Girls Wired To Fear Dangerous Animals 224
Foot-in-Mouth writes "New Scientist reports that girls are more "primed" to fear spiders and snakes, compared to boys. Infant boys and girls were shown pairs of images, a fearful and a happy object (such as a spider and a flower), measuring the boys' and girls' dwell times on the images. And in another similar test, normally happy objects (such as a flower) were given a fearful face and fearful objects were given a happy face. The results of these two tests suggested to the researcher that girls are not wired to fear spiders, for example, but rather girls are wired to more quickly learn to fear dangerous animals.
The researcher, David Rakison at CMU, 'attributes the difference to behavioural differences between men and women among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. An aversion to spiders may help women avoid dangerous animals, but in men evolution seems to have favoured more risk-taking behaviour for successful hunting.'
This reminds one of men's obsession with video games. Will game designers use this information to tweak video games for gender, either to make the games more or less frightening?"
Does anyone even read the summary anymore? (Score:3, Informative)
Foot in mouth is right. The title and the summary contradict.
Re:Nature vs nurture. (Score:5, Informative)
It seems foolish to base a scientific study off of some scientist's ability to objectively judge facial expressions in infants.
That's not what the study measured. It used quantifiable criteria. The conclusions are debatable, but you have to read the study before you're entitled to an opinion.
That's not science.
That's not reading.
Re:Nature vs nurture. (Score:3, Informative)
Just take the pictures of the infants' reactions, and get some third parties, who don't even know what the experiment is about, to do the scoring. You could probably conscript a bunch of child-development majors to provide assessments of the sample pretty easily.
Re:mice? (Score:3, Informative)
Not a legend, your link just separates them out as not being major rabies carriers. Here in New Mexico, we get cases of hantavirus [wikipedia.org] every year, which certainly is carries by mice and rats. We also typically get several cases of plague [wikipedia.org] every year. And, while the little rodents don't directly communicate the disease to humans, they make a pretty efficient transport device for the critters that do.
Because we all know men and women are the same? (Score:2, Informative)
How many 300-pound solid-muscle women do you see making millions of dollars a year in the NFL?
Why did that hermaphrodite from South Africa get stopped from racing as a woman?
Women and men ARE DIFFERENT.
That's reality. All the claptrap from "womyn" loons can't change it. Get over it.
Except it's not that clear cut at all (Score:3, Informative)
Except it's not that clear at all, so, yes, _I_ will call it blind guesses.
For a start, the evolution of the homo species has involved _reducing_ sexual dimorphism. All along the line we moved from disproportionately larger males than females and males with born natural weapons (e.g., bigger teeth and jaws) to something more gender-equal than any other ape. Clearly there wasn't as big a need for big males protecting weak females.
Also, if you're actually looking at primitive cultures, you must be looking through tinted glasses. Because it never was a case where females sit in the cave and just take care of the babies. In hunter-gathering cultures, the males were the hunters, yes, but the females were the gatherers. Obviously we lived with their being out of commission while pregnant just fine.
Furthermore, the actual roles in those cultures aren't anything like the modern stereotype in western culture. Women aren't the weaklings jumping on a chair when they see a mouse, and men aren't the stereotypical testosterone-poisoned idiots.
Women out gathering must be able to take care of themselves. Sure, they won't go wrestle tigers, but they must out-wit, out-run or out-climb any dangers they may meet.
And most importantly, they have to somehow finish gathering food for their family and come back even if they see a spider or a snake. Jumping on some branch and shrieking every time you see either, won't get you too far. There is no guy around who'll bravely come and kill the snake for you, because the guys are out hunting.
There are no guys on escort duty for the women gathering berries. If they need to save their skin, they must do it themselves.
But most importantly the guys in those cultures aren't the kind who'll think with his dick and wrestle tigers to impress the girls either. The role of the men is to hunt some antelope or whatever is available, but try to avoid the predators just like the women do. There is no way a lone bushman hunter will take on the lions, and even a group has nothing to gain and everything to lose from trying to. So he'll just try to avoid them.
Basically _both_ genders' roles were to avoid danger in as much as possible.
Yes, all cultures tried to give their women slightly less risky jobs, but
1. that doesn't really mean more than that they were protecting their pussy supply, to be blunt. For most of human history, the life expectancy for women was lower than for men. Because of birth-related death and complications. As modern civilizations as Old Kingdom Egypt had the median of life expectancy, if you got past the peak of infant mortality, in the 20's for women and the 30's for men. _That_ disproportionate. Warfare to capture women was a stapple all the way to late Roman republic at the very least.
So, yes, those guys tried to protect what was a limited supply of nookie, because demand always outstripped supply. It doesn't have to mean any different wiring or natural handicap or anything.
2. "that's the way it's been done" isn't really proving anything. Equally slavery was the way things were done for millenia, and nobody would still argue like Aristotle that some people were born to be slaves.
3. Even gathering was only marginally less risky, and was still a vastly more risky job than any moder woman will ever have to do. (Unless she's a tiger tamer or something.) Or than most modern men will.
What people are trying to apply to modern jobs and tasks, was actually the difference between (A) might have to outrun a tiger attracted by that freshly hunted antelope, and (B) slightly lower chances to meet the same tiger, but is good enough to save her skin if she does. Stupid "eeek, a mouse!" acts don't even come close to be justified by that ancient division of labour. If one of those gatherer women even heard of someone making a fuss over a mouse or bug -- when, again, they actually had to somehow deal with actual predators -- they'd probably be pretty perplexed.
Re:Dangerous animals (Score:3, Informative)
Screaming when in fear alerts the tribe to danger and the higher pitch of their voices seems like it would travel better than a guttural manly tone..
Actually the higher pitch is better because it is less omnidirectional (i.e. you can tell where it's coming from) than a lower pitch. This is why police/fire/medical vehicles have high pitch sirens, so you can tell where they are coming from easier.
Re:Dangerous animals (Score:3, Informative)
Mice bite
If you are catching a mouse in a cardboard box with your bare hand then the cornered mouse will eventually bite. But in an open land any sane mouse will do its best to run away. Attempts to bite a creature 100x larger than the mouse will only force it to come closer to the danger, and most likely will not be effective.
Re:Dangerous animals (Score:2, Informative)
The higher pitch (both siren and scream) are omnidirectional from the point of view of the source, but are easier to pinpoint from the view of the listener.