How can it be evolutionary, when it was different in the 19th Century? You know, when blue was associated with women and pink was a version of red - a strong male color. Come on people!

You beat me to the punch, mirm. Blue was associated with the Virgin Mary, and was considered a demure and delicate color for girls.

UCLAbodyimage, are you listening? Garbage like this is what gives evo psych a bad name among feminists.
A bullshit study is publicized and the results are internalized among the gullible public, which is eager to view men and women as two distinct species.

Could women's supposed preference for pink have anything to do with the fact that it's thrust upon them literally from the moment of birth? And because it's associated with girls (though only since a couple centuries ago), boys avoid it like the plague?

Usually I end up feeling the need to defend the scientific studies that get posted, but this is just about the dumbest study ever. There's absolutely no freaking way they would have obtained those results without starting with the traditional assumption. Their reasons sound like terribly flimsy rationalizations.

I didn't get past this line:

"...basis in evolution in which females developed a preference for reddish colors associated with riper fruit and healthier faces."

So males, then, have a preference for...moldy fruit, and faces with...frostbite? Extreme hypothermia? Black eyes? Am I MISSING something here?

Definitely one of the stupidest studies I've ever heard of. And it didn't even prove the results it purports to prove!: Girls allegedly prefer the "pinker end of the blue spectrum". That's not pink! It's still blue!

Well if you're socialized to pick one color over the other from birth, of course the results of a study of men and women (e.g. adults) is going to show you that women have a preference for pink-er and men for blue-er. Now if they had done this study with men and women who had not been socialized from birth to gravitate toward one color over the other, then yes, I would accept those results as possibly valid.

ugh. "results....is" should be "results....are" awesome.

This past spring one my friends had a baby and I had such a hard time finding clothes that were even remotely gender neutral. Granted, I was shopping at TJ Maxx, but 85% of the baby boy stuff was blue or had a sports motif. I ended up finding an awesome vegetable covered onsie/outfit (which was great because the baby daddy always teases me about being vegan) and a cool orange outfit with a koala on it, but it made me really disappointed that it was so hard. There's almost no choices outside of the pink for girls/blue for boys. And if it's not pink/blue it's lace/sports, flowers/trucks, or something else along those lines.

This study is flawed in so many different ways, I don't even want to go through the list. But, gosh, what bullshit. And it's so true that people are going to read it and internalize and believe it. Ugh!!! It just pisses me off that crap like that is all over the web.

:(

Could women's supposed preference for pink have anything to do with the fact that it's thrust upon them literally from the moment of birth? And because it's associated with girls (though only since a couple centuries ago), boys avoid it like the plague?

Posted by: SarahMC

Gee, ya think? What do people not get about socialization having a hand in development of preferences and perceptions?

ok, this is a small thing, but i think it's important to recognize the thoroughness of the problem. colors and gender conscriptions are thrust on young people BEFORE they are even born.

Hey SarahMC,

I am listening! I completely agree with you that stupid hypotheses like this that reinforce gender stereotypes get lots of attention in the media because people love research that reinforces their pre-existing notions.

Of course that works both ways - the reason this article, out of the dozens of ev psych articles that get mentioned in the news - is on feministing.com is because it appeals to the dominant cultural view on the blog that ev psych = evil.

I think it is important to separate out nonsensical hypotheses (i.e., the one referenced in this study) from well formulated ev psych hypotheses that not only explain human behavior but provide better solutions for improving people's lives (e.g., how chronic stress can damage immune system functioning and how increased social support from peers can buffer that damage; innate face processing mechanisms that can be damaged and result in inability to recognize faces, etc.).

I *DO* think it is plausible that there might be innate preferences for certain colors and hues. It sounds like in this case, however, the researcher didn't know much about evolution and just decided to spin a wacky story.

As a side note, ev psych researchers who actually know something about cross-species color displays and dominance have actually argued the opposite:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0518_050518_redsports.html

Sadly, it's true. I belong to a knitting community on LiveJournal and you would not believe the number of persons there (mostly female, but we've caught knitting!males doing it too) worrying that if they knit a boy something in pink or any other pastel shade it won't be "masculine" enough.

(Or, as we're inclined to say elsewhere - don't dress that baby boy in pink! His penis might fall off! Or a girl in blue might suddenly grow one.)

"Could women's supposed preference for pink have anything to do with the fact that it's thrust upon them literally from the moment of birth? And because it's associated with girls (though only since a couple centuries ago), boys avoid it like the plague?"

SarahMC - your explanation seems, by far, to be a far more reasonable interpretation of the results. My guess is most ev psych researchers would agree with you.

The evolutionary theory it's based on is pretty controversial, as well - the evidence for the sexual division of labour throughout human evolution is disputed. It's interesting that the idea of picking out ripe fruit against a leafy background is recycled from a theory concerning the evolution of primates' relatively large brains.

"UCLAbodyimage, are you listening? Garbage like this is what gives evo psych a bad name among feminists."

And among scientists, for that matter. I don't think she is an evolutionary psychologist - looking over her CV, there is nothing to suggest specialty in using evolutionary approaches to understand human behavior. Rather, seems like she latched on to a folk notion of the ancestral past.

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/anya.hurlbert/

I don't disagree with you at all that studies like this can be damaging - I can see some random person being like "der, see, girls are programmed to like pink" as a way of maintaining the current status quo, which is pink = girly = weak, and blue = boy = strong. I agree with you completely that can be damaging and needs to be fought against.

My reaction was exactly Quizzical1's - the study proves absolutely nothing about PINK. It proves that women preferred more reddish blues - i.e., indigo or purple. Yet Reuters, TIME, every other news outlet headlined the story "Women Like Pink!" GAH.

It can be hard to find, but baby and toddler clothes, toys and accessories can be found in pastel purple, yellow and green.

Most of the stuff is pink or blue/flowers or sports, but some neutral stuff is out there. Target has a good selection--their website even lets you shop by color.

UGH!

Cupcakesofdeath, my husband had the same reaction as you. He's been teasing me that he now has a 'biological imperative for necrophilia' since obviously men prefer the skintone of a recently dead woman!

This version of the article made me even more frustrated; http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2881412.ece

It has the following gem, explaining why men would prefer blue. "I would favour evolutionary arguments here," she said. "Going back to our 'savannah' days, we would have a natural preference for a blue sky, because it signalled good weather."

Umm... liking blue sky could have absolutely no effect on the process of natural selection, because liking it doesn't mean you can choose it. Being able to discern between blue and grey? Perhap useful. Liking blue over grey - very little use unless you can't otherwise tell the difference between rain and not-rain, cloud and clear. Do these scientists actually understand natural selection and evolutionary theory?

When will the media start actually questioning this tripe instead of reporting the press releases verbatim. It's completely worthless research. Even if the same preference is found in Asian women, as suggested by the Independent article, the speculation for such a preference existing is completely faulty.

Hrm... thats why in the early 20th century and the hundreds of preceeding years, pink was for boys (as a shade of red, a manly, powerful color that stood out) and blue was for girls (as it was then considered dainty and demure).

Can anyone say media/parents/etc cause this and NOT biology? :P

not only is this a dumb article, but it's veritably offensive!
by writing "Hurlbert believes women's preference for pink may have evolved on top of a natural, universal preference for blue," the article is belying a patriarchal bias of male/masculine as natural/normative and female/feminine as derivative! that angered the crap out of me.
how the hell could they be arguing for a biological basis if they are using grown SOCIALIZED men and women in their study?!?
furthermore, on the petty factual level: Eve ate no apple. the whole apple image is a late christian invention, when apple became the european fruit du jour. the most ancient traditions suggest a fig. how does that match up with your bullshit theory, Dr. Hurlbert?

Or maybe women gravitate "naturally" toward pink because we've had it shoved down our throats our whole lives. Really, the only way to study this would be to start at birth, raising babies of both sexes in a colorless world, then presenting them with pink and blue and seeing what they prefer. Or something of that nature. But any study where the participants' backgrounds are not monitored will be flawed.

"The evolutionary theory it's based on is pretty controversial, as well - the evidence for the sexual division of labour throughout human evolution is disputed."

That part doesn't seem controversial - The basic research on hunter/horticulturist societies is that women provide most of the calories and this comes mostly from foraging for plants/fruits or small organisms (e.g., insects). Hunting parties are primarily male, although there are a few societies where women undergo intense socialization to become part of war and hunting parties.

What's controversial is whether there are any psychological mechanisms that drive and support these preferences.

Some people argue that because A) Men are bigger and stronger AND B) Women nurse/carry offspring, that sexual divisions in labor simply arise from those two facts. There is no psychological separation of the sexes.

Others argue that since this division has likely occurred for 100,000+ years, that psychological differences would have developed (e.g., women with better better spatial location memory which is critical in patchy foraging would have reproduced most successfully, men with greater mental rotation abilities would have reproduced most successfully). You get the same differences among related species (e.g., moles with patchy vs. stable foraging patterns).

