You may think that unmarried scientists continue to make scientific contributions much later in their lives because they have more time to devote to their careers. Unmarried and therefore childless scientists do not have to spend time taking care of their children, driving them back and forth between soccer practices and ballet lessons, or doing half the house hold chores, and that is why unmarried scientists can continue making great contributions to science while married scientists must desist to devote their time to their families. This is precisely Hargens et al.’s interpretation of the negative correlation between parenthood and productivity among research chemists.
But we would point out that almost all the scientists in the main data on scientific biographies we rely on above lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when married men made very little contribution in the domestic sphere and their wives did not have their own careers. Hargens et al.’s data come from 1969–70, when this was probably still true to a large extent. We would therefore suggest that, if anything, married scientists probably had more (rather than less) time to devote to science, because they had someone to take care of their domestic needs at all times.
Why, then, does marriage depress the productivity of all men, criminals, and scientists alike? What underlies the desistance effect of marriage?
Enjoying the Fruits of Their Labor
The social control perspective on the desistance effect of marriage is at best incomplete if marriage has the same desistance effect on scientists. Unlike criminal behavior, scientific activities are completely within conventional society and are thus not at all incompatible with marriage and other strong bonds to conventional society. Unlike criminals, scientists are not subject to social control (by their wives or others), since scientific activities are not illegal or deviant in any way.
We believe an evolutionary psychological theory provides a much simpler explanation for the desistance effect of marriage for both crime and science, in the form of a single psychological mechanism that predisposes young men to compete and excel early in their adulthood but subsequently turns off after the birth of their children (which quickly followed pair-bonding and regular sex in the absence of reliable means of birth control in the ancestral environment). After their marriage and children, male scientists do not feel like spending hours and hours in their labs, just like married criminals do not feel like taking great risks and committing crimes. But neither scientists nor criminals know why.
From the evolutionary psychological perspective, reproductive success is the end, and everything men do (be it crime or scientific research) is but a means to this ultimate end. From this perspective, the question of why marriage depresses crime and scientific productivity misses the whole point. Does it make sense for men to continue employing the means even after they have achieved the ends they were trying to attain with the means? This is why married men are less likely to engage in a whole range of risk-taking behaviors, like driving fast, which are designed indirectly and unconsciously to attract women. Indeed, automobile insurance statistics clearly show that married men have fewer car accidents.
Q. Why Do Some Men Beat Up Their Wives and Girlfriends?
Critics of evolutionary psychology often claim that evolutionary psychological explanations are “untestable” and “unfalsifiable.”32 As but one perfect example of eminent testability and falsifiability of evolutionary psychological explanations33 we offer two competing explanations of domestic violence, formulated by the two deans of modern evolutionary psychology (who happen to be married to each other, no less).
When Martin Daly and Margo Wilson began studying domestic violence and uxoricide (the killing of one’s wife) in the early 1980s, they had competing explanations.34 Daly hypothesized that domestic violence and uxoricide resulted when the husband did not value his wife sufficiently and mistreated her as a result. Since a wife’s fertility and reproductive value decline with age, Daly predicted that older wives were at a greater risk of spousal abuse and homicide than younger wives. Wilson, in contrast, hypothesized that domestic violence and uxoricide were a maladaptive byproduct of the husband’s inclination and tendency to guard his wife to make sure that she did not have sexual contact with other men. Because men should be more motivated to guard younger, more valuable wives, Wilson predicted that younger wives were at a greater risk of spousal abuse and homicide than older wives.
Both explanations use impeccable evolutionary psychological logic and derive from known facts, but both predictions could not be true simultaneously. So Daly and Wilson got to work as the good scientists that they are, collecting data on domestic violence and uxoricide in Canada and the United States, and putting the two competing predictions to the empirical test. Their data showed that younger wives were at a much greater risk of violence and murder than older wives. In the end, Wilson’s prediction turns out to be true, and Daly’s false.35 Is evolutionary psychology untestable and unfalsifiable?
Astute readers may be thinking right now, “But younger women are usually married to younger men. And younger men are more violent than older men, as you point out in your discussion of the age-crime curve (see “What Do Bill Gates and Paul McCartney Have in Common with Criminals?” above). So younger women are at a greater risk of spousal abuse and murder, not because they are young but because their husbands are young and therefore more violent.”
