David Brooks, Evolutionary Psychology, and Sexist Nonsense

Possibly a tautology, eh?

David Brooks is, I believe, the universally acknowledged master of pseudo-science, especially where it can be used to confirm his existing prejudices, more often than not those involving gender roles.  So it was no surprise to me to read Mr. McBobo's* recent dialogue with Gail Collins in which they discuss whether more men might become "househusbands" as a result of the higher rates of male unemployment occurring during this recession.  Brooks engages in gender essentialism throughout, albeit in the guise of "evolutionary psychology."  Thus, when Collins discusses the idea of older women having relationships with younger men, initiated by the younger men, Brooks recoils:

This cuts against all sorts of genetic imperatives, by the way. According to evolutionary psychologists, in all human societies, males generally mate with younger women and women generally look for higher status men. A study of online dating found that a guy who is 5 feet 6 inches tall can attract as much interest as a 6-foot-tall man — if he makes at least $125,000 more a year. Don’t ask me why I know that.

I am guessing that Brooks takes great comfort in the fact that he makes more than $125,000 a year.

But he saves the best when dealing with the notion proposed by Collins that more men might consider staying at home with children given the greater levels of education and earning potential possessed by many women:

In theory, I agree with you. Men should be staying home more. But I do think for many working-class men, we will find ourselves running into some pretty stiff headwinds. I come back to evolutionary psychology, which suggests that women are just more nurturing. Let me cite an experiment I suspect will linger in your memory. Scientists took a bunch of research subjects and taped pads to their underarms and asked them to watch a funny or scary movie. Then they got another group of subjects to sniff the pads and predict whether the pads were from the scary movie group or the funny movie group. Both men and women could give the right answer most of the time, but women were much, much more accurate. The empathy thing. 

Notice that it is "working class men" who will have problems with staying at home, not enlightened educated souls like Mr. Brooks.  Except, of course, if you have ever read the Brooks' oeuvre (and I say that with all of the high-larious pretension I can muster), you realize that he is the one with an enormous problem with women who dare to assert their autonomy professionally, sexually, and socially, but understands at some level that it would be declasse to be too obvious about it.  Evolutionary psychology is a wonderful intellectual out for Brooks -- he is just reporting what science tells him -- and it just so happens that science confirms everyone of Brooks's social prejudices on the subject.  

I have been reading "Rebirth of a Nation" a compelling history of the United States from 1877 to 1920 by Jackson Lears.  This is the age of "Social Darwinism," the pseudo-science that justified segregation, wars of empire, the denial of suffrage to women and blacks, and the brutal exploitation of working people.  It is astonishing the degree to which the ideology of Social Darwinism and its enshrinement of the biological superiority of the white, northern European male and his American descendants is the defining narrative of the age.  In its name, wars of conquest are fought, blacks lynched, strikers shot, anarchists hanged, and pogroms are carried out against Chinese laborers.  And time and time again, these actions and outcomes are justified as manifestations of the scientific process of "survival of the fittest." 

Now, evolutionary psychology in the trained hands of our Mr. Brooks is not nearly as sinister as this, but it is about as scientifically sound.  Brooks likes to suggest biological imperatives for practices that are simply matters of longstanding social practice and cultural conditioning.  

I have always hated gender essentialism (and its subtler cousin "different voice feminism").  In a country of 300 million people, I am always amazed when someone suggests that men are like this and women like that in these kind of sweeping, across-the-board statements like: women are empathetic, consensus building leaders who tread softy and listen well -- men are aggressive, hierarchical actors who like to lead alone.  Stuff like that drives me nuts because it just doesn't conform to the world that I've witnessed.  In the law, I've worked with men who were sometimes maddeningly consensus-oriented, who had very sensitive political antennae, and who were only aggressive if you could throw passive into the same sentence.  Alternatively I have known women who were decisive, abrasive, and whose idea of consensus was securing their own vote.  In short, they are individuals with their own personalities, strengths, and foibles -- neither simply men nor women, but human.  