This, of course, does not mean that there is not tremendous variability within sexes on these traits, or that these traits can't be extremely well developed in both sexes.

"Going back to our 'savannah' days, we would have a natural preference for a blue sky, because it signalled good weather."

And there should be a sex difference in this... why?

"Do these scientists actually understand natural selection and evolutionary theory? "

My guess is definitely "no".

"Or maybe women gravitate "naturally" toward pink because we've had it shoved down our throats our whole lives. Really, the only way to study this would be to start at birth, raising babies of both sexes in a colorless world, then presenting them with pink and blue and seeing what they prefer."

Or, less draconian: Recruit 50 male and 50 female newborns. Present them with blue or pink slides and measure gaze length. If there is a sex difference, then this shows that newborn boys and girls process colors differently.

Similar studies have been done assessing newborns attention to faces prerated as attractive vs. unattractive.

"Or maybe women gravitate "naturally" toward pink because we've had it shoved down our throats our whole lives."

I think here it important to distinguish the headline from the study. As I understand it, the study didn't find that women prefer pink. Rather they prefer more reddish shades of blue.

Certainly in other species you get divergence among the sexes in preferences for red vs. blue.

For example, among sticklebacks, red is preferred more strongly by females. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/full/411944a0.html

So the idea that there could be sex differences in color preferences doesn't seem too unreasonable. In any case, though, it sounds like it was just a post-hoc story rather than a clearly formulated hypothesis that was tested.

Yes, studies with newborns or cross-cultural studies (hmm, do they honestly think pink=female is really universal?) would be extremely telling studies.

I found that article kind of idiotic. The thing about Eve, seriously? 1) It wasn't an apple, that was just the translation. 2) Like that really happened.

And bluish-red is not pink. It's purple. Do they really think I'm dumb enough to think that the reddish end of the blue spectrum is pink? The pink used to represent little girls looks to me to be pretty smack dab between the yellowish and bluish ends of red, except lightened, of course.

Yeah, UCLAbodyimage, that would be a lot better. heh heh

My draconian idea was born from a combination of my wanting to point out how ludicrous the whole study is and the extreme exhaustion I'm feeling this afternoon.

I'm sorry...this was a PAID research project? Who the hell funds this shit, and why can't they find something...I don't know...of greater import to humanity or the earth or really anything at all? Who the hell does this affect? How is this psychology? Opinions are subjective, and opinions are the uncontrolled variable here, what with opinions being taught (putting nerdily what SarahMC has said). I am amazed that they pass this off as science, let alone anything worth throwing money at. Good fucking grief.

"I'm sorry...this was a PAID research project? Who the hell funds this shit, and why can't they find something...I don't know...of greater import to humanity or the earth or really anything at all?"

Why fund it? Just off the top of my head, seems like a lot of important reasons. For example, identifying sex differences in the ability to process colors is tremendously important in terms of determining whether men or women are disadvantaged by certain screen computer screen color settings used in the workplace. Why study preferences? Clear marketing importance here in terms of identifying what might be most appealing brand logos or materials for men vs. women. And, more generally, to see how socialization might wire men and women's brains differently. Etc.

I'm not gonna lie: I'm a girl, and I love pink. Hot pink. But I love blue too. Does that make me a hermaphrodite?

Augh, this study was as pointless as the one trying to find out why Americans dislike beets.

When I saw the picture of newborn babies lying side by side in the photograph, I thought they were going to say they tested infants and discovered that even BABY boys & girls respectively preferred blue & pink. But no...they just used adults, and as we all know, adults are NEVER socially conditioned to like certain things.

Wow, this just got even more unscientific...

"For men, thinking about colors was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it, Hurlbert said."

Right...because all of our evolutionary traits come from our cavemen ancestors...and cavemen had guns.

I think I would have screwed up that study...

Actually, the "hunters just need to spot something dark and shoot it" thing made me think "what the hell are they hunting that's blue?"

Honestly, I'm drawing a blank on that one. If it's the hunter/gatherer thing, wouldn't it make sense for men to prefer brown? It seems like they'd hunt more brown animals than blue ones.

"The evolutionary theory it's based on is pretty controversial, as well - the evidence for the sexual division of labour throughout human evolution is disputed."

That part doesn't seem controversial - The basic research on hunter/horticulturist societies is that women provide most of the calories and this comes mostly from foraging for plants/fruits or small organisms (e.g., insects). Hunting parties are primarily male, although there are a few societies where women undergo intense socialization to become part of war and hunting parties.

I agree. Societies with a high infant and maternal mortality rate simply don't survive without putting extra emphasis on the survival of the females. In the worst case scenario, 10 females + 1 male = Next generation. 1 female + 10 males = Lucky to have 3 survive to adulthood.

I say we just nominate the guy for an ignoble and forget the study ever happened.

The more attention we pay to 'studies' like this one, the less time spend on the real problems and issues that effect us.

@ ucla: "tremendously important" about color screens? good lord, surely ye jest.
Hi, I am a mech. design engr. I spend all day in front of two (occasionally three!) computer screens, whirling three dimensional models through and across them pretty much all day, every day. There is NOTHING to bitch about, no difference between the eighty men I work with and...I think two other women...and...well, color levels are adjustable (rgb values by number on your monitor), then aren't they?
Am I ignorant of some awesome obscure computer fact, like women can only see red? I can see how this sort of thing would be relevant to the colorblind, but as far as I know, that affects BOTH genders...
And in response to marketing, I hardly recognize that as on equal par with understanding things like why some people get brain aneyurisms or what have you. I suppose its useful to some one, but I do wish they would find something less subjective to go on about.

"UCLAbodyimage, are you listening? Garbage like this is what gives evo psych a bad name among feminists."

OTOH, don't forget the other garbage which gives evo psych a bad name by not considering *enough* genetics. Ever noticed how some people will claim a woman is "unnatural" for wanting to earn a living (and put food on the table) for herself, as if we're not also organisms with the instinct to go get stuff (like food)?

"There's almost no choices outside of the pink for girls/blue for boys."

That's not only sexist but less profitable. I once saw a department store stock a lot of newborn stuff in pink, blue, and green.

If it had only stocked pink and blue baby clothes then a customer who thought "girls shouldn't wear blue, boys shouldn't wear pink, and my friend won't tell me the sex of her upcoming baby" might have been less likely to buy a baby clothes present at all. Meanwhile, doesn't green look good on everyone? :)

"although there are a few societies where women undergo intense socialization to become part of war and hunting parties."

Now I'm curious - where and when?

@ ucla: "tremendously important" about color screens? good lord, surely ye jest.
Hi, I am a mech. design engr. I spend all day in front of two (occasionally three!) computer screens, whirling three dimensional models through and across them pretty much all day, every day. There is NOTHING to bitch about, no difference between the eighty men I work with and...I think two other women...and...well, color levels are adjustable (rgb values by number on your monitor), then aren't they?
Am I ignorant of some awesome obscure computer fact, like women can only see red? I can see how this sort of thing would be relevant to the colorblind, but as far as I know, that affects BOTH genders...
And in response to your marketing point, I hardly recognize filling the land with more CRAP to buy and sell on equal par with understanding things like why some people get brain aneyurisms or what have you. I suppose its useful to some one, but I do wish they would find something less subjective to go on about.

ugh, double post. my bad...firefox behaves irrationally with any posting on here (for me at least)!

"The evolutionary theory it's based on is pretty controversial, as well - the evidence for the sexual division of labour throughout human evolution is disputed."

Really, the whole thing is more a Rohrschach (or perhaps TAT) test than anything else. It's an attempt to draw very detailed sociocultural conclusions from sparse and inconclusive data. In that setting, people will tend to interpret the data in terms of how they understand contemporary society.

It's impossible to be entirely sure whether a set of bones one is looking at is male or female without making a number of assumptions, at least one of which is quite dubious: that bone structure — and sex differences in bone structure — have remained entirely constant since prehistory. Since there have been significant changes in bone structure in men and women in a lot of places in just the past hundred years (average height, in particular, has been increasing), it would take more than just bones (especially incomplete skeletons) to determine anything about gendered division of labour.

"It's impossible to be entirely sure whether a set of bones one is looking at is male or female without making a number of assumptions, at least one of which is quite dubious: that bone structure — and sex differences in bone structure — have remained entirely constant since prehistory."

Which reminds me, how sure are they that Flores Woman was female?

http://www.primates.com/homo-floresiensis/nothob.html

Males are more likely to be color blind (by a huge margin). Reds and greens are the most popular colors that are not seen very well. It's a cone thing in the eyes. Google it! The info is all there. I think males can see blue better than pink. I agree "they" should pick some better gender-based color preferences (haha, just kidding). BTW, I'm comfortable with the idea that women are smarter than men.