Close, but no cigar. While it is difficult to separate the effects of the husband’s age and the wife’s age, careful statistical analyses show that the wife’s age almost entirely determines the likelihood of being a victim of spousal abuse and homicide. Middle-aged husbands (ages 45–54) legally married in Canada to much younger wives (ages 15–24) are more than six times as likely to kill their wives than young husbands (ages 15–24) married to women of similar age.36 Among common-law marriages, middle-aged husbands married to much younger wives are more than 45 times as likely to kill their wives as young husbands.37The effect of the wife’s age is so powerful that it overrides and even reverses a man’s tendency to become less violent with age. Thus, while it is true that younger men in general are much more violent and commit more murders than older men, young and old men kill different types of people. Young men kill other men (their male sexual rivals); older men kill their wives. As a result, the proportion of men among murder victims declines as the murderer’s age increases. For murderers aged 15–19, 86.3 percent of the victims are males; for murderers aged 65–69, only 51.4 percent of them are males.38
An Adaptation Gone Awry
From the evolutionary psychological perspective, spousal abuse is an extreme, maladaptive, and largely unintended consequence of a man’s desire for mate-guarding. Because of the possibility of cuckoldry (unwittingly investing in someone else’s genetic offspring), men are strongly motivated to guard their mates to make sure that they do not have sexual access to other men. And they use any means, including intimidation and violence, to achieve this goal.39 Unfortunately, sometimes their adaptive strategy of mate-guarding goes too far and results in a maladaptive outcome of spousal abuse and even murder. Because young women are reproductively more valuable than older women, men are more motivated to protect and guard their younger wives than their older wives, with the unfortunate consequence that younger wives are at a greater risk of spousal abuse than older wives. This is why it is the wife’s age, not the husband’s, that predicts the likelihood of spousal abuse and murder. Even though a 50-year-old man is typically much less violent and criminal than a 25-year-old man, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman is much more likely to abuse and murder his wife than a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman (although there are very few such couples) or even a 25-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman.40
The Myth of the Midlife Crisis
This is an excellent opportunity for us to shed evolutionary psychological light on a common misunderstanding, since it allows us to shift our attention from a dark topic like domestic violence and apply the same l
ogic to a much lighter topic: the midlife crisis. Many believe that men go through a midlife crisis when they are in midlife (in middle age). Not quite. Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crisis, but it’s not because they are middle-aged but because their wives are. Just as it is the wife’s age, not the husband’s, that determines the risk of spousal abuse and murder, it is the wife’s age, not the husband’s, that prompts the constellation of behavior commonly known as a “midlife crisis.” From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man’s midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife’s imminent menopause and the end of her reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger, reproductive women. Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old women would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would. It is not his midlife that matters; it is hers. So when he buys a shiny red sportscar, he’s not trying to regain his youth; he’s trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.
7
Life’s Not Fair, or Politically Correct
THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES
The topics covered in the final two chapters of this book (chapters 7 and 8) are the least explored areas of application for evolutionary psychology. Because of its origin in the field of psychology and its emphasis on sex and mating, most of the scientific progress and discoveries in evolutionary psychology have been on individual behavior and cognitions—how men and women behave differently, how the human brain perceives the world, the biases and tendencies in our thinking, and so on. Most of the applications of evolutionary psychology in the social sciences have therefore been “micro”—on the small scale of individuals.
There have not been many “macro” applications of evolutionary psychology—to the issues of economy, politics, and society at large. However, there have been some very intriguing studies in this area as well. Because both of us were originally sociologists, concerned more with macro issues than micro issues, this is where our training in sociology meets our current interest in evolutionary psychology.
One fascinating discovery from the application of evolutionary psychology to macro issues is that what we often regard as “beyond” individuals—because they are so much bigger than them—such as issues related to social institutions, economic and political inequalities, social problems, wars, religion, and even culture itself, have the same origins as individual behavior and cognitions. They all stem from our evolved psychological mechanisms in our brains. They are all macro manifestations of our human nature and biology.
Q. Why Do Politicians Risk Everything by Having an Affair (but Only If They Are Male)?
On the morning of Wednesday, January 21, 1998, Americans woke up to breaking news. The Washington Post, one of the nation’s leading newspapers, reported the allegation that President Bill Clinton had an affair with a 24-year-old White House intern. On that January morning, as the story unfolded in front of the stunned nation, America and the rest of the world had not yet had an inkling of what was in store: a yearlong political scandal that consumed the nation (and the world) and culminated on December 19, with Clinton being impeached by the House of Representatives—the first elected President ever to be impeached in American history.[1]
While the whole nation was in shock, one woman in Michigan woke up to the news on the morning of January 21, 1998, sipped her coffee while watching the events unfold on TV, smiled to herself, and said, “I told you so.” She is the Darwinian historian Laura L. Betzig. For more than twenty years, Betzig has written on the mating behavior and reproductive success of politicians and other political leaders in history.2 She points out that while powerful men throughout Western history have married monogamously (they had only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves).3 Many had harems, consisting of hundreds and even thousands of virgins. With their wives they produced legitimate heirs; with the others they produced bastards (Betzig’s term). Genes and inclusive fitness make no distinction between the two categories of children. While the legitimate heirs, unlike the bastards, inherited their fathers’ power and status and often went on to have their own harems, powerful men sometimes invested in their bastards as well.
