Sexual strategies predict religiosity and attitude toward drug use

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania has indicated that your sexual attitudes help cause not only your attitude toward drugs, but your religiosity. It was previously commonly believed that religiosity and/or political beliefs were the primary causative agents, but it appears to be the other way around. Here’s an excerpt from the paper explaining this in more detail:

Moreover, the relationship between sex and drugs tended to mediate items that, from the perspective of canonical views in political science, might have been thought to be driving views on drugs. For instance, while it is true, as one might have expected, that people who are more religious and those who are more politically conservative tend to oppose recreational drugs, in both our samples, the predictive power of these religious and ideological items was reduced nearly to zero by controlling for items tracking attitudes toward sexual promiscuity.

These reductions are difficult to reconcile with a model in which abstract political views are the underlying causal variables driving attitudes toward drugs. They are, however, consistent with the model we propose, in which individuals’ sexual strategies drive views on recreational drugs.

It is also plausible given our results that abstract commitments drive sexual attitudes and sexual attitudes drive drug attitudes. In both models, sexual attitudes directly influence drug attitudes, with the difference being that our model views sexual strategy as a major causal influence in determining abstract commitments, while the other model takes the opposite causal position, viewing items like religiosity and ideology as major influences in determining sexual attitudes. We note that recent work with regard to religiosity shows substantial evidence that the causal arrow runs at least in significant part from sexual lifestyles and attitudes to religious commitments (McCullough et al. 2005; Weeden et al. 2008; Li et al.
2009).

The authors rightfully note that sexual attitudes don’t account for all variance, but they do account for a significant amount. This is obviously a complex issue, so I would like to see more research, but it’s still interesting. If it is true, I think it has profound implications for religion. There’s a difference between “Divine mandate says we must be monogamous, therefore I am” and “I’m monogamous, so I feel comfortable in a belief system that affirms my opinion.” Moral judgments sort of fall flat when they’re based on arbitrary personal opinion. Although, this concept isn’t too shocking to atheists.

Of course, if there’s one hole in this study, it’s all the religious fundamentalists who keep popping up in the news for their inability to keep their pants on. You think they would all be sex-crazed liberals.

(Via Carnal Nation)

The more feminists distrust science, the more women look like fools

I want to make this clear: This post is not about porn. I am not saying it’s awesome, and I’m not saying it’s horrible. There is a time and place to discuss the effect porn may or may not have on men and women, and that is for a different time.

This post is about rational discussions, and the feminists who fail at them.

I’ve often said one of my big pet peeves about feminism are those feminists who distrust science. Not all feminist are like that, but there are definitely some vocal ones. Our newest example is Twisty Faster, over at I Blame the Patriarchy. From the title alone, you know it’s going to be a real winner: “Science dudes declare porn good, support claim with Danish graphs, flawed reasoning“

Not Danish graphs. Nooooooooo!

I suggest you go read the post on your own, since there’s just too many goodies to quote. But here I’ll offer a summary of how Anti-Science-Feminist logic works:

  • Scientists who study sex are totally just doing it to get their rocks off, not for the insights into human reproduction, medical breakthroughs, or the sheer pursuit of truth. The only reason they’re sticking a thing in your vagina is to go beat off later.
  • Put scare quotes around any description of the equipment used, to make sure the reader knows it’s wrong and icky. Ignore the fact that all the subjects are volunteers.
  • If science disagrees with your ideological/philosophical/ethical/political viewpoint, it is science that is wrong, not your subjective opinion. If it agrees with you or actually improves the lives of women, conveniently ignore those studies
  • When persistently presented with research, belittle it by using “science” as a derogatory word. Make sure to sneer, similar to “neeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrddddddddd“
  • If it’s a man disagreeing with you, it’s because he has a penis. This logic is so obvious that you must make sarcastic remarks about how shocking it is, and belittle him by calling him a “dude”
  • If it’s a woman disagreeing with you, it’s because she’s brainwashed by all the humans with penises around her. Completely disregard her comment, even if that may seem unfeminist of you. It’s for her own good
  • Moderate your comments so only people who agree with you can add their opinions, thus making your argument seem even more airtight!

