Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

[kokopelle]

A very interesting Psychology Today article lists these as ten politically incorrect truths about human nature:

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)


2. Humans are naturally polygamous


3. Most women benefit from polygamy, while most men benefit from monogamy


4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim


5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce


6. Beautiful people have more daughters


7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals


8. The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of


9. It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)


10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

The article goes on to examine supporting explanations for each of these myths. Eerie stuff...

Comments

Accurate Information

[jagboh.livejournal.com]

After studying people and what drives them, I find this to be very accurate information.

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

Excellent article.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

I liked the article, but Number 4 was right for the wrong reasons. Suicide bombers are mostly Muslim, no doubt, but it's not because of polygyny and not strictly because of religion.

The article ignores the long tradition of female suicide bombers. It would also be interesting for them to test their hypothesis by seeing if suicide bombing is more frequent in societies with more polygyny. My guess is that it is not.

And kamikaze pilots anyone? No, to boil this down to marital custom is a little silly. Does it matter that Palestinians are technically allowed to have four wives--however often they can afford to is another matter--or that their young men have no real industry to work in and are thus dirt poor and often have only their lives to give in struggle? Suicide bombing says more about what you can do than how you live. If Palestinians could afford helicopters, they wouldn't use rocks or pipe bombs or blow themselves up. Or do extremist Mormons embrace suicide bombing when they can find jobs and obtain firearms?

And the 72 virgins thing is commonly regarded as a joke in the Muslim world. I think these psychologists should stick to psychology and leave the cultural observations to anthropologists and political scientists and smart-asses like me. It's a common fact that Muslims more readily embrace suicide bombing--I'm not denying that. But if they think it has anything to do with metaphysics and marital law, then they need to ask why the tactic is only twenty-five years old.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, and number 10 started out strong and ended awfully.

These days, maybe, we don't really know horrendous sexual harassment, because we've had years of sensitivity training and massive strategizing to help keep lawsuits and the violations that cause them to a minimum.

But are we really supposed to believe that bosses have taken advantage of women precisely as they take advantage of men? I'll tell you, I've never had a boss lead me into a confined area and ask me to hold his dick. But if one does now, I guess that just means he's being consistent. I don't know where the hell they got that argument.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

That last sentence can be easily taken out of context. In English 101 I learned that the last sentence is suppose to be a summary of sorts for the paragraph. This time the author shot himself in the foot. The paragraph says:

Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.

If the author's point is that "sexual" is just one more tool in the competition tactics, than OK, it's a theory. The catch is that men have other tactics that they use on men. There is a choosing of harassment methods (aka competitive tactics) based on the gender/position of their target. That's my devil's advocate look at that author's point.

To your point, there are men that will corner other men and attempt to compromise/question their sexuality, even going as far as sexual contact. These are the sexual bullies that say, "I'm not gay. I was just showing him who's boss." Is the guy a bully, homosexual, or both? That's grist for another sociological discussion.

I do think that the author has a weak argument. IMO men think with their other brain and act as if they were raised in a barn the majority of time when sexual harassment is an issue. Saying that "it's just a competitive tactic" paints a too lily white picture. It is like saying, "men rape women because they want to be empowered, kinda like when men drive fast cars". If the author is trying to say, "but the competition thing does happen and that's politically incorrect", than fine. I just think this was a weird way to end an otherwise interesting article.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I thought eight of ten were well articulated. But the fourth was a little muddle-headed and, as you say, the tenth was just bizarre.

You make a good point. I appreciate that sexual goading is a natural part of male-to-male aggression. And even if that's not on the table, men in positions of power will often use those positions to manipulate men and women who are beneath them. But sexual harassment of men by men usually consists of teasing and competition for women. That's quite different from sexual harassment of women, which is usually driven by real interest.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

And let me make clear that I'm not really refuting anything you say. I think we're in agreement at this point.