@oread -- Actually, red-green color blindness is sex linked (recessive, X-chromosome only), meaning men are much more likely to be affected. It's not a severe disability; my husband and brother both have it, and my brother didn't even know he was until he was 17 and couldn't get into the Air Force because of it. There is definitely a difference in perception, though; a lot of pink or bright greens appear grey or tan to them, they can't distinguish well between bright red and bright green, traffic lights would be a problem if red and green weren't always in the same location.

I could see how non-color-blind individuals would like pink more, because it would not look dull or greyish. And since men are more likely to be red-green color blind, sure, women are more likely to like pink. However, given the conclusions that the researchers seem to have come to regarding their results, I suspect they did not attempt to correct for color blindness. That would be a pretty elementary mistake for a neuroscientist who appears to specialize in colour perception, though... I wonder!

Can't read the article from Current Biology at the moment, I'll wait until my physicist husband is at work tomorrow and see if he can get in. Free academia access to publications and all that :-)

UCLA: "although there are a few societies where women undergo intense socialization to become part of war and hunting parties."

MINA: "Now I'm curious - where and when?"

It's summarized in more detail in Wendy Wood and Alice Eagly's papers on "social structural theory of sex differences", but here it is in brief:

In the few known societies in which women hunt (Agta of the Philippines, Aka Pygmy of Central Africa), game is available close to home, and thus women of almost all reproductive statuses can hunt accompanied by children. Women in these societies hunt with nets, small bows and arrows, and/or dogs. Cultural customs have developed that sanction women's hunting.

More details:
http://www.duke.edu/~wwood/evolutionary.html

"There is NOTHING to bitch about, no difference between the eighty men I work with and...I think two other women...and...well, color levels are adjustable (rgb values by number on your monitor), then aren't they?"

Well okay then :-)!

But I assume you see my overall point? It would be problematic if:

A) Mostly men are designing and testing X product

B) That product relies on a color configuration that men process more efficiently than women (regardless of origin-socialization, brain-wiring, etc.).

C) That product becomes widely used in businesses.

It is useful to determine whether or not that might be a concern, by examining if there are sex differences in color processing or preferences.

"And in response to your marketing point, I hardly recognize filling the land with more CRAP to buy and sell on equal par with understanding things like why some people get brain aneyurisms or what have you. I suppose its useful to some one, but I do wish they would find something less subjective to go on about."

I don't know about that.

A) I agree that it is important to study how to prevent cancer, heart disease, etc.

B) I don't think every single scientist should be studying those issues. I think there is a huge range of topics that don't have immediate uses (e.g., analyzing women's roles in the 1800s, the rituals of hunter-gatherer societies, the color preferences of men and women) but still are of interest to people, whether it is for practical purpose (e.g., marketing) or simply to more thoroughly understand how different people perceive the world.

"Really, the whole thing is more a Rohrschach (or perhaps TAT) test than anything else. It's an attempt to draw very detailed sociocultural conclusions from sparse and inconclusive data."

Err... I disagree. There are ALOT of things that we can know for certain:

A) Women had higher obligatory parental investment (e.g., pregnancy)

B) Our ancestors faced dangers from a variety of mammals, snakes, spiders, etc.

C) Our ancestors hunted with stone tools

D) They congregated in nomadic groups of 100-150 people

E) They created abstract representations, often focusing on animals and human bodies

F) They killed each other with stone weapons

And so on. From these factors, plus comparative research with other mammals, we can start to draw a reasonable picture of what evolutionary pressures were, and how evolution might have shaped cognitive systems to handle these pressures.

For example, since snakes and spiders were recurrent threats, one might expect that we evolved modules that are particularly hypersensitive to the presence of snakes. Research with both naive monkeys (i.e., ones who have never seen snakes) and humans confirm this hypothesis.

Hrm... It seems that studies are scientific even if they ignore the scientific method and small things like societal conditioning. Ahh, how lovely to know that it is the /real/ scientists who get funding. Next grant will go to a man who proves that global warming is just a result of Stadium lighting. Those bulbs just produce too much heat!

I just want to second all the comments that this study is terribly flawed. As many have mentioned, the study completely ignores socialization. I can't imagine this study was done by any reputable institution.

Some studies that find innate differences between men and women deserve a careful critical evaluation, but this is definitely not one of them.

Okey doke, if you can get around the sticky little issue of post hoc hypothesizing. Personally, I'm a stickler for that one.

And if you are comfortable with the fact that you are likely examining the past through your current cultural lens. That's a tough one.

Err... I disagree. There are ALOT of things that we can know for certain:

From which one could conclude just about anything (especially if one ignores significant cultural differences in gendered distribution of labour and in concepts of gender). Fertile ground for the Rosenthal effect.

"From which one could conclude just about anything"

If by "conclude anything" you mean derive testable and falsifiable hypotheses, then yes, I agree with you.

"(especially if one ignores significant cultural differences in gendered distribution of labour and in concepts of gender)."

Not really sure what your getting at... Cross-cultural variation certainly doesn't negate evolutionary explanations for behavior. For example:

Gangestad, S. G., Haselton, M. G., & Buss, D. M. (2006). Evolutionary foundations of cultural variation: Evoked culture and mate preferences. Psychological Inquiry, 17(2), 75-95.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/EPculture.pdf

For example, since snakes and spiders were recurrent threats, one might expect that we evolved modules that are particularly hypersensitive to the presence of snakes. Research with both naive monkeys (i.e., ones who have never seen snakes) and humans confirm this hypothesis.

Well, I saw a documentary about that a while ago and it showed that naive monkeys were not initially afraid of snakes until they saw their peers' reaction of fear. Only then were they frightened. It was therefore concluded that fear of snake is instilled by socialization and not instinctive. So what is your point?

And this is scientifically significant HOW?? For real, who decides that THIS is a top priority in research?

what a waste in academic funding. seriously.

UCLA, I don't want to jump the gun here, b/c I only just started reading it, but The Invisible Sex talks about how women's supposed roles in prehistory are quite controversial, and that there is almost no definitive evidence that men were always the hunters and women always the gatherers. I'm sure I'll have more to say on the subject when I'm finished with the book, but it seems like people read their cultural norms into pretty skeletal evidence.

It's impossible to be entirely sure whether a set of bones one is looking at is male or female without making a number of assumptions, at least one of which is quite dubious: that bone structure — and sex differences in bone structure — have remained entirely constant since prehistory. Since there have been significant changes in bone structure in men and women in a lot of places in just the past hundred years (average height, in particular, has been increasing), it would take more than just bones (especially incomplete skeletons) to determine anything about gendered division of labour.

Exactly - couple this with the fact that the first major discoveries of early hominin stone tools and 'home base' sites were made in the early 20th century, and the assumptions about gendered division of labour get even more fishy.

UCLA - I'm not saying that it doesn't happen now, but this research suggests that this division goes a long way back into human evolution - and that you really can't extrapolate from behaviour of anatomically and behaviourally modern humans to make assumptions about other hominin species.

Which reminds me, how sure are they that Flores Woman was female?

Mina: I think it's because they were able to look at features of the pelvis, which is more reliable for sexing skeletons than cranial markers. Since a lot of fossil finds tend to be cranial, it follows that these would be harder to sex accurately. The flores find was also remarkably complete, which helps. I guess there's always a degree of uncertainty, though!

Sistercoyote said:Sadly, it's true. I belong to a knitting community on LiveJournal and you would not believe the number of persons there (mostly female, but we've caught knitting!males doing it too) worrying that if they knit a boy something in pink or any other pastel shade it won't be "masculine" enough.
(sorry not sure how to quote)

At a craft fair recently I found someone local who knits ponchos for children and wanted one for my son. "But you wouldn't put a poncho on a boy!" When I said "why not?", she quickly changed her mind (the customer is always right).
So, not just the colour, but the type of clothing matters. She had another fit when I wanted a purple one rather than blue, of course. :)

This whole study probably cost as much as enrolling three new subjects to one of the protocols I'm working with, so unless you're worried about improving my statistical power by 0.002, the cost of stuff like this shouldn't worry you too much.

If we're going to continue to graduate a zillion more social science researchers than there are faculty positions and research funding to support all of them, we might as well give a few of them something to do :0) Sorta like the Public Works Administration for the social sciences?

I almost wore a pink tie today with my blue shirt, but my wife vetoed the tie. Where does that leave us?!?!

Actually, I have no problem dressing the boy (scheduled to appear in 10 weeks, thank god) in all blue, but I will be GODDAMNED if I dress my infant son in camo.

I would totally dress a girl in blue, but I sort of hesitate at dressing my boy in pink. I'm not sure how much of this is my love for blue and dislike of really pink things, and how much is my social conditioning. I think more of it is social conditioning than I'm comfortable admitting, so I suppose I should pony up and get the boy a pink onesie.

