SOCIAL INFLUENCE

 Chapters 2-4 – “within-the-skin” phenomena

 Now, we consider “between-skins” happenings—how we influence and relate to one another
o We look at the powers of social influence

GENES, CULTURE, AND GENDER

HOW ARE WE INFLUENCED BY HUMAN NATURE AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY?

 Two perspectives dominate our current thinking about human similarities and differences: an evolutionary
perspective, emphasizing human kinship and a cultural perspective, emphasizing human diversity
o Nearly everyone agrees that we need both
 Our genes enable an adaptive human brain—a cerebral hard drive that receives the culture’s
software
 Jan and Tomoko are more alike than different:
o As members of one great family with common ancestors, they share not only a common biology but also
common behavior tendencies (sleeps and wakes, hunger and thirst, language development)
 Jan and Tomoko both prefer sweet tastes to sour, and divide the visual spectrum into similar colors
 Both know how to read one another’s frown and smiles
 Jan and Tomoko are intensely social
o Join groups, conform, and recognize distinctions of social status
 As children, beginning at about 8 months of age, we displayed fear of strangers
 As adults, we favor members of our own groups

Genes, Evolution, and Behavior

 The universal behaviors that define human nature arise from our biological similarity
o Anthropologists tell us that if we could trace our ancestors back 100,000 or more years, we would see that
we are all African
 Through migration to different continents, early humans developed differences that, measured on
anthropological scales, are recent and superficial
 Africa – Darker skin pigment (“sunscreen for the tropics”)
 North of equator – Lighter skins capable of synthesizing vitamin D in less direct sunlight
 We may be more numerous than chimpanzees, but chimps are more genetically varied
 Not much genetic differences
 Darwin’s idea: Natural selection enables evolution
o Daniel Dennett gave this the “gold medal for the best idea anybody ever had”
 Organisms have many and varied offspring
 Those offspring compete for survival in the environment
 Certain biological and behavioral variations increase their chances of reproduction and survival in
that environment
 Those offspring that do survive are more likely to pass their genes to ensuing generations
 Thus, over time, population characteristics may change
o Natural selection implies that certain genes—those that predisposed traits that increased the odds of
surviving long enough to reproduce and nurture descendants—became more abundant
 Arctic – Genes programming a thick coat of camouflaging white fur have won the genetic
competition in polar bears
o Evolutionary psychology studies how natural selection predisposes not just physical traits to particular
contexts, but also psychological traits and social behaviors that enhance the preservation and spread of
one’s genes
 The evolutionary perspective highlights our universal human nature
 Share not only food preferences but also answers to social questions
 Our emotional and behavioral answers to those questions are the same answers that
worked for our ancestors
 Universal characteristics have evolved through natural selection
o Culture however provides the specific rules for working these elements of social
life
 Concepts and definitions:
o Natural selection – The evolutionary process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to
survive and reproduce in particular environments are passed to ensuing generations
o Evolutionary psychology – The study of the evolution of cognition and behavior using principles of natural
selection

Culture and Behavior

 Most important similarity (hallmark of our species) – Capacity to learn and to adapt
o Evolution has prepared us to live creatively in a changing world and to adapt to environments from
equatorial jungles to arctic icefields
o Nature has humans on a looser genetic leash
 It is our shared human biology that enables cultural diversity
 o It enables those in one culture to value promptness, welcome frankness, or accept premarital sex whereas
those in another culture do not
 Evolutionary psychology incorporates environmental influences
o Recognizes nature and nurture must interact in forming us
o Genes are not fixed blueprints  Their expression depends on the environment
 Some New Zealand teens had genes that predisposed them to depression, but only if they had
experienced major life stresses (e.g., marital breakup)
 Neither stress nor genes alone allowed for the manifestation of depression, but the two
interacting did
 Nature predisposes us to learn whatever culture we are born into
o The cultural perspective highlights human adaptability
 People’s natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart
 Despite increasing education, we are not moving toward a uniform global cultural, cultural
convergence is not taking place. A society’s cultural heritage is markedly enduring.
 Concepts and definitions:
o Culture – The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and
transmitted from one generation to the next
o Norms – Rules for accepted and expected social behavior
 Standards for accepted and expected behavior
 Norms prescribe “proper” behavior
 They also describe what most others do—what is normal

