The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are. The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology [1994, 1995] by Robert Wright

Author:Robert Wright [Wright, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vintage Books/Random House [1995 pbk. ed]
Published: 1994-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

MEN, WOMEN, AND STATUS

Some of this has a familiar ring. Human males, too, have a reputation for being ambitious, egotistical, and opportunistic. The linguist Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand, has observed that for men, unlike women, conversation is "primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order."29 Many people have argued, especially during the second half of this century, that this difference is wholly cultural, and Tannen, in her book, accepts this view. It is almost surely wrong. The evolutionary dynamics behind the male chimpanzee's fevered pursuit of status are well understood, and they have been at work during human evolution.

These dynamics are the same ones that explain the male and female approaches to sex: the huge reproductive potential of a male, the limited potential of a female, and the resulting disparity in reproductive success among males. At one extreme, a low-status male may have zero offspring — a fact that, via natural selection, could readily come to imply an energetic aversion to low status. At the other extreme, alpha status can mean fostering dozens of offspring by numerous mothers — a fact that, via natural selection, could embed in males a boundless lust for power. For females, the reproductive stakes of the status game are lower. A female chimp in ovulation, regardless of her status, faces no shortage of suitors. She is not fundamentally in sexual competition with other females.

Of course, females in our species do compete for mates — for mates with the most parental investment to offer. But there's no evidence that, during evolution, social status was a primary tool in that competition. Besides, the evolutionary pressure behind male competition for sex seems to have been stronger than the pressure behind female competition for investment. The reason, again, is that [Page 246] potential differences in fitness are so much greater among males than among females.

The Guinness Book of World Records vividly makes the point. The most prolific human parent in world history is credited with 888 children — about 860 more than a woman could dream of having, unless she had a knack for multiple births. His name and title were, respectively, Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian emperor of Morocco.30 It's a little chilling to think that the genes of a man nicknamed "Bloodthirsty" found their way into nearly 1,000 offspring. But that's the way natural selection works: the most chilling genes often win. Of course, it's not certain that Moulay Ismail's bloodthirstiness lay in distinctive genes; maybe he just had a rough childhood. Still, you get the point: sometimes genes are responsible for a male's inordinate drive for power, and so long as that power translates into viable offspring, those genes thrive.31

Shortly after the Beagle's voyage, Darwin wrote to his cousin Fox that his work was being "favourably received by the great guns, & this gives me much confidence, & I hope not a very great deal of vanity; though I confess I feel too often like a peacock admiring his tail.

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