Also, my extremely masculine father wears pink shirts, and looks damn good.

what do you think the odds are that a lot of conservative folk (socially, not necessarily politically) agree with the conclusions of this, because it's what they want to hear?

...and how many of those same ones might not be the biggest fans of evolutionary theories in other cases?

I feel like studies like this aren't doing us too much good if we can't even convince a chunk of the population that evolution EXISTS, let alone helped dictate color preference.

(also, the recent trend of pink polos, t-shirts for guys...do the runways trump evolution?)

what do you think the odds are that a lot of conservative folk (socially, not necessarily politically) agree with the conclusions of this, because it's what they want to hear?

...and how many of those same ones might not be the biggest fans of evolutionary theories in other cases?

I feel like studies like this aren't doing us too much good if we can't even convince a chunk of the population that evolution EXISTS, let alone helped dictate color preference.

(also, the recent trend of pink polos, t-shirts for guys...do the runways trump evolution?)

what do you think the odds are that a lot of conservative folk (socially, not necessarily politically) agree with the conclusions of this, because it's what they want to hear?

...and how many of those same ones might not be the biggest fans of evolutionary theories in other cases?

I feel like studies like this aren't doing us too much good if we can't even convince a chunk of the population that evolution EXISTS, let alone helped dictate color preference.

(also, the recent trend of pink polos, t-shirts for guys...do the runways trump evolution?)

what do you think the odds are that a lot of conservative folk (socially, not necessarily politically) agree with the conclusions of this, because it's what they want to hear?

...and how many of those same ones might not be the biggest fans of evolutionary theories in other cases?

I feel like studies like this aren't doing us too much good if we can't even convince a chunk of the population that evolution EXISTS, let alone helped dictate color preference.

(also, the recent trend of pink polos, t-shirts for guys...do the runways trump evolution?)

what do you think the odds are that a lot of conservative folk (socially, not necessarily politically) agree with the conclusions of this, because it's what they want to hear?

...and how many of those same ones might not be the biggest fans of evolutionary theories in other cases?

I feel like studies like this aren't doing us too much good if we can't even convince a chunk of the population that evolution EXISTS, let alone helped dictate color preference.

(also, the recent trend of pink polos, t-shirts for guys...do the runways trump evolution?)

Yeah, this article is such crap! I don't see any credible evidence to suggest that it's biologically ingrained in women to prefer pink over blue. It's our cultural traditions that established these two colors for male and female, not some subconcioius connection to biology. It's like that crazy article saying hanging around heavy weight people is going to make you gain weight! I especially love when they try to trace it back to "Hunter Gatherer" days when I have yet to see any clear connection between the two. And which women are we speaking about here? I didn't see anything that could lead me to believe this is universally true. Why do people waste their time with these things?

Sorry, my previous comment got posted twice accidentally. Another thing I wanted to mention, did anyone else hate the color pink when they were younger due to Barbie? I used to love Barbie dolls but I hated the color pink because literally everything was that color.

Wait...I've thought I was a female lo, these 26 years. Now I find out that, since I prefer sky blue to pink, I must be transgendered! My husband may be disappointed...

"Well, I saw a documentary about that a while ago and it showed that naive monkeys were not initially afraid of snakes until they saw their peers' reaction of fear. Only then were they frightened. It was therefore concluded that fear of snake is instilled by socialization and not instinctive."

The experiment you are referencing actually showed the opposite.

It showed that naive monkeys who are shown videos of other monkeys responding fearfully to models of snakes immediately begin showing fear of snakes themselves. One trial learning.

Naive monkeys who are shown videos of monkeys responding fearfully to other models (e.g., rabbits) did not immediately show fear reactions to rabbits (and other models, except crododiles, which also prey on monkeys).

Why is this important? It shows that 1) monkeys have an evolved predisposition to learn fear of snakes AND 2) possibly have an predisposition to imitate the behaviors of others who express fear (what you called "socialization").

"So what is your point?"

That evolved mechanisms clearly shape learning behaviors. And, more importantly, it has helped clinicians develop better treatments for phobias. Those who wish to ignore evolved influences on human behavior and physiology should note that there are costs to doing so.

There is a nice review of the behavioral and neurobiological evidence for anti-predator modules by Susan Mineka. Here is the abstract:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8721.01211

Here is a different one with more information:

http://www.loc.gov/loc/brain/emotion/Mineka.html

Did you see the Today Show segment about tomboys? It reinforced the boys and girls as polar opposites idea.

Elise said: "...From which one could conclude just about anything..."

UCLAbodyimage said: "If by "conclude anything" you mean derive testable and falsifiable hypotheses, then yes, I agree with you.

Without putting words in her mouth, that does not remotely seem to be what she meant.

Using evolution as an explanation for current behavior is an interesting mental exercise, but it is postdictive. The hypotheses generated are necessarily post-hoc (unless you are studying evolution in, say, fruit flies or the like). Tiffanymichelle pointed out that studies like the one referenced violate scientific method.

When you violate scientific method, you can run studies that generate useful information. You can, however, just as easily run studies that support lameass assertions like "girls just like pink, boys like blue; blue-liking is nature's default and girls are nature's special, little un-boys."

That you sometimes get useful information is probably a good thing. It goes as far in defense of the methodology, though, as claiming that Tarot readings often result in good practical advice being given.

"UCLA - that you really can't extrapolate from behaviour of anatomically and behaviourally modern humans to make assumptions about other hominin species."

"UCLA, I don't want to jump the gun here, b/c I only just started reading it, but The Invisible Sex talks about how women's supposed roles in prehistory are quite controversial, and that there is almost no definitive evidence that men were always the hunters and women always the gatherers"

I'm certainly not saying that we know exactly what life was like 10,000-100,000 years ago! Or that our current cultural beliefs don't "color" our interpretations of existing evidence.

What I am saying is that we can make a number of reasonable assumptions in some areas, and derive testable predictions. For example, we can be pretty sure that human females had estrus/ovulatory cycles (it would be extremely odd if they became absent in humans and then reappeared, since every primate female shows these).

We can then reason that ovulation in humans, like in primates, that ovulation increases sexual arousal and specifically arousal to individuals displaying cues to good health and robust condition. So now we have a reasoned hypothesis and can test if it is true. About three dozen independent studies show this effect, and that some birth control (which mimics pregnancy) blunts this effect.

What I am saying is we can make some reasonable assumptions about the past (e.g., that we faced predators, that we lived in cooperative groups and keep track of different members, to learn socially transmitted information) and then think about what types of neural systems might be adaptive (e.g., snake-fear module, face-processing module, cheater-detection module).

Now that we are thinking that way, we can make one of two assumptions:

A) That each brain, indepedently, solves these problems from scratch by building up modules (i.e. cogntive systems)

B) That it would be more efficient to have evolved modules that process these problems.

Most evolutionary psychologists think B), that evolution crafted a series of modules dedicated to solving problems that we repeatedly faced in our evolutionary past. There are some "connectionist" researchers who argue for A, and then people argue about to what degree the brain is connectionist vs. modularized, and whether it is connectionist or modularized in a specific case. For example, do we have a system that evolved specifically to process faces, or a system that evolved to process complex objects, which then gets used to process faces?

If you are thinking like that, you are thinking like an evolutionary psychologist.

What peeves some people is that across species, there are a number of systematic sex differences in behavior, particulary in certain ecologies, and people get nervous that identifying similar differences in humans might reinforce stereotypes.

Others (e.g., my female advisor) view it differently: Rather than denying that women have a rich ancestral history that designed their physiological and cognitive systems, we should not assume that women are simply carbon copies of men but should test whether they have their own specialized evolved cognitive systems. In doing so, we should use what we know from archaelogical, anthropological, psychological, neurobiological, and biological research.

Has anyone gone back and tracked done the actual study?

My understanding is they do have a real finding...they do observe cross-cultural preference for color that was not predicted by hypothesis (ie Chinese participants would prefer red).

That's a real scientific finding if the study was done correctly.

What pisses me off is that, like many of you noticed...the study author's then jump their speculation to biological determinism?! What the fuck!

Here was my take on it Let's Color Ourselves in Pink And Blue

Right...because all of our evolutionary traits come from our cavemen ancestors...and cavemen had guns.

Without putting words in her mouth, that does not remotely seem to be what she meant.

What I meant was that, when you combine a poorly understood field, sparse and inconclusive data, and a direct relation to how society functions, it's not surprising that the findings correlate more than anything with the personal ideologies of those making them (the Rosenthal Effect).

