Overcoming Bias

Lies About Sex

Over at Certain Doubts, Gregory Wheeler reviews our lies about sex:

In survey after survey within country after country men report having more heterosexual partners over their lifetime than women do, and as this article and this clarification point out, what people say in these surveys cannot be a reflection of what they do.

If these surveys were representative, we would expect that the average number of heterosexual partners reported by men in each sample to approximate the average number reported by women. Instead, the numbers aren't even close. In Britain men report having an average of 12.7 hetrosexual partners over a lifetime whereas women report an average of 6.5; in France men report an average of 11.6 heterosexual partners, women 4.4; and in Germany men say 15.5, women 10.1.  ...

But the interesting feature of Brown's study was that he also asked the respondents to rate the truthfulness of their estimates. He found that 5% of men and 4% of women indicated that they thought their estimates were inaccurate, and 16% of men and 11% of women indicated that they knowingly misrepresented their counts. Still, even when these "self-incriminators" were removed from the sample population, there was still a significant discrepancy between the counts for men and women.

Yes, many are aware they lie about sex.  But it seems many others are not aware.  That suggests that you, yes you, do not really know how many sexual partners you have had!

Added: The movie Secrets and Lies has an ambiguous case: does she lie or self-deceive?

Is Hybrid Vigor IQ Warm And Fuzzy?

The July 2007 Psychological Review has Michael Mingroni reviewing an interesting theory he published in Intelligence in 2004, that IQ has increased mainly because of more interracial and cross-cultural mating:

IQ test scores have risen steadily across the industrialized world ever since such tests were first widely administered, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. Although the effect was documented more than 2 decades ago, there is currently no generally agreed-on explanation for it. The author argues that the phenomenon heterosis represents the most likely cause. Heterosis, often referred to as hybrid vigor, is a genetic effect that results from matings between members of genetically distinct subpopulations, such as has been occurring in human populations through the breakup of small, relatively isolated communities owing to urbanization and greater population mobility.

Regardless of whether Mingroni's theory is true, I find it striking that it seems less politically correct than it could be. 

The first response you often hear to genetic explanations of IQ, or even the very idea of IQ, is that such ideas encourage racists, such as Nazis.  But Mingroni's hybrid vigor theory seems tailor-made to oppose racist and other xenophobic mating policies; instead of killing off "lower" races or preventing interracial mating, Mingroni's theory suggests one wants to encourage diverse mating and preserve other races as sources of genetic diversity. 

The currently political correct environmental explanations of IQ, in contrast, are quite compatible with racist and other xenophobic mating policies.  That is, one can nearly as easily oppose contact and mating with outsiders for fear of contamination from outsiders' cultural and other environmental influences, as from outsiders' genes.  Such arguments were offered in the recent immigration debate, for example.  So why are environmental IQ theories so praised for opposing racism, relative to hybrid vigor?   

Food Vs. Sex Charity

Scott Aaronson asks a great question: 

Consider two men, A and B. Man A steals food because he’s starving to death, while Man B commits a rape because no woman will agree to have sex with him.  From a Darwinian perspective, the two cases seem exactly analogous. In both we have a man on the brink of genetic oblivion, who commandeers something that isn’t his in order to give his genes a chance of survival. And yet the two men strike just about everyone — including me — as inhabiting completely different moral universes. The first man earns only our pity. We ask: what was wrong with the society this poor fellow inhabited, such that he had no choice but to steal? The second man earns our withering contempt.

One problem with the question is that in our society giving enough sex to satisfy is expensive, while giving enough food to satisfy is cheap.  So it might help to imagine a society where the person who lost the food was also in some, though less, danger of starving.   

But even then food and sex seem to be treated differently.  When we give food aid we don't just give rice and beans to keep folks from starving; we give them enough to have a moderately tasty diet.   We do nothing remotely similar for sex.

To me the obvious answer is that our concern about inequality is not very general - compared to inequality in access to food, humans are just not that concerned about sexual inequality, especially for men.  Presumably for our ancestors, the gene pool of a tribe could benefit from equalizing food in ways that it could not benefit by equalizing sex. 

