Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Human Nature vs. Social Construct
The article I've chosen exposes some socially taboo or socially unacceptable subjects as innate human nature. The article posits that some of the social constructs or norms we have like monogamy, defy human nature. I thought it was super interesting and slightly shocking to read the arguments for each politically incorrect truth. I'm not sure if I agree with the author on some of his justifications. What do you guys think? After reading this article, are the social and political constructs in our society defying our human nature? Are we suppressing or denying truths like beautiful people having more daughters or couples with sons being less likely to divorce because we don't personally agree with them? What do you think the article says about our collective unconscious and evolutionary psychology?
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Overall, I’m a little torn by this article. I think a lot of these incorrect truths are far too generalized. Also, I feel that as a human species, we cannot always know precisely what our motives are for doing a certain think or exhibiting a certain behavior. For example, the author states that we do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us. What about those who would prefer eating celery over a Milky Way bar? I can certainly think of many people I know who would prefer vegetables over sweets. What if someone originally didn’t like sweets, but grew to like them because eating chocolate or candy reminded them of a loved one? (Kind of reminds me of the diagram we saw when we did the unit on learning – the girl kissed a guy with garlic breath, and then associated the smell of garlic with romantic arousal even if the guy was not present.) Maybe someone creates this love of sweets after experiencing some particular event. To say that we are born to crave sweets is simply too oversimplified of a statement.
ReplyDeleteThe one particular incorrect truth that struck me most was the first one, which said that men like blond bombshells and women want to look like them. If all women wanted to be blond, why do we have brunette, red, and black hair dye on the market? If everyone truly wanted to be blond, they would find a means of doing so. Again, the article makes a sweeping generalization. I’ll buy into the whole waist-to-hip ratio thing, as it does make sense that men would be attracted to a woman who appears to have the ability of reproduction; however, blond hair has nothing to do with reproduction and will not affect the man’s sex life at all. The whole theory that everything is evolution-based is being stretched way too far. Of course, there are men that like a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl; but there are also men who will only become romantically involved with brunettes.
Another incorrect truth that struck me, and even annoyed me, was that most suicide bombers are Muslim. Are they really mostly Muslim? Or is it just that, living in America and at war with Iraq, the media only focuses on the Muslim bombers? Stereotypes! We hear about one Muslim suicide bomber, and we latch on to that one particular instance because it fits our schema for what a suicide bomber would look like. If we learned that a young German girl was a suicide bomber, we would probably push it aside and refuse to believe it possible. In my opinion, this article was just a way to justify some common stereotypes and blow them out of proportion.
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DeleteWell, we choose to like different flavors (sweets or veggies and so on) based on what our bodies need more of. Kind of like people who get lost at sea and eat fish they catch off the side of the raft or boat Over time they will discard the flesh and eat the eyes and cartilage and report that their tastes changed while they, were stranded. This is because there is more that our bodies need nutrients wise in these parts of the fish rather than the flesh which does not have much of anything. So the author would be correct in that instance.