Falsifiability is just one prerequisite of a scientific theory (albeit an essential one). Alone, it doesn't mean much. If I state that soot is the elixir of life (thank you, Eddie Izzard), I have advanced a completely falsifiable proposition; you can test it and it can be found to be false. But we would rightly laugh at any purportedly scientific journal publishing a paper making the assertion (at least in the hard, natural sciences we would; in the social sciences it might just win an award). The problem with "evolutionary psychology" is that, even more so than psychology in general, it has not really come up with any nontrivial theoretical contributions.

This is not surprising; what we know about the human mind/brain is quite limited. For the most part, we are still at the descriptive level, despite all the progress we have been making. There is very little about human behaviour about which we can reliably say more than that it is probably the result of a combination of psychosocial and biological factors.

Against this background, it is easily possible to construct an evolutionary "theory" (in the lax sense used in the social sciences) explaining any aspect of human behaviour with a minimum of thought or effort. If I wanted to dedicate the time and energy to it, I could probably come up with an evolutionary theory of the QWERTY keyboard, and it would be no less nontrivial, falsifiable, and explanatorily and descriptively adequate than most of what "evolutionary psychology" has put out.

"This is not surprising; what we know about the human mind/brain is quite limited."

Exactly. And taking an evolutionary perspective is what generates oodles (oodles!) of findings about HOW the mind is structured, ranging from how brain systems regulate feeding to how they process self-vs-other information. I've given a bunch of examples earlier in the thread.

"If I wanted to dedicate the time and energy to it, I could probably come up with an evolutionary theory of the QWERTY keyboard, and it would be no less nontrivial, falsifiable, and explanatorily and descriptively adequate than most of what "evolutionary psychology" has put out."

Err... I doubt it. I somehow doubt you could make the argument that keyboard typing was a recurrent adaptive threat faced by humans that would generate specific evolved responses....

Somehow I don't think your qwerty keyboard theory would be in anyway comparable to theories about how parasite prevalence should impact human mating systems, how emotions function to respond to recurring adaptive problems, or how physiological systems are designed to respond to social stressors.

Your qwerty hypothesis seems pretty lame, in comparison to the ev psych research you are quick to denigrate.

"If I state that soot is the elixir of life (thank you, Eddie Izzard), I have advanced a completely falsifiable proposition; you can test it and it can be found to be false. But we would rightly laugh at any purportedly scientific journal publishing a paper making the assertion (at least in the hard, natural sciences we would; in the social sciences it might just win an award)."

Err.. No offense, but you really are making no sense at all...

"Using evolution as an explanation for current behavior is an interesting mental exercise, but it is postdictive. The hypotheses generated are necessarily post-hoc (unless you are studying evolution in, say, fruit flies or the like). Tiffanymichelle pointed out that studies like the one referenced violate
scientific method."

And yet I've given a number of examples on this thread which show exactly the opposite (e.g., effects of ovulatory cycle on mate preferences, prepared learning for predator avoidance, face-processing mechanisms, etc.). All of these hypotheses are derivable only from an evolutionary perspective, all of which can be confirmed or falsified, none of which can be explained from a strict social constructionist perspective.

So your vague charges that they "violate the scientific method" or "are necessarily post-hoc" are just flat out wrong.

Err.. No offense, but you really are making no sense at all...

I was pointing out that it makes very little sense to congratulate evolutionary psychology for coming out with "theories" that are falsifiable, as if that were some kind of feat. Falsifiability is an important requirement for a scientific theory, but it is hardly the only one.

Exactly. And taking an evolutionary perspective is what generates oodles (oodles!) of findings about HOW the mind is structured, ranging from how brain systems regulate feeding to how they process self-vs-other information.

That is precisely what it does not do. Even neuroscience — where they actually do brain research — is quite far from the point of being able to pose questions about the structure of the mind/brain (only evolutionary psychologists could have missed the memo that this dualism is pretty much dead), because it is still struggling to reach descriptive adequacy with regard to the structure and function of the brain.

It is unsurprising tha the pronouncements get more confident and categorical, the farther they are removed from the actual science of the brain.

"That is precisely what it does not do. Even neuroscience — where they actually do brain research — is quite far from the point of being able to pose questions about the structure of the mind/brain (only evolutionary psychologists could have missed the memo that this dualism is pretty much dead), because it is still struggling to reach descriptive adequacy with regard to the structure and function of the brain."

Well first of all, evolutionary cognitive neuroscience is one of the fastest growing disciplines of neuroscience. Here is a good example of that kind of work:

Duchaine,B., Yovel,G., Butterworth,E., Nakayama,K. (2006). Prosopagnosia as an impairment to face-specific mechanisms: elimination of the alternative hypotheses in a developmental case. Cognitive Neuropsychology 23(5), pp.714-747.

I think "lame neuroscience" is the type of neuroscience that just tries to figure out which brain systems light up to a given stimulus.

The more exciting research (conducted by both evolutionary and non-evolutionary neuroscientist) is identifying systems within the brain.

For example, research on how feelings of emotional pain are partially generated using physical pain processing centers in the brain, and how this overlap evolved:

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 294-300.

http://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/WhyRejectionHurts(TICS).pdf

"I was pointing out that it makes very little sense to congratulate evolutionary psychology for coming out with "theories" that are falsifiable"

Okay. Some people were claiming that evolutionary hypotheses aren't testable/falsifiable - thought that was what you were getting at.

"(only evolutionary psychologists could have missed the memo that this dualism is pretty much dead)"

That's funny because It seems to me that ev psych folks think the exact opposite.

Specifically, that cognition is firmly rooted in brain systems, that physiological and visceral responses impact the operation of these systems, and that these systems respond to hormonal, environmental, and social cues. That's pretty much what ev psych folks study on a day to day basis.

For example, my dissertation focuses on the impact of visceral experiences (e.g., hunger and chronic hunger) on cognitive systems designed to increase or decrease willingness to delay gratification and impulsivity - essentially the interface of evolved hunger systems and pursuit of reward regulation systems, particularly in the face of chronic stressors. How is that assuming a mind-body dualism?

Some ev psych folks use cogneuro techniques, others using priming studies, others use hormonal assays, others use paper-pencil measures, etc - but pretty much all start with the assumption that there are specific physiological and neurobiological systems that evolved to respond to certain stimuli or conditions in order to motivate behavior.

Okay. Some people were claiming that evolutionary hypotheses aren't testable/falsifiable - thought that was what you were getting at.

Well, some of them (those even more intellectually sloppy than the norm) aren't, but most of them are tripped up on other elements of a proper scientific theory.

For example, my dissertation focuses on the impact of visceral experiences (e.g., hunger and chronic hunger) on cognitive systems designed to increase or decrease willingness to delay gratification and impulsivity - essentially the interface of evolved hunger systems and pursuit of reward regulation systems, particularly in the face of chronic stressors. How is that assuming a mind-body dualism?

Without commenting on your dissertation topic, I was referring to your use of the word "mind" rather than "brain" or "mind/brain".

Some ev psych folks use cogneuro techniques, others using priming studies, others use hormonal assays, others use paper-pencil measures, etc - but pretty much all start with the assumption that there are specific physiological and neurobiological systems that evolved to respond to certain stimuli or conditions in order to motivate behavior.

And there's the problem. It makes very little sense to assume something that must first be proven. It is one thing to start on the basis that evolution has taken place; that's even been reproduced in laboratories by now. It is quite another thing to assume that specific human behaviours are the product of evolved neurophysiological traits. Because these are rather poorly understood matters, the presumptions are often decisive. If I assume, for example, that the division of social life into the domestic/public sphere is an evolved species trait, I will likely find exactly that (as some evolutionary psychologists claim to have done, often by ignoring historical and cross-cultural data). If, on the other hand, I assume that it is probably at least in part a societally created condition that is merely one possible form of human social relations, my findings will most likely correspond well to that assumption.

I think "lame neuroscience" is the type of neuroscience that just tries to figure out which brain systems light up to a given stimulus.

The more exciting research (conducted by both evolutionary and non-evolutionary neuroscientist) is identifying systems within the brain.

This is a false dichotmy. "Figuring out which brain systems [regions would be more accurate] light up to a given stimulus" is one of the more important methodologies for "identifying systems within the brain". It is, in some ways, a significant advance over the traditional lesion method, which used functional changes in the setting of localised brain lesions to draw conclusions about the functional subdivisions of the brain, in that it at least avoids the recurrent question of whether a particular behavioural change is caused by a lesion to a particular region or by the rest of the brain remaining intact.

One of the really frustrating things about modern neuroscience is that we really aren't in a position to start asking the really interesting questions in a systematic way. One of the biggest flaws of a lot of evolutionary psychology is that it tries to skip over this "lame" stuff in order to draw broad, sweeping conclusions about the interesting issues.

UCLA, here's Amanda's take on it.

