This was a great responce!

Generally, when you confront a bully, it's never the bully's fault. Somehow it gets turned around and becomes the problem of the confronter. For example, I pointed out that comparing someone to Rush Limbaugh was mean, and I made this point by analogizing it to comparing someone to Hitler. You responded that you would never compare him to Hitler. That does not seem good enough if the bar we are aspiring to reach was respectful conduct. If Rush Limbaugh was a likeable guy, it might be okay, but the guy is HORRIBLE. You need to take responsibility for keeping your discourse professional and respectful. The people who pointed out it was a personal attack were not crazy, or dodging the issue, or otherwise somehow mistaken about the valid point of asking for discourse on Psychology Today blogs to be professional, respectful, and uplifting. What is the point of studying about the human mind and how it works if in the process we are just making the human mind upset and angry and hurt?

Maybe the problem is that psychologists don't always have to interact with each other, so they do not have a code of ethics or any guidelines for what respectful conduct looks like? I don't know if that's true or not, but if we stepped outside the psychology field for a moment as a mental exercise, could you imagine an attorney comparing a judge to Rush Limbaugh? He would be held in contempt of court! Not to mention the fact that attorneys are held to code of Professional Responsibility that includes the duty to treat other attorney's with respect. If attorneys compared each other to Rush Limbaugh, they would be in violation of their rules of professional conduct and could face professional sanctions.

Do psychologists not have such oversight? One would hope that psychologists would be more mellow, and peaceful, like the kind who talk to people on the couch and say things like "tell me about your mother."

Anyways, comparing someone to Rush Limbaugh is a personal attack because Rush Limbaugh is a horrible dude, and you should fess up and take responsibility for your obligation to keep discourse civil. Don't be like a bully who always denies responsibility and continues on making the lives of others much less enjoyable. It does not matter if Kanazawa can take care of himself, because he should be able to live in a world where he doesn't have to take care of himself against those kinds of attacks, a world where professional colleagues are as respectful and courteous and kind to each other as an attorney would be to a judge (and that does not include comparisons to Rush Limbaugh, who is a horrible person).

Hey Ben,

A blog is not a formal dinner with the Queen. It's a place for relatively free-flowing presentation of unrefined ideas. If we took the time to carefully edit and chin-scratchingly reconsider everything we wrote here, we wouldn't bother. Then it would just be unpaid journalism. Such is the nature of blogging.

Having said that, I still don't accept that comparing someone to Rush Limbaugh (a hypocritical wind-bag with questionable motivations) is the moral equivalent of comparing someone to Hitler (a psychopath responsible for the deaths of millions). It's amusing that you make that connection and then accuse me of not keeping the discourse civil!

Maybe you should tell me about your mother...

Questioning the agenda of scientists with opposing notions of human nature happens all the time -- especially in sociobiology (evolutionary psychology). Kanazawa, Hatfield & Clark, David Buss, Donald Symons, Stephen Pinker and the rest of them have endured much worse, and have probably all been happy for the attention (which can only add to their book sales).

Relax. It's just egg-heads arguing. Nobody's invading Poland.

Thank you for writing this. If everyone had such an intelligent reply (one this good to every single one of Kanazawa's posts), I'd be a much happier, and less queasy person about the assumptions made in evolutionary psychology.

Julia and Metric,
Appreciate your support.

CPR

Great post. This research would be a good tie-in to the gay community and sex.

I am glad at least someone tries to use scientific principles on psychologytoday.com. It seemed to me that this website is just a bunch of popular-psychologists without a serious agenda who just want to earn money and satisfy their ego. As a psychologist who is working scientifically I think it the application of the scientific method cannot be too rigorous and personal agendas should be kept out of research as much as possible.

Thanks.

Kanazawa is getting too annoying to read. Thanks for undressing that college students research, too, it and its conclusions seemed sensible to me before, but now I feel stupid for not thinking about it more clearly.

Is your book out yet?

Sheesh, I wouldn't exactly call anyone citing Shere Hite (twice) someone who's much concerned about tightly towing the line of the scientific method. Only 4% of the women given her survey responded to it, so the self-reporting bias is so immense as to make it virtually meaningless if ones intent is to draw valid conclusions about the population at large.

Then there was a further reference to something fifty years ago about the "double standard" which is also of questionable relevance, seeing as how today women operate fully under the Barbie Mantra: Girls Can Do Anything! (Just try and stop one...) Because of the way consciousnesses have been raised over the last several decades, any double standards these days are largely mythical -- except for those men labor under; for example, the expectation on women's part that men treat them as equals while still requiring them to display chivalrous behavior (chivalry being benevolent sexism) such as requiring men to be the sex to ask for dates, plan them, pay for them, etc.