As people of the left, we very often focus on our defeats and failures, on the many imperfections that remain and likely will always remain in some form or fashion.  But we should from time to time, take stock of our victories, and the progress that we have made in terms of promoting a culture of equality across racial, sexual, and sexual preference lines.  Again, I hate to assert anecdote in lieu of data, but when I look around at my male friends who have recently become parents, I see tremendous strides in burden sharing and in an innate sense of equivalent responsibility for child rearing -- significantly more so than I saw nearly 17 years ago when I first became a parent and was one of the few men in my circle who really assumed an equal burden in terms of the housework and the doctors visits and the sick days and all of the other delights of new parenthood.  I have one friend who is a teacher who takes the summers off and hangs with the kids because his wife is a nurse in a unionized big city hospital and can earn far more than he ever could in a summer job.  I have another who took sole care of his infant child while his wife was overseas monitoring a recent election (and then became stranded by our terrible snow storm), and still another who stays home when the nanny can't make it because he is an established partner in a law firm and his wife is a relatively new associate. 

I admit that this is not a representative sampling of people culled from a University of Chicago study.  But it strikes me as consistent with broader trends ongoing among new parent couples. 

Ultimately, the men in question have been inculcated in a culture of equality in which they have learned to start from the presumption that they bear equal responsibility for their offspring.  These kinds of things are not genetically programmed into us -- they are learned behaviors fostered (or not) by the culture that surrounds us. 

David Brooks, for reasons I can't really understand, is incredibly threatened by women who are autonomous sexually, professionally, and financially.  He would like to turn back the clock and encourage women to return to a role of serving men and their children, to eschew having an active sex life while young and single, to marry and bear children young, and to make career advancement a minor, later-life goal.  He tries to invoke science to back up his archaic world view, but one should not be fooled by Mr. Reasonable Conservative, the human face of patriarchy.   

 *And no, I never will tire of that bit of cartoon brilliance by Tom Tomorrow.  

Comments

[Corvus9]

William Gibson wrote Neuromancer while being a stay-at-home dad. Stay-at-home dad=Neuromancer. Yay, stay-at-home dads!

[ikl]

I'm sorry to be obnoxious about this, but you really shouldn't criticize Brooks' class generalizations about "working class men" and then present a bunch of anecdotal evidence about middle (and mostly upper-middle) people. And note that in several of these cases, the ability of them men in question to stay at home a fair amount while still holding down the sort of job they want seems related to their middle class occupations.

It's pretty clear that Brooks is BSing here (so what else is new). But much of what you wrote about it seems kind of non-responsive or similarly impressionistic speculation.

[oddjob]

I still can't believe this ridiculous twit is a year and a half younger than me!

Oh, and as to his training in biology (including evolutionary psychology, a common graveyard for indulging in "biology" to justify your biases)?

He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983 with a degree in history.

[Corvus9]

OK, slightly more seriously, I will say that I do have some sympathy for the larger framework of evolutionary psychology, or sociobiology, or whatever, in part because I really like Robert Wright and E.O. Wilson, and partly just because, pessimistically, I always think it is wise for liberals to assume we might actually be, somewhat, fucked.

It seems like there is a lot of resistance to evolutionary psychology among liberals writers, and I think that is not necessarily help. The way I see it, if there actually are certain structures in the mind that determine behavior, either in general, or weighted more strongly along certain demarcations within the population that we wish for whatever reason to make more and more invisible, it does not necessarily benefit our long-term goals to ignore them or argue for their non-existence. First, there is just the flummoxing of the principle of seeking the truth in all things, which I have reason to give up (leave that shit to the Straussians). Second, if such structure DO exist, trying to paper them over is probably gonna lead to unforeseen errors in the reordering of society, which will lead either to the greater societal unhappiness or will discredit the "liberal" project in the long run, delaying the coming socialist utopia (one must always dream).

This is not so say that Brooks is not an asshole, and this he isn't just resorting to scientific platitudes and bullshit studies carried out by reactionaries. Such work under the umbrella of evolutionary psychology bears that same resemblance to evolutionary psychology as Social Darwinism does to the Theory of Natural Selection. It's pseudo-science dressed up science. But it seems silly to me to argue that there are no instinctual or hormonally-induced behavioral mechanisms encoded into our genomes, that we are functionally blank slates. It seems even sillier to me to argue such when there are clearly a large variety of psychological abnormalities (like depression or sociopathy or schizophrenia) that seem to have at least some basis in genetics (although obviously environment plays some factor in their expression), to argue for the at least partial encoding of behavior. And it doesn't seem unreasonable to me, considering the static genetic difference between men and women, or the various bottlenecks that have produced the various races or ethnicities (although these themselves have been so mixed up and cross-pollinated and of recent invention that attempting to derive any meaningful difference of temperament or ability is quite laughable, and The Bell Curve is obviously nothing more than a racist justification for racial stratification) that there might be some level of divergence of the means or averages among such groups, although given the vast wealth of genetic forces and diversity within each population that would act as countermeasures to any such divergences, The degree of divergence would be very small indeed, and of course, only measurable in the aggregate. The number of counter-examples to any attempted claim of difference would be almost more than the cases that confirmed it.

