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" ...many men are goats and can't help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks attractiveness."
-- Mark Twain
Many of the recent discussions about "men behaving badly" have been confounded by attempts to simultaneously understand the phenomenon and condemn it. But like oil and water, causality and morality don't mix well.
Often our first response to behavior we dislike is: I don't care why it happens. I just want it to be punished and to stop! Sometimes our moral outrage shuts down cool headed attempts to understand the causality of behavior. However, as pointed out by fellow evolutionary psychologist and PT blogger Michael Price in his recent post, if we wish to reduce behavior that we find morally objectionable, having an accurate understanding of why it occurs is an essential first step.
And sometimes we confuse immorality with psychological abnormality. We often label people as sick who act immorally (often they are not). Moral objections to homosexuality led to its classification as a psychological disorder only a few decades ago (it is not so classified now). As our cultural moral sentiments change over time, so too do some of our conceptions about what is, or is not, psychologically abnormal.
Another factor that bedevils our attempts to understand "men behaving badly" is our tendency to project our own motivations and beliefs on to others. Or, in the words of the anthropologist Donald Symons, we tend to "construct other minds is our own." When we are puzzled by someone's actions, we may often ask ourselves, Well, why would I do something like that? A thin person may have difficulty understanding the gustatory appetites of someone who is overweight, and may think that the naïve suggestion to "just eat less" is actually helpful. Heterosexuals have difficulty conceiving the sexual attractions of homosexuals, and vice versa. And, men and women have notorious difficulties understanding each others' sexual motivations and intentions.
Let me suggest that when it comes to the opposite sex, "constructing other minds as our own" can be a very bad idea. It can lead to mistaken conclusions about their motives and intentions. Why? Because the brains/minds of men and women can operate quite differently when it comes to sex. Most males can understand the motivations of men who succumb to sexual temptation, even if they do not do so themselves. Even faithful President Carter admitted: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust... I've committed adultery in my heart many times."
Women may have more difficulty understanding men's sexual motives (and, vice versa). This is especially true if they try to understand men by "constructing the mind of the opposite sex as their own." For example, some women have wondered aloud: Why would Tiger Woods want other women when he had a beautiful, young wife at home? Most men, however, find his motivations less confounding.
So, for now, let's leave aside both considerations of morality, and also curb our tendency to project our own perspectives on to the opposite sex.
First, let's focus on ultimate causality -- why evolution has predisposed men to "behave badly."
Our most basic desires and aversions are remnant adaptations of what worked in the ancestral past to increase the likelihood of reproduction. We are the psychological fossils of our ancestors. And, reproductively, what worked for males could be a ticket to reproductive oblivion for females, and vice versa.
Below are some (brutally honest) evolutionary reasons why men have sexually dimorphic psychological adaptations that can make resisting sexual temptation a bit of a challenge, even if they are in a satisfying relationship.
1. Because men have a faster rate of reproduction compared to women, they are generally more easily sexually aroused and are more indiscriminate about sexual partners.
Human males can reproduce very quickly and at very little cost.
In contrast, ancestral women bore a very heavy cost to reproduce – nine months of gestation, 3 to 4 years of lactation, and a decade or more of socialization. From a male perspective sex is fun, free, consumes calories, and can be a way to get to know each other a little better. On the other hand, for ancestral women the consequences of sex could be anything but free. By consenting to sex, an ancestral woman was consenting to the possibility of pregnancy by that particular man (who may or may not be able or willing to invest paternally), and she was consuming one of her precious opportunities to reproduce during a limited fertility time window. Wonder why women today are generally more sexually choosy and discriminating than men?
In contrast, men can literally walk away from a bad mating. They can literally be in another state tomorrow pursuing new reproductive opportunities. As a consequence, men generally tend to be far more sexually indiscriminate and eager than women. The setpoint for their reproductive libido is generally higher than it is for women.
Sometimes women complain that men are not willing to commit. Men are willing to commit... to as many fertile women as possible. It is not the commitment that is a problem for men, it is the commitment to limit his reproductive output to that of a woman. In the "best" of circumstances, men have a potentially much greater reproductive output (see my previous post on this topic). Men are polygynists by nature. Because this is illegal in our culture, some men change their reproductive strategy from simultaneous polygyny to serial monogamy (or to "monogamy" with affairs on the side).
Keep in mind that these are not conscious reproductive calculations being made by each gender. Instead, they are evolved psychological adaptations that operate at unconscious levels that generate motivation and desire. We don't choose to have the motives and desires that we have, nor do we know the ultimate reasons about why we have them. We just feel them.
2. Men are aroused by the prospect of sexual partner novelty in itself (the "Coolidge Effect").
The Coolidge Effect is the well documented phenomena of mammalian male sexual re-arousal when a novel sexual partner is introduced. For example, when a cow is placed in a pen with a bull, he will typically copulate with her, but he will soon stop. However, keep replacing the cow with a novel one, and the bull will continue to copulate with each new female, virtually until exhaustion. Why? Because each new female represents a new reproductive opportunity -- another chance to impregnate a female and thus increase his reproductive output.
This effect gets its name from this true story:
The President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm. When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, "Dozens of times each day." Mrs. Coolidge said, "Tell that to the President when he comes by." Upon being told, President asked, "Same hen every time?" The reply was, "Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time." President: "Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge."
