Race Differences in Ethnocentrism

by Edward Dutton

  4. Arabs and South Asians

  We can see from Table 4 that South Asians (primarily Arabs and other Muslim peoples in the sample) are more ethnocentric than Europeans. Why is this so?

  If the Life History Theory Model of ethnocentrism is to be accepted then it must explain all population differences in levels of ethnocentric behaviour. It might be argued that Arab peoples are more ethnocentric than Europeans. We would expect this in terms of negative ethnocentrism, as they would perhaps be less K-evolved, due to the less harsh environment. Also they have an average of IQ that is around a standard deviation lower than that of Europe whereas that of Northeast Asia is only a third of a standard deviation higher. So, we would expect Arabs to be more negatively ethnocentric than Europeans due to relatively lower average intelligence.

  Rushton (2005) has discussed, in some depth, the high levels of what he sees as positive ethnocentrism among Middle Easterners, and especially the Muslim population. The most obvious example is suicide bombing, where you lay down your life for your co-religionists, who are also disproportionately likely to be your co-ethnics. However, we need to be cautious here. The behaviour is mediated through religious belief, which may have independent effects on motivating self-sacrificial behaviour. Also, Vanhanen (2012) has observed that Arab societies are far from united. They are strongly canalized along the lines of separate — and conflicting — ethnic groups and clans and, indeed, the more unstable the ecology the greater the ethnic diversity appears to be. Thus, if Arabs are ethnocentric the nature of that ethnocentrism must be distinguished from that in many Western countries: it does not necessarily correspond with a nation state to the same extent. Assuming we accept that Arabs are highly positively ethnocentric, as evidenced in self-sacrificial behaviour, how can this be explained if Arabs are assumed to be lower in K than Europeans, due to a less harsh and less predictable ecology? We would argue that this can be partly explained by relatively high levels of cousin marriage. This would reduce the gene pool down to a series of competing tribes that would be internally strongly related. This would motivate high levels of both kinds of ethnocentrism.

  There are a number of ways of understanding how a high level of consanguineous marriage might develop. One of the most widely accepted is that it is a means of enforcing social continuity. The husband-wife relationship will be more stable and involve less upheaval because they will already have very similar social relationships. Such marriages also make it easier for both sides of the family to help with the grandchildren, they keep property within a single family, and they mean that both sides of the union are already strongly bonded. In addition, when people live in small, isolated communities that already have a small gene pool, Rushton’s research on Genetic Similarity Theory would predict that relatively closely related people would simply find each other attractive. He showed that couples who are more genetically similar tend to have happier marriages than those who are genetically distant. In line with this, a study in Iceland by Helgason et al. (2008), assessing population data between 1800 and 1965, found that fertility was highest among couples that were third or fourth cousins. Moving away from this ‘sweet spot’ in either direction seemed to lower fertility by consistent grades. The authors argued that owing to the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of Icelanders and the highly significant differences in the fertility of couples separated by fine degrees of kinship, their finding was likely to have a biological basis. For example, they found that contemporary Icelandic couples who are sixth cousins have higher fertility than do those who are seventh cousins. Thus, they argue that one possible explanation for the demographic transition associated with industrialization — where couples have fewer and fewer children — is that couples are decreasingly consanguineous in these societies.

  However, it needs to be emphasised that among some ethnic and religious groups consanguineous marriage has proved highly resistant to social change. Research on Muslim marriage in India found that 22% of marriages were contracted between second cousins or closer and that there had been very little change in this percentage between the 1950s and the 1990s (Bittles & Huissain, 2000). In much the same way, 55% of British Pakistanis are the products of cousin marriages and this has remained a robust figure over 50 or so years (Bittles & Black, 2010). So, why do some groups — seemingly independent of environment — practice cousin marriage so much more than others? As already indicated, the answer would seem to explain high ethnocentrism among modern-day Arabs.

  5. Cousin Marriage Among Arabs

  We might argue that it does indeed make sense in terms of Life History Theory to practice cousin marriage at a certain point on the r–K continuum. If the ecology were unstable then we would predict that people would sexually select almost exclusively for signs of genetic fitness — such as symmetry, which is associated with physical attractiveness — as these would imply the ability to withstand the random and unpredictable calamities, such as disease outbreaks, which would befall a population. As such, in a highly r-oriented environment, we would predict that people would simply want to copulate with as many attractive people as possible in order to maximise the possibility of passing on their genes. We would also predict that they would be relatively unselective with regard to whom they copulated with. Though they would obviously choose the more attractive over the less attractive person, even copulating with an unattractive person — as part of a general r-strategy — would increase the probability of them passing on their genes.

