Sound The Alarm: Sexist Citations

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Jesse Marczyk

First things first: I would like to wish Popsych.org a happy two-year anniversary. Here’s looking at many more. That’s enough celebration for now; back to the regularly scheduled events.

When it comes to reading and writing, academics are fairly busy people. Despite these constraints on time, some of us (especially the male sections) still make sure to take the extra time to examine the articles we’re reading to ascertain the gender of the authors so as to systematically avoid citing women, irrespective of the quality of their work. OK; maybe that sounds just a bit silly. Provided people like that actually exist in any appreciable sense of the word, their representation among academics must surely be a vast minority, else their presence would be well known. So what are we to make of the recently-reported finding that, among some political science journals, female academics tend to have their work cited less often than might be expected, given a host of variables (Maliniak, Power, & Walter, 2013)? Perhaps there might exist some covert bias against female authors, such that the people doing the citing aren’t even aware that they favor the work of men, relative to women. If the conclusions of the current paper are to be believed, this is precisely what we’re seeing (among other things). Sexism – even the unconscious kind – is a bit of a politically hot topic to handle so, naturally, I suggest we jump right into the debate with complete disregard for the potential consequences; you know, for the fun of it all.

Don’t worry; I’m, like, 70% sure I know what I’m doing.

I would like to begin the review of this paper by noting a rather interesting facet of the tone of the introduction: what it does and does not label as “problematic”. What is labeled as problematic is the fact that women do not appear to earning tenured positions in equal proportion to the number of women earning PhDs. Though they discuss this fact in the light of the political science field, I assume they intend their conclusion to span many fields. This is the well-known leaky pipeline issue about which much has been written. What is not labeled as problematic are the facts in the next two sentences: women make up 57% of the undergraduate population, 52% of the graduate population, and these percentages are only expected to rise in the future. Admittedly, not every gender gap needs to be discussed in every paper that mentions them and, indeed, this gap might not actually mean much to us. I just want to note that women outnumbering men on campus by 1.3-to-1 and growing is mentioned without so much as batting an eye. The focus of the paper is unmistakably on considering the troubles that women will face. Well, sort of; a more accurate way of putting it is that the focus is on the assumed troubles that women will face: difficulty getting cited. As we will see, this citation issue is far from a problem exclusive to women.

Onto the main finding of interest: in the field of international relations, over 3000 articles across 12 influential journals spanning about 3 decades were coded for various descriptors about the article and the authors. Articles that were authored by men only were cited about 5 additional times, on average, than articles authored by women only. Since the average number of citations for all articles was about 25 citations per paper, this difference of 5 citations is labeled as “quite a significant” one, and understandably so; citation count appears to be becoming a more important part of the job process in academia. Importantly, the gap persisted at statistically significant levels even after controlling for factors like the age of the publication, the topic of study, whether it came from an R1 school, the methodological and theoretical approach taken in the paper, and the author’s tenure status. Statistically, being a woman seemed to be bad for citation count.

The authors suggest that this gap might be due to a few factors, though they appear to concede that a majority of the gap remains unexplained. The first explanation on offer is that women might be citing themselves less than men tend to (which they were: men averaged 0.4 self-citations per paper and women 0.25). However, subtracting out self-citation count and the average number of additional citations self-citation was thought to add does not entirely remove the gap either. The other possibility that the authors float involves what are called “citation cartels”, where authors or journals agree to cite each other, formally or informally, in order to artificially inflate citation counts. While they have no evidence concerning the extent to which this occurs, nor whether it occurs across any gendered lines, they at least report that anecdotes suggest this practice exists. Would that factor help us explain the gender gap? No clue; there’s no evidence. In any case, from these findings, the authors conclude:

“A research article written by a woman and published in any of the top journals will still receive significantly fewer citations than if the same article had been written by a man” (p.29, emphasis mine).

I find the emphasized section rather interesting, as nothing that the authors researched would allow them to reach that conclusion. They were certainly not controlling for the quality of the papers themselves, nor their conclusions. It seems that because they controlled for a number of variables, the authors might have gotten a bit overconfident in assuming they had controlled for all or most of the relevant ones.

“Well, I’m out of ideas. I guess we’re done here”

Like other gender gaps, however, this one may not be entirely what it seems. Means are only one measure of central tendency, and not always preferable for describing one’s sample. For instance, the mean income of 10 people might be a million dollars provided nine have none and one is rather wealthy. A similar example might concern the “average” number of mates your typical male elephant seal has; while some have large harems, others are left out entirely from the mating game. In other words, a skewed distribution can result in means that are not entirely reflective of what many might consider the “true” average of the population. Another possible measure of central tendency we might consider, then, is the median: the value that falls in the middle of all the observed values, which is a bit more robust against outliers. Doing just that, we see that the gender gap in citation count vanishes entirely: not only does it not favor the men anymore, but it slightly favors the women in 2 of the 3 decades considered (the median for men from the 80s, 90s, and 00s are 5, 14, and 13; for women, 6, 14, and 15, respectively). Further, in two of the decades considered, mix-gendered articles appear to be favored by about 2-to-1 over papers with a single gender of author (medians equal 10, 22, and 16, respectively). Overall, the mean citation count looks to be about two-to-three times as high as the median, and the standard deviations of the citation count are huge. For instance, in the 1980s, articles authored by men averaged 17.6 citations per paper (substantially larger than the median of 5), and the SD of that count was 51.63. Yikes. Why is this rather interesting facet of the data not considered in much, if any, depth by the authors? I have no idea.

Now this is not to say that the mean or the median is necessarily the “correct” measure to consider here, but the fact that they return such different values ought to give us some pause for consideration. Mean values that are over twice as large as the median values with huge standard deviations suggests that we’re dealing with a rather skewed distribution, where some papers garner citation counts which are remarkably higher than others (a trend I wrote about recently with respect to cultural products). Now the authors do state that their results remain even if any outliers above 3 standard deviations are removed from the analysis, but I think that upper limit probably fails to fully capture what’s going on here. This handy graphical representation of citation count provided in the paper can help shed some light on the issue.

This is what science looks like.

What we see is not a terribly-noticeable trend for men to be cited more than women in general, as much as we see a trend for the papers with the largest citation counts to come disproportionately from men. The work of most of the men, like most of the women, would seem to linger in relative obscurity. Even the mixed-sex papers fail to reach the heights that male-only papers tend to. In other words, the prototypical paper by women doesn’t seem to differ too much from the prototypical male paper; the “rockstar” papers (of which I’d estimate there are about 20 to 30 of in that picture), however, do differ substantially along gendered lines. Gendered lines are not the only way in which they might differ, however. A more accurate way of phrasing the questionable conclusion I quoted earlier would be to say “A research article written by anyone other than the initial author, if published in any of the top journals, might still receive significantly fewer citation even if it was the same article”. Cultural products can be capricious in their popularity, and even minor variations in initial conditions can set the stage for later popularity, or lack thereof.

Except for black; black is always fashionable.

This would naturally raise the question as to precisely why the papers with the largest impact come from men, relative to women. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for that question. There is undoubtedly some cultural inertia to account for; were I to publish the same book as Steven Pinker in a parallel set of universes, I doubt mine would sell nearly as many copies (Steven has over 94,000 twitter followers, whereas I have more fingers and toes than fans). There is also a good deal of noise to consider: an article might not end up being popular because it was printed in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than because of its quality. On the subject on quality, however, some papers are better than others, by whatever metric we’re using to determine such things (typically, that standard is “I know it when I wish I had thought of it first”). Though none of these factors lend themselves to analysis in any straightforward way, the important point is to not jump to overstated conclusions about sexism being the culprit, or to suggest that reviewers “…monitor the ratio of male to female citations in articles they publish” so as to point it out to the authors in the hopes of “remedying” any potential “imbalances”. One might also, I suppose, have reviewers suggest that authors make a conscious effort to cite articles with lower citation counts more broadly, so as to ensure a greater parity among citation counts in all articles. I don’t know why that state of affairs would be preferable, but one could suggest it.

References: Maliniak, D., Powers, R., & Walter, B. (2013). The gender citation gap in international relations. International Organization DOI: 10.1017/S0020818313000209

Why Would You Ever Save A Stranger Over A Pet?

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Jesse Marczyk

The relationship between myself and my cat has been described by many as a rather close one. After I leave my house for almost any amount of a time, I’m greeted by what appears to be a rather excited animal that will meow and purr excessively, all while rubbing on and rolling around my feet upon my return. In turn, I feel a great deal of affection towards my cat, and derive feelings of comfort and happiness from taking care of and petting her. Like the majority of Americans, I happen to be a pet owner, and these experiences and ones like them will all sound perfectly normal and relatable. I would argue, however, that they are, in fact, very strange feelings, biologically-speaking. Despite the occasional story of cross-species fostering, other animals do not seem to behave in ways that indicates they seek out anything resembling pet-ownership. It’s often not until the idea of other species not making habits of having pets is raised that one realizes how strange of a phenomenon pet ownership can be. Finding that bears, for instance, reliably took care of non-bears, providing them with food and protection, would be a biological mystery of the first-degree.

And that I get most of my work done like this seems normal to me.

