Male intelligence and female preferences

This is actually a comment on Do women find bright men sexy?

Heartiste writes in his Dating Market Value Test For Men that only slightly above average men have an advantage. I would agree with that as it not only is consistent with my own experience but also coincidentally is found by a mathematical model of democratic election. Finally, it seems quite logical that higher intellectual capabilities are not perceived as an advantage but as a threat. According the Dunning-Kruger effect, we all are incapable to correctly evaluate capabilities that are more favorable than ours. We cannot understand a more intellectual person, and everything that we cannot understand we use to fear instinctively.

Fortunately, if women are capable to select slightly more intelligent men this is of evolutionary advantage over many generations, as these INDIVIDUAL decisions sum up over the generations.

Unfortunately, that is not true with democracies, as COLLECTIVE decisions always cut down over the generations.

The mathematical effect on variance is as follows: the former will increase variance, the latter decrease towards idiocracy.

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Social Problem: Feminism

“Females are poised to repress men. If unattractive, repellent, or simply unsocial they become feminists to execute their zest for suppression with men in general.”

– Anonymus –

If we want to stop slavery on this planet we have to keep females from enslaving men in the first place.

 

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Ideologically Challenged Research: X-chromosome and Intelligence

There are many research topics that an academic, state or governmental employed scientist, better doesn’t touch. Most of these topics lay in the field of social science, but there are a few biological issues too. Sex difference of intelligence is among them.

The table below shows the The trials to publish such data and the prompt and vigorous comments.

Year	Authors	Comments	Replies
1972	Lehrke 1	Anastasi2,Nance3	Lehrke4
1991	Turner5	Morton6
1992	Feingold7	Katzman8,Shaffer9	Feingold10
1993	Feingold11	Hedges12,Hedges13	Weinberg14
1996	Turner15	Hook16	Turner17
2008	Johnson18,Johnson19	Craig20,Turkheimer21	Johnson22

The next publication-comment-reply chain stands out a little bit as the first publication is not supporting sex differences. It rather states the opposite.

2005

Blinkhorn23

Irwing24

Blinkhorn25

The question is why someone bothers with commenting such a publication at all. The answer can be found in the text, which is actually a comment printed in a prestigious journal on a 2004 published metaanalysis²⁶. The Blinkhorn article somehow reminds me of Pravda articles in Soviet times, the official voice of the communist party, that law-like determined how things have to be interpreted to comply political correctness.

References

1. Lehrke R. Theory of X-Linkage of Major Intellectual Traits. American Journal of Mental Deficiency. 1972;76(6):611–419.

2. Anastasi A. 4 Hypotheses with a Dearth of Data – Response to Lehrkes a Theory of X-Linage of Major Intellectual Traits. American Journal of Mental Deficiency. 1972;76(6):620–622.

3. Nance W, Engel E. One X and 4 Hypotheses – Response to Lehrkes a Theory of X-Linkage of Major Intellectual Traits. American Journal of Mental Deficiency. 1972;76(6):623–625.

4. Lehrke R. Response to Dr Anastasi and to Dr Nance and Dr Engel. American Journal of Mental Deficiency. 1972;76(6):626–631.

5. Turner G, Partington MW. Genes for intelligence on the X chromosome. J Med Genet. 1991;28(6):429.

6. Morton NE. Genes for intelligence on the X chromosome. J Med Genet. 1992;29(1):71.

7. Feingold A. Sex Differences in Variability in Intellectual Abilities: A New Look at an Old Controversy. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1992;62(1):61–84.

8. Katzman S, Alliger GM. Averaging Untransformed Variance Ratios Can Be Misleading: A Comment on Feingold. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1992;62(4):427–428.

9. Shaffer JP. Caution on the Use of Variance Ratios: A Comment. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1992;62(4):429–432.

10. Feingold A. Cumulation of Variance Ratios. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1992;62(4):433–434.

11. Feingold A. Joint Effects of Gender Differences in Central Tendency and Gender Differences in Variability. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1993;63(1):106–109.

12. Hedges LV, Friedman L. Computing Gender Difference Effects in Tails of Distributions: The Consequences of Differences in Tail Size, Effect Size, and Variance Ratio. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1993;63(1):110–112.

13. Hedges LV, Friedman L. Gender Differences in Variability in Intellectual Abilities: A Reanalysis of Feingold’s Results. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1993;63(1):94–105.

