What Men are Best at…

Tags

Display, Gender differences, Signalling

Have you ever seen a girl do a wheelie?  If you do, please let me know… 🙂 Although this question may seem unrelated to this article, this is far from being the case.  The connection first struck me while I was looking at the list of speakers at the TESOL 2009 Convention – it occurred to me that in a female-dominated field, the male speakers were rather numerous – in fact the ratio was almost 50 – 50%.  And when it came to the Plenary Speakers, the ratio was 3:2 – 3 men to 2 women that is!!  So here is the answer to the original question:  Men are far better than women at showing off!  And chances are, they will always be! 🙂 Here is Professor Alice Roberts before we return to ELT:

What do the figures show?  As everyone knows, in the field of ELT men [M] are an endangered species and TESOL Greece membership reflects this.  Apparently 85% of our members are women [W] while only 15% are M.  When it comes to speakers however, things are not like that at all; over the past few years the speaker ratio at TESOL Greece Conventions was roughly 50 – 50% while for the plenary speakers the figures were 52% M to 48% W.  Information I got from TESOL Macedonia – Thrace paints a slightly different picture: during the past 15 years there have been 35 W Plenary Speakers compared to 69 M!  Whatever the case, it is obvious that there is a huge discrepancy between the ratio of members and speakers.  And the question is – ‘Why’?

Why does this happen? [1]:  Ask anyone who has been inculcated with the central belief of the Standard Social Sciences Model (Crawford & Krebs 2008) that any observable difference between M and W is attributable to the environment, and they will come up with an impressive array of plausible-sounding answers: W are held back by the demands of their second ‘career’ at home / there is a ‘glass ceiling’ even in ELT / W are socialised to be less ambitious than M etc. No doubt there is an element of truth in all of these – particularly the first one.  However I believe this is only a small part of the answer (for a brilliant and most informative book on the subject see Browne 2002).

Why does this happen? [2]:  So let us now turn to the real reason: M are programmed by evolution to show off.  In the vast majority of higher life forms (e.g. reptiles, birds and mammals), the female is the investing sex when it comes to reproduction and W are no exception.  Because of this, it is the males who display (e.g. peacocks, bower birds etc.) and the females who choose (Forsyth 2001).  So, the males need to stand out.  What is more, in very many species the few successful males mate with most of the females (ibid.) while the fate of the others is genetic oblivion – hence the need to stand out becomes even more imperative!

The animal world:  Do males display in the animal world?  Of course they do!  And I am not just talking about mating displays aimed directly at females like the spectacular ones by some birds of paradise; male animals display in more subtle ways too.  Male chimpanzees hunt monkeys, but they tend to do so even more when fertile females are present! (Miller 2001) Zahavi (1997) has discovered that among Arabian babblers (a species of bird) males actually fight each other for the right to do guard duty for the community!  This task is highly ‘altruistic’ since it means both that they cannot feed and that they are more at risk from predators – but of course it also results in higher status and therefore more ‘girls’!  M too are far more likely to perform ‘heroic deeds’ for others and not because they are great altruists! (Winston 2002)

Men, Women and ELT [1]:  Let us go back to the ‘Why?’ in our initial ‘mini-research’.  Is it that M in ELT and better than W?  Of course not * – if anything it is the other way round! (Pinker 2002) But the motivation is different.  When a W decides to give a talk, it may be because she thinks it will promote her career, or because she is excited about something and wants to share her ideas and enthusiasm with other colleagues.  With M it is all this plus something much more important; every female in the audience is a potential mate!  The M may be unaware of this factor, but it is there all the same.  And this is reflected in their delivery too.  Compare the straightforward, sensible style of someone like, say, Olha Madylus with the brilliant flamboyance of someone like Cliff Parry!

Men, Women and ELT [2]:  Nor is this male desire to stand out manifest only in the relative number of speakers.  Men constantly seek positions of high status in all fields (Vugt & Ahuja 2010) and ELT is no exception**:  Consider this:  out of 41 State School Advisors 10 are M!  And what about the private sector?  15 out of the 41 local PALSO Associations are headed by M!  The ratios are 25% and 36% respectively.  You want further proof?  Go to your bookcase.  Take out any Teacher’s Handbook you want.  Now look at the ‘Other Titles’ list and count the names of the authors.  I did this for two books published in 2009.  Here are the results: OUP: 24 M vs 20 W – CUP: 34 M vs 12 W.  I rest my case…

Other examples:  Everyday instances of M showing off abound.  Take language for instance:  Who tells the most jokes in groups? – M do!  Who were the greater orators in the past – and who are the greatest rappers of today? – M naturally!  (Miller 2001).  It is no accident that verbal ability is the feature most strongly predictive of leadership potential (Vugt & Ahuja 2010).  And what do M talk about? – themselves of course!  (65% of the time while for W the figure is 42% – Dunbar 2004).  Interestingly, M also tend to talk about more intellectual topics – when W are present! (ibid. – any resemblance to chimps is purely coincidental! 🙂 )