Which is to say I think there is a place for the study of such things, and liberals shouldn't be fearful of it, as long as any claims are couched in the observation that these "differences" among whatever populations exist only in the aggregate, and that no one should go trying to structure society around them, or using them as an excuse for defeatism in the face of progress.

[ikl]

Oh, and what Corvus said.

[oddjob]

Such work under the umbrella of evolutionary psychology bears that same resemblance to evolutionary psychology as Social Darwinism does to the Theory of Natural Selection. It's pseudo-science dressed up science.

Precisely.

I wouldn't ever automatically discount E. O. Wilson.

[Corvus9]

"First, there is just the flummoxing of the principle of seeking the truth in all things, which I have reason to give up (leave that shit to the Straussians)."

Uh, that should be, "which I have no reason to give up. I really do like Truth, I do!

Beauty isn't too shabby either.

[Corvus9]

...And I forgot to include my closing quotation mark after "up." Mother...

[Toast]

I admit that this is not a representative sampling of people culled from a University of Chicago study.

This statement, combined with what seems to be an out-of-hand rejection of ev-psych, seems to confirm a weirdly spiteful "you elitists and y'er book learnin'" trend in your writing lately, Charles. What gives?

[big bad wolf]

that particular line. toast, was just SC tweaking matt, cause, well, that's a fun thing to do.

i don't read this post as a rejection of ev-pysch per se, but rather as a rejection of pop ev-pysch and particularly politicized pop ev-pysch. the post is sort of a holmesian caution against slotting folks legally, morally, or economicially on the basis of a biological theory transplanted to a social/political context, rahter than treating them as individuals with particular values and attributes and dignity.

[Sir Charles]

Sorry kids -- was down with a nasty computer virus.

Let's see:

ikl,

You are correct that my examples are not of working class men. I probably should have spelled that out further, but the post is already too long. I have to go back to drunk blogging, where I could lay things out with one pithy paragraph and where the word "fuck" liberally sprinkled throughout stood in for analysis.

However, the class analysis doesn't matter when you look at the substance of what Brooks is really saying. He is arguing that this is a biological imperative -- a stance that explicitly falls outside of class, culture and other social parameters. Men just are a certain way -- and that should transcend sociological position.

Corvus,

I am not at all fearful about the science of evolutionary psychology -- I am simply skeptical about the science behind much of it. And even though he is a very smart guy and an entertaining and thoughtful writer, I am somewhat skeptical of E.O. Wilson as well.

I really do subscribe to the notion of pursuing truth where it leads -- it's just that I think some of the truths that evolutionary psychology purports to assert --especially in the hands of a wanker like Brooks -- are difficult to prove empirically and are often laden with ideological baggage of a profound sort.

Toast,

See above. The U Chicago thing was a joke from the previous Yglesias fest.

I am not anti-intellectual in the least, as I think you know. I am, however, opposed to crappy theory posing as a science.

Again, I suggest that people look at the history of things purporting to be "scientific" from Social Darwinism to Marxism to Freudian Psychology -- there is a venerable tradition of taking elaborate systems of political and social thought and trying to append the label of science to them.

One of the things that I liked at Brandeis was that I majored in "Politics" rather than "Political Science." There is no such thing as political science, notwithstanding the horrifying quantitative theories that have emerged as all of the rage since my departure from academia.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

I am always stunned that Brooks is a year younger than me. He seems like someone who was always old.

Yes, and his background in biology is about as good as mine.

[kathy a.]

i was sick of this kind of BS reasoning when i started college in 1975. that it still exists and is trumpeted about in public 35 years later is a profoundly disappointing.

my biology made it possible for me to bear children, something my husband is physically unable to do. that's it. i cannot think of tasks (in work, home, or public life) that women are categorically unable to perform -- including physically demanding jobs. i cannot think of tasks aside from childbearing that men are categorically unable to perform.

brooks appears to confuse social gender norms with biological imperative, in the service of preserving his notions of masculinity and femininity. and he thinks he is couching it in flattering terms -- women are more nurturing! men can't compete! -- but that is not-very-nuanced code for his view that men own the realms of reason, brawn, and bringing home the bacon. [and hey, guys -- if you are short in one area, perhaps brawn, you can compensate by earning a bundle! women lurve that!]

the reference to some test with underarm pads is hilarious. ooh, science! it does not in the least support his thesis about biological imperatives vis a vis socialization. but so what if it did. out there in the working world, the ability to work well with others is generally a benefit -- i suspect that is true pretty much across the range of employments. empathy is important for doctors and lawyers, for anyone in service industries, and i suspect also for skilled and unskilled trades -- who wants to be on a crew with joe/jo asshole, or hire him/her to do work around the house?

what a crank.