Cultural Diversity
 The diversity of our language, customs, and expressive behaviors confirms that much of our behavior is socially
programmed, not hardwired (The genetic leash is long)
 If we all lived as homogeneous ethnic groups in separate regions of the world, cultural diversity would be less
relevant to our daily living
o Japan – 125/127 million are Japanese  Internal cultural differences are minimal
o These differences are encountered many times a day in New York City, where more than 1/3 of the 8M
residents are foreign-born and where no ethnic group constitutes more than 37% of the population
 Cultural diversity surrounds us
o Global village  We are connected to our fellow villagers by e-mail, jumbo jets, and international trade
 The intermingling of cultures is nothing new
 “American” jeans were invented by German immigrant Levi Strauss by combining Genes,
with denim cloth from a French town
 Arts and literature have combined a fascinating interplay of cultures
 Nothing typifies globalization like the death of Princess Diana
 Confronting another culture is sometimes a startling experience
o American males may feel uncomfortable when Middle Eastern heads of state greet the U.S. president with a
kiss on the cheek
 Migration and refugee evacuations are mixing cultures more than ever
o Result is both friendship and conflict
 1/5 Canadians and 1/10 Americans is an immigrant

Focus On: The Cultural Animal

 Baumeister: Humans more than other animals harness the power of culture to make life better
o “Culture is a better way of being social”
 We have culture to thank for our communication through language, driving safely on one side of the
road, etc.
 Culture facilitates survival and reproduction, and nature has blessed us with a brain that enables
culture
 Other animals show the rudiments of culture and language
o Monkeys have been observed to learn new food-washing techniques, which then are passed across future
generations
o Chimps exhibit a modest capacity for language
o But no species can accumulate progress across generations as smartly as humans
 Intelligence enables innovation, and culture enables dissemination—the transmission of information
and innovation across time and place
 The division of labor = “another huge and powerful advantage of culture”
o Books = Tribute to the division of labor enabled by culture
 Product is the work of a coordinated team of researchers, reviewers, assistants, and editors
 Even if only one person gets his name on the cover
 “Culture is what is special about human beings”
o Helps us become much more than the sum of all our talents, efforts, and other individual blessings
o It is the greatest blessing of all

Norms: Expected Behavior

 As etiquette rules illustrate, all cultures have their accepted ideas about appropriate behavior
 o These social expectations, or norms, have been viewed as a negative force that imprisons people in a
blind effort to perpetuate tradition
 Norms do restrain and control us—so successfully and so subtly that we hardly sense their existence
o No better way to learn the norms of our culture than to visit another culture and see that its members
do things that way, whereas we do them this way
 Norms grease the social machinery
 In unfamiliar situations, when norms may be unclear, we monitor others’ behavior and
adjust our own accordingly
 Cultures vary in norms for expressiveness, punctuality, rule-breaking, and personal space:
o Expressiveness
 To someone from a relatively formal northern European culture, a person whose roots are in an
expressive Mediterranean culture may seem “warm, charming, inefficient, and time-wasting.” To the
Mediterranean person, the northern European may seem “efficient, cold, and overconcerned with
time”.
o Punctuality
 Latin American business executives who arrive late for a dinner engagement may be mystified by
how obsessed their North American counterparts are with punctuality. North American tourists in
Japan may wonder about the lack of eye contact from passing pedestrians.
o Rule-Breaking
 When people see social norms being violated, they become more likely to follow the rule-
breaking norm by violating other rules, such as littering. A Dutch research team found people
more than doubly likely to disobey social rules when it appeared that others were doing so.
 When useless flyers were put on bike handles, 1/3 of cyclists tossed the flyer on the ground
as litter when there was no graffiti on the adjacent wall.
 But more than 2/3 did so when the wall was covered with graffiti.
o Personal Space
 Personal space is sort of a portable bubble or buffer zone that we like to maintain between
ourselves and others
 As the situation changes, the bubble varies in size
o With strangers, most Americans maintain a fairly large personal space, keeping 4
ft. or more between us
o On uncrowded buses, or in restrooms or libraries, we protect our space and respect
others’ space; we let friends come closer, often within 2 ft.
 Individuals differ: Some people prefer more personal space than others
 Men keep more distance from one another than do women
 Groups differ: Adults maintain more distance than their children
 Cultures near the equator prefer less space and more touching and hugging
 The British and Scandinavians prefer more distance than the French and the Arabs
 North Americans prefer more space than Latin Americans
 To see the effects of encroaching personal space, play space invader
 Stand or sit a foot or so from a friend and strike up a conversation
o Does the person fidget, look away, back off, show other signs of discomfort?
 These are signs of arousal noted by space-invading researchers
 Concepts and definitions:
o Personal space – The buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies
 Its size depends on our familiarity with whoever is near us