DeleteThis article was really shocking especially being exposed to some of the incorrect truths about human nature. Many humans try to and want to pin point why they have performed an action, why they live in the place they live, or what has got them to the point in their life today. I think we can reason and suggest things as to why/ what, but we can never truly clearly define motives and reasons for our actions. Our motives doesn’t necessarily have to be from our selves, but they could from others in our environment, things in our environment, or things we were biologically born with. Something you see could spark something you do later in life. The thing about the sweets was very shocking. I do not think necessarily everyone evolves to likes sweets because they taste good since certain people would rather not eat them. There were two main incorrect truths that shocked me and caused me to think the most. The first is that most suicide bombers are Muslims. This is a heated topic especially with what happen on 9/11. I tend to think many people stereotype and even myself I see do this Muslims as bad people. I tend to think do Muslims or any other nation see us the same way “we” stereotype them? Imagine that! I think we just downgrade them because they are less superior than us and we shouldn’t discriminate against them because of that. Another incorrect truth I stumbled upon in this article was that beautiful people have more daughters. As mentioned in first paragraph the theory about rich families having more sons because wealth is passed down is seen that way because it has been like that for years and years. It states more poor people have girls and I think this stems backs to the times of slavery and how if you were a girl you were put to work and care taking. It is completely discriminating and should change with time. I just found this article bringing up many misconceptions and stereotypes that most Americans need to understand are wrong/ incorrect.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's because I can't accept some of the statements that are made in this article as true, but I'm pretty critical of the argument that the author makes here. It includes a number of sweeping generalizations -- for example, "Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny." Numerous statements such as these are too much of a stretch for me. I think that proponents of this argument are demonstrating something similar to the hindsight bias in this. When we are presented with an answer or able to look back on the past, we can find reasons for why something happened and how we "knew it all along." Similarly, I think that the author is starting with an argument given to him and working backwards to find somewhat pithy evidence to prove why everyone should have known this all along. The author looks back to a lot of biological evidence to make the argument (especially with mating, male/female dynamics, primal health, and more), and I think he uses this as rationale from which psychological and social-cultural norms spring. I don't really agree with this perspective -- contrastingly, I think that biological factors, psychological factors, and social-cultural factors all contribute to our thoughts and behavior equally; biology does not determine the other two.
ReplyDeleteThis article really tested my patience. While I was reading the article there were times when I wanted to stop reading and send an angry e-mail to the author (thankfully I refrained.) One of the things that stood out to me was the belief that all women want to look like "blonde bombshells," a la Pamela Anderson in Baywatch. This really annoyed me because I simply don't feel the need to look like a Barbie Doll. Those projections are so superficial and empty. I feel secure being imperfect, and I'm sure there are many other people who would say they felt the same way. It annoyed me that the author chose to lump every one together, as if we are all the same person.
ReplyDeleteHowever, upon deeper thought, I realized that the author may have more of a point than I thought. My sister has naturally dark features - dark brown hair and eyes, and an olive skin tone. I have always thought that she looks great accentuating her natural looks. So it came as a big surprise to me when she asked me what I thought about her dying her hair blonde. I immediately said, "No!" and explained how I thought she looked so pretty with her natural brown hair. She did not agree with me, and plans to dye it blonde. So, maybe this fact is more accurate than I initially thought.
The major gripe that I had with this article as a whole is the fact that the author tends to lump every one into a stereotype. Who's to say that Muslim people are the most common suicide bombers? How could you possibly prove that? And if it's true one day, who's to say it'll be true the next day? I feel like the author is basing his "facts" off of well-known stereotypes. Someone should tell the author that the world is not as black and white as he presents it to be.
These ten politically incorrect truths about human nature really shocked me. One truth that really surprised me was that most suicide bombers are Muslim. I think that as Americans we tend to think that all suicide bombers are Muslim because of the tragedy of 9/11. I do not think we believe suicide bombers are Muslim because of the competition they have for getting a wife. In the article it says that polygyny is practiced in Islam making it difficult for men to get a wife; since many men already have two. Another statement from the article was the belief that there are virgins waiting for men when they get to heaven. So, the combination of not being able to getting a wife and the knowledge that a virgin is waiting for men in heaven leads for Muslims to be suicide bombers. I find this reasoning ridiculous and the statement that most suicide bombers are Muslim. Another truth that I was very surprised to read about was that having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce. I know families that have more than one son and their parents are divorced. The article says that divorce would be reduced because having sons gives the father men to pass the inheritance onto and this effect tends to be stronger in wealthier families. I think we need to understand that these stereotypes about human nature are totally incorrect.
