All joking about specific individuals aside, are/were logical faculty in human beings an instrument that can (or did) attract potential mates?
It seems to me that all (physically) normal humans have the ability to reason. Starting from a given point (premises), they can follow the chain of logic to an argument until they arrive at a certain conclusion.
This ability doesn’t need to be limited to arguments, of course. It can be used to extrapolate certain meaningful trends and patterns.
Now this could confer important advantages for survival. For example, let’s say that pre-historic man could link a particular type of berry with death. Those who were better at recognizing this pattern quickly would probably stand a better chance of survival than those who couldn’t. Hence this is natural selection. The better the chances of your survival, the more likely it is that you’ll stick around to breed all night long and produce lots of wonderful babies, most significantly with a capacity for logical reasoning.
However, how attractive were these traits to members of the opposite sex? Natural selection in the above example sorta implies that these “LOGIC” guys were the only ones left to mate with.
But was the ability to reason well identifiable to humans when seeking a potential mate? Did Otis look at PeyPey and think, “My God, that woman can REASON!!!”
If this trait was identifiable, did Otis also think, “WooHoo! I’m gonna have me some sweet Logical ass!”
So in sum, was the ability to reason well a naturally attractive trait in human beings?
If you are asking if smart women are hot then the answer is yes. stupid is one of my biggest turn offs. but thats just me, I would guess that its like everything else, subjective and going to vary quite a bit.
Okay, generally AFAIK the way a genetic trait becomes a sexual selection trait is theorized to go like this. (Not sure if we have any proof that it happens or when.)
To start with, you have a population of males and females of various intelligence. Also, the individuals probably have a normalized distribution of preference for intelligence in their mates… some few really like stupid mates, some few really like smart mates, the majority may not care.
We have to assume that the members of our species are able to observe and guage the intelligence of prospective mates for this to work.
Generally, all other things being equal, the males who have a high preference for intelligent mates will probably tend to get more intelligent mates than the average. (This is before intelligent mates have become highly desirable in the population generally.) Also, males with a high preference for unintelligent mates will probably get less intelligent mates than the average.
Next generation, the males with a high preference for unintelligent mates have had a lot of slightly stupid kids. A lot of them ate bad berries before they grew up and died. Some of the kids of the males with no particular preference for the intelligence of their mates also ate the wrong kinds of berries and died. Probably very few of the bright kids born to smart female and males who like smart females died.
Now, all of this doesn’t mean much if the sons of the guys who like smart females aren’t more likely to have a preference for smart females themselves. If they do, then they’re going to come, over many many generations, to dominate the population more and more, and to compete in some way over the most intelligent females. (Luckily, evolution will also have been selecting for smart females.)
Hope this helps. I really don’t know that much about evolution meself.
Women tend to be attracted to men who can be good providers. Given a choice between an intelligent man with a great mind, or some good looking guy without a lick of sense, who likely would be a better provider?
Call this theory whatever you like (racism, reverse-racism, sour grapes, ???), but I not long ago read some online think piece propounding the idea that Jews tended to do so well on intelligence tests because intelligence (or some kinds of intelligence) was inheritable and selected for within the Jewish population.
The reasoning: Jews had historically been barred from most professions and trades, and thus had to develop unusually acute mental faculties to survive. For this reason, they supposedly chose intelligence as the number one desirable trait in potential husbands, thereby bringing genetics into the picture.
(If people really want to read this, I’ll try my Google-fu at finding it.)
IANAJ, but I’d also be tempted to speculate that logic, recall, and accuracy were some of the skills most prized – skills well developed by traditional Jewish styles of religious teaching.
You have to establish that Caveman Poindexter actually is a better mate than Caveman Meathead. Non-trivial, IMO.
You have to establish that women can tell which men are smarter. Also non-trivial IMO.
Frankly, it’s not clear to me at all that smart men are better mates. Or vice versa. It seems to me the closest you can get is that smarter men may achieve more status in a group. More status implies more power, power to protect mates and offspring.
Probably not the same piece, but your article reminded me of this: Why Jews Don’t Farm by Steven E. Landsburg for Slate magazine.
Not really getting in genetics and such, but it does touch on (and cast doubt on) the idea that jews had been barred from most professions and trades, suggesting instead that since the jewish religion imposed “an obligation to be literate”, Jews were naturally drawn to educated occupations. An interesting read at any rate, I think.
Um, was that specifically aimed at rfgdxm’s post??
It’s not necessarily about whether caveman poindexter of caveman meathead is a better mate. There’s also the question of which of them can give cavewoman carrie babies that will be more likely to survive long enough to have babies of their own.
This is a theory put about by several prominent sociobiologists. Even Darwin had a go at it in various forms. The best book to read on the subject is probably “The Mating Mind : How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature” by Geoffrey Miller. essentially he argues that all forms of artistic and intellectual endevour-music, arts, computer geeks etc have been selected for by sexual choice. As to why, it is a bit like a peackocks tail - the tail is not useful in itself, and is actually a hinderence to survival. But it tells females that the owner must be very fit. Similularly, a big brain/intelligence is not necessarily a good survival tool (e.g. jellyfish will probably be around long after humans have disappeared), but the owner is generally very fit, because he/she has resources to spare keeping his brain going (which consumes an enormous amount of the energy the body uses.
We also must remember that mate selection does not have to be the only selection method. If in a tribe of a 100 individuals, every once in a while comes upon a violent genius who exterminates every single potential rival applying intelligent methods, that is also selection in his favor(given that he now fathers every single child in the tribe).
Don’t underestimate the potential for violence in smart people.
Very attractive, I imagine, to the logical members of the opposite sex. They’d be thoroughly annoyed with members of my sex who were not logical and could not, therefore, follow their reasoning when they explained things.
Evolution works by those individuals in a population best able to stay alive long enough to reproduce and passing those traits on to their offspring.
Ability to reason is, of course, an evolutionary advantage because an individual who can reason can prepare or respond to various situations instead of simply passively reacting to them. Those who cannot reason would tend to do more boneheaded things and thus die before they can reproduce.
Some scientists (Matt Ridley IIRC) argue that it’s less a case of men selecting smart(er) / more rational women, and more a case of a biological arms race with language being the weapon/tool, where women select more able male seducers, who use their brains to figure out what the other person (female in this case) wants in exchange for mating privileges.
Brighter men aren’t chosen preferentially because they’re necessairly smarter, they’re chosen because they’re better at language use and seduction techniques which is preferentially enabled by being bigger brained.
Beware of Doug, this site discusses your theory and provides a good overview. It claims that an unfortunate side effect of this strong selection for intelligence was the concomitant development of rare genetic diseases, like Tay Sachs, in the Ashkenazi Jews. Interesting reading.
There was a study done a few years ago that showed women tended to pick different mates for bearing and raising children–they picked guys who looked more lunkheaded to be the genetic father and gentler-looking guys to be the person who helped them raise the child. Could this be trying to get the best of both worlds? I tend to believe that intelligence is mostly environmental whereas strength is mostly genetic, so in that case it would be most advantageous to pick a strong dumb guy for his genes and cultivate intelligence through a weak smart guy.
And no, a caveman-ish face doesn’t necessarily mean the guy is an idiot and vice-versa. But still, an interesting study.