Added: Riffing off this post, Scott rewords his question:  Why do we, as a society, provide food stamps for the hungry but not sex stamps for the celibate?

7/7/07 Weddings

From Time.com:  "Superstitious Americans...have gone to great lengths to secure the triple sevens as their wedding date, hoping the lucky numbers will make them lucky in love...It may well be the most popular wedding day in history."

Since the demand for weddings on this date was high, the price for 7/7/07 weddings should also have been high compared to other dates.  Thus, only couples willing to pay a superstitious premium got married on 7/7/07.  This could provide a great research opportunity.  Are superstitious couples, for example, more likely to get divorced?  Do they make as intelligent financial decisions as other couples do?

What Signals What?

The latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says we use visible luxuries and helpfulness in part as ways to attract mates:

Conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as "costly signals" of desirable mate qualities. If so, they should vary strategically with manipulations of mating-related motives. The authors examined this possibility in 4 experiments. Inducing mating goals in men increased their willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities. In women, mating goals boosted public-but not private--helping. Although mating motivation did not generally inspire helping in men, it did induce more helpfulness in contexts in which they could display heroism or dominance. Conversely, although mating motivation did not lead women to conspicuously consume, it did lead women to spend more publicly on helpful causes. Overall, romantic motives seem to produce highly strategic and sex-specific self-presentations best understood within a costly signaling framework.

This suggests that female luxury consumption, and non-heroic non-dominant male helping, are not done to impress potential mates.  Of course they could still be costly signals, but to other audiences. 

Biased Birth Rates

In poor societies richer couples have more kids, but richer societies have fewer kids.  This may be because female kid desires are biased low, relative to genetic interests, and in rich societies women have more relative power.  Ted Bergstrom explains in the May American Economic Review:

The demographic transition ... presents a challenge to ... evolutionary theories of reproductive behavior.  In Western Europe, starting in about 1870, real wages began to rise about 2 percent per year.  Net reproductive rates fell from an average of three children per woman in 1860 to fewer than two in the modern era. ... Evolutionary biologists find it puzzling that a species reproduces less rapidly when individuals have access to more material resources. ... Why was there a positive correlation between wealth and fertility before the demographic transition, but not after? ...

Because of a genetic conflict of interest between mates, evolution could have shaped preferences so that "human females would fail to bear the optimal number of children in the absence of pressure of mates and kin."  ...  Thus men would desire more children and women fewer children than their own genetic interest dictates.  Differences in birth rates across time and between cultures would occur as one side or the other gains increased leverage in this tug-of-war.  In modern economics, women have increased influence in household decisions and, together with improved contraceptive technology, have gained greater control of their own fertility.  ...

Malaysian husbands want more children than their wives and, when measurable household bargaining power favors the wife, a couple tends to have fewer children.  In a survey of Brazilian households, ... as the ratio of the wife's nonlabor income increases, couples tend to have fewer children. 

I've long been puzzled by the demographic transition, and so am excited to hear of a plausible theory that roughly fits people I know.  If it is true, and if we now have too many or just enough kids, relative to a social or moral optimum, then empowering women has helped.  But if, as I suspect, we now have too few kids, then empowering women may be largely to blame.

Added: Bergstrom credits Barkow & Burley. Ethology and Sociobiology, 1980.  If you want to play "find a better theory," at least try to explain all the related data, including fertility of the rich in poor societies, and the robustness of the demographic transition to cultures and contraception technology. 

Just A Smile?

A March 31 New Scientist article on "The Love Delusion" mentions these puzzling observations:

Martie Haselton ... research indicates that men typically overestimate the sexual interest conveyed by a woman's smile or laughter.  When men see someone of the opposite sex smile at them they tend to think "she must be interested."  Women simply see a smile.  That's not all.  It turns out that the smarter the guy, the more likely he is to show this "she wants me" bias.  ... Glenn Geher ... asked me how they thought women would respond to adverts in which other men offered no-strings-attached sex.  He found that the the higher the IQ, the more likely they were to think that women would be interested. 

