My friend Jason and I accidentally invented this game while at a party last week. The rules are simple:
1. Make an observation about a particularly odd aspect of human behavior.
Example: “Why is it that everyone congregates in the kitchen at parties, even when there’s plenty of space elsewhere?”
2. Come up with an explanation for how that behavior would have increased fitness in hunter gathering societies.
Example: “Well, food used to be sparse, so humans would congregate at food sources, so you’d be more likely to find a mate there, and thus have more babies.
3. Bonus points are rewarded for including 50′s era gender stereotypes.
Example: “Well, we KNOW women are drawn to the kitchen because they’re inclined to gather food, so they’re always in the kitchen anyway. The men just go there to be around their potential mates.”
Hours of fun guaranteed.
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Jeremy Yoder
January 28, 2011 at 8:30 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I’m going to suggest this for my department’s Darwin Day party.
Biodork
January 28, 2011 at 8:34 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ooo..okay. How about this: Why do I feel drawn to read lolcats every frickin’ night before I go to sleep?
Improbable Joe
January 28, 2011 at 8:37 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
HAH! Let’s all play!You’re only being sarcastic about evolutionary psychology and 1950s stereotypes because…ummmm… because ancient women developed sarcasm while harvesting roots and berries to avoid getting slapped by the big burly hunters who might overhear the womenfolk talking. For their own good, of course, like Bogie and Clint Eastwood used to do in the movies. Did I play right?
Gregory Colby
January 28, 2011 at 8:38 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I like it! Food sources and mating opportunities is a great one.
Jarich
January 28, 2011 at 8:58 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well, I lost the game.
jerry anning
January 28, 2011 at 9:13 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
@biodork easy. hominids who didn’t pay attention to sabertooths didn’t live long enough to mate, so reading lolcats is a remnant of hardwired survival behavior.
critter8875
January 28, 2011 at 9:54 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I will say that a long time ago (1950s for me) the kitchen was where the wood stove was & in the winter it was the place to go to be warm.
Three Ninjas
January 28, 2011 at 10:48 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Your friend Jason sounds handsome.
LadyAtheist
January 28, 2011 at 10:49 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Okay I’ll play!Why is it that men refuse to stop and ask for directions when they’re lost?
Three Ninjas
January 28, 2011 at 10:53 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
What if they accidentally ask a predator!! All the males with the genes for stopping to ask directions were eaten by lions disguised as gas station attendants!
Three Ninjas
January 28, 2011 at 11:01 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And here is my evidence: http://thepirata.com/wp-conten…
kelseigh
January 28, 2011 at 11:19 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Winner gets a research grant?
csdx
January 28, 2011 at 11:22 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
That must be the same reason that people tend to gather around the watercooler at work (except you know for potable water).
ethanol
January 29, 2011 at 3:07 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You forgot step 4: publish
April
January 29, 2011 at 3:16 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You win five shiny internets!
Katherine
January 29, 2011 at 6:18 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
This. Amazing.
John Figdor
January 29, 2011 at 9:46 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I always thought it was because that’s where the beer is…
Svlad Cjelli
January 29, 2011 at 2:52 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well, an attraction to food almost certainly does have a strong impact on potential reproduction. Hunter-Gatherer is a bit late, though. :P
J. Mark
January 29, 2011 at 4:15 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Men never really get lost…they just pretend to be lost so that it gives their mate something to do, and it shows that they have a vulnerable side….Women luv that, and want to jump their bones when they figure out where they are…
Gedediah
January 29, 2011 at 4:20 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Haha – Evolutionary Psychology pwned
jose
January 29, 2011 at 4:32 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Some apes started to walk upright more frequently because that allowed them to carry things, like food. To secure their own offspring, they started to bring food to their offspring’s survival system (aka females), but such effort was only worth it if the males were sure they were feeding their own descendants and not someone else’s. This triggered a selective pressure for bipedalism AND for parental care, and that’s why we have families now.Female bipedalism is just a genetic side effect.
Katie Hartman
January 29, 2011 at 5:31 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
This obviously stems from your innate tendency to allocate attentional resources to potential predators. You choose humorous depictions of cats because laughter resolves the stress created by the identification of a potential threat.True fact: women read lolcats less frequently because they’ve always depended on the menfolk in their vicinity to protect them from such threats.
cat
January 29, 2011 at 6:13 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Extra bonus points should also be awarded for completely ignoring all history and anthropology as well. Cultures that do not or did not behave in such a way must not be accounted for.For example, I have seen the pathetic one about women wearing high heels more because it makes their legs look as if they are lying down and hence makes them seem sexually available to men (that one fits the rest of the test nicely). When I responded with a simple display of Louis XIV portraits (he loved his heels), the theory could not account for it. The social behavior explained always has to be one that belongs to current western patriarchies without consideration of anything else.
Annie
January 29, 2011 at 6:34 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I always thought men light women in high heels because it made them helpless… unable to run away.
