Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire–Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do Read Free Page A

“Why are there so many deadbeat dads but so few deadbeat moms?” or “Why are almost all violent criminals men?”) as stereo types. We plead guilty to the charge; many of our (and others’) observations are stereo types. But we suggest that you cannot dismiss an observation by calling it a stereo type, as if that suddenly makes it untrue and thus unworthy of discussion and explanation. In fact, the opposite is the case. Many stereo types are empirical generalizations with a statistical basis and thus on average tend to be true. The only problem with stereo types and empirical generalizations is that they are not always true for all individual cases. There are always individual exceptions to stereo types. There are many dedicated fathers and female criminals, even though the generalizations are still true. The danger lies in applying the statistical generalizations to individual cases, which may or may not be exceptions.
    Stereo types have a bad name, but many of them may turn out to be true empirical generalizations that someone does not like or that are unkind or offensive to some groups. An observation, if true, becomes an empirical generalization until someone objects to it, and then it becomes a stereo type. For example, the statement “Men are taller than women” is an empirical generalization. It is in general true (and, by the way, there are evolutionary psychological explanations for this phenomenon 10 ), but there are individual exceptions. There are many men who are shorter than the average woman, and there are many women who are taller than the average man, but these exceptions do not make the generalization untrue; in every human society, men on average are taller than women. Everybody knows this, but nobody calls it a stereo type because it is not unkind to anybody. Men in general like being taller than women, and women in general like being shorter than men. 11
    However, as soon as one turns this around and makes the slightly different, yet equally true, observation that “Women are fatter than men,” it becomes a stereo type because nobody, least of all women, wants to be considered fat. But it is true nonetheless; women have a higher percentage of body fat than men throughout the life course (and there are evolutionary reasons why this is the case as well 12 ). Once again, there are numerous individual exceptions, but the generalization still holds at the population level.
    In this book, we will attempt to make and then explain observations and phenomena that the available scientific evidence indicates are empirically true, even though there are individual exceptions and regardless of whether they may seem unkind to some groups (which they may in many cases). We draw no consequences or conclusions out of such observations; we are simply stating and explaining them. We will not commit either naturalistic or moralistic fallacy. Stereo types and empirical generalizations are neither good nor bad, desirable nor undesirable, moral nor immoral. They just are.
    Stereo types also do not tell us how to behave or treat other people (or groups of people). Stereo types are observations about the empirical world, not behavioral prescriptions. One may not infer how to treat people from empirical observations about them. Stereo-types tell us what groups of people tend to be or do in general; they do not tell us how we ought to treat them. Once again, there is no place for “ought” in science.
    How to Use This Book
    The book is organized so that after the introduction and two introductory chapters, readers may skip around and read whichever chapters and sections are of interest. Each chapter (and section within it) is designed to be self-contained for anyone who has read the introduction and the first two chapters. We introduce fundamental principles of evolutionary psychology in chapters 1 and 2. Chapters 3–8 cover different areas of everyday life (sex and mating, marriage,