Therefore: You are always right.

Seriously though, were some science experiments misogynistic? Probably, sure. Are some scientists still misogynist? Again, probably, just because scientists are people too. But you know how we deal with that, other than educating men? By getting more women in science, NOT by acting like woo-filled idiots screaming conspiracy theories.

Every time a feminist treats science like some great big boogeyman, she makes all feminists and women look foolish and ignorant. Science isn’t a bunch of horny dudes in plush chairs sitting around a grandiose table commiserating about how they can best oppress women and get to poke a vagina in the process. To treat it that way by disregarding all scientific studies is simply ignorant. If someone shows me a bunch of scientific studies and I disagree, my response is not going to be a lot of hand waiving, speculation, opinion, and anecdotes. It’ll be scientific studies that contradict their findings, or critiques of the methods and analyses of those studies. One of the comments really illustrates how pervasive this woo-thinking is:

“Alas, this is why I prefer to hold up women’s intuition, which is actually a rational scientific tool of reasoning, over dude science any day. That doesn’t mean science is bad, it means that woman’s intuition is often far superior.”

No. Woman’s intuition is not far superior because it does not exist (you also have no idea what “scientific” or “reasoning” means). PZ Myers just wrote an excellent post on how supporting the myth of women’s intuition actually hurts women and science:

One of the most cunning tools of the patriarchy is the assignment of woo as a feminine virtue. Women are supposed to be intuitive, nurturing, accepting, and trusting, unlike those harsh and suspicious men. It’s a double-trap; women are brought up indoctrinated into believing that being smart and skeptical is unladylike and unattractive, and at the same time, anyone who dares to suggest that intuition and soothing, supportive words are often unproductive can be slammed for being anti-woman, because, obviously, to suggest that a human being might want to do more with their life than changing diapers and baking cookies is a direct assault on womanhood.

This naive imposition of unscientific modes of thought on women specifically leads to the state we have now. Assume a fundamental difference in attitude: women feel, while men think. Now declare an obvious truth: science requires rigorous thought. The conclusion follows that women will not be taking advantage of their strengths (that woo stuff) if they are trying to do science, therefore they will not be as good at science as men, and they will also be harming their femininity if they try to shoehorn their tender and passionate minds into the restrictive constraints of manly critical thinking.”

…Woo is powerless; you want to make someone powerless, put them in charge of nothing, but give it a happy-sounding title. Women have been taken on a millennia-long snipe hunt. But, you know, it keeps them busy and out of the hair of the guys doing the real, important work.

Oh, wait. PZ has a penis, I forgot. I get that makes everything he said bunk, and I only agree with him because I’m trying to be a funfeminist or something. Damn. I guess I’ll stop thinking rationally, quit my job as a scientist, and sit around expressing how I feel about things with no facts to back my assertions! Good thing I already have a blog.

But the really mindbending thing? The feminist PZ quotes who is so clearheaded about all of this, saying that intuition is just as affected by patriarchy? Yep, that’s the same feminist who brought out the major woo-guns when faced with something she personally disagreed with. Um, can we get a little consistency at least, please?

Making a biological child for gay couples

“Is there a way to have two people of the same sex have a kid who is biologically related to both? (Either gay or lesbian couples)”

Short answer: Yes! But it’s complicated.

Long-ish answer: Creating a child from same-sex parents isn’t as easy as just combining the DNA from two eggs or two sperm. The main problem is genetic imprinting, where gene expression is modified epigenetically. That just means the actual sequence isn’t changed, but something else is edited, like adding methyl groups or modifying histones (the proteins that help wind up DNA).

And depending on if you’re a mother or a father, you genetically imprint your gametes differently. And since you generally need one functioning copy of these select genes, it doesn’t help to have two female or two male versions where they’re both turned on or off (too much or too little can both be harmful).

While that seems impossible to overcome, science is pretty impressive. Researchers have already overcome this in mice, where two egg cells were used to produce fatherless mice. So yes, it has been done in another animal!