So why people seem to be so fond of pets? My guess is that the psychological mechanisms that underlie pet ownership in humans are not designed for that function per se. I would say that for a few reasons, notable among them are the time and resource factors. First, psychological adaptations take a good deal of time to be shaped by selective forces, which means long periods of co-residence between animals and people would be required for any dedicated adaptations to have formed. Though it’s no more than a guess on my part, I would assume that conditions that made extended periods of co-residence more probable would likely not have arisen prior to the advent of agriculture and geographically-stable human populations. The second issue involves the cost/benefit ratios: pets require a good deal of investment, at least in terms of food. In order for there to have been any selective pressure to keep pets, the benefits provided by the pets would have needed to have more than offset the costs of their care, and I don’t know of any evidence in that regard. Dogs might have been able to pull their weight in terms of assisting in hunting and protection, but it’s uncertain; other pets – such as cats, birds, lizards, or even the occasional insect – probably did not. While certain pets (like cats) might well have been largely self-sufficient, they don’t seem to offer much in the way of direct benefits to their owners either. No benefits means no distinct selection, which means no dedicated adaptions.

Given that there are unlikely to be dedicated pet modules in our brain, what other systems are good candidates for explaining the tendency towards seeking out pets? The most promising one that comes to mind are our already-existing systems designed for the care of our own, highly-dependent offspring. Positing that pet-care is a byproduct of our infant-care would manage to skirt both the issues of time and resources; our minds were designed to endure such costs to deliver benefits to our children. It would also allow us to better understand certain facets of the ways people behave towards their pets, such as the “aww” reaction people often have to pets (especially young ones, like kittens and puppies) and babies, as well as the frequent use of motherese (baby-talk) when talking to pets and children (to compare speech directed at pets and babies see here and here. Note as well that you don’t often hear adults talking to each other in this manner). Of course, were you to ask people whether their pets are their biological offspring, many would give the correct response of “no”. These verbal responses, however, do not indicate that other modules of the brain – ones that aren’t doing the talking – “know” that pets aren’t actually your offspring, in much the same way that parts of the brain dedicated to arousal don’t “know” that generating arousal to pornography isn’t going to end up being adaptive.

There is another interesting bit of information concerning pet ownership that I feel can be explained through the pets-as-infants model, but to get to it we need to first consider some research on moral dilemmas by Topolski et al (2013). This dilemma is a favorite of mine, and the psychological community more generally: a variant of the trolley dilemma. In this study, 573 participants were asked to respond to a series of 12 similar moral dilemmas, all of which had the same basic setup: there is a speeding bus that is about to hit either a person or an animal that both wandered out into the street. The subject only has time to save one of them, and are asked which they would prefer to save. (Note: each subject responded to all 12 dilemmas, which might result in some carryover effects. A between subjects design would have been stronger here. Anyway…) The identity of the animal and person in the dilemma were varied across the conditions: the animal was either the subject’s pet (subjects were asked to imagine one if they didn’t currently have one) or someone else’s pet, and the person was either a foreign tourist, a hometown stranger, a distant cousin, a best friend, a sibling, or a grandparent.

The study also starred Keanu Reeves.

In terms of saving someone else’s pet, people generally didn’t seem terribly interested. From a high about of 12% of subjects choosing someone else’s pet over a foreign tourist to a low of approximately 2% of subjects picking the strange pet over their own sibling. The willingness to save the animal in question rose substantially when it was the subject’s own pet being considered, however: while people were still about as likely to save their own pet in cases involving a grandparent or sibling, approximately 40% of subjects indicated they would save their pet over a foreign tourist or a hometown stranger (for the curious, about 23% would save their pet over a distant cousin and only about 5% would save their pet over a close friend. For the very curious, I could see myself saving my pet over the strangers or distant cousin). The strength of the relationship between pet owners and their animals appears to be strong enough to, quite literally, make almost half of them throw another human stranger under the bus to save their pet’s lives.

This is a strange response to give, but not for the obvious reasons: given that our pets are being being treated as our children by certain parts of our brain, this raises the question as to why anyone, let alone a majority of people, would be willing to sacrifice the lives of their pets to save a stranger. I don’t expect, for instance, that many people would be willing to let their baby get hit by the bus to save a tourist, so why that discrepancy? Three potential reasons come to mind: first, the pets are only “fooling” certain psychological systems. While some parts of our psychology might be treating pets as children, other parts may well not be (children do not typically look like cats or dogs, for instance). The second possible reason involves the clear threat of moral condemnation. As we saw, people are substantially more interested in saving their own pets, relative to a stranger’s pet. By extension, it’s probably safe to assume that other, uninvolved parties wouldn’t be terribly sympathetic to your decision to save an animal over a person. So the costs to saving the pet might well be perceived as higher. Similarly, the potential benefits to saving an animal may typically be lower than those of another person, as saved individuals and their allies are more likely to do things like reciprocate help, relative to a non-human. Sure, the pet’s owner might reciprocate, but the pet itself would not.

The final potential reason that comes to mind concerns that interesting bit of information I alluded to earlier: women were more likely to indicate they would save the animal in all conditions, and often substantially so. Why might this be the case? The most probable answer to that question again returns to the pets-as-children model: whereas women have not had to face the risk of genetic uncertainty in their children, men have. This risk makes males generally less interested in investing in children and could, by extension, make them less willing to invest in pets over people. The classic phrase, “Momma’s babies; Daddy’s maybes” could apply to this situation, albeit in an under-appreciated way (in other words, men might be harboring doubts about whether the pet is actually ‘theirs’, so to speak). Without reference parental investment theory – which the study does not contain – explaining this sex difference in willingness to pick animals over people would be very tricky indeed. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that the authors do not do a good job of explaining their findings, opting instead to redescribe them in a crude and altogether useless distinction between “hot” and “cold” types of cognitive processing.

“…and the third type of cognitive processing was just right”

In a very real sense, some parts of our brain treat our pets as children: they love them, care for them, invest in them, and wish to save them from harm. Understanding how such tendencies develop, and what cues our minds use to make distinctions between their offspring, the offspring of others, their pets, and non-pet animals are very interesting matters which are likely to be furthered by considering parental investment theory. Are people raised with pets from a young age more likely to view them as fictive offspring? How might hormonal changes during pregnancy affect women’s interest in pets? Might cues of a female mate’s infidelity make their male partner less interested in taking care of pets they jointly own? Under what conditions might pets be viewed as a deterrent or an asset to starting new romantic relationships, in the same way that children from a past relationship might? The answers to these questions require placing pet care in its proper context, and you’re going to have quite a hard time doing that without the right theory.

References: R. Topolski, J.N. Weaver, Z. Martin, & J. McCoy (2013). Choosing between the Emotional Dog and the Rational Pal: A Moral Dilemma with a Tail. ANTHROZOÖS, 26, 253-263 DOI: 10.2752/175303713X13636846944321

Tropes Against Video Games

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Jesse Marczyk

Back in mid-May of last year, Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter project to help fund her video series on portrayals of women in video games called “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games”. Her initial goal was set at $6000 for a planned goal of making 5 videos (or so I can gather from the Kickstarter page), meaning that she wanted approximately $1200 per video. Her project ended up being funded at close to $160,000 and her intent grew to creating 12 videos. This means that, currently, she has successfully netted a little over $13,000 per video she intends to eventually release; an impressive feat. Her first video was released a few days ago (a few months late, relative to her stated delivery, but here nonetheless) and, hot-button topic that her project was, I felt inclined to watch it and see what $13,000 a video buys in terms of research quality, methodology, and explanatory power. From my impression of Anita’s first video, were I to work under the assumption that she was making a reasonable amount of money for her time, effort, and conclusions in this project, I think I could be so bold as to suggest that I’m wildly underpaid for what I do in terms of research and writing.

I may not be as well-paid, but I make up for it in smug self-satisfaction.

Since Anita suggests that it’s important to think critically about the more problematic aspects of things (in this case, the “damsel in distress” story found in some video games), I’m sure she would agree it would be important to think critically about what she presents in her first video, so let’s do just that. The gist of the video appeared to be that, as noted, women are sometimes portrayed as being placed into peril (typically by a male character) from which a male character saves them. How common are such portrayals in video games? That’s an excellent question; perhaps Anita could have mentioned some data that bear on the point. Are these portrayals more or less common in video games, relative to other forms of media, and have they been getting more or less common over time? Those are some other excellent questions, but you won’t find any discussion of them either. Of course, this was only part 1 of the video, so maybe Anita’s saving all of her research findings for part 2. After all, it would surely seem peculiar if, after asking for several thousand dollars to make these videos that she claimed would take her a substantial amount of time and research, she ended up releasing videos stating her preexisting opinions about the matter, putting very little actual research in. Peculiar indeed.

The first set of points that I would be critical about when evaluating this video, then, is that, in the roughly 25 minutes of it, she presents almost nothing that would typically fall under the umbrella of what many people would consider research: there’s no methodology mentioned, no data presented, and there’s no discussion of how she reached the conclusions that she does. What she does present are some anecdotes and a few assertions. Here’s a good for-instance: Anita notes that the theme of “man-saving-woman” is at least several thousand years old. Despite noting this, she then goes on to suggest that, in 1933, there were two things (Popeye and King Kong, apparently) that led to this theme becoming a foundational element in video games 50 years later. Is this theme a foundational element in gaming? Maybe, but from what Anita presents in her video there’s no way to know (a) what she means by “foundational element”, (b) whether she was correct in that assessment, or (c) whether her posited causal link even exists. That is, if Popeye and King Kong never existed, would video games have come to represent this damsel in distress story line as frequently or infrequently as they do? Given that this theme is at least as old as recorded history accordingly to Anita, one could reasonably suggest that Popeye and King Kong did very little stage-setting at all.