ReplyDeleteI think that this article falsely simplifies the whole population into one category. Not all people prefer sweets and fats, not all women want to be blondes, and not all women benefit from polygyny . I will be the first to admit that I have a sweet tooth and LOVE candy and ice cream. But there are times when I would prefer eating a red pepper over a chocolate bar. And I do know many people who prefer eating healthy over eating sweets and fats. Also, I was completely insulted when the author talked about how all men want a women who has blond hair, blue eyes, and big boobs because I don't have any of these three qualities! I know a lot of men who are attracted to brunettes with brown eyes. Yet, the author categorizes all guys into one category. Also, the author says women desire to look like Barbie, but I don't believe this is true either. I know plenty of redheads who are proud to be "gingers". I do, however, agree with the hip to waist ratio because we learned it in class from Ms. Fuhrman. I think it is ridiculous to say that women benefit from polygyny. This statement bothers me so much- "Most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man." What happened to the days where people married out of love rather than wealthy? What woman would care if their husband was poor if they actually truly loved him? Love is all that matters, and the author is making it seem like people marry only based on wealthy.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that social and political constructs in our society, like seen in this article, are defying our human nature because anyone who reads this article will realize it is ridiculous. I think we are denying these truths because I think it is also absurd that the author can say beautiful people have more daughters. What is beautiful? Everyone is beautiful in an unique way so does that mean everyone will have more daughters?
Before I even began to read this article I immediately wanted to jot down all of the reasons why I think that this concept of lumping all of humanity together and validating stereotypes was just ridiculous. However, when I really thought about it, the author has some valid points. Stereotypes exist because the majority (not all) of the population agrees upon/tends to look at a particular thing in the same or a similar way. The idea that men prefer blondes is irritating. We don't want to believe that we are capable of such a superficial generalization. However, if you look at most movies, the "popular pretty girl" is usually portrayed as a perky blonde. Now whether or not media is influencing our belief of what beautiful is, or if we are determining the market which the media has to appeal to is debatable. However the author gives a lot of biologically valid reasons in support of why the stereotype even exists in the first place. While I found the part about suicide bombers being mostly Muslim disturbing, I was at least interested in the logic presented as to a possible reason behind suicide bombing in that society. While I don't agree with the generalization that most suicide bombers are Muslim, I don't have any numbers to prove that either way. So it's fascinating at least to examine possible causes behind this awful phenomenon. I think that what this article really forced me to do was separate what I believe from the opposing argument. I realized going into this that I was going to have to be open-minded to read it. While I still do not change my stance on many of the common stereotypes mentioned in the article, I actually enjoyed reading it and am glad that I got to see a new perspective on these issues.
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else, I was extremely annoyed reading this article. I could barely get through two sentences without having to stop, rewind, and rethink some of the statements the author makes. In history class on Friday, we learned that after World War II, Americans wanted foreign nations to practice birth control because they believed that it would lessen the risk of communism in other countries. Our class started laughing, because no one could seem to understand the jump from birth control to communism. How had the American people rationalized that and convinced themselves that one factor was a direct result of the other?! The same thoughts went through my mind reading this article. Most suicide-bombers are Muslim because Muslims are polygamous...really? If a couple is "beautiful", then they will give birth to more daughters than the rest of us ordinary people...what? Men sexually harass women because they are NOT sexist...I still don't get that one. We've learned since the beginning of this class that "correlation does NOT equal causation", and I think that the author of this article needs to be reminded of this rule. He rationalizes these shocking, extreme statements in round-about ways. Like Gabby mentioned, he's also guilty of a lot of hindsight bias and looking back for reasons why things have panned out as they have, even if that reason may not be at the actual root of the fact. I, for one, am not convinced by his arguments.
ReplyDeleteI thought this article was very different, but I have to say that it was not one that I enjoyed reading. I thought that most of them were crazy and that the author had ridiculous justification, but the one that surprised me the most was “having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce.” Although sociologists and demographers have a statistic out supporting this statement, I think it is absolutely crazy. How do we know that it isn’t just the parents fault because they fight a lot….It makes no sense to me that children could have that much of an impact on a relationship. Sure the lives of most parents revolve around their children, but I do not see how having a boy or a girl could ruin your relationship with your husband to that extent. (I think the reason this statement bothers me so much is because I am a girl, but if I were a boy I probably would not have very much of an issue or care about it.) The only sort of justification I could see for this statement is that boys rarely get into fights, and when they do they get over them quickly. Girls tend to hold grudges and let everyone know why they are mad and who they are mad at. If girls in a household are constantly cranky and putting up fight, then that could aggravate the parents, and in turn they could get in argument with each other. I still do not believe that warrants the statement that sons reduce the likelihood of divorce.
