Upper body strength regulates men’s assertion of self-interest, say social scientists

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http://www.science20.com/news_artic...vatism_coevolved_say_social_scientists-112048

If you are physically strong, social science scholars believe they can predict whether or not you are more conservative than other men.

This might seem obvious. Fitness takes a lot of individual initiative, the government can do all of the outreach programs and legislate all of the soda cups they want, but it won't make people exercise. Super-fit people have to be conservative when it comes to their own exercise, even if they are liberal about money.

Michael Bang Petersen, associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University, and evolutionary psychology colleagues at UC Santa Barbara say the strength/politics connection is due to evolution, which is sure to annoy biologists.

Men's upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, they write, and they believe that the link may reflect psychological traits that evolved in response to our early ancestral environments and continue to influence behavior today.

"While many think of politics as a modern phenomenon, it has — in a sense — always been with our species," says Petersen. Few people would argue that politics has not always been with us, and we have always evolved. They must be linked?

In the days of our early ancestors, they say, decisions about the distribution of resources weren't made in courthouses or legislative offices, but through shows of strength.

With this in mind, the scholars hypothesized that upper-body strength — a proxy for the ability to physically defend or acquire resources — would predict men's opinions about economic redistribution.

So they surveyed hundred of people in America, Denmark and Argentina about bicep size, socioeconomic status, and support for economic redistribution. Their belief was that since bicep size as a proxy for upper body strength is irrelevant to payoffs from economic policies in modern mass democracies - might no longer makes right - anyone who wants to be strong is likely to have political decision making shaped by an evolved psychology designed for small-scale groups.

In line with their hypotheses, the data revealed that wealthy men with big biceps were less likely to support redistribution, while less wealthy men of the same strength were more likely to support it.

In other words, richer men with big biceps supported lower taxes while poorer men with big biceps wanted higher taxes - on the rich. But men with tiny biceps were less adamant on both sides, they weren't as fanatical about socialism or capitalism.

"Despite the fact that the United States, Denmark and Argentina have very different welfare systems, we still see that — at the psychological level — individuals reason about welfare redistribution in the same way," says Petersen. "In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution.

"Our results demonstrate that physically weak males are more reluctant than physically strong males to assert their self-interest — just as if disputes over national policies were a matter of direct physical confrontation among small numbers of individuals, rather than abstract electoral dynamics among millions."

No link was found between upper-body strength and redistribution opinions among women. Petersen argues that this is likely due to the fact that, over the course of evolutionary history, women had less to gain, and also more to lose, from engaging in direct physical aggression.

Whereas some biologists think nothing in biology has functions, evolutionary psychologists (and at least one political scientist and criminologist) believe everything in culture, psychology and decision-making is predetermined by inheritance. The psychology and political science scholars say the results indicate that an evolutionary perspective may help to illuminate political motivations, at least those of men.

"Many previous studies have shown that people's political views cannot be predicted by standard economic models," Petersen explains. "This is among the first studies to show that political views may be rational in another sense, in that they're designed by natural selection to function in the conditions recurrent over human evolutionary history."

So Republicans shouldn't be conducting voter registrations outside the IRS office, like they do now, they should be doing them outside the gym.
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I'm not understanding how their hypothesis was backed up when strong poor favored "redistribution" but strong rich didn't. That seems to have more correlation to the richness, not the strength.
 
Right-wing politics is characterized by lack of empathy.
"I'm not poor/gay/black/immigrant so I don't care"

Empathy at least partially requires a person to go through hardship, so people who've had it better are less likely to be show empathy.
 
the bodybuilding forum is a clear example of that, I'm not surprised one bit, they think that just because they're ripped they can do anything
 
Tamanon said:
I'm not understanding how their hypothesis was backed up when strong poor favored "redistribution" but strong rich didn't. That seems to have more correlation to the richness, not the strength.
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Read it again. The rich strong were more favorable to their interests as were the poor strong.
 
Tamanon said:
I'm not understanding how their hypothesis was backed up when strong poor favored "redistribution" but strong rich didn't. That seems to have more correlation to the richness, not the strength.
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Yeah, I'm not getting this either. Seems like you could substitute anything in place of physical strength and so long as wealth remains a factor the results would remain the same. "Dr. Who fans more likely to be conservative over Sherlock fans", etc.
 
Deified Data said:
Yeah, I'm not getting this either. Seems like you could substitute anything in place of physical strength and so long as wealth remains a factor the results would remain the same. "Dr. Who fans more likely to be conservative over Sherlock fans", etc.
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Par for the course for Evolutionary Psychology.
 
Tamanon said:
I'm not understanding how their hypothesis was backed up when strong poor favored "redistribution" but strong rich didn't. That seems to have more correlation to the richness, not the strength.
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If I'm getting this correctly they found a correlation between the upper-body strength of the individual and their assertiveness about their interests. They were either strongly for or against redistribution, whereas the weak guys were reluctant to take a stance on the issue. The assertion is that the physically weaker guys are less likely to take and/or defend an opinion.
 
What a weird headline.