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

Exactly.

Before I go on a road trip I always make sure that my son's athletic uniforms or favorite soccer shirts are clean and available for him. Evidently, this is indicative of some kind of hermaphroditic tendency on my part.

I really do think there is an often insidious quality to this kind of pseudo-science, see, e.g., "The Bell Curve."

[Joe]

Corvus, I think you are underestimating the social versatility that biology gives most of us. We are able to adapt to our social environment using the biological toolbox which most of us are born with (although, different people are admittedly affected differently by biological predilections-- somebody with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia is heavily limited).

To illustrate my point, let's look at house cats. House cats originally had no social interactions with one another after they reached adulthood (other than mating). However, cats, after being domesticated, started using behaviors traditionally used between mother cats and kittens to interact with humans and one another. Purring was originally a way to signal that a kitten wanted to nurse. Cats modified and modify biologically based behaviors to take advantage of a new environment (domestication and the food sources that come with it).

Human beings are much more complicated in their psychological make up than cats. Just as cats can modify biologically based behaviors to fit different social circumstances, so humans can do so more easily and with greater alacrity. Human beings were able to modify biologically based behaviors to transition from hunter gatherer to agricultural village to industrialized city-- in order to take advantage of those environments. All of those environmental changes were much greater than modifying gender roles which really have only been around in their current form for a couple of hundred years (since industrialization).

Robert Wright's book on the Evolution of God is a great example of this-- as to how a biological need for some type of religion (Wright believes humans are "hard wired" to believe in a spiritual world)is modified by humans to fit social circumstances.

The bottom line is that human behaviors like gender roles are much more malleable than conservatives would like to admit- even if to some extent such behaviors are based in biology (which I'm not sure of).

[Corvus9]

Joe, at no point was I trying to play down the social versatility of the human mind. Obviously, the human capacity for critical and logical thinking (which are, ultimately biologically determined, btw) make the mind incredibly adaptable to a large variety of situations, moreso than other animals. But that doesn't mean that there isn't variation, from individual to individual, in terms of the biological constraints or influences upon behavior, whether we are talking about things like serotonin levels or hormone levels. These things vary from person to person, and so while it is accurate to say that "humans are very socially adaptable" that doesn't mean that certain individuals will all cope equally well, or respond in the same way, to certain stimuli. In it's way, such claims are just as reductive as saying that our behavior is the absolute result of our genes. Yes, as I said before, environment obviously plays a role in our personality, but I think it is fair to say that genes do to. And this is, I think, a pretty noncontroversial outlook among evolutionary scientists.

Oh, and everyone remember, watch Frontline tonight on PBS. Some friends of mine will be on it.

[Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle]

Speaking of Bobo, I think I just heard that he'll be on TCR tonight.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

None of us are denying that genes influence our behavior. What Joe and I are both voicing intense skepticism about is the notion that evolution explains deeply social, culturally driven, learned behaviors. As Joe put it so well, humans have adapted to all manner of deeply "unnatural" living situations -- whether it be the dictates of time, industrialization, urbanization, and the nearly limitless intrusions of technology. To explain how we live largely in terms of evolutionary psychology just doesn't ring true with me -- it seems to me that much of what passes for science in this realm is ideology of the sort exhibited by Bobo.

[Corvus9]

What Joe and I are both voicing intense skepticism about is the notion that evolution explains deeply social, culturally driven, learned behaviors.

I think, by definition, evolution cannot explain deeply social, culturally driven, learned beavhiors. As such things are, by defintion, outside the scope of genetics. The question is, to what degree is our behavior determined by culture and learning, and to what degree by genetics. The answer in either case is, I think, less than one hundred percent, but more than zero.

I mean, do you disagree that some aspect of behavior is genetically determined?

[Corvus9]

Also, Frontline is on now. Turn on PBS now!

[kathy a.]