14. Weinberg SL. The Hedges and Friedman Index: Two-Tailed Significance. REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. 1993;63(4):527–529.

15. Turner G. Intelligence and the X chromosome. The Lancet. 1996;347(9018):1814–1815.

16. Hook EB. Intelligence and the X chromosome. The Lancet. 1996;348(9030):826.

17. Turner G. Intelligence and the X chromosome. The Lancet. 1996;348(9030):826.

18. Johnson W, Carothers A, Deary IJ. Sex Differences in Variability in General Intelligence: A New Look at the Old Question. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2008;3(6):518–531.

19. Johnson W, Carothers A, Deary IJ. A Role for the X Chromosome in Sex Differences in Variability in General Intelligence? Perspectives on Psychological Science (Wiley-Blackwell). 2009;4(6):598–611.

20. Craig IW, Haworth CMA, Plomin R. Commentary on “A Role for the X Chromosome in Sex Differences in Variability in General Intelligence?” (Johnson et al., 2009). Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2009;4(6):615–621.

21. Turkheimer E, Halpern DF. Sex Differences in Variability for Cognitive Measures Do the Ends Justify the Genes? (Commentary on Johnson et al., 2009). Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2009;4(6):612–614.

22. Johnson W, Carothers A, Deary IJ. Speculation to Inform and Speculation to Explore Response to Craig et al. (2009) and Turkheimer & Halpern (2009). Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2009;4(6):622–623.

23. Blinkhorn S. Intelligence: A gender bender. Nature. 2005;438(7064):31–32.

24. Irwing P, Lynn R. Intelligence: Is there a sex difference in IQ scores? Nature. 2006;442(7098):E1–E1.

25. Blinkhorn S. Intelligence: Is there a sex difference in IQ scores? (Reply). Nature. 2006;442(7098):E1–E2.

26. Lynn R, Irwing P. Sex differences on the progressive matrices: A meta-analysis. Intelligence. 2004;32(5):481–498.

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Imprecise emotions allow to trick your sweetheart

A recent study [1] discussed on this blog page found a relationship between awe inspiring experiences and decision making. That is not absolute new, however. A similar study in the seventies similarly found an association between sexual desire and feelings of anxiety [2]. On a bridge, probably not as much anxiety arousing as this one in the picture, but height enough to feel uncomfortable, men were interviewed by an attractive women following a typical psychological questionnaire. At the end of the interview the women gave her telephone number to the male test person. Significantly more callbacks were counted from those who were asked at the height bridge compared to an ordinary bridge. Obviously the anxiety emotion, the raised heart beat for instance, caused by the bridge was interpreted as sexual attractiveness and some of the men felt it worthwhile to re-experience that emotion.

This picture is linked from http://secondblooming.typepad.com/second-blooming/2012/03/spin-cycle-high-anxiety.html

 That is good news for all those who want someone to fall in love. Simply choose a bridge or something else awe inspiring enough to arouse your sweetheart’s emotions, put on a lovely smile, and your sweetheart is likely to believe he or she is in love with you. I recall that Niagara Falls are a preferred honeymoon destination. Probably for the same reason.

 The question is what all this has to do with fauceir theory. The answer: it is a typical example of imprecision. Emotions are psychological fauceirs that are slaves to our rationality fauceirs. As such, they are likely to do things that are from the outset adapted to the most common situations of our animal or primeval ancestors, that we would not always sanction rationally.

 Most exciting to me however was the following quote from the blog mentioned above.

 … it seems to me that atheists have a great appetite for awe-inspiring stories – in particular, stories about great scientific and engineering feats. Could this in part be a facet of life that in other circumstances could be filled by religion?

 That is sheer fauceirology. Of course, atheism is some kind of religion. Of course, it has to fill the same emotional gaps as any other religion; if not all atheists would become distressed. In some people atheism ensues more rational thinking. In those I would agree that atheism is more evolutionary advanced (in its fauceirological sense). Some atheists however seek refuge in demonism which cannot be considered as a higher level of evolution.

 1.

Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D. & Aaker, J. Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being. Psychol Sci (2012).doi:10.1177/0956797612438731

 2.

Dutton, D. G. & Aron, A. P. Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30, 510–517 (1974).

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Addendum – Why not the Coolidge Effect?