Yes, I know we've been subjected to years of feminist propaganda about how women need, want, and enjoy sex every bit as much as men do, but a typical interaction with any actual woman anyone's been able to locate and treat as a test subject goes something like this...

Him: I really like chocolate cake.
Her: I like chocolate cake every bit as much as any man.
Him: Would you like some chocolate cake?
Her: You slimy pervert! Just what sort of woman do you think I am?
Him: A woman who likes and wants chocolate cake just as much as I do?

At least it's a fun field in which to conduct research.

Then, then to launch a total slam-down discounting such as "evolutionary psychology is largely dismissed in the scientific community" is simply rank dishonesty and pretentiousness. I mean, unless you don't think MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press -- which all publish titles in the field -- constitute in any way "the scientific community". It's patently self-serving, in a condescending and bullying sort of way, to try and make it sound as if ev-psych is coming from some tinfoil-hat crowd at unaccredited "Institutes for Universal Enlightenment" which nobody's ever heard of, as if it was all just so many UFO sightings. Ugh!

I am curious to know what you think of young females 18-22 classified as "nymphomaniacs"? What purpose do they serve in evolution? What causes them to reach their sexual peak so early for a female? They seem to be a very small minority (around 1% in western countries), but are very active sexually in society and seem to have no inhibitions at all.

I came across this blog entirely by accident a few days ago and have been following along as I find it interesting. The Chocolate Cake Theory seems empirically valid but you suggest it might be a bit hasty and perhaps the refusal is simply a matter of "ways" and "contexts" among which you cite:

Timing (not tonight dear I have a headache?)
Accessories (tea....peanut butter? marijuana? a Porche?)
Taste (not you buddy)

In the case of the third item we might inquire as to the nature of the elements that constitute personal taste but my question actually is :

What might these three items be examples of if not....ummm....female choice (?)

Hi Ron,

You ask: “In the human species, do the complexities inherent in being the more heavily-investing parent have an adverse effect on the female libido?”

I'm afraid I'll have to resort to the same line of reasoning again by answering that it depends. The social context is key here. Does the woman in question live in a society that will assist her in bringing her children up in security and health -- share her investment, in other words? Or does she live in a society where an unattached mother is shunned, shamed, and left without access to the necessities of life?

Our tradition has taken the latter approach, by and large, so it's not surprising that many women think twice before putting themselves in such a vulnerable position. If you look at the issue from a cross-cultural perspective, you find a strong correlation between social support and less constrained female libido (more casual sex).

In European societies, for example, the most frequent unmarried sex and parenthood is found in precisely those countries with the most generous government support to unwed mothers and their children (Scandinavian countries). If you take it to a more fine-grained level, as we do in our book, you'll find even stronger (and more entertaining) examples elsewhere. Social context is key.

Then, you'd want to think about the role, if any, of sperm competition in human beings. We argue that the evidence in favor of sperm competition being important in human evolution is very strong, and I believe we come at the question from a new angle, with evidence that hasn't been properly considered before -- but we're gonna save that for the book. If you believe sperm competition could have played a role in human evolution, then you can predict that high female libido would often be advantageous to women and their children.

Lastly, your point about mating arrangements being species-specific and far from conclusive on its own is well-taken but, when it complements other types of convergent evidence (anatomic, ethnographic, psycho-sexual, and so on), comparisons of closely-related species can be quite revealing.

As one example of many, is it coincidental that the only three species of primate are sexual more or less throughout the menstrual cycle are us, chimps, and bonobos -- species which are also more closely related than the Indian elephant and the African elephant?

Doubtful. I imagine you'd agree that inter-species triangulation can be useful if it's not the only line of reasoning one employs.

CPR

Ron and anyone else who might be interested: Here's a quote from anthropologist Marvin Harris (1980), who makes this point about how female libido responds to social conditioning:

"The idea that males naturally desire a plurality of sexual experiences while women are satisfied by one mate at a time is entirely a product of the political-economic domination males have exerted over women as part of the culturally created, warfare-related male supremacy complex. Sexually adventurous women are severely punished in male-dominated cultures. Wherever women have enjoyed independent wealth and power, however, they have sought to fulfill themselves sexually with multiple mates with no less vigor than males in comparable situations…. People can be socialized into and out of promiscuity, polygyny, polyandry, and monogamy with conspicuous ease, once the appropriate infrastructural conditions are present." (p. 129)