However, who knows when or if we’ll ever see it in humans. There are always ethical concerns when you’re dealing with human subjects, and it’s hard to predict if offspring would be completely healthy using this method. I think you’d have a hard time getting this past a review board since it’s not a necessary medical procedure – same-sex couples don’t need biologically related children, even if it would be nice. But, you never know.

Video: My lecture on Boobquake, Skepticism, and Feminism

My lecture last night in Chicago went wonderfully. Thanks to Elyse, Dr. Jen, Bruce, Matt, and anyone else I’m missing from Women Thinking Free for doing a great job organizing the event. It was a lot of fun talking to everyone afterward too!

Bruce videotaped the talk, and you can watch it here:

Jen McCreight – Boobquake Presentation from Bruce Critelli on Vimeo.

I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. It was a honor to be the inaugural speaker for WTF, and I hope this organization thrives! We need more active female voices in skepticism, and this is one great way to promote that.

Male antelopes lie to increase their chances of having sex

Replace “antelopes” with “humans” and I think most of us would nod in agreement. But this is the first time researchers have found “intentionally misleading behavior in animals for the explicit purposes of mating.” Ars Technica has a great overview of the study:

The four-year study looked at the behavior of topi antelopes (Damaliscus lunatus) in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. This area is dominated by a huge number of predators, including lions, cheetahs, leopards, and hyenas, all of which prey regularly on antelopes. When topi detect a predator nearby, they often make snort-like alarm calls.

From February to March, male topi hold small territories through which receptive females pass to assess each male’s mating potential. The authors noticed that, while a female in estrus was on a male’s territory, the male would sometimes emit alarm calls, even in the complete absence of a predator. These false alarms are acoustically indistinguishable from true alarm snorts.

The authors set out to determine whether these false alarm snorts are simply predator detection errors, or if they function to deter the female from leaving the territory in order to secure more mating opportunities with her. The results overwhelmingly supported the authors’ “sexual deception hypothesis.” False alarms almost never occurred without a receptive female on the territory, the onset of the false snorts was highly correlated with a female’s attempts to leave the territory, and, after emitting a false snort, males managed an average of 2.8 extra booty calls.

You may be wondering why females continue to fall for the lies of males. If this behavior evolved, you think females would also evolve to detect lies, right? It boils down to probability and consequences: Lies happen a lot less frequently than truthful signals, and believing a lie has less severe consequences (mating with a less desirable male) than ignoring a true signal (getting eaten).

This questions comes up a lot when you’re discussing dishonest signaling, which actually happens more than you would think in nature. One of the more popular example is bluffing in fiddler crabs. Sometimes when a fiddler crab loses its enlarged claw, it will grow back a weaker, cheaper claw. While these claws aren’t as good in fighting, they’re just as good at intimidating other crabs. It’s not worthwhile for crabs to check and see if another crab is bluffing, because the consequences of the signal being true are so large (getting the crap kicked out of your crabby self).

Still, it’s very interesting that they’ve now documented this type of bluffing specifically in regards to sex. I have a feeling we’ll see more examples of this in the future, now that researchers will be keeping their eyes open!

(Via Carnal Nation)

No talking about animal sex in academia!

A while ago a paper was published that discussed oral sex in bats. Now, if you’ve ever hung around biologists or evolutionary psychologists for more than five minutes, you know that we tend to be a little obsessed with sex. Seeing papers like this greatly amuses and interests us – I know I was sent this paper by at least 10 different biologists I know.

So what happened to Prof. Dylan Evans of University College Cork surprises me. I’ll just repost his letter so you get the whole story:

Dear Colleagues,

The President of University College Cork, Professor Michael Murphy, has imposed harsh sanctions on me for doing nothing more than showing an article from a peer-reviewed scientific article to a colleague.