This seems to be the key bit:
Our results demonstrate that physically weak males are more reluctant than physically strong males to assert their self-interest — just as if disputes over national policies were a matter of direct physical confrontation among small numbers of individuals, rather than abstract electoral dynamics among millions
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Being physically strong doesn't make you conservative, it just makes you push harder for politics that helps you personally.
 
Cyan said:
What a weird headline.

This seems to be the key bit:


Being physically strong doesn't make you conservative, it just makes you push harder for politics that helps you personally.
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So basically: stronger/alpha males fight for what they want, while weaker/beta males avoid conflict.

So humans = just like every other mammal?

Sounds like something from 4chan.
 
I'm a strong well off liberal. Call me ladies.

W2DBvJrl.jpg
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Study just seems super lazy. It subverts itself (self-interest, not conservativism, and they never argued that the latter and former were equivalent, which is the least they could have done with their assumption) and has the usual friction to women that can be expected from evolutionary psychology. You can make your stereotypes and hit "most" of the time, but why bother.
 
The headline sort of leads to a conclusion the study doesn't. When I first read it I thought they were implying 'strong men=conservatives weak = lefty'.Misleading.
 
I remember when I mentioned buying healthy, non-junk food with foodstamps in the fitness thread and a bunch of people got really mad that I was using foodstamps and told me to get a better job. Then I said I'd debate them on the value of food stamps to society in PM, as to not shit up the thread, and not a single person PM'ed me to talk about it in private. Strong people like to give their egos a workout too, including me sometimes. But I think ego and empathy are mutually exclusive a large portion of the time.
 
Greenhowse said:
Study just seems super lazy. It subverts itself (self-interest, not conservativism, and they never argued that the latter and former were equivalent, which is the least they could have done with their assumption) and has the usual friction to women that can be expected from evolutionary psychology. You can make your stereotypes and hit "most" of the time, but why bother.
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Evolutionary psychologists are the fucking worst. I mean yeah technically all psychologists (as well as most scientists in general) find information to confirm their bias. But evolutionary psychologists take that shit to a whole new level. It doesn't matter what the fuck something is its related to the evolutionary theory. Humans are always in the "wolf pack" mindset no matter what.

Timedog said:
I remember when I mentioned buying healthy, non-junk food with foodstamps in the fitness thread and a bunch of people got really mad that I was using foodstamps and told me to get a better job. Then I said I'd debate them on the value of food stamps to society in PM, as to not shit up the thread, and not a single person PM'ed me to talk about it in private. Strong people like to give their egos a workout too, including me sometimes.
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Do these people realize that somebody has to work these shitty jobs?
 
I happened to check Drudge today and saw this toward the bottom of the page...the succeeding headline was something like 'weaker men favor liberal ideas and wealth redistribution' or something to that effect. Shameless.
 
kirblar said:
They actually went over that part. :-P
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No link was found between upper-body strength and redistribution opinions among women. Petersen argues that this is likely due to the fact that, over the course of evolutionary history, women had less to gain, and also more to lose, from engaging in direct physical aggression.
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Boring. But yeah women learned to utilize other things. But evolutionary history? I'd call it more like being controlled.
 
Other idea:

What about other regions, like Asia and Africa?

zero shift said:
It doesn't matter what the fuck something is its related to the evolutionary theory. Humans are always in the "wolf pack" mindset no matter what.
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Yeah, it sounds awful to me, and those reasons you cited are a huge part why. It arguably also has a certain cultural bias...which admittedly is related to your "everything is about evolutionary theory" suggestion.
 
Greenhowse said:
Yeah, it sounds awful to me, and those reasons you cited are a huge part why. It arguably also has a certain cultural bias...which admittedly is related to your "everything is about evolutionary theory" suggestion.
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I remember reading the book "Magic Bullets". Its from the that company that Mystery guy (from the VH1 reality show) is from. It was so painful reading as quite literally every fucking thing, no matter how small, was claimed to be due to evolution. They guys even claimed that they were "evolutionary psychologists" and studied "female psychology".
 
Here's the actual study, you'll have to download it.

Of course, the study is ridiculously small and weirdly distributed.

Argentina, N=101; US, N=204; Denmark, N=418
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Also. Its been too long since I've been in stats. Can anyone decipher these to see if their results are actually true?

For males, there was a highly significant interaction effect in all three countries (Argentina: F1, 98 = 7.83; p = 0.003, r2=.082; US: F1,201=6.22, p =0.007, r2=.032; Denmark: F1,414=9.70, p = 0.001, r2=.124; one tailed p-values)
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Their "graph" at the end says nothing significant because it provides no definitions. Actually, the study itself states what conclusions they came to without really ever referring to what the figures are.

edit:

And the study itself comes to this conclusion:

Does upper body strength influence support for redistribution in men? Yes. As predicted, for men of high SES [ed. socio-economic status] the correlation between strength and support for redistribution is negative, whereas for men of low SES the correlation is positive. In other words, strong men who are high in SES oppose redistribution whereas strong men who are low in SES favor redistribution
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Lol I must be on a lot of ignore lists if what I said gets repeated for several posts after mine. It bugs me enough to post this but it's not so bad; I know I think very concisely.
 
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