{"id":3925,"date":"2013-01-16T17:28:26","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T22:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=3925"},"modified":"2013-01-16T17:28:26","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T22:28:26","slug":"darwin-was-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2013\/01\/16\/darwin-was-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Darwin Was Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a>
\n<\/small><\/p>\n

Well, at least about dating, according to Dan Slater\u2019s recent opinion piece<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>. \u00a0Charles Darwin, who is famous for his theories of evolution, argued that through competition for mates, natural selection encouraged man’s \u201cmore inventive genius\u201d while nurturing women\u2019s \u201cgreater tenderness.\u201d\u00a0 So, he suggested that the gender roles he saw\u00a0in Victorian England\u2014men making money and women staying home\u2014dated back centuries.<\/p>\n

Decades later, social scientists applied Darwin\u2019s theories to ideas about mating and concluded that men are less selective about whom they\u2019ll sleep with, men like casual sex more than women, and men have more sexual partners over a lifetime. \u00a0These assumptions persist today, and many evolutionary psychologists have studied them and argued in their favor. \u00a0For example,<\/p>\n

\u00a0 In 1972, Robert L. Trivers, a graduate student at Harvard…argued that women are more selective about whom they mate with because they\u2019re biologically obliged to invest more in offspring. Given the relative paucity of ova and plenitude of sperm, as well as the unequal feeding duties that fall to women, men invest less in children. Therefore, men should be expected to be less discriminating and more aggressive in competing for females.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Critics of this theory (and many other evolution-based theories) argue that cultural norms, not evolution, impact human behavior.\u00a0 This argument is quite sociological, though it has also found support in the work of psychologists.<\/p>\n

Take the question of promiscuity. Everyone has always assumed \u2014 and early research had shown \u2014 that women desired fewer sexual partners over a lifetime than men. But in 2003, two behavioral psychologists, Michele G. Alexander and Terri D. Fisher, published the results of a study that used a \u201cbogus pipeline\u201d \u2014 a fake lie detector. When asked about actual sexual partners, rather than just theoretical desires, the participants who were not attached to the fake lie detector displayed typical gender differences. Men reported having had more sexual partners than women. But when participants believed that lies about their sexual history would be revealed by the fake lie detector, gender differences in reported sexual partners vanished. In fact, women reported slightly more sexual partners (a mean of 4.4) than did men (a mean of 4.0).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A more recent study challenged the idea that women are more selective. \u00a0In speed dating, the social norm instructs that women sit in one place while men rotate tables. \u00a0In 2009, Psychologists Eli J. Finkel and Paul W. Eastwick conducted an experiment in which the men remained seated and the women rotated. \u00a0By switching the role of the “rotator,” they found that women became less selective while men appeared more selective.<\/p>\n

Slater\u2019s opinion piece, found here,<\/a> cites several other studies that cast doubt on the notion that evolution dictates gendered behavior.\u00a0 But, that doesn\u2019t mean that Darwinians are backing down. The debate will likely continue, but Slater gives the last words to those who challenge Darwinian ideas:<\/p>\n

\u201cSome sexual features are deeply rooted in evolutionary heritage, such as the sex response and how quickly it takes men and women to become aroused,\u201d said Paul Eastwick, a co-author of the speed-dating study. \u201cHowever, if you\u2019re looking at features such as how men and women regulate themselves in society to achieve specific goals, I believe those features are unlikely to have evolved sex differences. I consider myself an evolutionary psychologist. But many evolutionary psychologists don\u2019t think this way. They think these features are getting shaped and honed by natural selection all the time.\u201d How far does Darwin go in explaining human behavior?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, at least about dating, according to Dan Slater\u2019s recent opinion piece in the New York Times. \u00a0Charles Darwin, who is famous for his theories of evolution, argued that through competition for mates, natural selection encouraged man’s \u201cmore inventive genius\u201d while nurturing women\u2019s \u201cgreater tenderness.\u201d\u00a0 So, he suggested that the gender roles he saw\u00a0in Victorian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[387,1435,39114,120],"class_list":["post-3925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-dating","tag-evolution","tag-gender","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3925"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3938,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925\/revisions\/3938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}