Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, And Praying To Going To War And Becoming A Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What WeDo (2007)
About book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, And Praying To Going To War And Becoming A Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What WeDo (2007)
You know how when you read a really good nonfiction book, you come away with a sense of exhilaration, a feeling that the world is a little clearer, a little richer than it was before?Now imagine starting to read a book on evolutionary psychology, getting a bit of that feeling, then reaching the middle of the book and realizing that the authors have been cheating you the entire time.That's WHY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE HAVE MORE DAUGHTERS in a nutshell. The authors sound great for a while, but then they'll make an assertion that makes you go, "Wait..." and you'll discover, upon investigation, that they're stating things as fact without citing any support, and ignoring any evidence that conflicts with their conclusions.Take, for example, their assertion that "Islam [is:] the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions," and "while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is always Islam."Except it's not. Christians and Hindus have been known to commit religiously-motivated suicide attacks.The authors assert that the explanation for Muslim suicide bombing is that Islam allows polygyny, meaning that many young men will have no access to wives, and promises the suicide bombers 72 virgins in heaven. By the standards of evolutionary psychology, then, suicide bombing makes perfect sense for Muslim men with poor marital prospects: it is logical to leave this life in which they have no access to women for one in which they will have access to a large number of women.What's missing is any sort of information on how strongly that belief is held by bombers. Belief in that particular passage would have to be extremely strong to override the evolutionary urge to survive and pass on your genes in this world.Or take women's income versus men's. The authors conclude that "the sex gap in earnings and the so-called glass ceiling are caused not by employer discrimination or any other external factors, but by the sex differences in internal preferences..." and proceed to assert that women in liberal capitalist societies can achieve whatever they want. Any difference in achievement is because women don't care as much as men about status.Any woman who's worked her way up in a male-dominated industry (myself included) can tell you that our lack of desire for success and promotion is not the sole factor - or even the primary factor - in holding us back.The authors ignore mountains of evidence that opposes their conclusion. For example, women asking for raises or promotions are perceived more negatively than men asking for the same. Ambition in men is perceived more positively than in women. Identical resumes will be perceived as representing less competence and value if a female name is attached to them. And so on.The authors claim that men harass each other, so in the case of hostile work environments, "men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women."This ignores different types of teasing, such as those used to strengthen ties between members of an in-group versus those used to exclude non-members. It ignores differences in attitudes toward and perceptions of women between men who promote a hostile work environment and men who don't. Basically, it ignores anything that doesn't fit with the authors' hypotheses. Which is the exact opposite of appropriate use of the scientific method. You don't get to ignore what doesn't fit.The most egregious abuse of the reader's trust is probably in the section entitled "Why are single women more likely to travel abroad - and why are young single men more likely to be xenophobic?" It starts out by asserting that if you ask a group of unmarried friends what their hobbies are, women will list traveling, men won't. This is because indicators of status are culturally-determined, so single men abroad won't have their status markers recognized by foreign women, and therefore won't get a chance to mate with them (this explains their xenophobia). They cite studies that show that unmarried women are far less likely to express xenophobic attitudes than unmarried men. They then claim that the differences disappear when people marry - married women are no less likely to express xenophobic attitudes than married men. Wait, what? Otherwise open-minded young women suddenly become xenophobic when they marry? Seem a little hard to believe? Well, guess what: the authors don't have any citation for that piece of "evidence."I could go on and on (language isn't apparently a system because men are better than women at systems, but women are better at language, ergo language is not logical and systematic) but I think this sampling is representative enough.There are more enlightening ways to spend your time.