The article was about fellatio in fruit bats. You can read it online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007595

It was covered extensively in the media, including the Guardian – see http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/10/oral-sex-bats-improbable-research

The colleague to whom I showed the article complained to HR that the article was upsetting. I had been engaged in an ongoing debate with the colleague in question about the relevance of evolutionary biology to human behaviour, and in particular about the dubiousness of many claims for human uniqueness. I showed it the colleague in the context of this discussion, and in the presence of a third person. I also showed the article to over a dozen other colleagues on the same day, none of whom objected.

HR launched a formal investigation. Despite the fact that external investigators concluded that I was not guilty of harassment, Professor Murphy has imposed a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counselling on me, and as a result my application for tenure is likely to be denied.

I am now campaigning to have the sanctions lifted. I would be grateful for your support on this matter. I have created an online petition at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/freedebate/

I’d be grateful if you sign the petition and ask your colleagues to do so. If you also felt like writing directly to the President of UCC, his address is:

Professor Michael Murphy
The President’s Office
University College Cork
Cork
Republic of Ireland.

Your support would be greatly appreciated.

Dylan Evans

If someone gets upset for you bringing up something sexual (that’s relevant) during a biology discussion, something is wrong. Just because us humans like to be puritanical about things doesn’t mean nature follows suit. I’ve blogged before at the diversity of sexual behavior in living organisms – we shouldn’t be ignoring that because “oral sex” sounds gross or sinful. It’s still part of the discussion, whether you like it or not.

I wonder what would have happened if Dr. Evans showed this colleague papers about homosexuality, polygamy, rape, necrophilia, traumatic insemination… I’m betting on fainting and pearl clutching.

(Via Pharyngula)

This is exactly why I hated my philosophy class

From SMBC:
Replace “Engineer” with “Scientist” and this is pretty much what Biomedical Ethics was to me. In fact, we had this exact scenario, and I replied the exact same way.

Or maybe I hated my philosophy class because we never got a single moment to ask questions during lecture, and during recitations we spent the whole time being fed answers to the quizzes and never had a single discussion about the material. Maybe I would have liked the class if it was more, well, philosophical.

*ahem*

Oh well. Got my A.

Your personal opinion does not trump scientific studies

As a scientist, one of my big pet peeves is when someone tries to use a personal anecdote to disprove a scientific study. “Cigarette are bad for you?! But my grandpa chain smoked until he was 96, and he was healthy as an ox!”

Great for your grandpa! …But that’s irrelevant.

The whole purpose of science is to reduce our biases. Looking at your sample size of one (Grandpa) is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion about what’s going on with smoking. Your grandpa was an outlier – and while that is interesting, the vast majority of people suffer harmful effects from smoking.

But my bigger pet peeve is when someone’s culture, personal opinion, or political belief stands in the way of them accepting science.

For example, during our unit on aggression in my Social Psychology class, we talked about cultural causes for aggression. One example was the Southern Culture of Honor. People who grow up in this culture see a perceived insult as a threat to their ego, which increases testosterone levels* and violent cognitions, and can lead to acts of violence. Southern cities and states have much higher White homicide rates than those populated by northerners**, and in Southern states homicides exceed suicides.

Effects of Insults on Testosterone levels in Southerner and Northerner Participants
When I mentioned this in a tweet, some of my Southern followers got angry and said it wasn’t true, and tried to provide anecdotal evidence about how kind and helpful Southerners are. Your neighbors may be sweet, but that doesn’t negate an overall trend. Scientific studies aren’t saying that all southerners are homicidal maniacs. Though you know, getting angry at a perceived insult doesn’t exactly help your cause…

Another topic within aggression that really riles people up is spanking. Numerous studies have been done showing that spanking children increases antisocial*** and aggressive**** behavior. But when people who have been spanked or spank their children hear about this, they get very defensive. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve heard “Well I was spanked, and I turned out fine!” or “I spanked my kids and now they’re little angels!”

I’m sorry, but 1) Your specific experience does not negate the average response seen in hundreds of families, and 2) Your evaluation isn’t necessarily correct. You could very well have had an increase in antisocial or aggressive behavior, but you didn’t have a psychologist assessing your behavior, did you? I’d really like to see a psychological study on why people like to defend spanking. Do they hate thinking that their parents did something wrong? Do they hate having to come up with a better (and possibly less easy) disciplinary action?