By now you must have figured out why it is boys who do wheelies and not girls…  Here is the reason in a nutshell: M show off to W because evolution has designed the former to be aggressive sexual advertisers, while the latter comparison shoppers! (Barash 2001).  This is also the reason why M talk and talk and talk – preferably in public!  And if some of them do not even know what they are talking about, this only goes to show that ‘the reach of their display often exceeds their grasp’! (Miller 2001) [ Hmmm… I’m not quite sure I like this last bit… I think I’d better stop here…. 🙂 ]

*  But we think we are – and not just in language either!  73% of American M but only 57% of W think they are better than average in terms of intelligence (Chabris & Simons 2010).

** For an amazing debate as to  why M are over-represented at the highest levels in academia (and other fields) you simply must watch Pinker vs Spelke (just click here).

References

Barash, D. & Lipton, J.E. “The Myth of Monogamy” Freeman 2001

Browne, K. “Biology at Work” Rutgers University Press 2002

Chabris, C. & Simons, D. “The Invisible Gorilla” Harper Collins 2010

Crawford, C. & Krebs, D. [eds.] “Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology” Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 2008

Dunbar, R. “Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language” Faber & Faber 2004

Forsyth, A. “A Natural History of Sex” Firefly 2001

Miller, G. “The Mating Mind” Vintage 2001

Pinker vs Spelke 2005 [www.edge.org]

Pinker, S. “The Blank Slate” Penguin 2002

Vugt, M. & Ahuja, A. “Selected” Profile Books 2010

Winston, R. “Human Instinct”  Bantam Books 2002

Zahavi, A. & Zahavi, A. “The Handicap Principle” Oxford 1997

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Are Women Less Competitive than Men?

The study design was amazing: subjects (both M and W) were invited to the lab. They worked individually. The instructions were simple – ‘You just sit in front of a computer and you solve mazes’. Subjects were divided into two groups; one was paid $1 for every maze they solved, but with the other group the deal was different; the task was the same, but there was a competitive incentive. You had to compete with another participant. If you solved, say, 10 mazes and they solved 15, they got proportionally more money (e.g. they got $20 and you only got $5). The Q was this: would M in the competitive situation solve more mazes than M in the non-competitive one? And what about W?

No answers yet… 🙂  The researchers then posed another interesting Q: let us say that M perform better in the competitive condition. Is this because of ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’? To find out they ran similar studies * in one of the most patriarchal cultures of the world (the Masai in Africa) and in one of the very few cultures (the Khasi in India) which is in some ways female-dominated. The Khasi society is matrilinear and inheritance flows through mothers to the younger daughters. Would the results turn out to be different?  They were. You can see them in the chart below.

Here is the researchers’ conclusion: ‘Our study suggests that given the right culture, women are as competitively inclined as men, and even more so in many situations. Competitiveness, then, is not only set by evolutionary forces that dictate that men are naturally more so inclined than women. The average woman will compete more than the average man if the right cultural incentives are in place’. [Gneezy, U. & List, J. “The Why Axis” Random House 2013 – pp. 52-53]

 

( * The task used in Africa and India was a different one [throwing tennis balls into a bucket from a distance of 3m, but this is not relevant; what is important is the difference in performance in the two experimental conditions).

How to Turn a Man into a Picasso

Tags

Creativity, Priming

Well said J. L. Lewis!: In ‘Chantilly Lace’ J. L. Lewis sings ‘There ain’t nothing in the world like a big-eyed girl  / to make me act so funny make me spend my money / Make me feel real loose like a long necked goose / Like a girl oh baby that’s what I like’! J. L. Lewis could not have put it better if he had been an Evolutionary Psychologist! He was spot-on about the effects of Women [W] on Men [M] – more of that in another article. What he failed to point out however is that apart from all the other effects, the presence of ‘a big-eyed girl’ may well release the artist in a guy…

‘The Science of Lust’:  What happens in this experiment is very revealing: One by one, a group of guys are led into a waiting room where they are kept waiting for some time and then taken to another room where they asked to express themselves on a canvas. Then the same thing happens with a second group, only this time there is a difference. As each man is led to the waiting room, he is introduced to Kate, a young, sexy girl in a figure-hugging top and hot pants… (Kate may or may not be a ‘big-eyed’ girl… I never seem to be able to focus on her eyes… 🙂 ) Kate flirts with him a little and only then is the man taken to the room and asked to paint. A picture is worth a thousand words – a video, even more:

The results: …So the question is this: Does ‘romantic priming’ make any difference to the quality of the work the M produce? The answer is a resounding ‘YES’! An art expert is called in to assess it and the work of the two groups is displayed in two rows. Even an ignoramus such as myself can easily see that the work of the second group is far more exciting. Obviously the ‘excitement’ the M felt after their short session with Kate was channeled into their creations!

