially and culturally universal, and thus women have no need to fear foreign cultures.

  Conclusion

  Stump the Evolutionary Psychologists

  A FEW TOUGHER QUESTIONS

  In the preceding chapters, we have used evolutionary psychology to explain a wide variety of puzzles in many areas of social life, from sex and mating to marriage and the family; from crime and violence to economics, politics, and religion. We hope we have succeeded in convincing you that evolutionary psychology is an approach that can provide at least some (partial) answers to many persistent questions about human behavior. Given the range and number of questions that we have attempted to address in this book, you may rightfully wonder if there is anything that evolutionary psychology cannot address.