I don't know. I think my real annoyance is one based in common sense. If I make a sexual comment to a man and a sexual comment to a woman, the contexts of the comments are usually so different. I just think that most sexually-interested people are so painfully aware of gender in today's society (and probably in most societies throughout history) that for anyone, no matter how learned, to say that we're actually behaving in a sexually-neutral way raises a lot of red flags in my head. Whenever I make statements of dubious nature, I make sure I know what I'm meaning. It's usually humor with men, and humor or attraction with women. I mean, if we're all apes, why the hell would we treat men and women the same? All of our higher evolution demands that we treat them very differently. That's why it's such a challenge to behave professionally. A lot of us can't keep it in our pants.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

In the John Cleese special I saw last night the comedian was asked if there was any material he would not do. He said that he is known for the 'hard' stuff - abusive and angry comedy. He also said that there was some material that was funny, but he wouldn't do it because the public was not ready for it. There were too many ‘hot-buttons’ on the topics. He mentioned that comedy about recent disasters was on his personal list of no-go comedy due to hot-buttons.

I believe that sexual harassment does need to be discussed. Public discussion of the issue is part of the solution. I also believe that sexual harassment is too hot of a button for nuanced sociological snarking/comment. A Muslim would probably feel the same way about point #4. Buttons do exist. They are distributed unevenly at both a societal and personal level. Some people make a point of pushing them. Perhaps that was the author's intent. If so, he gets points for initiative. I, in turn, hand him strikes for inappropriateness.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

I don't care about propriety. I care about accuracy. If a Muslim doesn't want to acknowledge that more suicide bombers are Muslim or culturally Muslim, than he's fine. He'd be incorrect, though.

It's not anything essential about Muslims, however, and that I want to be clear on. It's environmental. Strategies in war might be motivated by madness, but tactics by and large either work or they don't. Whether we want to admit it or not, suicide bombing achieves objectives.

So it wasn't that it was politically incorrect that got me. It was that it was incorrect, full-stop. The authors even say how North African states see more suicide bombing--which itself is incorrect, seeing as though Libyans are a lot less likely to do that than, say, Palestinians, and Iraqis never used to do that, before the Civil War, and likewise, the Taliban adopted suicide tactics only a few years ago. Again, the article says that you don't see that in sub-Saharan Africa, and the authors suggest that sub-Saharan Africa doesn't have a lot of Muslims in conflict. That shows a complete misunderstanding of the world. Africa is full of Muslims, and they fight differently based on their needs.* Look at the Arab-Israeli Wars. Was there extensive use of suicide bombing? I'm not aware of it occurring at all. And yet were they less polygynous or less apocalyptic then? If Muslim doctrine is as the authors say it is--and it's not, but let's give them the benefit of doubt--then why is suicide bombing such a new phenomenon? It doesn't add up.

Again, being a beer-drinking heathen with only slight ethnic ties to the world of Islam, I have no Muslim roots to offend. I am not nor will ever be a Muslim. I don't care if the article was rude. It wasn't, really. It was just inaccurate--on two points.

* Of course, something that they might want to think about, that's environmental and not psychological, is population. In sub-Saharan Africa, fighting men may be more precious, as they are ravaged by AIDS, other diseases, drug addiction, lack of health administration, and so on. Whereas the Gaza Strip is one of the most overpopulated places on Earth. I think that might be more of a factor than either marriage customs or concept of heaven.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

I wish I could speak to you in person about this topic. Your comments spin all kinds of ideas and this is rich stuff for examining wars, soldiers, patriotism, what an enemy is, the proper enemy, propaganda, and more.

Note... the following comments are not an attempt to disprove anything you've already said. Your comments are good stuff.

At this moment I find the idea of the suicide bomber being 'new' to be a matter of semantics. Yes, a suicidal bomber is a recent thing in warfare, but the suicidal warrior is not, especially if the concept of 'suicide' is open to interpretation. Soldiers are willing to die for their groups. The weapon has changed but the desire to give a life for a cause has not. Witness the suicidal charges by armies as recently as the Iran/Iraq war. We give medals to our own soldiers when they get killed in battle doing "heroic" but ultimately foolish things, if their living is a measure of wisdom. Some of these deaths were "suicidal" even as they heroic. The new thing about the suicide bomber is their 0% survival probability. How is this different from the low percentage survival probability of archetype "suicide missions" from which many soldiers have not returned?

IMO the true measure of suicide is in the eye of the beholder. The concepts of a just war, legal targets and the acceptable enemy/self casualty ratio are all open to interpretation on a culture-by-culture basis. The generic Western 'we' are stuck looking at things from our perspective.