Denialism Blog is debating this issue too and one of the comments actually reads "AND they spent more time looking for animals, with the background being the BLUE sky.
AND the women sought out berries and fruit, pink, and red in colour.
Mark, the problem with Americana, is it's complete disregard for those who disagree with the US PC brigade, including the evil feminists who are gender confused.
Fuck off America, your empire is in terminal decline, and start to learn from we indiginous peoples that pink is for girls and blue is for boys!" That is the problem with research like this being discussed by Reuters and CBS as thought it were legit - it makes people think that their own stupid anti-woman rhetoric makes sense.

The above link doesn't seem to work - sorry! To visit Denialism Blog, go to http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/

"UCLA, here's Amanda's take on it."

Hey Sarah, I think that is all reasonable what she (and you) are saying - that some ev psych stuff gets used in bad ways.

But the point I'm trying to get across is that there is such a huge range of things ev psych people study. Here is a good sampling if you peruse the titles:

http://www.bec.ucla.edu/BECSpeakerSeries.htm

The reason I am so excited about the ev psych approach is that I really think it provides a method for A) solving many problems more efficiently and B) better understanding human behavior. I don't think I need to be anti-evolutionary in order to be pro-feminist.

"UCLA, here's Amanda's take on it."

Hey Sarah, I think that is all reasonable what she (and you) are saying - that some ev psych stuff gets used in bad ways.

But the point I'm trying to get across is that there is such a huge range of things ev psych people study. Here is a good sampling if you peruse the titles:

http://www.bec.ucla.edu/BECSpeakerSeries.htm

The reason I am so excited about the ev psych approach is that I really think it provides a method for A) solving many problems more efficiently and B) better understanding human behavior. I don't think I need to be anti-evolutionary in order to be pro-feminist.

But the point I'm trying to get across is that there is such a huge range of things ev psych people study.

The problem is that the institutional culture of evolutionary psychology has intellectual standards that are even more dismal than the rest of the social sciences. It is that culture that allows manifest idiocy like this "study" to be treated as if it were science.

"One of the really frustrating things about modern neuroscience is that we really aren't in a position to start asking the really interesting questions in a systematic way."

And yet, contrary to your assertions, 100s of neuroscientists are doing precisely that. Here are some examples.

http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol1/issue3/index.dtl

Here is an example of how your perception of the neuroscience field is... odd. Looking at systems in the brain:

http://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/X&Csystem(2007).pdf

"One of the biggest flaws of a lot of evolutionary psychology is that it tries to skip over this "lame" stuff in order to draw broad, sweeping conclusions about the interesting issues."

Oh well if you say so... I've posted a number links to articles by evolutionary psychologists. All of which consider precisely how brain systems a) evolved and b) influence behavior.

Your only response is to just keep claiming that ev psych folks ignore all that good stuff, despite the evidence to the contrary.

You got to admit, the social pain study is pretty damn cool!

Wow. I can't believe someone could so much sexist material into one article. Not only do women like pink, but men don't because it helps them to become better hunters...and Eve picked a red apple thanks to evolution? Please them me this article is really from the Onion and not Reuters.

"The problem is that the institutional culture of evolutionary psychology has intellectual standards that are even more dismal than the rest of the social sciences."

What do you want me to do?

You keep making random unsupported statements.

I keep giving you concrete examples that completely contradict what you say, which you either aren't reading or are simply choosing to ignore.

Do you expect me to accept your random and unsupported statements, or my own eyes which have read 100s of studies that examine how different cognitive systems are instantiated in the brain, tests of these hypotheses, and wide ranging tests that use dozens of different methods to isolate whether there are evolved mechanisms operating to produce behavior.

I mean... seriously?

UCLA, I guess I just don't understand why it would matter if I process colors differently than men. Women and men manage to function pretty well without these sorts of studies coming in to save us from...what? I'm interested in physiological differences only. I don't necessarily believe in tabula rasa...but, most of the things evo psych seem to study look like things that can be chalked up to social conditioning. For me, and maybe I'm completely wrong, but Occam's razor rules. What's more likely? That social conditioning dictates most human behavior or that we come mostly prewired?

"I'm interested in physiological differences only. I don't necessarily believe in tabula rasa..."

I don't understand that view.

A) We know that evolution crafted incredibly complex physiological systems to solve recurring adapative problems in human and nonhuman animals.

B) We know that evolution crafted incredibly complex psychological and behavioral mechanisms in animals that respond contingently to physiological and environmental stimuli in animals.

C) Wouldn't it be surprising if evolution didn't craft incredibly complex psychological and behavioral programs in humans that respond contingently to physiological and environmental stimuli? Doesn't it seem plausible to investigate whether we have evolved systems to help process social norms, social interactions, cooperation and conflict, and other recurring adaptive problems humans have faced for 100,000s of years?

I think everyone can agree that internalizing social norms, responding to social pressures, concerns for reputation, etc., all have powerful effects on human behavior. Many evolutionary psychologists study these processes, how they might have evolved, and what neural structures support these behaviors.

Why is it important to take an evolutionary approach? There are just so many times when it has proved useful.

For example, women with anorexia display seemingly paradoxical behavior: They are extremely self-controlled in some respects, but extremely impulsive in other respects. At first this seems like a quandary until you consider evolved responses to resource scarcity. Basically, chronic hunger makes animals more risk prone and impulsive. Once you are thinking this way, you can examine the neural reward pathways that encourage impulsivity, the role of seratonin in this, and whether seratonin modifiers might help reduce impulsivity in anorexic women.

You get a whole series of studies like that. Here are some examples of interesting ev psych work that consider more broadly how our evolved psychology influences socialization:

http://www.bec.ucla.edu/BECSpeakerSeries.htm

Some of these topics studied by evolutionary psychologists/anthropologists include:

The Origin of Concepts: The Case of Natural Number

Allies and Rivals: The Complex world of women's social dynamics among the Tsimane of Bolivia

The origins of prosocial preferences

Reciprocity is not sufficient to explain human cooperation

Love and hatred in a world of feedback

Why do patients and religious people perform rituals?

Learning and Transmission of Pottery Style: Women’s Life Histories and Communities of Practice in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Maybe one of the things I'm not explaining well is the idea that evolutionary social scientists view culture, and the processes that support it, as part of evolved adaptations.

Here is a really good book on the relationship between evolved mechanisms and cultures:

Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Paperback)

Peter Richerson and Rob Boyd

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Genes-Alone-Transformed-Evolution/dp/0226712125/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-6231413-0382850?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187881393&sr=8-1

Book Description

Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics.

Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature.

In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come.

No offense, but you really are making no sense at all... She was making sense to me before she took all of that time to explain. You did not understand her comment, which is different from her not making sense.

So your vague charges that they [evolutionary hypotheses]"violate the scientific method" or "are necessarily post-hoc" are just flat out wrong.
It was an assertion and it was apparently specific enough for you to respond to.

I would be "just wrong" if all evolutionary hypotheses concerned themselves solely with phenomena that were verifiably due to evolution alone. That is not the case (even without opening the whole epigenetic can of worms).

I understand that you have special expertise on the topic of evolutionary psychology. However, there is a difference between expertise and authority. You do not have the authority to proclaim me just-wrong in this context. Nor does your authority extend to deciding objectively when people are and are not making sense. Nor is it likely that you are the only person here with any expertise on the matter. You might want to keep a lid on the assumptions.

The fact they'd they'd refer to religious mythology to "prove" their whacked out point is the best part.

"We know men and women are basically different species. Men love blue while women love pink. What can we pull out of our asses to prove that they're wired that way? I know! Adam and Eve!"

COME ON

UCLA, that's what I don't understand, the idea that evo psych supposedly recognizes how powerful social conditioning is, but then says that people have evolved these systems. Now, I recognize that human behavior is a combination of nature and nurture, but it seems contradictory say that social indoctrination is very powerful, so powerful that it can make people do X, but that an evolved system is the cause of that X behavior. Besides which, many of these studies seem to focus on adults. Adults have already been conditioned. There's no way to tell whether what you're observing is a conditioned response or an evolved one. There's no way to separate those things out. That's why I say that I'm only interested in studying differences in the body, instead of differences in behavior or supposed preferences. I know that my heart doesn't function in a way society conditioned it to do. It's not that I think evo psych is awful or anything, I just think it's too full of confounds, and I am more interested in studying differences that you can concretely track the source to, and that can be used for medical treatment.

Hey, kissmypineapple. I would argue that in some ways even your heart functions in the way society conditioned it to. People who are competitive and time-conscious are more prone to heart disease than those who are more easygoing. I don't mean to nitpick, but I can't pass up this opportunity for an example of how the environment affects things we might not logically expect it to affect.

I agree with you completely that the puzzle gets even more complicated when you are looking at behavior of adult humans.

"It's not that I think evo psych is awful or anything, I just think it's too full of confounds, and I am more interested in studying differences that you can concretely track the source to, and that can be used for medical treatment."