What is notably absent from Anita’s video – on top of any mention of methodology or data – is any attempt at an explanation as for why this theme appears to be relatively ubiquitous. Lacking anything resembling a formal explanation concerning this theme’s popularity, much less any attempts at ruling out alternative explanations, Anita sticks largely to just noting that the theme exists in some unspecified proportion of games and that she doesn’t seem to like it very much. So, to recap, that’s no mention of a method, findings, or an explanation of the topic being investigated. Of course, I’m not here to just be critical of the fact that this video likely cost her backers approximately $260 per minute to make, by my estimation, and ended up with nothing of value to show for it; I also want to see if whether, in a few minutes, I can do better than Anita in discussing important questions, analyzing data, and explaining the issues.

“On your mark, get set…Hey, how come only men are racing in this picture?!”

So why might it be that it’s typically men who are portrayed as the saver of the woman, rather than the reverse? Why might it be that men are portrayed as predominately trying to save women, rather than other men? In order to answer those questions, it is helpful to first consider a third question: why is it the case that when a species of animal has one sex that displays a costly ornament – like peacocks – or one sex that engages in costly competition – like bowerbirds or rams – that this sex is most frequently the males? Here’s one candidate explanation that doesn’t work: peacocks have evolved such decorative plumes that they display for peahens in order to reduce the peahens to mere objects. The display itself serves the function of reducing peahens to powerless objects so that male peacocks can thus be empowered protagonists in their own male power fantasies. Though this explanation might sound silly on the grounds that you think that peacocks and peahens don’t think that way, there’s a better reason for discounting such an explanation: objectifying one sex to empowering the other doesn’t do anything biologically useful. As the explanation stands, it’s incomplete at best. Rather than explaining the phenomenon in question, the explanation phase is just pushed back one step to: why would peacocks benefit by objectify peahens? Where’s the reproductive payoff for a psychology that did that?

Here’s an altogether more plausible alternative explanation: peacocks have evolved this trait and display it because peahens were more inclined to mate with males that had larger, costlier, and harder-to-fake signals of phenotypic quality (Zahavi, 1975). Peahens favored such males because these costly signals served as viable reproductive guarantees of healthy offspring, and male behavior and physiology changed to suit the preferences of females so as to capitalize on the increased potential for reproduction. Peacocks behave this certain way, then, to attract mates; not to objectify or disempower them. To couch this in terms of a specific video game example Anita mentions, Mario doesn’t rush into Bowser’s castle in order to reduce Princess Peach to a helpless object; he does so because, by doing so, he’s increasing the chances he’ll have the opportunity to have or maintain a relationship with her (though whether or not this is his conscious motivating drive is a separate question).

With this explanation in mind, let’s do our best to imagine that peacocks and peahens decided to do distinctly human-like things, such as fantasizing and telling stories. What would the content of such things tend to be,? It seems that the sex of the individual in question would matter a great deal: the males might be enthralled by imagining tales of conflicts between other males with impressive ornaments, both displaying them for a desired female, and fantasize about displaying such an impressive ornament that the female who observed it couldn’t help but fall madly in love with him. Females, on the other hand, might find stories about other females deciding between their various competitors to be altogether more engaging, fantasizing about the social intricacies of deciding upon one male or another. You could think the distinction being something along the lines of the peacocks enjoying movies more along the lines of Die Hard and peahens being more inclined towards Twilight. Both stories involve a good deal of male-male competition, but the focus of the story would either center on the male or female perspective in that competition.

Let’s finally assume that this species of bird came across the technological capabilities to translate their fantasies into video games. Arguably, it’s easier to translate certain aspects of the the typical male fantasy into something resembling a video game that’s entertaining to play. While one could easily imagine a game where a peacock moves from level to level by out-competing his rivals, it’s less easy to imagine a game centered around female choice of partners (more succinctly, while Twilight might make an appealing series of books and movies, it might not make a good video game). Tying this back to Anita’s video, she seems to suggest that male video game designers are trying to tap into male power fantasies to sell more video games and, importantly, that they do this to the exclusion of women. What she did not seem to consider are two alternative explanations: (1) how easily are typically male and female fantasies turned into entertaining video games and/or (2) are the people making these games simply expressing their own preferences for what they find appealing, rather than trying to explicitly appeal to the preferences of others? Regarding that second point, imagine asking men to write a story that they were either trying to sell or not sell: would the content of these stories between the two groups differ significantly in terms of major themes, like the use of a damsel in distress? Certainly an interesting question: perhaps it’s one that Anita might have considered answering…

Or, you know, she could just take pictures in front of video games; that works too.

So we now have the beginnings of a plausible explanation for understanding the first question (why are men typically rescuing women, rather than the reverse) and have considered some alternative explanations as to why such a theme might be as common as it is across time and genres. It might not be too much, but it’s at least a start, providing us with some considerations that help us interpret the meager amount of information Anita offers.

To conclude, let’s briefly consider further why some of Anita’s beliefs about the motivations of male video game characters and designers, are, at the very least, likely in need if revision. There is another research finding that casts severe doubt on the “men view women as helpless objects in need of saving” angle that Anita seems to favor. When a mixed-sex group of 3 people was made up of 2 men and 1 woman, men were found to universally volunteer and end up in a role that caused them discomfort; what awful paternalistic sexist crap, right? Surely women could handle that discomfort just as well as the men, so men must be pushing women out of the hero role to fulfill their own power fantasies. By contrast, however, when then groups were made up of 1 man and 2 women, men ended up in this “protective” role at chance levels (McAndrew & Perilloux, 2012). So unless the hypothesis is to be amended to “men tend to view women as powerless and in need of rescue but only in the presence of other men (or, perhaps, when women are relatively scarce); oh, and also women tend feel the same way about the whole being protected by men thing”, one could conclude there’s likely some wrong with Anita’s hypothesis. If only she had done some kind of research to figure that out…

(I’d also like to note, as a bit of off-topic point, the apparent contrast between Anita’s proposed videos #4 and #9. It looks like she’s exploring the trope of women being sexy and evil in 4, and the trope of being unattractive and evil in 9, both of which are apparently unacceptable. Damned if the villainess is attractive; damned if she isn’t. But hey, only an approximate $260 per minute for this knowledge, right?)

References: McAndrew, F.T. & Perilloux, C. (2012). Is self-sacrifical competitive altruism primarily a male activity? Evolutionary Psychology, 10, 50-65

Zahavi, A. (1975). Mate selection—A selection for a handicap Journal of Theoretical Biology, 53 (1), 205-214 DOI: 10.1016/0022-5193(75)90111-3

“Nice Guys”, The Friend Zone, And Social Semantics

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Jesse Marczyk

A little over a year ago, a video entitled, “Why men and women can’t be friends” was uploaded to YouTube. In the video, a man approaches various men and women and presents them with the question, “can men and women just be friends?”. While many of the woman answered in the affirmative, most of the men seemed to answer in the negative, suggesting that men would generally be interested in something more; something sexual. When asked about whether their male friends were interested in having sex them, many of the women seemed to similarly acknowledge that, yes, their male friends probably were interested, so maybe there was more lurking behind that “just friendship”. In a follow-up video, the same man asked whether it would be alright for people in relationships to hang out alone with same-sex friends. While the men seemed to be of relatively one mind (no, it would not be appropriate), women, again, initially stated that opposite-sex friends are fine. However, when confronted with the possibility of their significant other hanging out alone with a member of opposite-sex, the tune seemed to change dramatically: now men and women agreed that they would, indeed, be bothered by that state of events.

“And here I thought his sudden interest in jogging was purely platonic”

So why the discrepancy in women’s responses, but not men’s? Perhaps it’s simply due to the magic of video editing, where only certain responses were kept to make a point, but, working under the assumption that’s not happening, I think there’s something interesting going on here. Understanding what that something is will require us to dig deeper into two concepts that have been floating around for some time: “the friend zone” and “Nice guys”. The friend zone, as many of you know, refers to the context where someone wants a relationship with another, but that other doesn’t return the affection. Since the interest isn’t mutual, the party interested in the relationship settles for a friendship with the target of their affections, often with the hope that someday things will change. “Nice guys” on the other hand, are typically men who are stuck in the friend zone and, upon the eventual realization that their friendship will probably not transition into a relationship, become irritated with the person they were interested in, resulting in the friendship being called off and feelings being hurt. The friendship, after all, is not what they were after; they wanted the full relationship (or at least an occasional hook up).

“Nice guys”, in other words, are only being nice because they want to get sex, so they’re not really nice, people seem to feel; hence the quotation marks. Further, “nice guys” are frequently socially maligned, seemingly because of their (actually held or assumed to be held) attitude that women are obligated to have sex or start a relationship with them because they are nice (whether any substantial number of them consciously think this is another matter entirely). Alternatively, “nice guys” are looked down on because they view the friendship – or the friend zone – as, at best, a consolation prize to what they were actually going after or, at worst, something they couldn’t care less about having. The nerve of these people; insisting that just a friendship isn’t enough! There are some very peculiar things about the label of “nice guy”, though; things that don’t quite fit at first glance. The first of these is that the earning of the “nice guy” label appears to be contingent on the target of the affections not returning them. If whomever the “nice guy” is interested in does return the affections, there is no way to tell whether he was “nice guy” or one of those actually nice guys. In other words, you could have two identical guys enacting identical sets of behavior right up to the moment of truth: if the target returns the man’s affections, he’s a nice guy; if she doesn’t and the man doesn’t find that state of affairs satisfactory, he is now a “nice guy”; not a nice guy.