In the post before I introduced two behavioral patterns widely exploited by religions to enhance fecundity. These are upholding of mutual trust and the generation micro alpha males. An other behavioral pattern also common in humans is the Coolidge effect. (I highly recommend to read the wiki entry for the origin of this term’s name). The Coolidge effect evolved in animals, including primates, in which males can inseminate more than one female, in which the number of male sperm cells abundantly outnumbers the number of female eggs, in which a female’s capability to produce progeny is more than exhausted by a single shower of sperm, and in which fitness can be increased only by males copulating with as much as possible females. In these species, males soon get tired of a female after copulation but immediately rejuvenate by an new female.

The Coolidge effect would demand societies/religions that would encourage men to have many women. In fact, such societies/religions exist, which proves the impact of this effect in men, but these societies are rare, failed to gain great importance, and are rather dying out. Why? What are the evolutionary disadvantages of religions that rely on the Coolidge effect?

1. The Coolidge effect reduces allelic variability. Societies that allow harems are characterized by consanguinity and hereditary disorders. Such behavior produces genetic bottle necks that hinder evolution in the long term. This explains why even in apes with strong hierarchical social compounds alpha males do not sire all the children in a troop.
2. As human sex ratio is nearly 1:1, some men maintaining harems would leave others without any chance to find a mating partner. These unsatisfied men constitute a permanent thread of social unrest which turns the master fauceir, the society, unstable. Witnessing this, successful societies rather discourage men to indulge in their Coolidge effect.
3. Finally,  overall fitness of a human society is limited by the number of children per female and not the number of females inseminated per man. The latter may have a bearing on the biological evolution of favorable traits, as observed in primate societies, but in human societies this is no longer the case when social status is inherited along with the whole harem.

Coolidge or not the net effect on both biological and social fitness is just the same. Human’s biological capabilities involve and social capabilities remain unchanged.

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Heredity of religiousness and fecundity – data from a dating website

Today I want to present a little research on religiousness and fecundity that I performed on a free dating website that collects a lot of data about the degree of religiousness and the desire to have children. Unfortunately the search engine provided by the website does not allow queries about how faithful a person and whether he or she likes children, so I had to limit my queries on type of faith and children already present or not.

Figure 1. The frequency of having at least one child when registered with the dating website.

The result (Fig. 1) is not surprising. It shows what we already know. Religious people are more likely to already have children even when registered with this dating website for search of a new partner. The selection bias that only those people become member of this website that are not in a relationship might explain why Hindus and Jews have only few children when advertising on this website. Probably, in these religions, if children are present or planned, strong family bounds are demanded. An other explanation might be the under-representation of Hindus in America. The next figure (Fig. 2) shows the population density. Given these data, I have to admit that only reliable conclusions about religiousness and the probability to have children can be made for Agnostics, Atheists, Catholics, Christians, and Jews.

Figure 2. The cumulative popolation density of members in selected East Cost and West Cost areas.

Still, the difference between atheistic and religious faiths is striking. What amazes me is Buddhism. I don’t know enough about this faith but I always find its position somewhere between Atheism and Christianity.

Figure 3. The frequency by which religious and non religous members declared that they don't want children.

Next I did something more experimental. I collected data by google search of the dating website. That approach allowed me to quantify the degree of religiousness, and also I was able to discriminate between those member who do not want children and those who like them. The result, although consistent with the former data, came as a surprise to me. I expected that at the outset Atheists and Religious people were similar, but the difference was even more striking (Fig. 3). By contrast to what I said in my previous post this rather supports the assumption that differences are genetically determined or imprinted during childhood. Well, though differences growing with age and family responsibility would more support my assertion of a social (cultural) determination, the data, on the other hand, does not contradict these ideas. People registered with this website are mature socially active individuals, so cultural factors have already affected them substantially.

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

The Regulation of Human Fecundity

Humans are social being not mere biological subjects. Humans consist of a complex structure of nested fauceirs. Each of them is controlled by its master fauceir that mainly reduces the innate proliferation rate.

The first fauceir that we going to consider are unicellular organisms, which exhibit the highest proliferation rate: one cell division every 10 minutes in some bacteria (Prokaryotes). Unicellular Eukaryotes still show an extraordinarily height proliferation rate of 7 cell divisions per day (Paramecium).