Another experiment: Here is another one: Professor Kenrick (Kenrick 2011) got together two groups of M. The M of the first group were ‘romantically primed’ by looking at pictures of highly attractive girls, choosing one and imagining what a first date with her would be like. The men of the second (control) group were asked to imagine walking down a street and looking at the windows. Both groups were then asked to write a paragraph about an abstract painting or a picture of two friends chatting together at a café. The paragraphs were then shown to a third group of people who rated them independently for such traits as ‘creativity’ / ‘originality’ etc. He then repeated the process with two groups of W – again, there was the control group and the one where the girls were ‘primed’ with pictures of handsome guys.

 The results: So – would there be a difference? Once again, the M outdid themselves after imagining a date with the likes of Megan Fox or Beyonce Knowles. In a different study it was found that such M also scored highly in standard creativity tests. But what about W? No! Fantasising about a date with Antonio Banderas or Brad Pitt obviously failed to bring out the artist in them… (ibid.)

So what can we make of all this?: Natural Selection goes for sensible designs and has a sense of proportion. The adaptations we have in order to survive are practical, no-nonsense ones. And then you get the peacock’s tail – there is no way such a thing aids survival. It is clearly meant to impress the peahens! Whenever one sees ‘extravagance’ and ‘waste’ in nature, the culprit is almost certainly Sexual Selection (Miller 2001). It is all about the struggle of males (in 95% of the cases) to impress females. Creativity is a good case in point – the amount of effort, dedication and energy that people are willing to invest in order to give an outlet to their artistic urges defies all calculation!

But why should it be so? Well, it is the W’s preferences which determine what trait M will develop! And studies have shown that creativity and originality are highly valued by the fair sex (Buss 2009). Not only that; research has also shown that during their fertile days W’s preferences shift – they prefer better-looking guys, dominant guys AND guys who are more creative! (Thornhill & Gangestad 2008). Another study focusing on traits W find attractive found that during the luteal (infertile) phase of the month 40% of W asked found ‘wealth’ appealing, while only 8% went for creativity; on their fertile days however, this preference was reversed! (5% and 30% respectively! (Miller, G. ‘Sex, Mutations & Marketing’ YouTube) There is no doubt about it; W find artistically-inclined M sexy…

The Godfather connection: Now if creativity is connected to mating effort, then we would expect it to decline with the years. And this is exactly what we find! Kanazawa looked at the lives of 280 top scientists and found that 68% of them made their greatest contributions before their mid-30s! Not only that, but there was a clear decline in the originality of their output once they had got married! (Fisher 2004) As Kurzban points out (2012) different modules in our brain kick in at different stages in our lives. Having children reconfigures our brain (Brizendine 2010) and we switch from mating to parental mode. What is truly astonishing is that the male creativity curve coincides almost exactly with the male criminality curve!! (Miller & Kanazawa 2008) According to this view, they both represent different ways males employ to acquire resources and/or status… in order to impress W! Once they have settled down, the tendency towards both criminality and creativity fades…

What about Women? We saw earlier that the prospect of dating Johnny Depp does not create in W an irresistible urge to try their hand at sonnet-writing. Yet it does have an effect on them. Remember what we said earlier? The two sexes have co-evolved and like good business people both M and W are prepared to offer their would-be significant other what the latter wants. Now this would normally mean that romantically-primed W would change physically to look more like Kate – alas that is a little too difficult. But there is something that M want in a long-term partner, that W can offer: kindness. In the same programme Vlad Griskevicius conducts another experiment where after flirting with a handsome guy, W become exceptionally helpful to strangers – even though the M is no longer present! Here is what happened:

 Now you know…: So if you ever need to send male creativity soaring, you know what to do… Imagine for instance you are a teacher, you have an all-boy class and you would like them to enter the ‘Creative Essay’ competition; no problem! Just invite that sexy teaching assistant from the other building to join you in your next lesson… that should do the trick… In a more professional context, say you are working for an advertising agency and you again have an all-male team… All you need to do is hire some pretty girls for the promo clip… (mind you, judging by the output of advertising agencies, I think they already know this!!  🙂 )

References:

Brizendine, L. “The Male Brain” Bantam Books 2010

Buss, D. “Evolutionary Psychology – The New Science of the Mind”  Pearson 2009

Fisher, H. “Why We Love”  Holt 2004

Griskevicius, V. “The Science of Lust” YouTube

Kenrick, D. “Sex, Murder and the Meaning of Life” Basic Books 2011

Miller, A. & Kanazawa, S. “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters”  Pedigree 2008

Miller, G. “The Mating Mind” Vintage 2001

Miller, G. “Sex, Mutations & Marketing” YouTube

Thornhill, R. & Gangestad, S. “The Evolutionary Biology of Human Female Sexuality”  Oxford 2008