That, however, is only a surface issue. The much more substantial issue is in the label itself, which would, given its namesake, seem to imply that the problem is the nice behavior of the guys, rather than the attitude of entitlement that the label is ostensibly aimed at. This is very curious. If the entitled attitude is what is supposed to be the problem of the people this term is aimed at, why would the label focus on their otherwise nice behavior; behavior that might not differ in any substantial way from the behavior of genuine nice guys? Further, why is the label male-specific (it’s “nice guys” not “nice people”, and even when it’s a woman doing it, well, she’s just being a “nice guy” too)? With these two questions in mind, we’re now prepared to begin to tackle the initial question: why do women’s response to the friendship questions, but not men’s, seem discrepant?

“Thanks for taking me shopping; I’m so lucky to have a friend like you…”

Let’s take the questions in a partially-reversed order: the first is why the term focuses on the nice behavior. The answer here is would seem to revolve around the matter of cooperation and reciprocity more generally. In the social world, when an altruistic individual provides you with a benefit at a cost to themselves, the altruist generally expects repayment at some point down the line. It’s what’s called reciprocal altruism – or, less formally, cooperation – and forms the backbone of pretty much every successful social relationship among non-kin (Trivers, 1971). However, sometimes relationships are not quite as reciprocal in nature: one individual will continuously reap the benefits of altruism without returning them in kind. Names for those types of individuals abound, though the most common are probably exploiters or cheaters. Having a reputation as a cheater is, generally speaking, bad for business when it comes to making and maintaining friendships, so it’s helpful to maintain a good reputation amongst others.

The implications for why the “nice guy” label focuses on otherwise nice behavior should be immediately apparent: if someone is behaving nicely towards you – even if that nice behavior might be unwanted – it creates the expectation of reciprocity, both among the altruist and potentially other third parties. Failing to return the favor, then, can make one look like a social cheater. This obviously puts the recipient in a bind: while they would certainly like to enjoy the benefits of the nice individual’s behavior (free meals, social support, and so on), they don’t want to have the obligation to repay it if it’s avoidable (it’s that expectation that makes people uncomfortable about accepting gifts; not because they don’t want said gifts). So how can that obligation be effectively avoided? One way seems to be to question the altruist’s motives: if the altruist was only giving to get something else (like sex), and if that something else is viewed to be of substantially more valuable than what was initially given (also like sex tends to be), one can frame the ostensible altruist as the exploiter, the cheater, or, in this case, the “nice guy”. If a woman wants to either (a) reap the benefits of nice guys, (b) avoid the costs in not reciprocating what the nice guy wants, or (c) both, then the label of “nice guy” can be quite effective. Since there behavior wasn’t actually nice, there’s no need to reciprocate it.

Bear in mind, none of this needs to be consciously entertained. In fact, in some cases it’s better to not have conscious awareness of such things. For instance, to make that reframing (nice to “nice”) more successful, the person doing the reframing has to come off as having innocent motives themselves: if the woman in question was explicit about her desire to take advantage of men’s niceness towards her with no intentions of any repayment, she’s back to being the cheater in the situation (just as the “nice guy’s” behavior is back to just being plain old nice, if a bit naive). Understanding this point helps us answer the third question: why are women’s responses to the friendship question seemingly discrepant? Conscious awareness of these kinds of mental calculations will typically do a woman no favors, as they might “leak out” into the world, so to speak. To think of it in another way, you’ll have an easier time trying to convince people that you didn’t do something wrong if you legitimately can’t access any memories of you doing something wrong (as opposed to having access to those memories and needing to suppress them). To relate this to the answers in the videos, when a woman is receiving benefits from her male friends, keeping the knowledge that her male friends are trying to get something more from her out of mind can help her defend against the criticism of being a social cheater, as well as avoid the need to pay her male friends back. On the other hand, when it’s her boyfriend who’s now being “nice” to other women, there are benefits to her being rather aware of the underlying motives.

“I swear I was just giving her my opinion about her new bra as a friend!”

Finally, we turn to the answer to second question, the answer to which ought to be obvious by now: why is the “nice guy” term male-specific? This answer has a lot to do with the simple fact that, all else being equal, women do prefer men who invest in them, both in the short and long term, but investment plays a substantially lessened role for women in drawing and maintaining male interest (Buss, 2003). Put simply, males invest because females tend to find that investment attractive. So, to sum up, women want to receive investment and males are generally willing to provide that investment. However, male investment typically comes contingent on the possibility or reality of mating, and when that possibility is withdrawn, so too does male investment wane. The term “nice guy” might serve to both avoid the costs that come with receiving that investment but not returning it, as well as a potential shaming tactic for men who withdraw their niceness when it becomes clear that niceness will not pay off as intended. Similarly, a woman might doubt her partner’s “niceness” when it’s directed towards another. This analysis, however, only examines the female-end of things; males face a related set of problems, just from a different angle. Further, the underlying male strategy is, I assure you, not any less strategic.

References: Buss, D. (2003). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. Basic Books: New York

Trivers, R. (1971). The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46 (1) DOI: 10.1086/406755

The Fight Over Mankind’s Essence

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Jesse Marczyk

All traits of biological organisms require some combination and interaction of genetic and non-genetic factors to develop. As Tooby and Cosmides put it in their primer:

Evolutionary psychology is not just another swing of the nature/nurture pendulum. A defining characteristic of the field is the explicit rejection of the usual nature/nurture dichotomies — instinct vs. reasoning, innate vs. learned, biological vs. cultural. What effect the environment will have on an organism depends critically on the details of its evolved cognitive architecture.

The details of that cognitive architecture are, to some extent, what people seem to be referring to when they use the word “innate”, and figuring out the details of that architecture is a monumental task indeed. For some reason, this task of figuring out what’s “innate” also draws some degree of what I feel is unwarranted hostility and precisely why it does is a matter of great interest. One might posit that some of this hostility is due to the term itself. “Innate” seems to be a terribly problematic term for the same two reasons that most other contentious terms are: people can’t seem to agree on a clear definition for the word or a context to apply it in, but they still use it fairly often despite that. Because of this, interpersonal communication can get rather messy, much like two teams trying to play a sport in which each is playing the game under a different set of rules; a philosophical game of Calvinball. I’m most certainly not going to be able to step into this debate and provide the definition for “innate” that all parties will come to intuitively agree upon and use consistently in the future. Instead, my goal is to review two recent papers that examined the contexts in which people’s views of innateness vary.

“Just add environment!” (Warning: chicken outcome will vary with environment)

Anyone with a passing familiarity in the debates that tend to surround evolutionary psychology will likely have noticed that most of these debates tend to revolve around issues of sex differences. Further, this pattern tends to hold whether it’s a particular study being criticized or the field more generally; research on sex differences just seems to catch a disproportionate amount of the criticism, relative to most other topics, and that criticism can often get leveled at the entire field by association (even if the research is not published in an evolutionary psychology, and even if the research is not conducted by people using an evolutionary framework). While this particular observation of mine is only an anecdote, it seems that I’m not alone in noticing it. The first of the two studies on attitudes towards innateness was conducted by Geher & Gambacorta (2010) on just this topic. They sought to determine the extent to which attitudes about sex differences might be driving opposition to evolutionary psychology and, more specifically, the degree to which those attitudes might be correlated with being an academic, being a parent, or being politically liberal.

Towards examining this issue, Geher & Gambacorta (2010) created questions aimed at assessing people attitudes in five domains: (1) human sex differences in adulthood, (2) human sex differences in childhood, (3) behavioral sex differences in chickens, (4) non-sex related human universals, and (5) behavioral differences between dogs and cats. Specifically, the authors asked about the extent to which these differences were due to nature or nurture. As mentioned in the introduction, this nature/nurture dichotomy is explicitly rejected in the conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology and is similarly rejected by the authors as being useful. This dimension was merely used in order to capture the more common attitudes about the nature of biological and environmental causation, where the two are often seen as fighting for explanatory power in some zero-sum struggle.

Of the roughly 270 subjects who began the survey, not all of them completed every section. Nevertheless, the initial sample included 111 parents and 160 non-parents, 89 people in academic careers and 182 non-academics, and the entire sample was roughly 40 years old and mildly politically liberal, on average. The study found that political orientation was correlated with judgments of whether sex differences in humans (children and adults) were due to nature or environment, but not the other three domains (cats/dogs, chickens/hens, or human universals): specifically, those with more politically liberal leanings were also more likely to endorse environmental explanations for human sex differences. Across other domains there were some relatively small and somewhat inconsistent effects, so I wouldn’t make much of them just yet (though I will mention that women’s studies and sociology fields seemed consistently more inclined to chalk each domain – excepting the differences between cats and dogs – up to nurture, relative to other fields; I’ll also mention their sample was small). There was, however, a clear effect that was not discussed in the paper:subjects were more likely to chalk non-human animal behavior up to nature, relative to human behavior, and this effect seemed more pronounced with regards to sex differences specifically. With these findings in mind, I would echo the conclusion of the paper that there is appears to be some political, or, more specifically, moral dimension to these judgments of the relative roles of nature and nurture. As animal behavior tends to fall outside of the traditional human moral domain, chalking their behavior up to nature seemed less unpalatable for the subjects.

See? Men and women can both do the same thing on the skin of a lesser beast.