But that distinction doesn't work either. Look at the post just before this one (on women's self-silencing and it's effect on health). That's where alot of evolutionary psychologists do their work - on how social stressors impact physiological stressor

For example, I'm working on a study right now on how social support in relationships influences speed of recovery from physical wounds. To get to this hypothesis, you need to understand how physiological systems are wired to respond to social stimuli and what brain systems forge this link, and whether evolution forged a motivational system to seek out social support in response to physical threats.

But are you seeing my overall point? Every once and a while there will be a post on feministing.com that basically says ev psych = stupid because of some study the finds men or women do X, and ignoring the really important work done by ev psych. So many people are stuck in this binary of it's "prewired and fixed instincual reflexes" vs. "social conditioning" when that isn't at all how the mind works.

"Now, I recognize that human behavior is a combination of nature and nurture, but it seems contradictory say that social indoctrination is very powerful, so powerful that it can make people do X, but that an evolved system is the cause of that X behavior."

That's the premise of social constructionist vs. evolutionary social science.

Social constructionism: Everything is socially conditioned. Little attention is actually paid to what brain systems make social conditioning possible.

Evolutionary psych: Social conditioning influences all behaviors. Different forms of social conditioning rely on different evolved brain systems.
Some behaviors are also further influenced by evolved predispositions.

Further, some behaviors are the products of evolved systems that respond contingently to different social or environmental stimuli (e.g., a tendency to discount the value of the long-term future in times of stress).

"No offense, but you really are making no sense at all... She was making sense to me before she took all of that time to explain. You did not understand her comment, which is different from her not making sense."

I disagree, I still maintain she wasn't making sense.

She was attempting to compare the practice of just dreaming up fanciful random hypotheses (e.g., soot is the elixir of life) to how evolutionary psychologists operate.

The exact opposite, however, is the case. Evolutionary psychologists start with existing knowledge (e.g., known behavioral patterns of animals in patchy vs. non patchy food environments, sex differences in mating strategies among socially monaganous species, brain systems the process self-related information) or they reason what adaptive challenges ancestral humans faced (e.g., recognizing kin, avoiding inbreeding, etc.) to attempt to design testable hypotheses.

"We know men and women are basically different species. Men love blue while women love pink. What can we pull out of our asses to prove that they're wired that way? I know! Adam and Eve!"

COME ON"

I really think she was just trying to be cute. A nice little mythical allegory.

I'm assuming that, like most scientists, she's probably a liberal atheist/agnostic.

"So your vague charges that they [evolutionary hypotheses]"violate the scientific method" or "are necessarily post-hoc" are just flat out wrong.
It was an assertion and it was apparently specific enough for you to respond to."

Again I disagree. She claimed that it violates the scientific method but gave no reasons why that would be.

I responded by pointing out various ev psych studies that clearly use the scientific method.

"I understand that you have special expertise on the topic of evolutionary psychology."

Yes.

"However, there is a difference between expertise and authority"

I agree. And I am using that expertise to point out that the way evolutionary psychologists view social cognition is very different than the traditional binary nature vs. nurture paradigm that gets taught in lots of humanties/social science classes.

"Hey, kissmypineapple. I would argue that in some ways even your heart functions in the way society conditioned it to. People who are competitive and time-conscious are more prone to heart disease than those who are more easygoing. I don't mean to nitpick, but I can't pass up this opportunity for an example of how the environment affects things we might not logically expect it to affect."

Well okay!!! There you go. Now, don't you think that it could work the other way as well? That the heart might respond in specific ways to social influences, increased heart rate might adaptively shift cognitive mechanisms (e.g., arousal and attention to possible external threats), which could then guide behavior (e.g., mobilize increased activity and ranging)?

You don't think there could be a whole host of evolved systems that rely on a series of feedback loops between social stimuli, physiological responses, and cognitive mechanisms?

I disagree, I still maintain she wasn't making sense.
I hope that you can appreciate that your claim to an objective pronouncement on the matter is based entirely on your subjective experience of her non-sense-making.

Social constructionism: Everything is socially conditioned. Little attention is actually paid to what brain systems make social conditioning possible.

Evolutionary psych: Social conditioning influences all behaviors...
This is not an entirely accurate characterization of theory guided by social constructivism. Additionally, to represent evolutionary perspectives as embracing social variables while denying the benefit of basic non-ashattery to the competing theoretical perspective is an implied condemnation based on omission of fact. Cf. Any work in the burgeoning field of social-cognitive neuroscience.

"I agree with you completely that the puzzle gets even more complicated when you are looking at behavior of adult humans. "

I agree. And yet here is a good example of how there are numerous ways to still test for the operation of evolved systems despite that limitation. For example:

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/haselton_gangestad.pdf

"Additionally, to represent evolutionary perspectives as embracing social variables while denying the benefit of basic non-ashattery to the competing theoretical perspective is an implied condemnation based on omission of fact. Cf. Any work in the burgeoning field of social-cognitive neuroscience."

Ummm.... what?

Oh, peepers, I think I understand what you are saying. Can I simply quote myself from earlier in this thread?

UCLA:

Well first of all, evolutionary cognitive neuroscience is one of the fastest growing disciplines of neuroscience. Here is a good example of that kind of work:

Duchaine,B., Yovel,G., Butterworth,E., Nakayama,K. (2006). Prosopagnosia as an impairment to face-specific mechanisms: elimination of the alternative hypotheses in a developmental case. Cognitive Neuropsychology 23(5), pp.714-747.

The more exciting research (conducted by both evolutionary and non-evolutionary neuroscientist) is identifying systems within the brain.

For example, research on how feelings of emotional pain are partially generated using physical pain processing centers in the brain, and how this overlap evolved:

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 294-300.

http://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/WhyRejectionHurts(TICS).pdf

You misrepresented the competing theoretical perspective. You subsequently implied that your pet theoretical perspective was more inclusive. This looks like a straw-man argument.

Social constructionist theories do not necessarily and implicitly deny biology. That would be asinine. Bodies of work, indeed the existence of entire subfields, support my contention that evolutionary psychology, while it sounds super-scientifical and stuff, has no special claim on considering both environmental and biological influences.

More importantly, I'd say, he seems unable to comprehend that there is a difference between attacking a hypothetical, abstract evolutionary psychology (which I'm not doing; eventually, worthwhile work may be done in EP) and critiquing the present intellectual culture, which allows pseudoscientific tripe like the "study" that started this thread, or so many other "studies" that have been mentioned on this site and elsewhere, to be published.

He also seems to assume that he's the only one here with an (admittedly marginal) knowledge of neuroscience, while ironically not realising that just about nothing he's cited harms his argument. Particularly amusing is the fact that he seems to be unaware that the things he characterises as as "random and unsupported" are generally accepted as virtual truisms in the field.

He's also quite eager to change the subject. When someone points out, for example, that it makes little sense to assume the truth of a hypothesis that must yet be proven, he just moves on to ad hominem and straw men.

Typo: SHould read - just about nothing he's cited doesn't harm his argument.

I don't have anything in Many interesting arguments fail to materialize (both on this site and in other contexts) because once the tone of those expressing the predominant view starts becoming somewhat hostile (here, the dominant view is clearly that ev psyc is crap, and the tone clearly has become somewhat hostile) the person with the against-the-grain view tends to devolve into hostility and the conversation falls apart. UCLA has retained a calm demeanor despite the presence of invitations to abandon calm. I, as someone who can benefit from reading an intelligent debate on this subject, greatly appreciate that.

And I don't mean this to disparage those who are disagreeing with UCLA. Your tone is not dismissive or cruel and is well within the bounds of what I think is acceptable for intelligent online debate. This is intended solely as a compliment.

Whoops, that comment got messed up.

There should be some more text after the "I don't have anything in..."

It should basically read "i don't have anything in particular to add to this discussion. I just wanted to thank UCLA for persisting and maintaining a calm demeanor in the face of a challenging conversation. I'd also like to thank him for the obvious time he's spent in providing relevant links to interesting material." And then the rest of the comment applies.

"More importantly, I'd say, he seems unable to comprehend that there is a difference between attacking a hypothetical, abstract evolutionary psychology (which I'm not doing; eventually, worthwhile work may be done in EP)"

What I'm trying to get across is that by attacking a hypothetical abstract evolutionary psychology and making general and unsupported statements like "ep has a totally lame intellectual culture", your ignoring all of the real evolutionary psychology work that is being done.

Hence the reason I keep giving you concrete examples of them.

"He also seems to assume that he's the only one here with an (admittedly marginal) knowledge of neuroscience"

I would agree that my knowledge of neuroscience is not extensive, but it's certainly not marginal, considering that:

a) I am a trainee in the UCLA Culture, Brain, and Development Center;

b) I've taken multiple classes on behavioral neuroscience including functional magnetic resonance imaging; and

c) I'm currently conducting an actual fMRI study on how social norms regarding "attractive" levels of male/female body fat piggyback on more general evolved neurobiological reward and sexual arousal systems.