As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate or otherwise), while countless poor men in the countryside died mateless and childless. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, whom we encountered in chapter 2, stands out quantitatively, having left more offspring than anyone else on record, but he was by no means qualitatively different from other powerful men, like Bill Clinton.
Why Not?
From Betzig’s Darwinian historical perspective, the question that many Americans and others throughout the world asked in 1998, “Why on earth would the most powerful man in the world jeopardize his job for an affair with a young woman?” is a silly question. Betzig’s answer would be: Why not?
Recall from chapter 1 (“What Is Evolutionary Psychology?”) that the underlying motive of all human behavior is reproductive; reproductive success is the purpose of all biological existence, including humans.4 Humans do much of what they do, directly or indirectly, knowingly or (usually) unknowingly, to achieve reproductive success. Attaining political office is no exception. From this perspective, men strive to attain political power (as Bill Clinton did all his life, since his fateful encounter with John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1963), consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women. In other words, reproductive access to women is the goal, political office is but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it. The purpose of earning money is to spend it. The purpose of becoming the President (or anything else men do) is to have a larger number of women with whom to mate.
What distinguishes Bill Clinton is not that he had extramarital affairs while in office; others have, and more will in the future. It would be a Darwinian puzzle if they did not. What distinguishes Clinton instead is that he got caught and that his affair became a spectacular political scandal. What Clinton’s genes did not know is that he was not permitted by others to have sex with a large number of women and that he could not get away with it when most of his predecessors have, like all the kings, emperors, sultans, and democratically elected presidents whose reproductive lives Betzig’s work describes in great detail. Clinton’s genes didn’t know about the DNA fingerprinting technology that ultimately exposed the affair and forced him to admit it publicly, because no such thing existed in the ancestral environment.
Q. Why Do Men So Often Earn More Money and Attain Higher Status Than Women?
In all industrialized nations, women earn less money and attain lower occupational status than men do.5 This is true across the board, among blue-collar and white-collar workers and professionals, and in capitalist, socialist, and communist economies. Why?
The Traditional Social Science View
The sex difference in earnings is one of the central concerns of economics6 and sociology.7 Economists and sociologists identify three different parts to the total difference in earnings between men and women. First, there is the difference in what they call “human capital”—education, job skills, training, and other individual traits that affect productivity and job performance. Second, sex difference in earnings can be due to occupational segregation by sex—the fact that men and women tend to occupy different jobs. Men tend to occupy “blue-collar” jobs (manufacturing, construction, truck driving), while women tend to occupy “pink-collar” jobs (secretarial, nursing, teaching). Third, the sex difference in earnings can be due to sex discrimination, where employers pay equally qualified
men and women doing the same job differently.
To the extent that the sex gap in pay is due to differences in human capital and productivity, it is considered to be fair by most social scientists. To the extent that the sex gap in pay results from the existence of blue-and pink-collar jobs, then paying all workers in a given occupation equally will not close the total sex difference in earnings. Paying the same wages to male and female truck drivers and to male and female secretaries will not close the sex gap in pay if truck drivers make more than secretaries and most truck drivers are male and most secretaries are female. The existence of occupational sex segregation thus requires consideration of “comparable worth.”8
Because they are deeply wedded to the Standard Social Science Model, most economists and sociologists assume that men and women are on the whole identical in their preferences, values, and desires. They therefore assume that any remaining sex difference in earnings that is not due to sex differences in human capital or sex segregation on the job must be due to employer discrimination. The existence of discrimination, however, must always be inferred from statistical evidence and cannot be observed directly. Social scientists are not likely to witness an employer telling the employees, “I’m paying you more because you are a man, and I’m paying you less because you are a woman.” Nor are employers likely to admit to such a practice if they indeed engaged in it.
But Men and Women Are Different
The conclusion that there is sex discrimination by employers crucially depends on the assumption that men and women are on average identical, except in their amount of human capital (education, job experience, skills) and the jobs they hold. If, on the other hand, men and women with the same amount of human capital and in the same jobs are nonetheless inherently and fundamentally different in ways that affect their earnings, for instance in their preference and desire for earning money, then discrimination becomes unnecessary to explain the sex gaps in pay. If men and women are different in internal preferences and dispositions, such as their desire and drive to earn money, then no external factors, such as employer discrimination or a “glass ceiling,” becomes necessary to explain the sex difference in earnings.
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 Page 14