Research Close-Up: Passing Encounters, East and West

 Midwestern America: Passersby routinely glance and smile at one another
o To Europeans, this greeting might seem silly and disrespectful of privacy
 Britain: Such microinteractions were visibly less common
o To an American Midwesterner, avoiding eye contact—what sociologists call “civil inattention”—might seem
aloof
 Unobtrusive research in natural settings (Eye contact in Japan and America)
o A confederate (an accomplice of the experimenter) would initiate one of 3 behaviors when within about 12
ft. of an approaching pedestrian on an uncrowded sidewalk:
 Avoidance – looking straight ahead
 Glancing at the person for less than a second
 Looking at the person and smiling
o A trailing observer would then record the pedestrian’s reaction
 Observer was approximately 30 ft. behind the confederate
 Makes a hand signal to start the condition
o Participant
 Solitary pedestrian with no one close in front or behind
o To ensure that the person recording the data was “blind” to the experimental conditions, the order of the
accomplice’s behaviors was randomized
o Results:
  Pedestrians were more likely to look back at someone who looked at them, and to smile at, nod to,
or greet someone who also smiled at them, especially when that someone was female rather than
male
 But cultural differences were striking:
 In view of Japan’s greater respect for privacy and cultural reserve when interacting with
outgroups, Americans were much more likely to smile at, nod to, or greet the confederate
 In Japan, there is little pressure to reciprocate the smile of the confederate because there is
no relationship with the confederate and no obligation to respond
 By contrast, the American norm is to reciprocate the friendly gesture

Cultural Similarity
 Thanks to human adaptability, cultures differ
o Yet beneath the veneer of cultural differences, cross-cultural psychologists see an essential universality 
The processes that underlie our differing behaviors are much the same everywhere
 At ages 4-5, children across the world begin to exhibit a “theory of mind” that enables them to
infer what others are thinking
 If they witness a toy being moved while another child isn’t looking, they become able—no
matter what their culture—to infer that the other child will think it still is where it was

Universal Friendship Norms

 People everywhere have some common norms for friendship
o Several cultural variations in the norms that define the role of a friend
 Japan – It’s especially important not to embarrass a friend with a public criticism
o Universal norms:
 Respect the friend’s privacy
 Make eye contact while talking
 Don’t divulge things said in confidence

Universal Trait Dimensions

 People tend to describe others are more or less stable, outgoing, open, agreeable, and conscientious
o “Big Five” personality dimensions often describe your personality well no matter where you live
 Nation-to-nation differences in Big Five trait scores such as those of conscientiousness and extraversion are
much smaller than most people suppose
o Australians see themselves as naturally outgoing
o German-speaking Swiss see themselves as strikingly conscientiousness
o Canadians describe themselves as distinctly agreeable
 These national stereotypes exaggerate real differences that are quite modest

Universal Social Belief Dimensions

 Kwok Leung and Michael Harris Bond: There are five universal dimensions of social beliefs
o People vary in the extent to which they endorse and apply these social understandings in their daily lives:
 Cynicism – Powerful people tend to exploit others
 Social complexity – One has to deal with matters according to the specific circumstances
 Reward for application – One will succeed if he/she tries
 Spirituality – Religious faith contributes to good mental health
 Fate control – Fate determines one’s successes and failures
o People’s adherence to these social beliefs appears to guide their living
 Those who espouse cynicism express lower life satisfaction and favor assertive influence tactics and
right-wing politics
 Those who espouse reward for application are inclined to invest themselves in study, planning, and
competing

Universal Status Norms

 Wherever people form status hierarchies, they also talk to higher-status people in the respectful way they often
talk to strangers
o They talk to lower-status people in the more familiar, first name way they speak to friends
 Patients call their physician “Dr. So and So”; the physician may reply using the patients’ first names
 Students and professors typically address one another in a similarly nonmutual way
 Most languages have two forms of the English pronoun “you”: a respectful form and a familiar form
o German: Sie and du
o French: Vouz and tu
o Spanish: Usted and tu
 People typically use the familiar form with intimates and subordinates—close friends and family
members, but also in speaking to children and pets
 First aspect of Brown’s universal norm: Forms of address communicate not only social distance but also social status
o This correlates with the second aspect: Advances in intimacy are usually suggested by higher-status
person
 This norm extends beyond language to every type of advance in intimacy
  It is more acceptable to borrow a pen from or put a hand on the should or one’s intimates
and subordinates than to behave in such a casual way with strangers and superiors
 Faculty president invites the faculty members to his home first before he is invited to theirs
 In the progression of intimacy, the higher-status person is usually the pacesetter

The Incest Taboo

 The best-known universal norm is the taboo against incest
o Parents are not to have sexual relations with their children, nor siblings with one another
 Although the taboo is violated more often than psychologists once believed, the norm is still universal
o Every society disapproves of incest
o Given the biological penalties for inbreeding (through the emerge of disorders linked to recessive genes),
evolutionary psychologists can easily understand why people everywhere are predisposed against incest