ReplyDeleteOne other statement that really bothered me was the one that “beautiful people have more daughters.” I honestly do not even have anything to respond to that statement with because I think that it is so biased.
I do not agree with any of the arguments/justifications this author gives and he bothers me a lot….
I found this article interesting because it looks at things from purely a evolutionary/biological perspective. The combination of nature and nurture influence our behaviors, but I think we tend to focus on the nurture side of things because we see examples of this in our everyday lives. I liked that the author gave some examples of how nature affects our behaviors, but I think he went too far by cutting the nurture side out completely. Some of his arguments made sense from a historical perspective, but I think modern people were generalized. The stereotypes including things like all men are attracted to blonde girls with blue eyes and big boobs. I also think the author found a correlation and wrote an article about it as if it were a causation, which we all know is not the case. One example is people have a higher divorce rate if they have daughters. There are many reasons why this could be, such as boys tend to cause more trouble and are immature longer than girls so parents who may have otherwise gotten a divorce feel like they need to stay together to control their son. The author is also not really making predictions for anything, just justifying current stereotypes. He is guilty of hindsight bias. I think this article has really shown us how important it is to consider both nature and nurture when determining why people act the way they do.
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ReplyDeleteThis article was extremely shocking to read because it goes against a lot of our basic social norms. The whole section on polygyny was almost disturbing because I do not agree that it is a better way of living. I’m sure most of my classmates agree because this was the way we were raised so it is hard to open our eyes to the way other people live. The section that says “most suicide bombers are Muslim” really struck me because of the September 11 attacks. I think from this day, many Americans have developed a major stereotype towards Muslims because of the suicide planes used to kill many Americans. After knowing how much devastation it caused for every single individual American, it is disheartening to hear that this author is trying to argue that these suicide bombers (planes) are mostly due to polygyny. The article says that polygyny makes men violent because there are not enough women for every men to go around. This, therefore, increases crimes. This idea is so abstract that it is hard to believe a “silly” concept of polygyny was behind the killing of millions of Americans. The last ridiculous theory that stood out to me was that beautiful people have more daughters. This brings up the idea of operationally defining beautiful. Who determines who is “beautiful” and who is not? All people have different opinions and everyone is beautiful in their own ways.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that the social and political constructs are defying human nature. This article is extremely bizarre and I cannot bring myself to agree with one idea that is brought up by this author.
I have to say this bothered me a lot: why are so many of these stereotypes unfavorable to women? Essentially any subtopic that made a male/female comparison painted women as the objects of men, stating as fact that men can cheat on us and pick and choose which ones of us are good enough because of evolutionary psychology. I know the article wasn't saying any of this was morally okay; it was just stating that they are true. Still, I have a hard time believing that these concepts are really so universal. Not all "gorgeous" women are blond bombshells...and what even defines gorgeous anyway? I'd like to see that operational definition, just out of curiosity -- what qualities are considered beautiful? Further, like some of you have said above, if all men wanted blonde women, all women would be blonde by now. I also think that it's hard to apply such preferences to everyone in the world, because these concepts have a lot to do with culture. Each culture finds different things attractive, which I think is good support for the argument that social constructs do have a large influence on our behavior. Of course, I'm not completely discounting the power of evolution -- evolutionary psychology obviously has valid, proven points -- but I think it's important to remember that evolutionary explanations are not the only ones out there and that there are multiple explanations for these issues, many of which are less dependent on (sometimes inaccurate) stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteSecond attempt at posting for this article......