The next paper is a new release from Knobe & Samuels (2013). You might remember Knobe from his other work in asking people slightly different questions and getting vastly different responses, and it’s good to see he’s continuing on with that proud tradition. Knobe & Samuels begins by asking the reader to imagine how they’d react to the following hypothetical proposition:

Suppose that a scientist announced: ‘I have a new theory about the nature of intention. According to this theory, the only way to know whether someone intended to bring about a particular effect is to decide whether this effect truly is morally good or morally bad.’

The authors predict that most people would reject this piece of folk psychology made explicit; value judgments are supposed to be a different matter entirely from tasks like assessing intentionality or innateness, yet these judgments do not appear to be truly be independent from each other in practice. Morally negative outcomes are rated as being more intentional than morally positive ones, even if both are brought about as a byproduct of another goal. Knobe & Samuels (2013) sought to extent this line of research in the realm of attitudes about innateness.

In their first experiment, Knobe & Samuels asked subjects to consider an infant born with a rare genetic condition. This condition ensures that if a baby breastfeeds in the first two weeks of life it will either have extraordinarily good math abilities (condition one) or exceedingly poor math skills (condition two). While the parents could opt to give the infant baby formula that would ensure the baby would just turn out normal with regard to its math abilities, in all cases the parents were said to have opted to breastfeed, and the child developed accordingly. When asked about how “innate” the child’s subsequent math ability was, subjects seemed to feel that baby’s abilities were more innate (4.7 out of 7) when they were good, relative to when those abilities were poor (3.4). In both cases, the trait depended on the interaction of genes and environment and for the same reason, yet when the outcome was negative, this was seen as being less of an innate characteristic. This was followed up by a second experiment where a new group of subjects were presented with a vignette describing a fake finding about human’s genes: if people experienced decent treatment (condition one) or poor treatment (condition two) by parents at least sometimes, then a trait would reliability develop. Since most all people do experience decent or poor treatment by their parents on at least some occasions, just about everyone in the population comes to develop this trait. When asked about how innate this trait was, again, the means through which it developed mattered: traits resulting from decent treatment were rated as more innate (4.6) than traits resulting from poor treatment (2.7).

Skipping two other experiments in the paper, the final study presented these cases either individually, with each participant seeing only one vignette as before, or jointly, with some subjects seeing both versions of the questions (good/poor math abilities, decent/poor treatment) one immediately after the other, with the relevant differences highlighted. When subjects saw the conditions independently, the previous effects were pretty much replicated, if a bit weakened. However, even seeing these cases side-by-side did not completely eliminate the effect of morality on innateness judgments: when the breastfeeding resulted in worse math abilities this was still seen as being less innate (4.3) than the better math abilities (4.6) and, similarly, when poor treatment led to a trait developing it was viewed as less innate (3.8) than when it resulted from better treatment (3.9). Now these differences only reached significance because of the large sample size in the final study as they were very, very small, so I again wouldn’t make much of them, but I do still find it somewhat surprising that there were still small differences to be talked about at all.

Remember: if you’re talking small effects, you’re talking psychology.

While these papers are by no means the last word on the subject, they represent an important first step in understanding the way that scientists and laypeople alike represent claims about human nature. Extrapolating these results a bit, it would seem that strong opinions about research in evolutionary psychology are held, at least to some extent, for reasons that have little to do with the field per se. This isn’t terribly surprising, as it’s been frequently noted that many critics of evolutionary psychology have a difficult time correctly articulating the theoretical commitments of the field. Both studies do seem to suggest that moral concerns play some role in the debate, but precisely why the moral dimension seems to find itself represented in the debate over innateness is certainly an interesting matter that neither paper really gets into. My guess is that it has something to do with the perception that innate behaviors are less morally condemnable than non-innate ones (hinting at an argumentative function), but that really just pushes the question back a step without answering it. I look forward to future research on this topic – and research on explanations, more generally – to help fill in the gaps of our understanding of this rather strange phenomenon.

References: Geher, G., & Gambacorta, D. (2010). Evolution is Not Relevant to Sex Differences in Humans Because I Want it That Way! Evidence for the Politicization of Human Evolutionary Psychology EvoS: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium , 2, 32-47

Knobe, J., & Samuels, R. (2013). Thinking like a scientist: Innateness as a case study Cognition, 126 (1), 72-86 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.09.003

Just A Little Off The Top

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Jesse Marczyk

In my last post I suggested that humans likely possess a series of modules designed to assess victim characteristics when it comes to assessing their associated victimhood claims. Simply put, there are some people who make better social investments than others, and, accordingly, would tend to have their victimhood claims seen as more legitimate than those others. Specifically, I noted that men might be at something of a disadvantage when attempting to advance a victimhood claim, relative to women, as women might tend to be better targets of social investment (at least in certain contexts; I would be hesitant to assume that this is the case a prior across all contexts).

Coincidentally, I happened to come across this article (and associated Reddit post) today discussing whether or not male newborns should be circumcised. I feel the article and, more importantly, the comments discussing the article serve as an interesting (if non-scientific) case study in the weight of moral claims between genders. So let’s talk about the moral reactions of people to circumcision.

“There might have been a slight mix-up, but don’t worry; we’ll do your ears for free!”

In the debate over whether male offspring should be circumcised around the time they’re born, those in favor of circumcision seem to tend and phrase their stance in a consequentialist fashion, often claiming one or more of three* things: (1) circumcised penises are more appealing aesthetically, (2) circumcision brings with it health benefits in the form of a reduction in the risk of STI transmission, and (3) that the removal of the foreskin doesn’t really do any serious harm to the child. The function of these arguments would appear fairly self-evident: they are attempts to disengage the moral psychology of others by way of denying a victim, and without a victim the moral template cannot be completed. Those in favor of allowing circumcision, then, are generally claiming that being circumcised is a benefit, or at the very least not a cost, and you don’t get to be a victim without being perceived to have suffered a cost.

Beginning with the second point – the reduction of risk for contracting HIV – there is evidence to suggest that circumcision does nothing of the sort. Though I am unable to access the article, this paper in The Journal of Sexual Medicine reports that not only is circumcision not associated with a lower incidence of STIs in men, including HIV, but it might even be associated with a slightly higher incidence of infection (for whatever reason). The studies that claim to find the 40-60% reduction in the female-to-male transmission rate of HIV in circumcised men seem to have been conducted largely in African populations, where other issues, such as general hygiene, might be a factor. Specifically, one of the proposed reasons why uncircumcised males in these studies are more likely to become infected is that the foreskin traps fluids and pathogens, increasing bodily contact duration with them. In other words, a little soap and water after sex (along with a condom during sex, of course) could likely accomplish the same goal as circumcision in these cases, so the removal of the foreskin might be just a bit extreme of a remedy.

I’m most certainly not an expert in this field so don’t just take my word for it, but my perspective on the matter is that the results about whether circumcision decreases the transmission of HIV are mixed at best. Further, at least some of the hypothesized means through which circumcision could potentially work in this regard appear perfectly achievable through other, non-surgical means. Now that I’ve covered at least some ground on that evidentiary front, we can turn towards the more interesting, moral side. On the basis of this mixed evidence and a general lack of understanding as to how circumcision might work, the report issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that:

“…the benefits of newborn male circumcision justify access to this procedure for families who choose it” [emphasis mine].

“If you can’t be trusted to wash it properly, I’m going to cut it off”

One interesting facet of our moral judgments is that, to some extent, they are nonconsequentist. That is to say, even if an act leads to a positive consequence, it can still be considered immoral. The classic example of this concerns people’s intuitions in the trolley and footbridge dilemmas: in the former dilemma, roughly 90% of subjects say that diverting an out-of-control trolley away from five hikers and towards one hiker is morally acceptable; in the latter dilemma, a roughly equivalent percentage of subjects say that pushing another person in front of a train to save five hikers is morally impermissible (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009). Despite the consequences of each action being identical, the moral feel of each action is radically different. Thus, to say that an action is justified strictly by referencing a cost/benefit ratio (and a rather fuzzy and potentially flawed one at that) can be to miss the point morally to some degree. That said, to some other degree it does hit the mark because, as previously mentioned, moral claims need a victim, and without costs there can be no victim.

This conflict between the nonconsequentialist and consequentialist aspect of our moral psychology appear readily visible in the reactions of people when it comes to comparing elective surgery on the genitals of boys to that of elective surgery when performed on girls. A few years back, the American Academy of Pediatrics also recommended reconsidering US law regarding whether or not doctors should be allowed to engage in a “ceremonial” female circumcision. Though not much is said about the details of the procedure explicitly, the sense the various articles discussing it give is that it is a “harmless” one, essentially amounting to a pinprick to the clitoris or clitoral hood capable of drawing a drop of blood.The AAP recommended this reconsideration in order to, hopefully, appease certain cultural groups that might otherwise take their daughters overseas to engage in a much more extreme version of the ritual where piece of the external genitalia are cut or fully removed. This recommendation by the AAP was soon reversed, following a political outcry.