Norms of War
 Humans even have cross-cultural norms for conducting war
o In the midst of killing one’s enemy, there are agreed-upon rules that have been honored for centuries:
 Wear identifiable uniforms, surrender with a gesture of submission, treat prisoners humanely (If you
can’t kill them before they surrender, you should feed them thereafter)
o These norms, while cross-cultural, are not universal
 When Iraqi forces violated them by showing surrender flags and then attacking, and by dressing
soldiers as liberated civilians to set up ambushes, a U.S. military spokesperson complained that
both of these actions are among the most serious violations of the laws of war

 Some norms are culture-specific, others are universal

o The force of culture appears in varying norms, while it is largely our genetic predispositions—our
human nature—that account for the universality of some norms
 We might think of nature as universal and nurture as culture-specific
 Universalistic psychology – A psychology that is as valid and meaningful in Omaha and Osaka as it is in Rome and
Botswana
 Attitudes and behaviors will always vary with culture, but the processes by which attitudes influence behavior will
vary much less

HOW ARE GENDER SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES EXPLAINED?

 For people’s self-concepts and social relationships, two dimensions matter most:
o Race
o Gender – the characteristics, whether biologically or socially influenced, by which people associate/define
with male and female
 Of the 46 chromosomes in the human gene, 45 are unisex
o Females and males are therefore similar in many physical traits and developmental milestones
o They are also alike in many psychological traits
 Meta-analyses – each a statistical digest of dozens of studies
o The common result for most variables studied is gender similarities
 Your opposite sex is actually your nearly identical sex
 Nevertheless, there are some differences—and it is these differences—that capture attention and make news
o Compared with males, the average female:
 Has 70% more fat, 40% less muscle, is 5 inches shorter, and weighs 40 pounds less
 Is more sensitive to smells and sounds
 Is doubly vulnerable to anxiety disorders and depression
o Compared with females, the average male is:
 Slower to enter puberty (by about 2 years) but quicker to die (by four years, worldwide)
 Three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), 4x
more likely to commit suicide, and 5x more likely to be killed by lightning
 More capable of wiggling the ears
o Even in physical traits, individual differences among men and women far exceed the average differences
between the sexes
 Don Schollander’s world-record-setting 4 min. 12 seconds in the 400-meter freestyle swim at the
1964 Olympics trailed the times of all 8 women racing in the 2008 finals for that event
 During the 1970s, many scholars worried that studies of such gender differences might reinforce stereotypes
o Although findings confirm some stereotypes of women—less physically aggressive, more nurturant, and
more socially sensitive—those traits are not only celebrated by many feminists, but also preferred by most
people, whether male/female
 Most people rate their beliefs and feelings regarding women as more favorable than their feelings
regard men

Independence vs. Connectedness

 Women more than men give priority to close, intimate relationships
 Play
o Compared with boys, girls talk more intimately and play less aggressively
 o Girls also play in smaller groups, often talking with one friend, while boys more often do larger group
activities
o As they each interact with their own gender, differences grow
 Friendship
o As adults, women in individualist cultures describe themselves in more relational terms, welcome more
help, experience more relationship-linked emotions, and are more attuned to others’ relationships
o In conversation, men often focus more on tasks and on connections with large groups, women on personal
relationships
o When on the phone, women’s conversations with friends last longer
o When on the computer, women spend more time sending e-mails, in which they express more emotion
o When in groups, women share more of their lives, and offer more support
o When facing stress, men tend to respond with “fight or “flight” often their response to a threat is combat
o In nearly all studies, women who are under stress more often “tend and befriend”
 Tend and befriend – they turn to friends and family for support
o 5/10 (males) and 7/10 (females) say it is important to help those who are in difficulty
 Vocations
o Men gravitate disproportionately to jobs that enhance inequalities (prosecuting attorney, corporate
advertising); women gravitate to jobs that reduce inequalities (public defender, advertising work for a
charity)
o Men more than women value earnings, promotion, challenge, and power
o Women more than men value good hours, personal relationships, and opportunities to help others
 Most N. American caregiving professions (social worker, teacher, and nurse): Women outnumber
men
 Worldwide, women’s vocational interests, compared with men, usually relate more to people and
less to things
 Family Relations
o Women – bind families
 More time spent caring for preschoolers and aging parents
 Buy 3x as many gifts and greeting cards, write 2-4x more personal letters, 10-20% more long-
distance phone calls to friends and family
 Women include more photos of parents and of themselves with others
o Sense of mutual support is crucial in marital satisfaction for women
 Smiling
o Women – generally higher rate of smiling
 Empathy
o Empathy – The vicarious experience of another’s feelings; outing oneself in another’s shoes; to feel what
another feels
 Women are far more likely to describe themselves as having empathy
o Both men and women report friendships with women to be more intimate, enjoyable and nurturing
o Men-women empathy difference may be because women are better at reading others’ emotions , they are
also more strikingly better than men at recalling others’ appearance
o Women are also skilled at expressing emotions nonverbally
 Especially so for positive emotion
 Men, however, were slightly more successful in conveying anger
o Because women are generally empathic and skilled at reading others’ emotions, they are less vulnerable to
autism