It is with good reason that I ought to agree with the conclusions of this book – I have two daughters and no sons. I have never really thought of myself as beautiful and so it would have been nice to have objective proof of my beauty.Unfortunately, and despite my unequivocal reward in accepting this hypothesis, I can’t bring myself to accept Evolutionary Psychology and its wonderful claims.I do tend to believe in serendipity though – and the fact Manny and I were talking about this recently on my review of Outliers and now the very next book I read is about Evolutionary Psychology is one of those odd little coincidences that adds a bit of spice to life.In the end I just found this book annoying. It is presented as a series of questions. The answers are based on what is described as the best possible research and the reader is encouraged not to bother worrying about such unscientific notions as ‘political correctness’ (how did ‘being nice to people’ ever become a pejorative?) No, this is hard-nosed and fearless science at its best. There is an easy way to tell this is the case – women are basically to blame for everything, including it seems male mid-life crisis.I nearly stopped reading this book when it gave the reason why most suicide bombers are Muslim. The reason? Well, Islam tolerates Polygyny and that means lots of men end up with no access to women. Monogamy favours men and Polygyny favours women (as they get access to the best men and have their children looked after). But it does leave lots of men living a rather lonely existence. So, with the mere promise of 72 Virgins off they run to strap on the bomb belts. If it wasn’t so serious it would almost be funny.You know, one of the authors of this book is Japanese. Did they have polygyny in pre-war Japan? If not, how does his theory account for the suicide missions of Japanese pilots? Actually, don’t tell me – anyone can play the ‘let’s just make something up’ game. Who would have thought Rudyard Kipling would have such a powerful role in modern science.This is a book of evolutionary just-so stories. Some of the stories are more or less accepted today – like how the penis got its shape. But others are very iffy, like why beautiful people have more daughters idea – if you know someone who is butt-ugly with a squad of daughters (and I would prefer if you could think of someone other than me as your example if you don’t mind) the other ‘solution’ to this problem is that people of low status also tend to have daughters – so if you have more daughters it is either because you are hot or a no hoper. That just about covers it, I guess.But some of the stories are plain obnoxious. The idea that sexual harassment is a growing problem in the world (I would have actually thought it was becoming less of a problem) is because men treat women as equals, rather than because men treat women differently, has to be one of the more repulsive ideas in the book.What annoyed me most was the spurious conclusions contained in this book are invariably presented as the uncontroversial results of a purely objective application of the scientific method. This is precisely my problem with Social Darwinism. Natural selection has its place – and that place is called Biology. When it is used to ‘explain’ human behaviours the whole thing has a rather pungent smell about it. And to be frank, the smell that fills my nose is of death.Not everything that is said in this book is nonsense, although it would be easier to criticise if it was. For example, like any other male I think about sex rather frequently (perhaps even too frequently) – but to say that ‘getting laid’ is virtually the sole motivator for every action I do is not just more Freudian than Freud – but also too silly to waste time on seriously rebutting.I know people really do love having simple answers to complex behaviours, but really, this is just being silly.
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I rate this book so highly not because I agree with all the ideas put forth in this book, but for the manner in which it was written. I won't lie--I have a hard time getting through most non-fiction books. I get bored about half way through and abandon them for more fast paced fantasy novels. But this book not only kept my interest, it made me think.The argument of the book is that humans, like all other lifeforms on Earth, have evolved throughout the ages. We are not "blank slates" but are subject to the natural impulses of our brain that come from our Stone Age ancestors. Evolutionary Psychology relates everything back to reproduction: the reason men do everything that they do (which is mostly driven by the unconscious mind) is to pass on their genes, and the reason women act the way they do is to find the best mate.One thing I found interesting was the claim that we still have our "Stone Age" brains; because society has changed so rapidly, we as a species have not had time to evolve to keep up with our surroundings.I'm not sure where I stand on Evolutionary Psychology--I need to research it more--but I had a difficult time believing everything is motivated by sex. A lot of the "answers" they give in this book make sense to me. Others seem a bit far fetched.I also liked that at the end of the book the authors listed questions that could not be explained by Evolutionary Psychology. They acknowledged that this theory could not explain away every human behavior. Overall, I thought this was a very interesting read that encourages critical thought. Don't read this if you are offended easily because some of the questions they answer are very charged. Read this with an open mind a willingness to pick out the truth.
—Asenath
There are a lot of negative "one star" reviews for this book. I read this book years ago as part of my graduate program in Anthropology, and I loved it then, and love it now. It highlights the "rules of attraction"...I'm glad my instructor chose this book because it has a great way of making non-fiction engaging and relatable to everyday occurrences. Easy read, and for me there were a lot of "ah-ha" moments. Explained the psychological underpinnings for why we choose our mates, and ultimately why we "do what we do".
—Jessica
This was a very silly book. Lots of footnotes, but the author (only one of the co-authors actually wrote it) would have done well to study a bit of formal logic to avoid some really basic errors in the cause-and-effect relationship.For one thing, just because 2 things are statistically related does not imply causality at all, let along a particular one. "A" might cause "B"; "B" might cause "A"; both might be caused by "C", etc. Jumping from relationship to a specific causality was done consistently throughout the book.And that's ignoring the circular arguments. The best one here was why women earn less money than men, even when doing the same work. Our author says that there is no such thing as sexual discrimination in this- rather, women and men are paid fairly because women lack the motivation men do in pursuing their careers, and thus deserve less pay. And how do we know this? Why, because women earn less! That proves it!Also, just because one very specific example of evolutionary psychology turned out to be actually falsifiable, He then concludes triumphantly that this proves that EP itself is falsifiable! That was, though, the only such example in the book; I cannot see any way to prove most of the conclusions one way or another- although I suspect that picking and choosing the data one uses is not a good way to start.Not recommended.
—Cissa