It’s worth noting that, during discussions on the topic of circumcision, there are many people who get rather upset when a comparison is made between the female and male varieties, typically because the female version is more extreme. A complete removal of the clitoris is, no doubt, worse than the removal of the foreskin of the penis. When comparing a pinprick to the clitoris that does no permanent damage to a complete or partial removal of the male foreskin though, that argument would seem to lose some of its weight. Even without that consequentialist weight, however, people were still very strongly opposed the ceremonial pricking on (more or less) nonconsequentialist grounds:

“We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world,” said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey. [emphasis, mine]

The interesting question to me, then, is why male genital cutting isn’t currently opposed as vehemently in all forms when performed on newborn infants who cannot consent to the procedure (Wikipedia puts the percentage of newborn boys being circumcised before they leave the hospital at over 50% in the US). One could try and point, again, to the iffy data on HIV reduction, but even in the event that such data was good and no alternatives were available to reduce the spread of the virus, it would leave one unable to explain why circumcision as a practice dates back thousands of years, well before HIV was ever a concern. It would also still leave the moral question of consent very much alive: specifically, what are the acceptable bounds for parents when making decisions for their dependent offspring? A pinprick to the genitals for culture reasons apparently falls into the non-accepted category, whereas the remove of foreskin for aesthetic or cultural reasons is accepted.

He’ll appreciate all that endorsement cash when he’s grown up.

Now maybe, as some suggest, the female genital pricking would to some extent morally license the more extreme version of the practice. That would certainly be a bad outcome to the procedure, and such an argument seeks to add the consequentialist weight back into the argument. Indeed, most all the articles on the topic, along with many of the commenters, likened the pricking to its far more extreme expression elsewhere. However, I get the sense that such a justification for avoiding pricking might represent a post hoc justification for the aversion. I get that sense because I saw no evidence presented that this moral licensing outcome would actually obtain (just a concern that it would) and no indication that more people would really be OK with the procedure if the moral licensing risks could be reduced or removed. I don’t think I recall anyone saying, “I’d be alright with the clitoral pinprick if…”

Returning to the gender issue, however, why do people not raise similar concerns about male circumcision licensing other forms of harm to men? My sense is that concerns like these are not raised with nearly as much force or as frequently because, in general, people are less bothered by males being hurt, infants or otherwise, for reasons I mentioned in the last post. Even in the event that these people are just incredible swayed by the HIV data, (though why people accept or reject evidence in the first place is also an interesting topic) those potential benefits wouldn’t be realized by the boys until at least the point at which they’re sexually active, so circumcising boys when they’re newborns without any indication they even sort of consent seems premature.

So when people say male and female circumcision aren’t comparable, I feel they have more in their mind then just the consequentialist outcome. I get the sense that the emotional feel of the issues can’t be compared, in part, because one happens to men and one happens to women, and our psychology tends to treat such cases differently.

*Note: this list of three items is not intended to be comprehensive. There are also cultural or religious reasons cited for circumcision, but I won’t be considering them here, as they didn’t appear well represented in the current articles.

References: DeScioli, P., & Kurzban, R. (2009). Mysteries of Morality Cognition , 112, 281-299 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.05.008

Social Banking

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Jesse Marczyk

“Bankers have a limited amount of money, and must choose who to invest it in. Each choice is a gamble: taken together, they must ultimately yield a net profit, or the banker will go out of business. This set of incentives yield a common complaint about the banking system: that bankers will only lend money to individuals who don’t need it. The harsh irony of the banker’s paradox is this: just when individuals need the money most desperately, they are also the poorest credit risk and, therefore, the least likely to be selected to receive a loan” – Tooby & Cosmides (1996, p. 131)

While perhaps more of a set of unfortunately circumstances than an actual paradox (in true Alanis Morrissette fashion), the banker’s paradox can be a useful metaphor for understanding social interactions. Specifically, it can help guide predictions as to how we would expect the victim/perpetrator/third party dynamic to play itself out, and, more importantly, help explain why we would have such expectations. The time and energy we can invest in others socially – in terms of building and maintaining friendships – is a lot like money; we cannot spend it in two places at once. Given that we have a limited budget with which to build and maintain relationships, it’s of vital importance for some cognitive system to assess the probability of social returns from its investment; likewise, individuals have a vested interest in manipulating that assessment in others in order to further their goals.

And, for the record, reading my site will yield a large social return on your investment. Promise.

The first matter to touch on is why a third party would feel compelled to get involved in other people’s disputes. One reason might be the potential for the third party to gain accurate information about the likely behavior of others. If person A claims that person B is a liar, and it’s true, person C could potentially benefit from knowing that. Of course, if it’s not true, then person C would likely have been better off ignoring that information. Further, if the behavior of person B towards person A lacks predictive value of how person B will behave towards person C, then the usefulness of such information is again compromised. For instance, while an older sibling might physically dominate a younger sibling, it does not mean that older sibling will in turn dominate his other classmates or his friends. Given the twin possibilities of either receiving inaccurate information or accurate but useless information, it remains questionable as to how much third party involvement this hypothesis could explain.

Beyond information value, however, third parties may also get involved in others’ conflicts in the service of forming and maintaining valuable social alliances. Here, the accuracy of the information is less of an issue. Even if it’s true that person B is an unsavory character, he may also be a useful person to have as an ally (or at least, not have as enemy; as the now famous quote goes, more or less: “He might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”). As I touched on previously the accuracy of our perceptions are only relevant to the extent that accuracy leads to useful outcomes; accuracy for its own sake is not something that could be selected for. This suggests that we shouldn’t expect our evaluations of victimhood claims to be objective or consistent; we should expect them to be useful and strategic. Our moral templates shouldn’t be automatically completed in all cases, as our visual templates are for the Kanizsa Triangle; in fact, we should expect inputs to often be erased from our moral templates – something of an automatic removal.

Let’s now return to the banker’s paradox. In the moral realm, our investments come with higher stakes than they do in the friendship realm. To side with one party in a moral judgment is not to simply invest your time in one person over another; it involves actively harming other potential investment partners, potentially alienating them directly and their allies indirectly (and harming them can bring with it associated retribution). That said, aligning yourself with someone making a moral claim can bring huge benefits, in the form of reciprocal social support and building alliances. As Tooby and Cosmides put it:

…[I]f you are unusually or uniquely valuable to someone else – for whatever reason – then that person has an uncommonly strong interest in your survival during times of difficulty. The interest they have in your survival makes them, therefore, highly valuable to you. (p.140)

So the question remains: In the context of claims to victimhood, how does someone make themselves appear valuable to others, in order to recruit their support?

Please say the answer involves trips to the red light district…

There are two distinct ways of doing this which come to mind: making yourself look like a better investment, and/or make others appear to be a worse investment. Victims face a tricky dilemma in regard to the first item: they need to make themselves appear to genuinely have been a victim while not making themselves look too easily victimizable. To make oneself look to victimizable is to make oneself look like a bad investment; one that will frequently need support and be relatively inept at returning the assistance. Going too far in other direction though, by making oneself out to be relatively unharmable, could have a negative effect on your ability to recruit support as well. This is because, as in the banker’s paradox, rich people don’t really need money, and, accordingly, people in strong positions socially are not generally viewed as needing help either; you rarely find people concerned with the plight of the rich and powerful. Those who don’t need help may not be the most grateful for it, nor the most likely to reciprocate it. Tooby and Cosmides (1996) recognized this issue, writing:

“…[I]f a person’s trouble is temporary or they can easily be returned to a position of full benefit-dispersing competence by feasible amounts of assistance…then personal troubles should not make someone a less attractive object of assistance. Indeed, a person who is in this kind of trouble might be a more attractive object of investment than one who is currently safe, because the same delivered investment will be valued more by the person in dire need.” (p.132)

Such a line of reasoning would imply we should expect to find victims trying to manipulate (a) the perceptions others have of their need, (b) their eventual usefulness, and (c) the perceptions others have concerning the needs and usefulness of the perpetrator. Likewise, perpetrators should be engaging counter manipulation along precisely the same dimensions. We would also expect that victims and perpetrators might try and sway the cost/benefit analysis in third parties via the use of warnings and threats – implicit or explicit – about the consequences of siding with one party or another. Remember, third parties are not making these judgments in a vacuum; if the majority of third parties side with person A, third parties that sided with person B might now find themselves on the receiving end of social sanctions or ostracism.

DeScioli & Kurzban (2012), realizing this issue, posit that human mind contains adaptions for coordinating which side to take in a dispute with other third parties, so as to avoid the costs of potential despotism on the one hand, and the costs of inter-alliance fighting on the other. If a publicly observable signal not tied to one’s individual identity is used for coordinating third party involvement – i.e. all third parties will align together against an actor for doing X (killing, lying, saying the wrong thing, etc), no matter who does it – third parties can solve the problem of discoordination with one another. However, one notable problem with this approach is the informational hurdle I mentioned previously: most people are not witnesses to the vast majority of acts people engage in. Now, if person A suggests that person B has done something morally wrong, and person B denies it, provided the two are the only witnesses to the act, there’s not a whole lot to go on in terms of publicly observable signals. Without such signals (and even with them), the mind needs to use whatever available information it has to make such a judgment, and that information largely revolves around the identity of the actors in question.

And some people just aren’t very good actors.

I’d like to return briefly to a finding I’ve discussed before: men and women agree that women tend to be more discriminated against than men, even in the face of contradictory evidence. This finding might arise because people are perceiving – accurately – that women tend to be objectively more victimized. It might also arise because certain classes of people – in this case, women, relative to men – are viewed as being better investments of limited social capital. For instance, in terms of future rewards, it might be a good idea for a man to align himself with a woman – or, at the very least, not align himself against her – even in the event she’s guilty; moral condemnation does not tend to get the romance following, from my limited understanding of human interaction.