Social Dominance
 People rate men as more dominant, driven, and aggressive
o Men more than women rate power and achievement as important
 Essentially, in every society, men are socially more dominant
 Gender differences vary greatly per culture, and gender differences are shrinking in many industrialized societies as
women assume more managerial and leadership positions
o Women in 2008: 18% of the world’s legislators
o Men > women in terms of concern for social dominance and are more likely to favor conservative political
candidates and programs that preserve group inequality
 Men > women: Support of capital punishment and Iraq war
o Men more likely to be leaders in legal and medical settings
o Women in industrial countries have lower wages than men: 1/5 of this wage gap is attributable to gender
differences in education, work experience or job characteristics
 Men initiate most of the inviting for first dates, do most of the driving, and pick up most of the tabs
 Men’s style of communicating undergirds their social power
o When roles aren’t rigidly scripted  Men tend to be more autocratic, women more democratic
o Leadership roles  Men: Directive, task-focused leaders; Women  “Transformational” leadership that is
favored by more and more organizations (inspirational and social skills that build team spirit)
o Men > women: Priority on winning, getting ahead and dominating others
  This may be why people prefer male leaders for competition between groups, than when conflicts
occur within a group (women preferred, perhaps)
 Men take more risks
o Men more overconfident than women: Make 45% more stock trades
o Because men’s trades proved no more successful, their results underperformed the stock market by 2.65%,
compared with women’s 1.72%
 The men’s trades were riskier  The men were poorer for it
 Writing: Women: more communal prepositions (with), fewer quantitative words, and more present tense
 Conversation: Men’s style reflects their concern for independence, women’s for connectedness
o Men’s style: More direct
o Women’s style of influence: More indirect—less interruptive, more sensitive, more polite, less cocky
o Men and women’s conversational styles vary with social context
 Men: Typical of people in positions of status and power
 Students nod more when speaking with professors rather than peers
 Women nod more than men
 Individuals vary:
 Some men are characteristically hesitant and deferential
 Some women direct and assertive
o To suggest that men and women are from different planets greatly oversimplifies
 Some gender difference do not correlate with status and power
o Women at all status levels tend to smile more

Aggression
 Aggression – Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone
o In laboratory experiments, this might men delivering electric shocks or saying something likely to hurt
another’s feelings
 Hunting, fighting and warring  Primarily male activities
 Gender difference fluctuates with context
o When there’s provocation, the gender gap shrinks
o Within less assaultive forms of aggression—slapping a family member, throwing something, verbally
attacking someone—women are no less aggressive than men
 Women may be slightly more likely to commit indirect aggressive acts such as spreading
malicious gossip
 But across the world, men much more than women, injure other with physical aggression

Sexuality
 Gender gap in sexual attitudes and assertiveness
o True: Women and men are more similar than different in their physiological and psychological responses to
sexual stimuli, but there are some statistics that highlight certain differences.
 Casual sex: Men > Women
 Women > Men: Cited affection for partner as reason for first intercourse
 Thinking about sex: Men > Women
 Gender difference in sexual attitudes carries over to behavior: Males > Females: Initiating sexual activity
 Compared with lesbians, gay men also report more interest in uncommitted sex, more frequent sex, more
responsiveness to visual stimuli, and more concern with partner attractiveness
o Coupled American homosexuals: Lesbians > Gay men
 Cultures attribute greater value to female rather than male sexuality
o Seen in gender asymmetries in prostitution and courtship  Men generally offer money, gifts, praise or
commitment in implicit exchange for women’s sexual engagement
o In human sexual economics, women rarely pay for sex
 The more scarce are available men, the higher is the teen pregnancy rate
o Because when men are scarce, women compete against each other by offering sex at a lower price in terms
of commitment
 When women are scarce, as is increasingly the case in China and India, the market value of sexuality rises and
they are able to command greater commitment
 Sexual fantasies express the gender driven
o In male-driven erotica, women are unattached and lust driven
o In romance novels, whose primary audience is women, a tender male is emotionally consumed by his
devoted passion to the heroine
 Psychological detectives are more interested in differences rather than similarities
o Individual differences far exceed gender differences
 Females and males are hardly opposite (altogether different) sexes
 Rather, they differ like two folded hands—similar but not the same, fitting together but differing
as they grasp each other

EVOLUTION AND GENDER: DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY?