So, obviously neuroscience isn't at all my specialty. But, from what I've seen, I do feel confident in saying that many neuroscientists are looking at how a variety of evolved systems are instantiated in the brain, based on the work I'm familiar with, some of which I've cited here.

"which allows pseudoscientific tripe like the "study" that started this thread, or so many other "studies" that have been mentioned on this site and elsewhere, to be published"

It's not at all unreasonable to assume that sensory systems would attach special salience to cues associated with regularly occuring food stores. Certainly we know that happens in a great deal of species, which then has all sorts of interesting results (e.g., male sticklebacks are selected to display brighter and brighter shades of red, which catch female's attention because of pre-existing bias to process red light hues. That's not intellectual tripe.

What makes this study lame is that even if we were to assume that there was a selective foraging pressure to be attentive to red, there are so many confounding variables, such as the well known cultural associations of gender and color preference. Earlier in the thread I suggested more compelling ways to test this hypothesis.

"while ironically not realising that just about nothing he's cited harms his argument."

Perhaps you could be more specific rather than continuing to make these very general statements. I would find it helpful if you used a concrete example.

Here are two papers I've cited that rely on ev psych perspectives. Can you explain to me how they harm my argument?

For example:

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/haselton_gangestad.pdf

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 294-300.

http://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/WhyRejectionHurts(TICS).pdf

"You misrepresented the competing theoretical perspective. You subsequently implied that your pet theoretical perspective was more inclusive. This looks like a straw-man argument. "

I agree to some extent that I did - hard to summarize a whole theory in one sentence!

But I think at the core it's correct, right? That social constructionists essentially believe that almost all behavior is a product of the social and historically driven norms of the time, and that evolved processes have minimal impacts on these behaviors.

"Bodies of work, indeed the existence of entire subfields, support my contention that evolutionary psychology, while it sounds super-scientifical and stuff, has no special claim on considering both environmental and biological influences"

I certainly agree that many people do research on biological and environmental and social interactions without taking an evolutionary appraoch. To the evolutionary psychologist, however, this seems less productive than also considering how these systems might have evolved and how taking this perspective might generate more informative ways to test these interactions.

"He's also quite eager to change the subject. When someone points out, for example, that it makes little sense to assume the truth of a hypothesis that must yet be proven, he just moves on to ad hominem and straw men."

When did I say that we should assume the truth of a hypothesis that must yet be proven?

"UCLA has retained a calm demeanor despite the presence of invitations to abandon calm."

Well thanks!

It's an interesting experience for me. I'm co-teaching classes with hard core social constructionists this year so it's useful for me to figure out what sorts of examples might get people interested in ev psych.

But I think at the core it's correct, right? That social constructionists essentially believe that almost all behavior is a product of the social and historically driven norms of the time, and that evolved processes have minimal impacts on these behaviors.
Not really. That's kind of reductive. It's akin to saying evo psych. = biological essentialism = the contention that social contexts have no meaningful effects on behavior.

The contemporary reality for both is that it's much more a matter of which set of assumptions one is comfortable working from. (There are whole sets for each perspective.)

There is also social-constructivist metatheory, which reminds us that science itself is a game played by human beings who are (because they are culturally and historically situated) possessed of biases.

If you are interested in getting more information, you might ask your co-teachers how they would add to the description you gave.

I disagree about the "calm demeanor." I have actually been rather offended at the tone of authority coupled with statements which implied to me that others lacked similar authority (e.g., "just wrong," "not making sense."). To me, this seemed presumptuous and abrasive to me. I choose to interpret it as the ardor of someone who has newfound mastery of a subject. This is a conscious choice — my initial, gut level response was that it was just more male entitlement/dominion over all things scientific/claim to special objectivity.

"I disagree about the "calm demeanor." I have actually been rather offended at the tone of authority coupled with statements which implied to me that others lacked similar authority (e.g., "just wrong," "not making sense."). "

I'm pretty calm :-).

I think the only time I made those comments were to a couple of Elise's point which I thought were, indeed, quite farfetched or just plain wrong.

Which is substantively different from assuming a tone of authority claiming everything else that everyone says is wrong and that I am always right.

"This is a conscious choice — my initial, gut level response was that it was just more male entitlement/dominion over all things scientific/claim to special objectivity."

lol, if you can't kill the message, try to kill the messenger, I suppose. Fine, I'll point you to materials written or co-written by women who same the exact same thing I'm saying about cognition and evolution, if it makes you more comfortable to hear it from a woman than a man.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/HaseltonKetelaar.pdf

http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html

I'll choose not to engage your other variety of ad hominem attacks, since that won't really get us anywhere.

"If you are interested in getting more information, you might ask your co-teachers how they would add to the description you gave."

And, based on my experience, their view is typically either a) even if there are evolutionary influences on behavior they are pretty minimal - it's all social condition; and/or b) evolutionary mechanisms are like black box-we can't really see them so there is no point testing for them.

Which, for reasons I've outlined, ev psychologists don't accept.

"Not really. That's kind of reductive. It's akin to saying evo psych. = biological essentialism = the contention that social contexts have no meaningful effects on behavior."

So, then, what is the social constructionist view on how evolved systems interpret, process, and generate behavior based on environmental, hormonal, physiological, and social stimuli?

Peepers, I understand what you're saying about environmental factors affecting physiological systems, though we could say people are conditioned to think smoking is super cool, and then people who are conditioned to smoke have more heart disease. And that's not what I was trying (apparently poorly) to get at. I guess what I mean is that I'm very interested in what biological differences are present between female people and male people at birth. In what ways does my heart (tired example, I know) function differently than a man's holding all other things equal. And evo psych can't tell me that. Or I don't understand it enough to see how it could, and very likely it's the latter.

And, though, at times, UCLA, you do come off as having a sort of "No, no, no, silly girl! It's like this!" tone, which I'm probably just reading into your comments (because, admittedly, I feel out of my depth in this discussion, as Keith Ellis so derisively pointed out, I went to school for theatre, not science), I do appreciate your trying to explain things clearly to me. Maybe I'm reacting emotionally, because I don't like the idea that I come pre-programmed to behave a certain way. If it's mostly social conditioning, I can change it. If it's evolved, then it seems more etched in stone and reflexive.

In any case, I promise not to jack the thread again. I'll go read a book on evo psych or something if I want someone to explain it to me. :-)

Hey Kissmypineapple,

"And, though, at times, UCLA, you do come off as having a sort of "No, no, no, silly girl! It's like this!" tone"

I certainly don't mean to come off like that!! I'm not sure if it's something about my writing style or if it's just to academic (i.e., make a strong claim and then defend it, modifying it based on critiques).

I think if you are interested in how environment and individual experience can shape behavior along with evolved mechanisms, you might be most interested in "Life History Theory" or "Human Behavioral Ecology".

Some of ev psych is bottom up (i.e., we have these evolved mechanisms that then permeate up into the world and then shape culture), where as some of it is top down (how culture and individual experiences shape behavior in concert with evolved mechanisms).

I had a similar view to people on this board for a long time about ev psych. The first book that got me interested was "The woman who never evolved" by Sarah Hrdy and also "Primate Paradigms" by Linda Fedigan, which basically critiqued male bias in evolutionary approaches to human and animal behavior. They are a little old now though.

Other Books that may be of interest:

Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd

Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin?: Debating Feminism and Evolutionary Theory by Griet Vandermassen

"If it's mostly social conditioning, I can change it. If it's evolved, then it seems more etched in stone and reflexive. "

I definitely understand that. Of course, things that are socially conditioned and habits are hard to break, too! Ev psych folks usually have one of two responses to that which are a) the better we understand the causes of something, the better we are at changing it and; b) our preferences for how we would like things to be shouldn't influence our investigation of how things actually are.

UCLAbodyimage asked, "...what is the social constructionist view on how evolved systems interpret..."
Thanks for the invitation, UCLA, but truly explaining how all theories grounded in social constructivism fail to reject biology/evolution is too tall an order to address here. I think that is what you were getting at: I said these theories do not necessarily reject biological fact. You do not have to take my word for it, but I don't have the time/resources/will to subvert this thread. You seem familiar with social role theory, so I can point you in that direction as something I consider a good example. (For everyone else, the link UCLA gave, above, to Wendy Wood's page would be a quick primer about this theoretical perspective.)

Kissmypineapple said "...In what ways does my heart (tired example, I know) function differently than a man's holding all other things equal...I promise not to jack the thread again..."
Got it. Thanks for the explication.

I, for one, don't think you're hijacking. Heck, no! It's your thread just as much as it's anyone else's here. We're all just camping on Samhita's turf, the way I see it.

There's a nice crit of the paper here: http://www.badscience.net/?p=518

OMG, lucy! Cool site. Thanks for the link.