Tapsearch Com EditorLove my genes better than you
August 9th 2007 23:01
When Jeremy Lott told me about a piece he was working on for the Spectator (it's since run here), I was skeptical of his thesis. There's a new study about how charity actually has selfish roots, and The Economist made an argument based on it.
Jeremy criticizes The Economist, but typically I'm pretty sympathetic to that kind of logic. As the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People put it:
Evolutionary psychologists like Richard Dawkins contend (correctly, in my opinion) that "that feeling" evolved because of the "selfish gene." That is, say a gene makes you altruistic to people who are like you -- you'll be most altruistic toward your relatives, pretty altruistic to your community, less so to your national compatriots and even less so to all mankind. People like you will be more likely to have that gene as well, so your altruism actually furthers the gene's interests, and the gene wins out in natural selection. Thus the gene is selfish by making you altruistic.
But after reading Jeremy's article, he's 100 percent correct on this study. Some researchers took two groups of people, showing one group some pictures of attractive opposite-sex folks and asking them to write essays about dating those fine specimens. The other group saw pictures of buildings and wrote about the weather.
Then, both groups were asked what they'd do with $5,000. The dating-primed men were more likely to spend their money on flashy, impressive things. They were also more likely to spend money on charity, especially when other people could notice. Dating-primed women were more likely to say they'd volunteer a lot.
Interesting, but Jeremy is quick to pounce on the idiocy of this conclusion from the Economist article:
This is a basic logical fallacy. The study showed that the mating drive can increase charity; i.e., that charity is in part influenced by conspicuous consumption urges. It does not follow from this that charity is primarily due to these urges. If this were true, married people would give less than people in the dating market, but in fact we see the opposite.
And as Jeremy argues:
Jeremy criticizes The Economist, but typically I'm pretty sympathetic to that kind of logic. As the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People put it:
How about the time you gave a large contribution to the Red Cross?...If you hadn't wanted that feeling more than you wanted your money, you would not have made the contribution.
Evolutionary psychologists like Richard Dawkins contend (correctly, in my opinion) that "that feeling" evolved because of the "selfish gene." That is, say a gene makes you altruistic to people who are like you -- you'll be most altruistic toward your relatives, pretty altruistic to your community, less so to your national compatriots and even less so to all mankind. People like you will be more likely to have that gene as well, so your altruism actually furthers the gene's interests, and the gene wins out in natural selection. Thus the gene is selfish by making you altruistic.
But after reading Jeremy's article, he's 100 percent correct on this study. Some researchers took two groups of people, showing one group some pictures of attractive opposite-sex folks and asking them to write essays about dating those fine specimens. The other group saw pictures of buildings and wrote about the weather.
Then, both groups were asked what they'd do with $5,000. The dating-primed men were more likely to spend their money on flashy, impressive things. They were also more likely to spend money on charity, especially when other people could notice. Dating-primed women were more likely to say they'd volunteer a lot.
Interesting, but Jeremy is quick to pounce on the idiocy of this conclusion from the Economist article:
Giving money to charity is thus more akin to conspicuous consumption than it is to blatant benevolence.
This is a basic logical fallacy. The study showed that the mating drive can increase charity; i.e., that charity is in part influenced by conspicuous consumption urges. It does not follow from this that charity is primarily due to these urges. If this were true, married people would give less than people in the dating market, but in fact we see the opposite.
And as Jeremy argues:
It ignores alternative explanations for the results -- such as, maybe the control group was bored?
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