"evolution" is a pretty loose term for aspects of human functioning with a genetic component, isn't it? we know that things ranging from predisposition to heart disease to predisposition to major mental illnesses [and on the flip side, perhaps protective factors] tend to run in families. and yes, i believe factors like that influence behavior to some extent, and so does the environment, usually probably to a larger extent. ymmv.

what i call BS, though, is some idiot saying women belong in the kitchen and nursery, because they have the nurturing chromosome [science!!!], and the dudely studly men are fortunately spared so that they can go out and earn lots of money, just as the cave men did from teh beginning of time.

[kathy a.]

i think this is the link to what corvus mentioned on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/view/

[oddjob]

By the way, this sort of argument is common among evolutionary biologists, too, and not just with those who study humans.

It also happens with those who study insect behavior. Accurately assessing the contribution of evolution to behavior can be a devilishly difficult thing to sort out. With insects very often what happens is the researcher(s) have a limited amount of good observational data, plus possibly some good physiological data. Then, upon reflection upon it all different people come to different hypotheses to explain the data, and not only are those hypotheses different - they're mutually exclusive!

Yet the data are adequately addressed by both conclusions, despite the fact that they cannot possibly both be true.

There's a whole raft of research devoted to the effects of the genes of Drosophila melanogaster upon its behavior, but I know little about that except that it exists. That insect is pretty much in a class by itself when it comes to topics like this because there is so much genetic research done with that one insect it's almost as if it's not really an honest to god "bug", but rather a bag of genes walking on six legs.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

Of course I believe that genetics have an impact on behavior. Anyone who has been a parent quickly realizes that one's offspring are not little lumps of clay to be molded but rather independent, willful monsters -- in many ways quasi-fully formed humans upon emerging from the womb.

What I am skeptical of is attempts to construct elaborate evolutionary rationales for activites that are literally but a blink in the eye of human history.

Just one "for instance" of an evolutionary psychology claim that drives me nuts is the notion that men want to have sex to essentially spread their seed as much as possible. I tend to think this mistakes cause and effect. Men (and women too) want to have sex because it feels good, not for the most part to procreate. Indeed, one need merely think of the many non-procreative forms of sex in which people indulge to be skeptical about the evolutionary psychology rationale.

I like kathy's take on this too. Cave women really dug the cave men who made $125,000 or more.

[oddjob]

So how did it come to feel good?

(Not offered because I disagree, but only to show again how difficult it can be sort out cause from effect in these matters. The problems of being yourself inside the box you wish to study, and which is best studied from a distance outside...........)

[Sir Charles]

Oh I think it feeling good has a biological purpose.

But I think when people became quasi-masters of their own fertility the context of secuality changed radically -- and not in some evolutionary sense, but in a very real social sense. Ditto living in a society with elaborate social rules, status objects, taboos, etc. There are entire elaborate sexual cultures utterly divorced from procreation -- because I'm pretty sure my subscripton to "PVC Lover Magazine" has nothing to do with reproducing. I don't think evolutionary psychology could begin to explain the full variety of human desire that one can observe on the internets -- preferably with a really good anti-spyware program.

[Sir Charles]

That would be "sexuality" not secuality.

[Corvus9]

Kathy is indeed right that that is the program to which I am referring and everyone should go watch it.

[Joe]

Corvus, I guess the point I was trying to make is that gender roles (as opposed to gender) are entirely socially driven. I think people have a conception of their "gender" which is apart from social mores. But the social roles that come along with being a "gender" are entirely constructed to react to environmental factors. Most men and women can adapt and accentuate their emotions and intuitions (which arise biologically) to adapt to a role which society and/or the environment rewards.

[Corvus9]

See, I was never really talking about gender roles, so I have no idea why you brought it up. Gender roles relates to the concept of possible differences in the mean of behavior between the sexes, as the existence or non-existence of such would have some effect on how they play out, but they are most definitely not the same thing.

For the record, I think environment, meaning culture, economics, and, of course, climate, has the greatest effect on gender roles. That's why gender roles change all the time, and differ from region to region. You assertion that gender roles have been the same since the industrial revolution seemed acutely ridiculous to me. Seriously, genders change all the time. They've changed since I went to high school! And all the similarities among gender roles roles across cultures can most likely be attributed to sexual dimorphism, the logistics of organizing a hunter-gatherer society, perhaps the schematic nature of human thought, and the interplay of those forces over time. Differing behavioral mechanisms probably account for very, very little of our gender demarcations; most of the influences are either biologically universal (which is, I think, an incredibly fertile source for evo-psych to study; E.O. Wilson's assertions about how morality is determined by genes are a much better use of evo-psych than attempts to explain why women are more emotional than men, or whatever bullshit) or environmental.