Annie
January 29, 2011 at 6:35 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I play this game often… but love to use the hunters and gatherers to explain my friends’ mate’s annoying behavior. It’s the game that keeps on giving…
katalina
January 29, 2011 at 9:41 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
OR… They don’t want to expose their mates to potentially more handsome, virile men, which would lessen their ability to reproduce with said mate. That could also make paternity of any future children questionable, and a male shouldn’t waste their time protecting and caring for the young of another male (hence the innate extreme revulsion to being cuckolded).
katalina
January 29, 2011 at 9:49 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
How about: wearing heels engages the muscles of the legs and butt, making them appear firmer when supposedly “at rest.” This increases the appearance of youth and vitality, indicating greater fitness for reproduction. Royalty isn’t succeptible to the necessities of hunter-gatherer-ness because of the guarantee their position gives them of having at least one mate. Thus, male royals can be as feminine as they like (or maybe he was using them to actually achieve the goal of increasing height, making him seem more manly?) without hurting their chances of reproducing.
Guest
January 30, 2011 at 1:05 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
lmao! i have got to try this sometime.
SonofRyan
January 30, 2011 at 3:33 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ok, seriously, why so much hate for evolutionary psychology, just cause there are a few weirdo’s in it doesn’t mean it’s not a legitimate discipline! I mean it’s not like evolution just stopped when creating our brains. Or are you being sarcastic? If so, ignore my previous comment. PS It does sound like a fun game though..
Jen
January 30, 2011 at 3:37 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I put the adjective “Pop” in the title for a reason. I don’t think all evolutionary psychology is like this.
Azkyroth
January 30, 2011 at 8:58 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Though you wouldn’t know it given that its proponents, just like Creationists with their “scientists refuse to even consider the possibility of design!” canard, immediately jump to accusing its, and/or their, critics of assuming “evolution just stopped when creating our brains.”
jose
January 30, 2011 at 3:58 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
“just like Creationists with their “scientists refuse to even consider the possibility of design!” canard”You mean something like “it is completely unreasonable to insist that the brain is magically not under selective pressure like every other thing in nature.”
Azkyroth
January 30, 2011 at 6:34 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
No, I mean like the way expressing skepticism about a particular evo-psych just-so story is not equivalent to insisting that. And like I’m really tired of having to explain that.
SonofRyan
January 31, 2011 at 6:10 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
1. Jen, ok, that’s why I added the caveat.2. It’s just a pet peeve of mine for people to dismiss psychology, especially evolutionary psych out of hand, which annoys me, especially as there is a lot of valuable and legitamae scientific research done in the psychological community, it could just be the people who I hang out with, but I constantly get people poo-pooing research as unscientific due to being psychological3. Azkyroth, please don’t compare me to a creationism proponent, I find that profoundly offensive XD.
zen
January 31, 2011 at 6:35 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Heels: a) make the legs effectively longer, resulting in a more slender youthful look and (generally) a longer, more graceful gait.2) force the lower leg into flexing the posterior muscles resulting in a more tone youthful look.third) force the wearer to change their posture in order to maintain balance, resulting a slight inward arch of the lower back, resulting in the buttocks being more pronounced as well as thrusting the chest upwards and outwards.Like it or not, men are genetically more inclined to prefer women with child-bearing features such as more pronounced hips, ass and breasts. In fact, it’s been proven empirically that generally speaking men find women with a waist to hip ratio of .7 to be the most attractive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W…That isn’t to say that many men do not find other body types such as ‘heroin chic’ or conversely BBW (aka rubenesque) more appealing. In any case, the result of the heel lengthening the leg and pronouncing hips and ass has a _bit_ of evolutionary substantiation.
Rollingforest
February 1, 2011 at 2:10 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I had heard that men like women in heels because the women are less sturdy walking up on stilt-like shoes and men feel inclined to be more protective because of it. It just goes to show that these evolutionary psychology aren’t necessarily right…or necessarily wrong either.
zen
February 1, 2011 at 4:24 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
except that “i heard” hardly qualifies as citation linking to an empirical study.
jl
February 4, 2011 at 3:36 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
my mom just told me that if any man tells me to go to the kitchen, to throw some laxative in his coffee. Then, before it hits, go out ‘grocery shopping’ since the house is suspiciously out of toilet paper.
David
April 30, 2011 at 10:06 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I hope that your more astute readers will recognize that Evolutionary Psychologists actually test their hypotheses with the scientific method, and do not merely speculate as to the evolved function of human thought/behavior.Also, Evolutionary Psychologists are not chauvinistic, 50′s-style conservatives as demonstrated by the egalitarian degree of female participation in the field (e.g., Leda Cosmides, Martie Haselton, Margo Wilson, Debra Lieberman) and the Liberal political orientation of member’s of the field (as reported in Geoffrey Miller’s book Spent).While I dislike arguing over the internet, and being a party pooper regarding an idea that I found pretty funny actually, perceptions like these do great harm to scholars trying to use sound evolutionary logic to understand/improve humankind.
Memills
May 3, 2011 at 9:17 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I have a better idea — let’s play:The Pop Anti-Evolutionary Psychology Gamehttp://www.epjournal.net/blog/…Fun!
Derbasementcat
August 9, 2011 at 7:32 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I know this is not the point at all, and just me being a pervy girl, but, I can’t the straps. Is she topless?
Daniel Engblom
July 30, 2012 at 5:52 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You mean this link:
http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/05/the-pop-anti-evolutionary-psychology-game/
Evolutionary Psychology, Politics, and Bad Science « Free Northerner
September 12, 2012 at 10:01 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] genes. … It’s tricky to disprove the notion that some human trait is the result of evolution. The logic is circular: if some trait exists, it must not have been fatal to our ancestors and it may have helped them [...]