  Furthermore, deliberately copulating with somebody who was genetically very dissimilar to oneself would make sense in an unstable environment because such a person might possibly carry some genetic defence against a particular disease, which would seemingly not be the case among the local population. This strategy would lead to greater genetic diversity. Moreover, in a highly unstable environment the main selection is for general fitness, rather than genetic similarity, and those who are ‘hybrids’ will have ‘hybrid vigour’ due to a relatively low level of double doses of mutant genes. In other words, hybrids will be fitter. Consistent with this, it has been established that mixed-race people are, in general, more physical attractive, with beauty being associated with symmetry. This betokens a good immune system, as we have discussed, because such a person has maintained a symmetrical phenotype in the face of disease and thus a low percentage of double doses of mutant genes (Adams, 1st January 2006). Anyway, this being the case, we might expect that Sub-Saharan Africans, who have been shown to be strongly r-strategist, would be less inclined to engage in cousin marriage than those who were somewhat slower in their Life History, such as Arabs. Though they might engage in it to some extent, in a highly unstable ecology it would not be so strongly selected for. This being so, their instinct for cousin marriage or ethnocentrism would not be especially pronounced.

  By contrast, in a more K-oriented environment, it would make sense to trade investment in partners who indicate just high fitness for partners who are genetically similar to oneself. This is because the adoption of a K-strategy, where you invest in your partner and child, could potentially reduce your ‘fitness’, because you would no longer be copulating with large numbers of people. You would be copulating with a small number of people but investing more in them so that they, and your children, could successfully negotiate the predictable dangers they would meet. Copulating with one person, who was genetically similar to you, would, thus, increase your fitness via inclusive fitness. There would be two ways of achieving this: consanguineous relationships and assortative mating. Let us look at them in turn.

  Cousin Marriage

  This can be supposed to be less K than assortative mating. Consanguineous marriage appears to be associated with those who live relatively difficult, unstable lives. Hampshire and Smith (2001) found that among the Fulani of Sudan levels of consanguineous marriage were significantly higher among brides whose families owned the fewest cattle. Likewise, British evolutionary psychologist Michael Woodley
of Menie (Woodley, 2008) found a strong negative association between national IQ and levels of consanguineous marriage; also, countries with low average IQ tend to be poorer and so more difficult to live in (see Lynn & Vanhanen, 2012).

  I would argue that one reason is that cousin marriage would help build a functioning society and would thus be group selected for. Fast Life History strategists are aggressive, uncooperative, distrusting, and mutually hostile. We would expect them, however, to be less hostile to those who were closely related to them, as it would be in the interests of their genetic fitness to be less hostile to these relatively close kin. Any society of this kind, in which people began to interbreed with close relatives, would thus soon start to become less internally hostile, because all of its members would be relatively closely related. Even in an ecology, for example, in which the low levels of trust might mean that males could be less sure that their children were really theirs, high levels of cousin marriage would still mean that they were relatively closely related to these children and so it would be worth investing resources in the society as a whole. In other words, a relatively fast Life History society which developed a rule of cousin marriage would be likely to display relatively higher levels of positive ethnocentrism combined with high levels of negative ethnocentrism. A functioning society would need to be achieved in this way in an unstable ecology. It could not be achieved through a particular group adopting a very slow Life History strategy because the instability of the environment would mean that, in the long term, such a group would be unlikely to survive. So, the viable way to achieve a complex society would be a combination of the appropriate Life History strategy and high levels of cousin marriage. When this society then came into conflict with another band, there would be group selection for the band which was more ethnocentric, as predicted by higher levels of consanguineous marriage.

  A second, more specific, reason for cousin marriage, as argued by Thornhill and Fincher (2012), is as a response to parasite stress. This creates a highly unstable environment which can potentially wipe people out at any moment. If parasite stress is extreme, then it makes sense to outbreed as the outsider may have some immunity which you don’t have. However, once the level of stability is heightened slightly there will be an on-going arms race between humans and parasites. In this context, marrying your cousin will ensure that you breed with somebody who is as far ahead as they can be in this evolutionary arms race. So, we would expect a society that is middling in Life History to adopt cousin marriage, something which would elevate ethnocentrism.

  Assortative Mating

  As the society becomes even more K, we would expect there to be a movement away from cousin marriage and towards assortative mating. This is likely due to the increased importance of tit-for-tat social relations. As the environment becomes harsher and more stable, the more K group — the group which can strongly cooperate — is more likely to survive. Through alliances with more distantly related kin, such a group will be able to develop into a very large group indeed. It will be able to trade, swap ideas, develop socio-economically and thus triumph over the kind of small, insular groups which would be produced by cousin marriage. Accordingly, members of such a group would be attracted to people — as friends and potential sexual partners — who were more distantly related, and this would aid their group survival. And they would be strongly repelled by what they would regard as incest.