And last, but not least: political beliefs that get in the way of accepting science. The one that bugs me the most are feminists who are such huge supporters of female equality that they simply cannot accept that males and females do differ in certain ways. For one, you kind of can’t ignore that (biologically typical) males and females differ physically – we kind of have different reproductive organs and chromosomes. We also have different secondary sex characteristics – males are going to be slightly stronger and larger on average.

And because our biology differs, it’s not insane to suggest our psychology differs. Saying men are better in some areas and women are better in others does not mean one is superior to another. Saying men may have certain mating strategies and females may have different ones does not mean one is morally superior, or that either are things we should actually do – humans are not simply slaves to their biology, after all. There are differences between the sexes in almost every species where there are two different sexes – humans aren’t exempt. To deny these differences because they don’t jibe with your political beliefs is simply unscientific.

Now, I know I’m not perfect. There have definitely been times where I’ve been skeptical of a study when I personally didn’t like the results – it’s human nature (especially when the study is saying something delicious is bad for your health). But the thing about being a scientist is reducing our biases as much as possible. So next time you find yourself giving anecdotal evidence, remember: Your personal opinion may be an interesting new hypothesis, but until you do a study of your own, it does not trump previous scientific research.

* Cohen et al (1996) Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South
**Myers (2008) Social Psychology
*** Strauss et al (1997)
**** Taylor (2010) in Pediatrics

A confession of astronomical proportions

I used to believe in astrology.

That’s embarrassing for me to admit, now that I’m a strong skeptic – but it’s true. While I never really believed in God, I wasn’t totally immune to supernatural thinking my whole life. Between age 13 and 17 I was very into astrology. Out of all things, why that? I think it happened for three main reasons:

  1. I was fascinated with astronomy when I was a little kid – it was the first science I loved, much more than my current field of biology. I loved learning about stars and planets, star gazing, and picking out constellations. I can still point out all the different patterns in the night sky (though I’ve always known the winter sky better). I was part of our elementary school astronomy club, and I was dying to go to Space Camp (but I could never convince my parents to let me). Because of my love for space, I think the idea of it having some sort of supernatural power really resonated with me.
  2. I think that’s an age where everyone is looking for answers, and I settled on the stars. By age 13, I was already fairly certain that the idea of God or gods was just silly. I was exposed to different religions enough to logically think about their flaws and come to the conclusion that they were wrong. But no one really debated astrology, so I wasn’t forced to think critically about it.
  3. I felt like I had proof. I’m a Scorpio, and the description just seemed to fit me so well – determined, passionate, secretive, moody, obsessed with sex. I now know that this is hardly proof (more on that later), but it was convincing evidence to a young girl.

Now, before you laugh at me, remember most atheists were at one point religious. Is believing that planets have some sort of control over your personality really that much more insane than believing in an invisible supreme being that cares about what you eat and screw, and sends his own son (who’s also himself) down to earth to save you from something bad one of your ancestors did by dying and coming back to life?

Didn’t think so.

Anyway, when I say I was really into astrology, I mean it. I didn’t believe in newspaper horoscopes because I didn’t think they were done rigorously enough. I had books on astrology and drew my own charts. I would defend astrology and explain that it’s much more than your sun sign – that you have to look at the planets, and ascendants, and lunar nodes, and angles between all of these things, and what houses they were in… It was a complex art, and I told myself that people rejected it because they were only seeing the pop culture version of it.

Remind you of anything? Yeah, Christians versed in theology who claim people who attack “simple Christianity” aren’t really understanding what it’s really like. Astrology is no different, and let me tell you – something can be complex and nuanced and still be bullshit.

So why do I bring this up at all? Well, thanks to the boobquake media attention, I was contacted by the astrologer Eric Francis. He was a huge fan of boobquake, and extremely friendly. Even though he knew that as a skeptic I would probably think astrology is bullshit, he still wanted to do my chart for me (and gave me permission to poke fun at it). Eric didn’t know about my past relationship with astrology, which made me unable to resist. Even though I no longer believe in it, I wanted to know what a “real” astrologer would say.

