By DemocracyRules
h/t Alan S. Miller Ph.D., Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D.
Their Book is Available here.
"1. Men like Blond Bombshells
In 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago--women were dying their hair blond... There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features. Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman's health status.
Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio... A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).
Blond hair... changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair... Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable-in males as well as females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she likes... the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. ... It is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.
2. Humans Are Naturally Polygamous
Humans are naturally polygamous... polygyny [polygamy] is widely practiced in human societies ... We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.
Among [many] species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females... Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.
3. Most Women [Actually] Benefit from Polygyny, While Most Men Benefit from Monogamy
When there is resource inequality among men--the case in every human society--most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
4. Most Suicide Bombers Are Muslim [and here's why]
According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, a comprehensive history of this troubling yet topical phenomenon, while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is always Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions?
The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in it). It may have nothing to do with the religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars-but not suicide bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
5. Having Sons Reduces the Likelihood of Divorce [a small amount]
Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?
Since a man's mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power... the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically attractive.
The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families."
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DemocracyRules Notes:
These findings need to be seen in appropriate context. The authors' main argument is that human nature is not congruent with the "socialist narrative".
The phenomena discussed represent human tendencies, and humans routinely depart from these tendencies. Angelina Jolie is a celebrated beauty but she is a brown eyed brunette.
The new research fits better with the Bible than radical feminism. For example the rules of marriage, fidelity, and adultery tell us to use our big brains to control and channel our natural human anti-social tendencies. Unchanneled, humans can wreck society. If you read a Commandment and compare it to human behavioral research, it helps clarify why that Commandment exists.
The research shows why the Bible and moral guidance are important. It also shows that the struggle to be a good person must be renewed in each generation, because unchanneled human nature would wreck society.
More later in Part 2...
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