 

In multicellular organisms cell division is more or less tightly controlled by the master fauceir that contains and governs these cells. Control mechanisms include cytokines, hormones, and various mechanisms of DNA silencing that occur during development. Developmental processes ensure cell specialization into tissues and organs, and only specialized reproductive organs are allowed to participate in reproduction. Hormones control these reproductive organs. While male germ cells (sperms) still are abundantly produced there is only a limited number of female reproductive cells (ovum) that mature during lifetime, and maturation is tightly controlled by hormone cycles. By all these mechanisms, the control at the level of the muticellular organisms significantly reduces reproduction rate. On average, a woman prepares 250 eggs for insemination during a lifetime. Mammals are vastly outnumbered in this respect by fish. Still, a female salmon can produce 35,000 eggs and a male salmon the huge number of 100 billion sperms per year, which is minute compared to the reproduction rate of unicellular organisms. If a unicellular organism exhibits only one cell division per day it would have produced this incredible number of progeny.

 

 

N(2^365,digits=10) = 7.515336265e109

 

Reproduction is further controlled by behavior constraints. Behavioral mechanism that control reproduction include: (1) the aversion of having sex observed in males and females during lactation and early child care, (2) females carefully selecting their mating partners, and (3) infanticide. The data given for Gorillas allow to calculate an average of 8 children per female during lifetime.

 

N(((30+50)/2-(13+11)/2)/3.5,digits=10) = 8.000000000

 

But we know that even in the most reproductive societies such an average number is not achieved. The average fertility rate in Niger is 7.1. Although I personally know families that had up to 14 children, these are rare exceptions. The average fertility rate is further down regulated by social control mechanisms. By the way, even in these few families with more than 10 children the women had been sterilized by law. (Don’t ask me which law it was.) These figures, however, demonstrate that even in societies as fecund as the Amish there are still constraints that limit the number of children per women. These constraints are doubtlessly more effective in atheist settings. Given parsimony, these constraints most likely effect behavior the closest sub-fauceir. Social fauceirs did so for centuries. Contraceptives that affect the maturation of female germ cells are rather a recent innovation in controlling human reproduction.

 

Which are the behavior patterns used by societies to control human reproduction will be investigated in a next blog entry. In this respect, the study of religious communities provides insight how innate behavioral patterns are exploited.

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Why the Oneida Community Dissolved

The Oneida Community was a religious commune that existed from 1848 til 1881 in Oneida, New York. This community practiced complex marriage whose aim was to control human breeding. Doctors’ handwritten medical records now made available for research by the Kinsey institute prove that the breeding system was real and meticulous.

As demonstrated before, religions and religious communes might be considered fauceirs (here and here). Applying evolutionary rules, religious communes might be considered as individuals and the set of all such communes as the population. Communes propagate if they show better fitness than their competitors. The fitness of a community nowadays is mainly defined by the fecundity of its members. It was not always that way. In the period of early Christendom missionary work played the dominating role because of two reasons Christians have been persecuted and killed and there were lot of people still not under such a strong religious control. This picture changed with time, as the competitive religions evolved a missionary defense system compatible to our immune system. For the reason that most people are capable to fend off religious intrusions, Blume pointed out that mass conversions are rather an exception. In recent history the success of a religion is determined solely by the fecundity of its members and the capability to effectively indoctrinate the children with their parents’ faith. Not surprisingly then are the facts

1. that the world’s dominating, hence most successful, religions dislike birth control, and
2. that communities that successfully proliferate show the highest rate of increase.

However, knowing this rule does not answer the question why the Oneida community dissolved. On the contrary, the Oneida community launched an active breeding system, encouraging its members to proliferate. They practiced eugenics that should have assured an increasing number of outstanding members. Despite of all that they dissolved, or should I better say because of all that. There is an other fauceir rule that explains the dissolution of that community (which had been outlined before.)

A social fauceir can be stabilized by stereotyping its members,

And the reversal of that rule is also true. A human society becomes unstable and even dissolves if its members become capable enough to leave the stereotype.

From that rule follows that each human society that encourage its members to become more capable is digging its own grave. This is not only the case with the Oneida community, but also the recent Tunisian Revolution that started years after the government launched a huge program to advance education.

Well I admit fauceir theory develops ultimate causes of a historic process only. The immediate causes why the Oneida Community dissolved are quite different. But even these causes that were mainly conflicts between the older and the younger generations support the ultimate cause that more favorable properties of the engineered new generation cause conflicts with the existing old-fashioned rules of the society.

By contrast to what social leaders want to make us believe, the dissolution of a social fauceir is not a catastrophic event. On the contrary, if the dissolution takes place because of reasons of improvement, the members usually form new even more successful social fauceirs.

