FAULTY WIRING

Look Who's Cheating: Men, women, and evolution (Cathy Young, 8/12/03, Reason)

"Why do men cheat?" asked a TV news promo that showed a man and a woman in a passionate embrace. "A surprising new study says the answer might be in their genes." A cynic might say: And that's news? That's olds (to quote British novelist Terry Pratchett's brilliant satire of the news business, The Truth). True or not, the notion that men are "hard-wired" by evolution to spread their seed while women are predisposed to seek monogamous relationships has been around for years.

Many feminists have been highly critical of evolutionary psychology, which they see as validating gender stereotypes and upholding the status quo. The feminist denial of biological differences between men and women can certainly go to extremes; some even argue that the very idea of two sexes is just a cultural construct. Yet to some extent, the feminist critique is on target. Particularly by the time it trickles down into popular culture, the evolutionary view of male and female behavior can often be simplistic and divisive.

The new study, conducted by Bradley University psychologist David Schmitt and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is impressive in its scope: It involved 16,288 college students from 50 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Men and women were asked how many partners they would like to have in the next month. The average response from men was 1.87 and from women, 0.78; more than a quarter of men and just five percent of women said they wanted more than one partner in the next month. Over the next 10 years, men wanted an average of nearly six partners; women, just over two.

Since the greater male preference for sexual variety was found in every country included in the study, some evolutionary psychologists have hailed the Schmitt study as definitive, irrefutable evidence that these differences are indeed biological. [...]

One might argue that the universality of the sexual double standard suggests that it's rooted in biology. And to some extent, it is. For most of history, before reliable contraception existed, the cost of sex was much higher for women than for men; no wonder parents were more concerned about protecting the chastity of daughters. Men's uncertainty about their paternity also led to harsh restrictions on women's sexual behavior.

Despite yeomanlike by folks like Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection, and Olivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, which pretty conclusively demonstrates that ideas like the "natural" chasteness of women as opposed to the "natural" promiscuity of men are utterly false, people like Ms Young still pen nonsense like this. Particularly amusing is that last paragraph where she argues that the chastity of women is "rooted in biology" as parents and husbands force it on them. It's an odd biological urge that has to be enforced by the culture rather than being internalized, no?

In fact, despite her intentions, Ms Young has effectively argued that evolutionary psychology is bullwash, as witness her next line: "But there is no reason to believe that this legacy is impervious to social change." Precisely so, because the restrictions we place on behavior are functions of morality, not of natural selection. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2003 9:53 AM