ReplyDeleteI'm going to focus on the first "Truth" in this article because it was a little too close to home and therefore really caught my attention. I think it's frightening to find out that love/lust is a complete and total scientific break down of ratios and color. To find out that everything results back to youth is unsettling because time is something none of us have. However we see this trend all too much in life, news, media, etc. (example Hugh Hefner) I've always wondered why guys are attracted to girls with bigger breasts. As the article says its about youth, I'm not totally sure that sits right with me. There's something about that justification that seems a little off. However the others like the hair I felt was so on point. Being blonde, I feel like I'm in a constant race to be blonder than everyone else. The older I get, the darker my hair gets and the lighter it seems everyone else's gets. I notice all of the time when I'm in a picture with fellow blondes with lighter hair because the attention naturally goes to them first. Its really interesting how we as a society run. We have this intuition of what attracts guys, and then we as females all rush to do it the best. The constant rat race for the attention and affection of the male gender is getting more pathetic as the years go on. With information like this article, who knows where the future generations will be in their battle to perfection.
I found this article to be very confusing at first and had to read it over twice before I was able to fully understand the concept behind it. When reading the article for the first time, the first truth stuck out to me the most, the one about men preferring blonde bombshells. I think that each guy has a totally different taste. For example, one guy could see a girl and call her hot, while a different guy could see the same girl and declare her ugly. If all guys preferred blondes, then there would be no women with different color hair. If every single guy liked the same exact type of girl, then there would be a lot of lonely women in the world, and there would be a lot of angry guys fighting over those ideal girls. As the famous saying goes, to each his own. Another shocking truth was the one where it said the all suicide bombers are Muslim. This is another statement I disagree with and I believe it has originated because of the war on terror. It has come to be a stereotype in America and we can all admit to feeling nervous when walking past a Muslim man alone. We can all admit to associating bombers with Middle Eastern people, and we can all admit to being uneasy when accompanied by a Muslim on an airplane. This has come about from America’s stereotypical beliefs but is not true in any way.
ReplyDeletehaha this was certainly interesting. everyones comments are awesome by the way. Well obviously these are grossly false "truths" but I kinda get that the author is trying to utilize this exaggeration to capture the reader's attention though it is a bit infuriating haha. i somewhat appreciate the evolutionary viewpoint but I personally think its a bit of a stretch. I think our society focuses so much on stereotypes in terms of proving and disproving them. I don't like how this article talks about these topics so objectively and in such a detached manner. It comes across almost mechanical, like we're all lab rats living out an experiment. I think the whole "men like blonde women because they seem younger thing" is definitely false because guys can be attracted to older women. I think we have put this ideal model of a woman into our heads so we obsess about it and analyze it. its sad. The Muslim-suicide bomber topic makes me so angry. These kind of stereotypes thrust us into a backwards society. This is a ingroup- outgroup case. We always have to point our fingers at someone.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with everyone who said that these ten politically incorrect truths are over simplified. That being said, I also feel, like Katherine, that maybe the author over exaggerated these "truths" on purpose to show how perposterous and over the top they really are.
ReplyDeleteI think the "truth" that is the most disturbing, but also the most prevalent in our society is that "all suicide bombers are Muslim." Since 9-11, I think it's easier for us to assume and generalize the entire Muslim population into a "terrorist" group and fear them then it is to actually understand a separate culture from our own.
Of course there are radicals in every culure and religion, but that doesn't mean that all, or even a majority of the people are a detriment to society. I think it's totally ridiculous that this article tied in polygny with Islam. It said if fifty percent of the men have two wives, that means the other fifty percent cannot have a wife; this, along with the fact that a hundred virgins will be waiting for them in heaven, pushes Muslim men to be suicide bombers. It's totally unrealistic to say that every suicide bomber has been Muslim, it'sjust not true--the statistics are just too falsely based.
This article was extremely generalized and really didn't touch on anything concrete because the "truths" were simply inconclusive of anything. Grouping all individuals into a category just because they may fit certain qualities (i.e. being Muslim, or a "blonde bombshell") doesn't do justice to any kind of individuality.