It is surprising to see smarter people being less accurate.  So I wonder.  Yes, the men disagree with the women, but how clear is it that the women are right and the men are wrong?  Maybe around smart guys, smiles and laughter do indicate an interest which women will not admit, perhaps even to themselves.  After all, Tuesday's New York TImes says:

The body's entire motor system is activated almost instantly by exposure to sexual images, ... the body is primed for sex before the mind has had a moment to leer.  Moreover, she said, arousal is not necessarily a conscious process. ... Show a woman scenes of a man and a woman having sex, or two women having sex, or two men, or even two bonobos, Dr. Chivers said, and as a rule her genitals will become measurably congested and lubricated, although in many cases she may not be aware of the response.

Ask her what she thinks of the material viewed, however, and she will firmly declare that she liked this scene, found that one repellent, and, frankly, the chimpanzee bit didn’t do it for her at all. ... “with women, there’s a discrepancy between stated preference and physiological arousal.”

Libertarian Purity Duels

Many of my colleagues are reading Brian Doherty's "Radicals for Capitalism," so I read the first chapter.  Doherty describes how movement libertarians competed to show who was more devoted to principle: 

Many a movement libertarians's favorite pastime is reading others out of the movement for various perceived ideological crimes.   As Fred Smith, head of the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, says, "When two libertarians find themselves agreeing on something, each knows the other has sold out."  Libertarians are a contentious lot, in many cases delighting in staking ground and refusing to move on the farthest frontiers of applying the principles of noncoercion and nonaggression; resolutely finding the most outrageous and obnoxious position you could take that is theoretically compatible with libertarianism and challenging anyone to disagree.   If they are not of the movement, then you can enjoy having shocked them with your purism and dedication to principle; if they are of the movement, you can gleefully read them out of it.

Libertarians ... have advocated ... private ownership of nuclear weapons; the right of parents to starve their children; and that if you fell off a building and grabbed onto a flagpole and didn't have the explicit permission of the person who owned the balcony, you ought to let yourself fall rather than violate their property rights by crawling to safety. 

Seems quite a bit like arguments leading to duels.  Duels signal ability and willingness to defend yourself, which women find attractive because it suggests you can and will defend them.   Perhaps women like men committed to principles, in the hope that such men stay more committed to their women as well.

Awareness of Intimate Bias

A recent Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says we are biased to be generous in evaluating people we are intimate with, especially for mating-related traits, and are more biased for happier relationships.  We are also aware that we and others are biased in these ways:

Meta-awareness of bias in intimate partner judgments was investigated in 3 studies. In Study 1, participants rated fictional partners in happier relationships as more positively biased in their partner perceptions. In Study 2, participants thought their judgments of their own current partners were positively biased and that they were judged by their partners in a positively biased fashion. Using a sample of couples, Study 3 showed that metaperceptions of bias were anchored to actual levels of bias at the individual and relationship levels. In addition, positive bias was accentuated for traits that were more relevant to mate evaluation. These findings (as expected) suggest that positive bias in partner judgments can be a normative and consciously accessible feature of intimate relationships.

This is a clear example that being aware of our biases is not enough to eliminate them. 

Romantic Predators

Last summer a New York Times article worried that having more women on college campuses gave men more bargaining power in dates:

"When there were fewer men, the environment was not as safe for women," said Joyce Bylander, associate provost. "When men were so highly prized that they could get away with things, some of them become sexual predators. It was an unhealthy atmosphere for women."

Relationships are about give and take, but the person in more demand can give less while taking more.  If men tend to more want sex, and women tend to more want romantic devotion, then when men are scarce men should tend to get more sex while giving less romantic devotion.   

But when women are scarce, women should tend to get more romantic devotion while giving less sex.   So why don't we hear similar complaints about "an unhealthy atmosphere for men" due to "romantic predators"?   Just as we seem more worried about women and children being hurt in war than men, this seems another example where males complain less because they get less sympathy.