 In explaining gender difference, two influences have been brought to focus: Evolution and Culture
 Survey: Differences between men and women
 o About the same number answered upbringing and biology

Gender and Mating Preferences

 We cannot change the evolutionary history of our species, and some of the difference between us are undoubtedly a
function of that history
o Evolutionary psychology predicts no sex differences in all those domains in which the sexes faced
similar adaptive challenges
o But evolutionary psychologists predict differences in behaviors relevant to dating, mating, and
reproduction
 Male’s greater sexual initiative
 Females invest their reproductive opportunities carefully, by looking for signs of resources
and commitment
 Males compete with other males for chances to win the genetic sweepstakes by sending
their genes into the future, and thus look for healthy, fertile soil in which to pant their seed
o Women want to find men who will help them tend to the garden—resourceful,
monogamous dads
 Women seek to reproduce wisely, men widely
 However, in species for which males provide more parental care, males have a longer-term
mating strategy, are more discriminating among potential mates, and die later
 Physically dominant males were the ones who excelled in gaining access to females, which over
generations has enhanced male aggression and dominance as the less aggressive males had fewer
changes to reproduce
 Principle: Nature selects traits that help send one’s genes into the future
 Little of this process is conscious
o Our natural yearnings are our genes’ way of making more genes
o Emotions execute evolutionary dispositions, much as hunger executes the body’s
need for nutrients
 Hidden evolutionary predispositions  Fanciful description of a male moth responding to a female’s release of
bombykol (single molecule of which will tremble the hairs of any male within miles and send him driving upwind in
ardor)
o It’s doubtful if the moth has an awareness of being caught in an aerosol of chemical attractant
o He probably finds suddenly that it has become an excellent day, the weather remarkably bracing, the time
appropriate for a bit of exercise of the old wings, a brisk turn upwind
 Evolutionary psychology predicts that men will strive to offer what women will desire—external resources and
physical protection
o Men on the other hand prefer physical features suggesting youth and health—and reproductive fitness
o Male peacocks strut their feathers; male humans, their abs, Audis and assets
o Men have greater interest in the physical form; women have greater interest in men’s wealth,
resources, power, and ambition
 But similarities exist: Both men and women desire kindness, love, and mutual attraction
o Men like women whose features suggest peak fertility
 Teenage boys  Women several years older than them
 Mid-20s men  Women their own age
 Older men  Younger women
 The older the man, the greater the age difference he prefers when selecting a mate
 Women of all ages prefer men just slightly older than themselves

Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology

 Critics see a problem with evolutionary explanations
o E. psychologists sometimes start with an effective and then work backward to construct an explanation for
it
 Approach is reminiscent of functionalism, a dominant theory in psychology during the 1920s (A
behavior occurs because it serves such and such a function)
o E. and functionalism approaches may be likened to hindsight reasoning
 And they can hardly lose because of that
 E. psychologists respond to criticisms:
o Hindsight plays no less a role in their cultural explanations
o E. psychology as a field is an empirical science that tests evolutionary predictions with data from animal
behavior, cross-cultural observations and hormonal and genetic studies
 Observations inspire a theory that generates new, testable predictions
 These predictions alert us to unnoticed phenomena and allow us to confirm, refute, or revise the
theory
 Critics:
o Empirical evidence is not strongly supportive of e. psych’s predictions
 E. speculation about sex and gender reinforces male and female stereotypes
o E. psych: E. wisdom is wisdom from the past
 Tells us what behaviors worked in our early history as a species
 Whether such tendencies are still adaptive today is an entirely different question
  Critics:
o E. helps explain both our commonalities and differences (a certain amount of diversity aids survival)
o But our common e. heritage does not, by itself, predict the cultural variation in human marriage patterns
nor does it explain cultural changes in behavior patterns over more decades of time
o Most significant trait nature has endowed us with: Capacity to adapt—to learn and to change
 Therein lies what we can all agree is culture’s shaping power

Sample Predictions Derived from Evolutionary Psychology

General Evolutionary Theory: Theory of Natural Selection
Mid-Level Evolutionary Theories:
 Theory of Reciprocal Altruism
 Theory of Parental Investment and Sexual Relation
o Specific evolutionary hypotheses:
 1: In species where the sexes differ in parental investment, the higher-investing sex will be more
selective in choice of mating partners
 2: Where males can and sometimes contribute resources to offspring, females will select mates in
part based on their ability and willingness to contribute resources
 3: The sex that invests less parentally in offspring will be more competitive with each other for
mating access to the high-investing sex
o Specific predictions derived from the hypotheses (2):
 1: Women have evolved preferences for men who are high in status
 2: Women have evolved preferences for men who show cues indicating a willingness to invest in
them and their offspring
 3: Women will divorce men who fail to contributed expected resources or who divert those
resources to other women and their children
 Theory of Parent-Offspring Conflict
Focus On: Evolutionary Science and Religion
 U.S.: Half of adults do not believe that evolution accounts for how human beings came to exist on Earth
 Scientists:
o Mutation and natural selection explain the emergence of life
 Science and religion aren’t adversaries, they can co-exist comfortably, and both have a place and provide important
benefits to society
o Science: When and how
o Religion: Why and who