It would follow, then, that the automatic completion vs automatic deletion threshold for our moral templates should vary, contingent on the actor in question: friends and family have a different threshold than strangers; possible romantic interests have a different threshold than those we find romantically repulsive. Alliances might even serve as potential tipping points for third parties. Let’s say person A and B get involved in a dispute; even if person A is clearly in the wrong, if person A already has a large number of partial backers, the playing field is no longer level for third party involvement. Third party involvement can be driven by a large number of factors, and we shouldn’t expect all moral claims to be viewed equally, even in cases where the underlying logic is the same. The goal is usefulness; not consistency.

References: DeScioli, P., & Kurzban, R. (2012). A Solution to the Mysteries of Morality Psychological Bulletin DOI: 10.1037/a0029065

Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the banker’s paradox:Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 119-143

The Myths That Never Were

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Jesse Marczyk

I recently came across a post over at Psychology Today entitled, “Six Myths About Female Sexuality and Why They’re Myths” by one Susan Whitbourne. I feel the need to discuss it here for two reasons: first, it’s a terrible piece; not only does Susan get a lot wrong, she gets it wrong badly while bad-mouthing my field. So that’s kind of annoying, but it’s not the main reason. That reason is because, at the time I’m writing this, there are five comments on the article; there were ten comments on it before I had left mine last time I had checked it. This means at least six comments (all the highly critical ones, I might add) were deleted. This has, in turn, activated my moral template for automatic completion, and I find myself perceiving an incompetent writer trying to hide criticism instead of engaging it, instead of all the negative comments vanishing into the internet magically.

“Just throw a rug over it and you’re good to go”

I’d like to first mention that the source Susan is drawing her information from is Terri Conley. You know, the one who suggested that sexual reproduction is a byproduct of sexual pleasure. That is to say, sexual reproduction did not directly contribute to reproduction, which is kind of an odd claim to make. The paper itself was also discussed at some length here roughly a year ago, so what I’m doing is largely repetition; you know, standing on the shoulders of giants and all. Anyway, on to the matter of figuring out what institution is giving out psychology PhDs to people who clearly don’t deserve them (I’m looking at you…Columbia University? Really? Well, fancy that).

Susan – who I should remind everyone again says she has a PhD – in her first point suggests that men and women value the traits of status, youth, and attractiveness equally. Since this point is about preferences, it’s wrong on the grounds that massive amounts of evidence from surveys the world over demonstrate precisely that pattern of preferences. However, just because someone has certain preferences, it does not imply that their partner – should they eventually have one – will manifest any or all aspects of those preferences, as tradeoffs need to be made. If everyone expressed an interest for an attractive partner and there are only so many attractive partners to go around, someone’s going to be disappointed; many someones, in fact. Accordingly, it might not be such a good idea to attempt and invest a lot of energy in a long-shot, no matter how attractive the payoff might be (but more about speed dating below).

The second “myth” is that men and women desire (and have) different numbers of partners. In the realm of desire, men do indeed desire a greater number of partners than women. However, when, as Susan suggests, “appropriate statistical controls were used”, this difference goes away. In the current context, “appropriate” means “using the median instead of a mean”, or, as I might put it, ignoring all the inconvenient data. This is not a first time that a median, rather than mean, has been used to ignore data that doesn’t fit preconceptions. Now, of course, men and women need to have the same number of opposite sex partners; that’s just basic statistics. Despite this, men tend to claim to have more partners than women, so someone must be lying. In this case, the person lying is… the author, Susan. She reported that when hooked up to a fake lie detector, men adjusted their number down, which is peculiar, given that the study she’s talking about (Alexander & Fisher, 2003) found that men were consistent across groups; it was the women who were under-reporting. Way to bust myths, Susan.

You clearly put in the effort instead of just bullshitting it.

The third myth is that men think about sex more than women. This myth is a myth, according to Susan, in that it’s true. Men do, in fact, think about sex more, according to Conley et al (2011); they also think about food and sleep more. So let’s examine the logic here: Men do X more than women. Men also do Y and Z more than women. Therefore, men don’t do X more. Sure, that might seem like a basic failure of reasoning abilities, since the conclusion in no way follows from the premises, but, bear in mind, this woman does have a PhD from Columbia, so she clearly must understand this problem better than those who pointed out this huge failing. Better to just delete the comments of people pointing this out, rather than risk Susan wasting her valuable time engaging in debate with them.

Myth four is another one of those true myths: women have orgasms less frequently than men. However, it’s not just a true myth; it’s also one of those things Susan lies about. Susan grants that this orgasm differential exists in hookups, but not in romantic relationships. Conley et al (2011) report on data showing that, during hookups, women orgasm 32% and 49% as frequently as men (in first and repeat hookups respectively). However, in established relationships, women orgasmed 80% as much. Thus, according to Susan, a 20% gap in frequency amounts to no gap. Frankly, I’m surprised that Mythbusters hasn’t snatched Susan up yet, given her impressive logical and basic reading abilities.

Myth five is that, apparently, men like casual sex more than woman. I know; I was shocked to hear people thought that too. I already linked to the discussion of the article Conley (2011) uses to support the notion that men and women like causal sex just as much, but here it is again. The long and short of the paper is that, when women and men considered casual sex offers from very attractive and famous people, there was no difference. Women were also just as likely as men to accept a casual sex offer from a close friend who they thought would provide a positive sexual experience. It might be worth pointing that most people aren’t very attractive, famous, familiar, and skilled in bed, and women tend to judge most men as lacking in this department (given that 0% accepted offers for casual sex in the classic Clark and Hatfield paper), whereas the same dimensions don’t seem to matter to men nearly as much (given the roughly 75% acceptance rate). It might be worth pointing that out, that is, if you know what you’re talking about, which Susan and Conley clearly don’t.

Finally, we arrive at Myth Six: women are choosier than men. The Clark and Hatfield results, along with evidence from every culture across the globe and many species on the planet, might seem to confirm this myth. However, the results of a single speed-dating survey where no sexual behavior actually took place and no sex difference was fully reversed could overturn it all. In this study, depending on who approached who at a speed-dating event, there was a (relatively minor) effect on feelings of romantic desire, chemistry, and a desire to see the other partner again. That said, women tend to not approach men as much as men approach women in the world outside of the speed-dating scenarios, and when women approached men in the Clark and Hatfield study the men overwhelmingly said “yes” (while the women universally said “no” when approached by a man), and the study didn’t track whether anything ever came of the speed-dating, and a certain type of person might be interested in speed-dating, and speed-dating might not be terribly ecologically valid, and….you get the idea.

But other than being a total failure, your article was a great success.

Susan caps off her article by demonstrating that she doesn’t understand that the nature/nurture debate has long ago ended and that evolutionary psychologists reject such a dichotomy in the first place by asking about whether these behaviors are genetically or environmentally based. It’s nice to see that Susan comes full circle from her introduction where she suggests that she doesn’t understand evolution isn’t working to “keep the species afloat”. Finally, she asked why some people, who ought to know better, favor an evolutionary-based theory in their research. One can only wonder, Susan. I’ll leave it to people like you, who clearly know better, to lead the way. I just hope for all of our sakes that whatever path you end up leading us down doesn’t involve you having to read or understand anything.

References: Alexander MG, & Fisher TD (2003). Truth and consequences: using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality. Journal of sex research, 40 (1), 27-35 PMID: 12806529

Conley, T.D., Moors, A.C., Matsick, J.L., Ziegler, A., & Valentine, B.A. (2011). Women, Men, and the Bedroom: Methodological and Conceptual Insights That Narrow, Reframe, and Eliminate Gender Differences in Sexuality Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0963721411418467

The Science Of White Knighting

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Jesse Marczyk

As a male, it’s my birthright to be a chauvinistic sexist, sort of like original sin. I still remember the day, though I was still very young, that some representatives from the Patriarchy approached me with my membership card. They extended their invitation to join the struggle to keep gender roles distinct, help maintain male privilege, and make sure the women got the short end of the social stick despite both genders being identical in every way. I’m proud to report that towards this end I’ve watched many movies and played many games where the male protagonist saves an attractive woman from the clutches of some evil force (typically another male character), and almost none where the roles have been reversed. Take that, 19th amendment!

While we having yet figured out how to legally bar women from playing video games, we can at least patronize them while they do.

I have some lingering doubts as to whether I, as a man, am doing enough to maintain my privileged position in the world. Are sexism and recurrent cultural accidents the only reasons that the theme of man-saves-woman is so popular in the media, but the woman-saves-man theme is far less common? While I certainly hope it is to maximize the oppression factor, there have been two recent papers that suggest the theme of a damsel in distress being rescued by their white knight (or Mario, if you’re into short Italian plumbers) has more to do with getting the girl than oppressing her by reinforcing the idea that women need men to save them. A worrying thought for you other sexist pigs, I know.

While there’s always an interest in studying heroic behavior, researchers can’t put people into life-and-death scenarios for experimental purposes without first filling out the proper paperwork, and that can be quite tedious. The next best thing that we’re able to do is to get subjects to volunteer for self-inflicted discomfort. Towards this end, McAndrew & Perilloux (2012) brought some undergraduates into the lab under the pretenses of a “group-problem solving study”, when the actual objective was to see who would volunteer for discomfort. The undergrads were tested in groups of three and given three minutes to assign each group member one of three jobs: astronaut, diver, and pitcher. The astronaut’s job was to write down arguments in favor of taking three items from a hypothetical crashed spaceship. The diver was tasked with, first, submerging their arm in icy water for forty seconds, and then sit under a large water-balloon that the pitcher would attempt to break by throwing balls at a target (in keeping with the “3″ theme, the pitcher had three minutes to accomplish this task). Needless to say, this would soak the diver, which was pretty clearly the worst job to have. Afterwards, the subjects decided how to split up the $45 payment privately. People who volunteered for the diver role were accordingly paid and liked more, on average.