You can find his full analysis here, but here’s just a taste:

“And as you might imagine, she’s got it all going on — a Sun-Pluto conjunction in Scorpio, in the 8th house (she jokingly described herself as a sex-obsessed Scorpio, though her precise Sun-Pluto conjunction in the 8th house turns up the heat by a few orders of magnitude). This powerful alignment is conjunct the asteroid Astraea, the goddess of justice. So this is passion driven by a sense of balance and integrity.

Boobquake was planned for Monday, when the Full Moon happened to be fast approaching, carrying lots of momentum — with the Moon itself reaching full phase exactly conjunct her natal Sun/Pluto conjunction. So she was in the cosmic spotlight as well as the regular one. The Full Moon so personally aspected against her chart provided a sense of emotional presence, which is why this event, while funny, was taken seriously.”

Yes, I understand all of that. How I wish I could replace my astrological knowledge with those biochemistry reactions I was supposed to memorize.

It sounds cool, doesn’t it? Seems to make perfect sense (especially if you read the whole article) and fit the story well, right? That’s why astrology can be so convincing. It relies on something known as confirmation bias – people tend to remember accurate predictions and forget the inaccurate ones. Eric was able to come up with multiple examples of things that support my personality (which he learned about from my blog) and boobquake (which he learned about from the media). But he doesn’t analyze every single relationship in the chart (see all those lines in the middle?). I’m rusty on my astrology, but I assure you there will be things that don’t quite fit in there.

What I really should have done is given Eric fake birth information for me and see if he still makes it fit his story. Something tells me he still would have been able to dig some meaning out of that different chart. Unfortunately for skepticism, I was too nice to turn his good intentions into a science experiment.

But you want to know what the really interesting thing about that chart was? When I saw it, my initial thought wasn’t “I’m going to write up a huge post debunking astrology!” It wasn’t even “Now I can write a little backstory about how I used to believe this crap!”

It was “Wow, how cool!”

Even four years after “losing my faith” in astrology, I still had an emotional reaction to it. All the emotional triggers were there, and I felt that same excited rush as when I would look at my own chart, or draw up a chart for a friend, or read about complex interactions that I didn’t originally understand. I used to not understand my religious friends when they explained the same experience. That an ex-Catholic would go to mass, and even though they no longer believed a word of it, they easily went through all the motions and had the same emotional reaction to their surroundings. That a crucifix or stained glass could trigger memories and dig up old feelings. That hearing an old hymn could make you feel closer to God, even if you now think he’s a fairy tale. That being told about the horrible torture in hell can instill fear in your heart, even if you know it’s not real.

Do these things prove that astrology or Catholicism are true? Of course not. What they show is how deeply people can get emotionally connected to their superstitions. That even after years of rational thought, certain stimuli still result in trained reactions. We all know about Pavlov’s dogs, but we have a hard time admitting it applies to us too.

Even though I know astrology is bunk, I don’t think I’ll ever totally shake the emotional connection. If people ask my sign, I’ll still happily reply “Scorpio!” out of habit (hey, at least it’s the most badass sign to have). If skeptical men use that as a dating litmus test, I’m screwed. When people poke fun at the vagueness of sun signs (the Forer effect), I’ll instinctively start explaining how it’s more complex than that, even though that’s bunk too – much like an ex-Catholic may still explain that no, Catholics don’t worship Mary, even though what they do believe is still nonsense. I’ll still poke through the Sextrology book at Borders and giggle at what my supposed kinks are because of my particular planetary alignment.

And while I still may get some enjoyment out of it, at least I know it’s not real. Now it’s similar to my fascination with Harry Potter – I can babble about how I’d totally be a Ravenclaw, but I don’t really think magic is real and my Hogwarts letter got lost in the mail. If I ever become a true believer again, feel free to stick me on the first train to crazy town – especially if it’s scarlet.