Gender and Hormones

 Genes predispose gender-related traits, they must do so by their effects on our bodies
o Males: Testosterone  Male hormone that influences masculine appearance
 Girls exposed to excess testosterone during fetal development tend to exhibit more tomboyish play
behavior than other girls
 Males, born without penises, are reared as girls
 Despite being reared this way, most exhibit typical male play and eventually—in most
cases, not without emotional distress—come to have a male identity
o Gender gap in aggression  Also influenced by testosterone
 Inc. test.  Inc. aggressiveness
 Human male criminals have higher than normal testosterone levels
 So do National Football League players and boisterous fraternity members
 Both humans and monkeys:
 Gender differences in aggression appears early in life (before culture has much effect)
 Wanes as testosterone levels decline during adulthood
o No one of these lines of evidence is conclusive
 As people mature to middle age and beyond: Curious thing happens:
o Women become more self-confident and assertive
o Men more empathetic and less domineering
 Hormone changes are one explanation for the shrinking gender differences
 Role demands are another
 During courtship and early parenthood, social expectations lead both sexes to emphasize
traits that enhance their roles
 Men: Courting, providing, and protecting play up their macho sides and forgo the needs for
interdependence and nurturance
 Women: While courting and rearing young children, young women restrain their impulses to
assert and be independent
 As the two graduate from these early adult roles, they express more of their restrained
tendencies, each becoming more androgynous—capable of both assertiveness and
nurturance
o Androgynous – From andro (man) + gyn (woman)—thus mixing both masculine
and feminine characteristics
CULTURE AND GENDER: DOING AS THE CULTURE SAYS?
 Culture’s influence  See differing gender roles
 Gender socialization
o Gives girls “roots” and boys “wings”
 Girls: 4x more likely than boys to use household objects
 Boys: 5x more likely than girls to use production objects
o Adults: The situation is not much different
 Cooking and dishwashing are the least shared household chores
 Sexes are equally likely though to plant and harvest crops and to milk cows
 Gender roles – A set of behavior expectations (norms) for males and females
o Culture indeed helps construct our gender roles

Gender Roles Vary with Culture

 Despite gender role inequalities, the majority of the world’s people would ideally like to see more parallel male and
female roles
o But there are big country-to-country differences:
 Egyptians disagree with greater parallelism 2 to 1
 Vietnamese concurred by 11 to 1
 Norway, Finland and Sweden have the greatest gender equality
 Saudi Arabia, Chad, and Yemen the least gender equality
 Industrialized societies: Roles vary enormously
 Women fill 1/10 managerial positions in Japan and Germany and nearly ½ in Australia and
the United States
 N. America: Most doctors and dentists are men; opposite for Russia, as are most dentists in
Denmark

Gender Roles Vary Over Time

 Today, women are no longer believed to be best confined to the home and family
 Behavioral changes have accompanied the attitude shift
o College degrees are now granted to women
o Women spend less time engaged in household chores
o Medical and law school female enrollees have risen to nearly half of the entering student population
 Changing male-female roles cross many cultures: Women’s gradually increasing representation in the parliaments of
nations from Morocco to Sweden
o Shows evolution and biology do not fix gender roles: Time also bends the genders

Peer-Transmitted Culture
 Cultures come in many flavors
 How are traditions preserved across generations?
o The Nurture Assumption: Parental nurture, the way parents bring their children up, governs who their
children become
 Freudian and behaviorists agree with this
 Comparing the extremes of loved children and abused children, results suggest that parenting
does matter
 Moreover, children acquire many of their values, including political affiliations and religious
faith, at home
 The Nurture Presumption is refuted by developmental psychology
o Two children in the same family are on average as different from one another as are pairs of children
selected randomly from the population
 Genetic influences explain roughly 50% of the individual variations in personality traits
 Shared environmental influences—shard home—accounts for 0 to 10% of their personality
differences
 The rest are largely peer influence
 What children and teens care most is not what their parents thing but what their
friends/peers think
 Children and youth learn their culture mostly from peers
 Consider:
o Preschoolers will often try to refuse a certain food despite parents’ urging, until they are put in a table with a
group of children who like
o Although children of smokers have an elevated smoking rate, the effect seems largely peer-mediated
 Such children more often have friends who model smoking, who suggest its pleasure, and who offer
cigarettes
o Young immigrant children whose families are transplanted into foreign cultures usually grow up preferring
the language and norms of their new peer culture
 They may “code-switch” when they step back into their homes, but their hearts and minds are with
their peer groups
 Deaf children of hearing parents who attend schools for the deaf usually leave their parents’ culture
and assimilate into a deaf culture
  Leave a group of children in the same schools, neighborhood, and peers, but switched the parents around  They
would develop into the same set of adults
o Parents have an important influence, but it’s substantially indirect
 Parents help define schools, neighborhood and peers that directly influence who their children
become
o Children take their cues from slightly older youth, who take theirs from young adults in the parents’
generation
 Links between parental and child groups are loose enough that the cultural transmission is never perfect
o Human and primate cultures  Change comes from the young
 When one monkey discovers a better way of washing food/people develop a new idea about
fashion/gender roles  Innovations come from the young and are more readily embraced by
younger adults
 Cultural traditions continue, yet cultures change

WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE ABOUT GENES, CULTURE, AND GENDER?