  This being the case, we can start to understand why high levels of cousin marriage can be found in the Middle East. American psychologist Kevin MacDonald (2002) argues that in this context, in pre-history, the environment would have been less stable but also less harsh than Europe. Clearly, this would lead to a relatively fast Life History strategy. However, it would be slow enough, compared to Sub-Saharan Africa for example, that the people would have the space to innovate combined with the evolved psychological factors necessary to do so. As such, it was here, in the Fertile Crescent, that the Agricultural Revolution began. This led, earlier than in Northeast Asia or Europe, to larger social groups, based around pastoralism rather than hunter gathering. In that the environment would be much less harsh than the Northeast Asian one, intergroup conflict would be, relative to Northeast Asia, a more significant selection pressure than environmental harshness, which would select for a slower Life History. As these Middle Eastern pastoralist groups came into conflict, we would expect the more ethnocentric groups to survive better and their being more positively ethnocentric would be underpinned by the practice of cousin marriage. Such a practice, accordingly, may have become gradually partly genetic: groups would be more likely to survive if more of their members were more inclined to copulate with their cousins. This would, in turn, lead to large numbers of conflicting tribes and clans.

  6. Testing the Relationship between Cousin Marriage and Ethnocentrism

  In order to test this, Dutton et al. (2016a) drew upon the percentage of the population in either a cousin or second cousin marriage for which they had data for thirty-four countries. Where there were a number of studies in a given country they took the median value. They found that cousin marriage was significantly positively associated with negative ethnocentrism. As discussed, this practice would only be necessary because of the very low levels of trust and a general fast Life History strategy. So, anyone who was not relatively close kin would be strongly distrusted and this would include people of different races and ethnic groups. In addition, the practice of cousin marriage would help to create a small gene pool, rendering such a group very strongly different from any other group. Following Salter (2007), the damage that immigration would thus inflict on the genetic interests of such people would be proportionally higher than if they had a larger gene pool and thus were genetically closer to any foreigner. We would not expect cousin marriage to predict fighting for your group, and it would also predict the inability to create large ethnic groups because this would be based on trusting people with decreasing degrees of kinship. Instead, it would create states that were Balkanized along tribal lines, tribes being overt kinship groups with a common ancestor. Dutton et al. found that cousin marriage was not significantly associated with positive ethnocentrism but it was very close to significance in the expected direction, at 0.3. It was significantly positively associated with willingness to fight for your country at 0.6. This is likely because societies which practice cousin marriage have only a weak sense of nationalism, because they are divided along tribal lines. As such, they lack ‘pride in their country’. But they are strongly prepared to defend their community from a foreign invader — who would be even more genetically distinct from them than a neighbouring tribe — and this manifests itself in being prepared to potentially sacrifice their lives. So, cousin marriage predicts negative ethnocentrism and aspects of positive ethnocentrism in such a way that it would seem to neatly explain relatively high levels of ethnocentrism among Arabs. Further, it could be argued that cousin marriage is effectively a way of reducing the gene pool and so, following Genetic Similarity Theory, it implies that if a group had a small gene pool for different reasons than cousin marriage, such as intense Natural Selection, this should heighten their general ethnocentrism. This would be in line with high levels of ethnocentrism among Northeast Asians.

  7. Religiousness and Ethnocentrism

  So, we have examined the issue of cousin marriage and the way in which it explains how a less K group can be more positively ethnocentric than a more K one. Another possible explanation, which we have already touched upon briefly, is a high level of religiousness, and meta-analyses have found that religiousness is in the region of 0.44 heritable (see Dutton, 2014).

  In terms of the r/K model, religion is something of an anomaly. In many ways, religiousness is associated with a slow Life History strategy. Religious people are (weakly) higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness than are non-religious people (Saroglou, 2002) and they maintain strong and ordered communities. Religiousness is generally seen as a marker of moral
ity and of sexual control. In monogamous societies, religious people have stronger pair bonds (evidenced in lower levels of divorce), are less likely to have sex outside of marriage, are less likely to have illegitimate children, are less likely to engage with drugs of any kind, are less likely to have mental health problems (Blume, 2009). They also have a longer life expectancy than the non-religious (Koenig, 2012). In all of these ways, religiosity can be regarded as slow Life History strategy and Figueredo et al. (2006) have actually employed religiousness as a measure of K. However, there are a number of key ways in which religiousness appears to reflect a fast Life History strategy. Religiousness is negatively associated with IQ at about −0.2 (Dutton, 2014) and, at the group level, intelligence tends to be part of a K strategy. It is also associated with a desire to have lots of children and with actually having lots of children, meaning that the fertility of the religious — when controlling for sociological variables — is higher than the fertility of the non-religious (Rowthorn, 2011).

  How can this anomaly be explained? It could be argued that r-strategists are simply programmed to have lots of sex with lots of different people. If children are the consequence of this, then so be it. However, they have no desire to invest anything in these children. Modern Western societies compel us to do this — by tracking fathers down and making them pay child maintenance or prosecuting neglectful mothers. This means that r-strategists don’t really want to have children and if they have them then they have them by accident. By contrast, the religious actually want to have children. But the problem is still that the more religious they are then the more children they want to have and this is surely a sign of fast Life History strategy. If you have lots of children then, by necessity, you are minimising the level of investment in each child, when holding everything else constant. Moreover, having large numbers of children is normally associated with an unstable environment wherein organisms produce many offspring to ensure that at least some survive to adulthood. Further, the clearly documented relationship between religiousness and stress, which will discuss below, would imply that religiousness is at least partly a function of an unstable environment.