If that’s where the experiment ended there wouldn’t be much worth caring about. The twist is that the groups were either made up of two men and one women, or two women and one man. In the latter groups, men and women ended up in each role at chance levels. However, when the group was made up of two men and a woman, the men ended up in the diver role 100% of the time, and the pitcher role almost as often (the one exception being a woman who was actually a pitcher for a softball team). It seemed to be that the presence of another man led the men to compete for the position of altruist, as if to show off for the woman and show-up the other man. If we were to translate this result into the world of popular movie themes, a close fit would probably be “male friend tries to convince a girl he really cares about her and he has has been the one for all along, not that jerk of a boyfriend she’s had”.

“Tell me more about all the men you date who aren’t me. I’m selflessly concerned with all your problems and can take the pain; not like those Jerks.”

Now it’s worth pointing out that the mating motive I’m suggesting as an explanation is an assumed one, as nothing in the study directly tested whether the behavior in the two male groups was intended to get the girl. One could be left wondering why the two female groups did not universally have the male volunteering for the diver position as well, were that the case. It could be that a man would only feel the need to compete (i.e. display) when there’s an alternative to him available; when there’s little to no choice for the women (one man, take him or leave him), the motivation to endure these costs and show off might not be aroused. While that answer may be incomplete, it’s at least a plausible starting point.

A second paper paints a broader picture of this phenomena and helps us infer sexual motives more clearly. In this study, Van Vugt & Iredale (2012) looked at contributions to public goods – sacrificing for the good of the group – rather than the willingness to get a little wet. In the first experiment, subjects played an anonymous public goods game with either no observer, an attractive observer of the same sex sitting close by, or one of the opposite sex. Across the three conditions, women were equally as likely to donate money to a group account. Men, however, donated significantly more to the account, but only when being observed by a member of the opposite sex. Further, the amount men donated correlated with how attractive they thought that observer was; the more attractive the men felt the woman was, the nicer the men were willing to behave. I’m sure this facet of the male psychology has not escaped the notice of almost any woman on Earth. To the infuriation of many girlfriends, their significant others will seem to take on a new persona around other women that’s just so friendly and accommodating, leading to all manner of unpleasant outcomes for everyone.

The next experiment in the paper also looked at male-male competition for behaving altruistically in a public goods game. Male subjects were brought into the lab one at a time and photographed. Their photos were then added alongside two others so subjects could see who they were playing with. Feedback on how much money participants gave was made available after each of the five rounds. Additionally, some participants were led to believe there would be an attractive observer – either of the same or opposite sex – watching the game, and the photos of the fake observers were included as well. Finally, at the conclusion of the experiment, participants were asked to make a commitment to a charitable organization. The results showed that men tended to increase their contribution between the beginning and the end of the game, but only when they thought they were being observed by an attractive woman; when they weren’t contributions steadily declined. Similarly, men also volunteered for more charity time following the experiment if they had been observed by an attractive woman.

All the sudden, the plight of abused children just became a lot more real.

While male behavior was only studied under these two situations, I don’t see any reasons to suspect that the underlying psychological mechanisms don’t function similarly in others. Men are willing to compete for women, and that competition can take many forms, altruism being one of them. Everyone is familiar with the stereotypical guy who befriends a woman, is always there to help her, and is constantly looking out for her, with the end goal of course being sex (however vehemently it may be denied). Given that women tend to value kindness and generosity in a partner, being kind and generous as a way to someone’s pants isn’t the worst idea in the world. Demonstrating your ability and willingness to invest is a powerful attractant. That comes with a caveat: it’s important for some frustrated men out there to bear in mind that those two factors are not the only criteria that women use to make decisions about who to hook up with.

I say that because there are many men who bemoan how women always seem to go for “jerks”, though most women – and even some men – will tell you that most guys are pretty nice overall, and being nice does not make one exceptionally attractive. They’ll also tell you that women, despite the stereotype and for the most part, don’t like being with assholes. Real jerks fail to provide many benefits and even inflict some heavy costs than nicer men would. To the extent that women go for guys who don’t really treat them well or care about them, it’s probably due in large part to those men being either exceptionally good looking, rich, or high-status (or all three, if you’re lucky like I am). Those men are generally desirable enough, in one way or another, that they are able to effectively play the short-term mating strategy, but it’s worth bearing in mind their jerkiness is not what makes them more attractive generally; it makes them less attractive, they can just make up for it in other ways. Then again, denigrating your competition has a long and proud history in the world of mating, so calling other guys jerks or uncaring probably isn’t a terrible tactic either.

References: McAndrew, F.T. & Perillous, C. (2012). Is self-sacrifical competitive altruism primarily a male activity? Evolutionary Psychology, 10, 50-65

Van Vugt, M. & Iredale, W. (2012). Men behaving nicely: Public goods as peacock tails. British Journal of Psychology, Article first published online : 1 FEB 2012

Why Are Plumbers So Sexist?

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Jesse Marczyk

By now, most people have surely heard of the dreaded wage gap between men and women. If I am to believe what I have heard around the internet, women in the US earn about 77 cents for every dollar a man does, and – here’s the key part – this is because we live in a deeply sexist society that needs to be changed.

Oh yeah? Well my glass ceiling is still higher.

I could point out that the wage gap only reflects gross earnings, not things like hours worked, education, or profession, but those factors alone don’t explain the whole discrepancy; there’s still a couple cents left over. As for what percentage of the remaining is gap is due to sexism specifically, well, I can’t say. What we could say, with a reasonable degree of certainty is that there is a gap in gross earnings which can be divided up into explained and unexplained variance. What we cannot say is that the unexplained variance equals sexist discrimination.

Now before you decide to label me a sexist for daring to consider an alternative hypothesis, let’s consider some other gaps as presented by Susan Pinker (2008): In 1973, only 5% of lawyers in the US were women; in 2003 that number was 27%. That’s a pretty impressive gain, and we see a similar one for Aerospace engineers; up from 1% to 11% over the same time period. But what about plumbers? In 1973, women represented approximately 0% of the plumbers in the US; by 2003, women represented a mighty 1%. Why were women able to make such vast inroads in the fields of law and engineering, but somehow couldn’t break through the extremely sexist barriers put up by the field of plumbing?

“I unclogged that drain for you. Also, women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

Perhaps plumbers and plumbing culture are just vastly more sexist against women compared to lawyers. Then again, perhaps that huge gap between male and female plumbers reflects something else, such as women not being particularly interested in the idea of becoming a plumber. Pinker – not to be confused with her brother, Steven – makes the case for underlying differences in male and female psychology being an important factor in some of these gaps we see, from choice of employment to the pay gap. I feel it can probably help account for a hefty portion of that variance. It’s important to remember that when you see sex differences, like in the pay gap, you haven’t found direct evidence of sexism. For instance, in Michigan women now outnumber men in terms of earning all types of degrees, but this doesn’t mean colleges there are sexist against men.

So let’s forget about plumbing and focus on comedy. Someone happens to think there’s no difference between men and women in that area. Why, hello again Amanda. (I didn’t even notice who the author was until I was well into writing, it’s just a lucky coincidence that she’s consistently bad at science)

My posts have pictures with hilarious captions; your posts do not. Point: Men.

The idea of innate sex differences can be a touchy subject for some, and is no doubt responsible for part of the opposition towards evolutionary psychology (Geher, 2010). Marcotte thinks men and women are identical in the humor department, it would seem. Why does she think this? She reports that a study found 16 men and 16 women (I presume, from some college) were rated about equally when it came to how funny captions they came up with for a cartoon were. Despite this, 90% of people rated men as funnier than women, to which Amanda can only conclude “sexism did it”.

First of all, let me say that I’m happy to see Amanda has apparently gotten over her concerns about small, homogenous samples that she expressed about the hand grip research, at least temporarily; I suppose Amanda figures since the results sound nice, the work must be good enough to generalize to “men and women” everywhere.

Despite not knowing much about the research in the field of humor myself, the second point I’d like to make is that there’s probably a ceiling effect here; there’s only a certain range of possible captions to pre-drawn, pre-selected pictures that make sense and are funny. The claim was this helps “level the playing field”, much like only having 10 pound weights available can make differences between men and women in muscle mass seem irrelevant when recording how much they can lift (which would clearly mean men only lift more weight outside the lab because of sexism). Most people would agree there’s a lot more to humor than captioning pictures, but Amanda Marcotte is not most people.

Who’s got two thumbs and thinks captioning pictures is hilarious? This guy.

Did sexism play any role? Well, it seemed to. It’s reported that people tended to remember the funny captions as coming from men and unfunny ones coming from women, but since the current study appears to not be available to read, I can’t comment much further about that. I’m going to go ahead an guess that the effect wasn’t terribly large, let alone able to account for why 90% of people agreed that men were funnier, as there wasn’t much said about it other than “it exists”. Why it exists would be another question worth examining. Spoiler alert: Marcotte probably thinks it’s due to baseless sexism.

References: Geher, G. (2010). Evolution is not relevant to sex differences in humans because I want it that way! Evidence for the politicization of human evolutionary psychology. The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium, 2, 32-47

Pinker, S. (2008). The sexual paradox: Extreme men, gifted women, and the real gender gap. Ontario, Canada: Random House Press

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