BIOLOGY AND CULTURE

 The two aren’t competitors
 Cultural norms subtly yet powerfully affect our attitudes and behavior
o But they don’t do see independent of biology
o Everything social and psychological is ultimately biological
o What our biological heritage initiates, our culture accentuates
 Biology and culture may also interact
o Interaction – A relationship in which the effect of one factor (such as biology) depends on another factor
(such as environment)
 Genes respond actively to our experiences
 Occurs when biological traits influence how the environment reacts
 Men, being 8% taller and averaging almost double the portion of muscle mass, are bound
to experience life differently than women
o Only few couples violated the norm that husbands should be taller than wives (men
are usually taller than women among married couples)
 Height: A result of biology and culture
 Social-Role Theory of Gender Differences in Social Behavior
o Eagly and Wood
o How biology and culture interact
o A variety of factors, including biological influence and childhood socialization, predispose a sexual division of
labor
o In adult life, the immediate cause of gender differences in social behavior are the roles that reflect this
sexual division of labor (specifically, gender role expectations and gender-related skills and beliefs)
 Men because of their biologically endowed strength and speed, tend to be found in roles demanding
physical power
 Women’s capacity for childbearing and breastfeeding inclines them to more nurturant roles
o Each sex then tends to exhibit the behaviors expected of those who fill such roles and to have their skills
and beliefs shaped accordingly
 Nature and nurture are a tangled web
o As role assignments become more equal, Eagly predicts that gender differences will gradually lessen
 Consistent with the model:
o In cultures with greater = of gender roles, the gender differences in mate preferences is less
o As women’s employment in formerly male occupations inc  Gender diff. in self-reported
masculinity/femininity has decreased
o Psychological difference shrink in these areas where men and women have more similar roles
 But not all
 Across the world—especially in prosperous, egalitarian, educated countries—women report
more extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness
 In less fortunate contexts, the development of one’s inherent personality traits is more
restrained
 Biology predisposes men to strength tasks and women to infant care
o However, behavior of women and men is sufficiently malleable that individuals of both sexes are fully
capable of carrying out organizational roles at al levels
o Today’s high-status and high-tech work roles  Male size and aggressiveness matter less and less
o Lowered birthrates mean women are less constrained by pregnancy and nursing
o Result: Inevitable rise in gender equality

The Inside Story: Alice Eagly on Gender Similarities and Differences

 Gender differences should not necessarily reflect unfavorably to women
o In fact, the stereotype of women is currently more favorable than the stereotype of men
The Power of Situation and the Person
 The opposite of trivial truths is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
 Assuming plainly cultural reasons for our actions might lead to Sartre’s bad faith—evading responsibility by blaming
something or someone for one’s fate
o Social control (power of the situation) and personal culture (power of the person) no more compete with
each other than do biological and cultural explanations
 Social situations influence individuals, but individuals also influence social situations: The two interact in at least
three ways:
o A given social situation often affects different people differently
 Our minds do not see reality identically or objectively, we respond to a situation as we construe it
 Some are more sensitive and responsive to social situations than others
 Japanese are more responsive to social expectations than the British
o People often choose their situations
 Sociable people elect situations that evoke social interaction
 When you choose your college, you also choose what type of social influences you will be
exposed to
 Ardent political liberals are unlikely to live in suburban Dallas and join the Chamber of
Commerce
o More likely to live in San Francisco or Toronto and join Greenpeace
o People often create their situations
 Preconceptions can be self-fulfilling: Expect someone to be extraverted, our actions toward that
person may induce that behavior
 A conservative environment is created by conservatives
 Social environment is not like the weather—something that just happens to us
 It is more like our homes—something we make for ourselves
 Power resides both in person and situations
o We create and are created by our social worlds

POSTSCRIPT: SHOULD WE VIEW OURSELVES AS PRODUCTS OR ARCHITECTS OF OUR SOCIAL WORLDS?

 We would do well more often to assume the reverse—to view ourselves as free agents and to view others as
influenced by the environment
o We would assume self-efficacy as we view ourselves, and we would seek understanding and social reform as
we relate to others
 Most religions in fact encourage us to take responsibility for ourselves but to refrain from judging
others