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This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.

Evolution of Human Brain

Motivated by the discussions about human brain size shrinking, I did some research on the matter.

The Brain size data are thoroughly summarized in this article [PMID 20378153] (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378153). The same point is made in a more popular fashion in this Times article (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7060327.ece). The hypothesis of allometry is added by this blog entry (http://adhominin.com/index.php?id=4152453199173583192). The article (http://www.livescience.com/history/091113-origins-evolving.html) also neatly reviews the fact but unfortunately without providing any reliable references.

What is the fauceir perspective on that problem? Interestingly but not surprisingly, the shrinking of the human brain began with the evolution of human societies. You may date this back 5,000 or even 30,000 years. Humans organized in groups were much more effective at overcoming difficulties. An individual regardless its strength and intelligence had to succumb to a group. Therefore when humans began to form social groups an individual’s capabilities became less important for its own survival compared to traits that made this individual more suitable for this group. To put it bluntly, a quarrelsome individual even if strong and intelligent was less welcome in a group than a submissive one even if not so bright and tough.

The corresponding fauceir rule states: The adaptation of a slave fauceir is controlled by its master. Thus, with the formation of societies, humans as a biological being became slaves to the dominating master, the society they live in.

Often intelligent people were the most quarrelsome and therefore systematically eliminated. Yes natural selection began to work against intelligent individuals. A process like this, we observe in devolution and domestication. We have abundant evidence for this. It starts in prehistoric times. Remember the Bible, the Old Testament. Jacob’s intelligent son Joseph has been almost killed by his two less brainy brothers. He survived by accident and became a successful entrepreneur. In the New Testament, Jesus had not so much luck. In medieval times, his ostensible followers committed the first documented mass murder among such quarrelsome people during inquisition. Giordano Bruno was among them only because he lectured the heliocentric solar system. The culling of intelligent people proceeded til last century when Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot did the job.

In summary, Darwin’s thesis that women feel more sexually attracted to brainy males might be true at the level of human individuals, but it is overrun by social factors, and soon, as biology is controlled by society, women’s sexual preferences will adapt. If you wish, you can see the fulfillment of this prediction right now as more and more women select their partners for social status and not intelligence.

Pheromones and Human Evolution (What is the fauceir stance?)

Male pheromone perfume.

A study  identified a new male urinary pheromone, darcin, that stimulates female’s sexual memory and attraction to an odor of a specific male (in mice). It is not a pheromone, as so many other described before, that makes females more willing to have sex. Instead it is a pheromone that makes a female stick to a specific male. In other words, it guarantees by reprogramming the brain a female’s fidelity (in mice). If the same existed in men, it would allow for the following implications:

1. Females need to smell a male’s urine to fall in love and to stay attached. Well this was not a problem in stone age, I suppose, when no proper hygiene standards existed. It was not a problem among peasants still, where the hygiene remained poor and the wife had enough opportunity to smell her husbands clothes while washing them. (Here probably lays the reason why laundry was a female task for centuries. Simply, cultures in accordance with an other custom produced less offspring and went extinct.) The problems with infidelity and infertility began with rising hygiene standards, the use of perfumes, and the handing over of the laundry to servants or washing machines. The upper class, accordingly, experienced these problems earlier than the general population. Well, I cannot say at this point whether these observations are related. It might be simply coincidence, and there are scores of other explanations for these phenomena, but it is supporting evidence though.
2. At this point, I wont dwell on the question whether certain sexual practices may have a bearing on a couple’ mutual devotion. This might be studied by anonymous questionnaires and probably such studies already exist.
3. Now taking the fauceir perspective, we may conclude that biological fauceirs as the pheromone system that controlled a partnership between humans in the past have been subsequently overruled by social fauceirs, customs and law, marriage for instance, that finally became stronger than the original, biological, ones. By the time, loss-of-function mutations to the biological system of fidelity had a minor importance for fitness and not have been negatively selected any more. After all human evolution is shaped by culture. Consequently, if we want to study whether pheromones play or played a role in human behavior we have to study humans that are less domesticated as did the authors of the study when they specifically took wild mice for their experiments.

Given the wide range of variation among present day humans and the rapidly further diverging traits, I assume people differently respond. Therefore a pheromone perfume would not have the same effect on every female. There will be someone who is not pleased but intensely annoyed.