You are an insightful writer who says very true things. I suspect that you would say just as true things, but completely different things, if you were born into another culture or people. I honor you for your willingness to state a point, press a case, and bring enough facts to the table to prove your hypothesis.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but it's your job to tell me how I might view things differently. We must culturally inoculate each other, round the sharper edges, add dimensions to ourselves and each other.

On the note of suicidal soldiers, you speak correctly. But the thing is that if we expand the dimensions of suicidal behavior in war, then we completely explode the statement made by the article, that the majority are Muslim. Muslims do not constitute the majority of the world's population, let alone military population. There are millions of Chinese soldiers who are prepared to die for the state and for Chinese civilization. The only reason they don't do so as quickly is because of the expense of training a whole new soldier. But in a pinch, every Asiatic army, and quite a few non-Asiatic armies, have resorted to human wave attacks, which are sloppier than the most wanton rock-throwing Palestinian youth.

I was arguing in focus, acknowledging their accurate findings if inaccurate reasoning and data. If you open things up, then fine, but it renders the article even more incorrect than I was saying. But then, the article is a means to an end, isn't it?

[iskender.livejournal.com]

And as to your note regarding cultural norms for warfare, point well taken.

But I made a materialistic argument, based in established definitions. I made no moral or value-based argument regarding suicide bombing. I spoke of its presence in various societies and whether it correlates with polygyny or particular metaphysical belief.

I don't get into cultural standards of what's fair and what's not, if I can avoid it. I try to stick to what's quantifiable, which is number of people affected, period of time needed to physically recover, and of course--whether the desired result was achieved, and how it compares to the unforeseen consequences. I'm not going to get into whether suicide bombing is "barbaric" or "insane." But then again, I have a long enough historical memory to remember the acts of most the actors.

[elegy-of-flames.livejournal.com]

I think I'm vaguely disturbed...

Nevertheless, the strong undertone of "biology is destiny" that this article seems to have is probably going to become more and more inaccurate in an industrialised society where, at least for the privileged Westerners, biology is not destiny.

As an example: "Since a man's mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas a woman's is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has."

Speaking as an only daughter, might I advance the hypothesis that, these days, girls are often being raised to fulfill the traditional role of a son. As in #10 on the list, this probably brings complications of its own, but I wonder how matters will stand if we make it another millenium and the species manages to self-select in a way which does not favour a hunter-gatherer mentality.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

I guess all that depends on whether you think we've changed in the last millennium.

[elegy-of-flames.livejournal.com]

That sounds like just the sort of cynical thing I might say ;) Yes, I'd say we have. Not for the better in every way, but certainly the things that need to be involved in the human survival instinct have complexified beyond "feed fight fuck".

[greensh.livejournal.com]

You make some good points. In some part the article's reliance on "biological is destiny" is open to error as much as an examination of work cycles based on pre-electric lighting.

But... that said, I am reminded of the saying, "The more things change, the more they remain the same". I am a believer that our industrialized society is a major catastrophe away from melting down, and humans could easily fully revert back to these biological drivers.

[elegy-of-flames.livejournal.com]

The entire idea of "biological destiny" sounds to me like a very scientific fatalism. Acknowledging that we have certain basic drives does not necessarily lead straight into the idea that our actions will always be motivated by these instincts. Humans have been taught to be rational, to overanalyse, to not always act on impulse. We don't always succeed, of course, but to imply that hind brain imput = output entirely disregards complex filters of morality, self-awareness, and weighing of social consequences that most people will probably indulge in before acting on instinct.

"am a believer that our industrialized society is a major catastrophe away from melting down, and humans could easily fully revert back to these biological drivers." I wish I could argue with you on this one, but I have the same feeling. Nevertheless, I'm uncertain if at the very least the first generation of Apocalypse survivors will immediately pull a Lord of the Flies or if the conditioning of an upbringing where thought is a necessity not just a luxury will change matters, perhaps enough that some of the things we've learned whilst evolving will even be passed on to subsequent generations.

[tinymasterpeace.livejournal.com]

was this a recent issue of Psych Today? I'd like to read the rest of the article...

[greensh.livejournal.com]

The URL is:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml