The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4263959/

by hpb42 • 3 years ago

42 80 3 years ago

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Haha...I'm surprised to find this on HN. Just to comment on a note made in this study: "While MIT provides a parsimonious explanation of differences in idiotic behavior and may underlie sex differences in other risk seeking behaviors, it is puzzling that males are willing to take such unnecessary risks—simply as a rite of passage, in pursuit of male social esteem, or solely in exchange for “bragging rights.” Northcutt invokes a group selectionist, “survival of the species” argument, with individuals selflessly removing themselves from the gene pool."

The reason this happens is due to risk-taking behavior. Males take way more risks than females do - and you can find other studies which confirm this (i.e. for example this one: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470490800600...). When I read the Northcutt explanation for this I laughed -- it makes absolutely 0 sense and I can't believe that someone expanded energy in proposing this. It's absolutely ridiculous that someone would even suggest this, but meh.

SkyMarshal3• 3 years ago

There was at least one hypothesis floating around a while ago that males take more risks because they’re expendable to society, but females are not. If a society is decimated by a famine, disease, war, etc, it can be repopulated with just a few males, but requires many females. Thus males evolved to be more risk-taking and females more risk-averse.

At an individual level, the incentive may be social esteem/bragging rights, or it may be based on a calculation of greater risk = greater reward = more resources = more mating options, etc. It’s not that males are “selflessly removing themselves from the gene pool”, but that there’s some incentive and/or lack of disincentive to be more risk-taking.

Log_out_3• 3 years ago

And it's more attractive cause with great risk comes great reward, thus men with breasts in leotards. (Forgive the marvel jib)

Male risk taking behavior is more attractive to other males.

lelanthran3• 3 years ago

There was at least one hypothesis floating around a while ago that males take more risks because they’re expendable to society, but females are not.

That's not the hypothesis the way I heard it - men are more expendable to society, but it's really a stretch to conclude that because men are more expendable, they make decisions with this knowledge in mind.

I mean, really - there's no logic linking the two.

lelanthran3• 3 years ago

It's absolutely ridiculous that someone would even suggest this, but meh.

It is, but note that someone suggested the very same thing below.

Anyone who has ever been out their front door knows why men take more risks - it's because riskier behaviour gets them laid more often, with more different women.

Being the top-dog amongst your male peers gets you more women. To get to the top-dog spot you need to take a ton of risks (challenging existing leaders, creating your own subgroup, learning new skills, etc).

grepLeigh• 3 years ago

This conclusion comes from 2 studies:

The first observes 1,000 students over 20 days at a single bus station in Liverpool. The second observes a single crossing point near the university.

sjducb8• 3 years ago

I feel like the paper lacks a discussion about why males are more likely to take risks.

Typically extremely reproductively successful men like Chengis Khan take enormous risks to get the power and status that leads to high reproductive success. Unfortunately we are all descended from those men.

photon_lines7• 3 years ago

I don't feel like there needs to be a discussion on 'why' they take more risks. Females expand way more energy in having and raising kids than males do (within the human species). In other species (like sea-horses) - the females actually compete for males since males are the ones that expand way more energy in raising / producing children... (i.e. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seahorse.html).

lelanthran3• 3 years ago

I don't feel like there needs to be a discussion on 'why' they take more risks.

Why not? Do you think that this:

Females expand way more energy in having and raising kids than males do (within the human species)

Is the only answer applicable to "Why to males take more risk than females?"

pfannkuchen2• 3 years ago

like sea-horses

I don’t think it’s fair to represent an edge case, “noteworthy for being different” type species as being just one example out of many. As far as I’m aware the behavior exhibited by sea horses is extremely rare, and I recall it being highlighted as such in, at least, The Selfish Gene. Can you think of other examples?

sjducb8• 3 years ago

If you don’t think there needs to be a discussion then don’t engage.

In my first year at college we were all set an essay about why human females invest lots of resources preening and enhancing their appearance, while across nature females normally put almost no effort into their appearance, and males are the ones with the bright colours.

This is an enormous area of study with thousands of papers published. Sexual selection is incredibly important. Especially as modern human evolution is driven almost entirely by sexual selection.

It’s worth understanding how sexual selection works.

bell-cot2• 3 years ago

Neither propensity to high-risk behaviors, nor high intelligence, are reliably inherited. (Vs., say, blood types.)

Hence there are plenty of males who got the former, but not the latter.

bumby7• 3 years ago

Are you sure? A trivial search on Google scholar suggests scientists have identified specific genes that may be responsible for risky behavior. (A very cursory look seems to implicate genes that alter dopamine pathways, which, to a layperson, would make sense since dopamine is heavily involved with motivation.)

dehrmann• 3 years ago

My theory is that because of the sperm/egg relationship, survival of men is less critical to the survival of the species, so men are programmed to do more risky things, and the ones that survive are more fit.

ozim• 3 years ago

Little nitpick: ones that reproduce and their offspring survive are more fit.

Man is useful to protect the offspring but is not required.

bluGill3• 3 years ago

There are a few factors here.

Men can father more babies than women. Which means that a male who sacrifices himself for the community indirect ensures his siblings survive, via brothers and sisters (cousins...) while a female who sacrifices herself ensures less children for the community - not a big deal now, when when infant mortality was high all women needed to be pregnant or nursing a baby from the teens until menopause or the population would shrink enough to kill the village off.

Men can father babies with many women, which means women can select the best male. A man who does something stupid and survives often gets the attention of the women and thus is allowed to pass his genes on. (woman can have more than one partner for their babies, but only one at a time will get her pregnant). Some stupid things are useful for the village as well - if you destroy a different village that is land you can then take for your own village, if you succeed in killing the lion you ensure that lion won't attack the village. Thus for a women encouraging men to try stupid things is a good reproductive strategy by rewarding them with babies is a smart move (as a bonus the man who succeeds may have better genetics that caused the success)

There are probably more. And this deserve real study as opposed to people like me on a forum making logical things up. I'm not sure how to do such a study though.

huytersd• 3 years ago

Unfortunately?

sjducb8• 3 years ago

We evolved in the only phylogenetic family to use organised group conflict (war) as a mating strategy.

I think we’d have a much more peaceful world if we’d evolved from crocodiles or something peaceful like that.

BobaFloutist5• 3 years ago

I think it's far more likely that thousands of years of human society have encouraged and rewarded risk-taking behavior in men, and discouraged and punished it in women.

Remember, in any perspective on the differences of sexes, there's no control; no human being has ever been raised outside of human society and very few have ever been raised outside of male-dominated societies.

golemotron2• 3 years ago

We're lucky that we can look at other primates and mammals and see the same patterns.

marcellus233• 3 years ago

Why do you think it's more likely to be societal and not inherited?

globular-toast2• 3 years ago

Presumably the presence of risk-taking males is advantageous to the species as a whole. If our species was asexual each individual would have to be fairly risk averse as any individual lost is lost breeding capacity. But in a sexual species a lost male is fine and happens all the time. Just losing males is, of course, pointless but presumably the advantages brought by the successful ones outweighs any disadvantages brought by the unsuccessful ones. This seems to be true when you look at unsuccessful males who just tend to sit out on the sidelines or whither away in silence rather than actively leech on society while successful males can be great leaders, innovators, visionaries etc.

It's perhaps easier to see why risk-taking behaviour is less common in females, though. In a sexual species each female is required to carry at least two children, on average, to merely replace the current population (it's also beneficial if she survives the final birth). The loss of a single female is therefore quite significant. A population with more risk-taking females would be less successful than one with less.

sjducb8• 3 years ago

Natural selection operates at the gene level, not the population level.

There has to be a positive expected return for the genes of the individual that takes the risks.

If it’s beneficial to not take risks then populations will be full of individuals who play it safe.

maxerickson• 3 years ago

It'd be interesting to try to identify highly represented individuals that were otherwise not historically notable.

RGamma• 3 years ago

Your genetic influence will probably dilute over the generations and in response to environmental and cultural factors. Also, with randomness at play it may not make much of a difference after all. Properly assessing this empirically seems like a statistical nightmare.

jvalencia• 3 years ago

For those who didn't make it to the end, it's worth noting that there's a fair bit of tongue in cheek in there.

We believe MIT deserves further investigation, and, with the festive season upon us, we intend to follow up with observational field studies and an experimental study—males and females, with and without alcohol—in a semi-naturalistic Christmas party setting.

elzbardico• 3 years ago

This is so deliciously meta:

A study about Darwin Awards worthy of an Ignobel Prize.

readthenotes12• 3 years ago

I have no idea why you're being downvoted. I can only attribute it as an expression of MIT

yedava2• 3 years ago

Do Darwin Awards look at all of humanity or only a subset of it? Maybe there is a cultural component to behavior. Maybe there are cultures which don't treat men as idiots. How can anyone assert that men are genetically stupid without controlling for culture?

dekhn2• 3 years ago

It's non-scientific. It's kind of a joke paper written by an undergrad.

oh_sigh2• 3 years ago

What culture treats men as idiots?

Yes, there are memes about clueless men, but there are also memes about clueless women - in fact, we have an entire genre of "blonde jokes" about them - which, note, are 99% about blonde women, not blonde men. The fact that these memes exist doesn't mean that society treats men(or women) as clueless generally.

yedava2• 3 years ago

You can see it here on this discussion, or even in general on HN. It is taken as a given that men are hard wired to optimize for getting laid and all their behaviors follow from that. It's like culture is irrelevant and humans are resigned to act out their genetics.

setgree• 3 years ago

If only more academic papers were written so clearly and engagingly:

According to “male idiot theory” (MIT) many of the differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency department admissions, and mortality may be explained by the observation that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.
there can be little doubt that Darwin Award winners seem to make little or no real assessment of the risk or attempt at risk management. They just do it anyway. In some cases, the intelligence of the award winner may be questioned. For example, the office workers watching a construction worker demolishing a car park in the adjacent lot must have wondered about the man’s intelligence. After two days of office speculation—how does he plan to remove the final support to crash the car park down safely?—they discovered, on the third day, that he didn’t have a plan. The concrete platform collapsed, crushing him to death and flattening his mini-excavator.

readthenotes12• 3 years ago

Is the MIT just the low side of the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis?

The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

Related Stories