[kathy a.]

i have not read wilson, so take this with a grain.

but i also am extremely wary of efforts like exploring "morality" as a product of genes. morals are human social constructs.

one huge danger is consigning people to categories based on genetics. there is all kinds of crap floating around about people "born bad" -- it a cousin of purely racist beliefs. it is far easier to think someone was born with a "dangerousness" gene than to accept that everyone who should have protected a child at risk failed to do so.

[Amy]

So is there any actual evidence-based evolutionary psychology, especially about gender? I mean, has anyone ever demonstrated empirically that psychological differences between men and women are genetically based, or is it all based on speculation? Oddjob's comments seem to speak to this, but i would really like to know whether anybody knows of any scientifically plausible evidence on this point (about humans), since every time it comes up, the arguments always seem to be theoretical rather than empirical.

I have not read Wilson, but does he offer compelling evidence of genetically based morality (slightly different, but related) or gender psychology?

PS: Sir Charles, it's not just David Brooks. I know lots of privileged, self-identified "liberal" men who are absolutely terrified of the thought that gender roles are not biologically determined.

[Corvus9]

it is far easier to think someone was born with a "dangerousness" gene than to accept that everyone who should have protected a child at risk failed to do so.

This is the exact kind of abrogation of truth that I was talking about earlier.

I remember reading an article a while back, I think in the NYT Magazine, about psychologists studying the psychological disorder known as either sociopathy or psychopathy. The psychologists in the article, who were often studying prison inmates, as thats the only place to find such case studies, all used the term psychopath, not sociopath. Sociopath actually had fallen out of favor, though it used to be popular. The reason is, sociopath connotes some kind of disease that is caused by society, a kind of dysfunction due to a history of mistreatment, while psychopathy connotes that there is something pathological about a person's soul, that, a person really is "born bad" (and yes, however you want to define morality, I think it is safe to say that people with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies are "bad people"). So, why did the psychologists revert to the earlier, less politically correct term? Because their field's research was pointing to there being actual inborn tendencies behind such behavior. That, though obviously environment was playing a role in how this tendency was expressed, there was, ultimately, non-environmental, and therefore genetic, component to such behavior.

And if this is the case, then it is completely unhelpful to refuse to think that it is not. For one, you are not going to help a "child at risk" if you don't understand what exactly they are at risk from.

And I find the accusation that such thinking about such issues to be "a cousin to purely racist beliefs" to be risible and insulting. To get slightly personal for a moment, I suffer from clinical depression, and anxiety attacks. I know what it is to have a brain that seems to be going one way, and doing one thing, and not understanding why you are thinking or feeling a certain way. The idea that these are just decisions I am making, or just the product of some childhood neglect (my parents were very kind and loving and giving) is self-evidently ridiculous to me. It's brain chemistry, pure and simple. Some brains get a particular complements or genes that many other brains get and it creates a setting for a certain toxic possibilities. And depression, as such a phenomena, is minor compared to things like schizophrenia and psychopathy. There are things you can do to treat such things, of course, and probably behavioral things that can be done to combat them, but they are far different than just making sure they have a bright, happy, loving childhood.

I think one reason people are hesitant to embrace such an idea is because there is a certain horror to admitting that we are not totally in control of our actions, that our brains are almost not ourselves, that they may make usact in ways we wouldn't otherwise. It undermines the concept of the black slate, or even our concept of free will, or, most importantly, I think, our entire concept of justice. After all, how do you get angry at a person for doing bad things, if their brain is hardwired that they have no concept of bad, and no choice in the matter? It's like getting angry at a plane for crashing, or blaming tectonic plates for an earthquake. And if you can't really hold people responsible for their actions, how do you justify punishment? And if you can't justify punishment, how do you maintain order. Easier to just insist everyone makes up their own minds, that it's culture's fault when people make such decisions (because culture arises in a vacuum, apparently), so really, all you people talking about inborn tendencies are just like racists. Yeah, that's it.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

Two things -- no one is attacking you or in the end disagreeeing all that much about a couple of basic points. One, I think we all agree that there are significant aspects of personality that are innate -- that is to say, im many instances people are just "born that way." See my point above re: parenting.

Two, what we are all voicing skepticism about -- and you seem to concur -- is the notion of broad based and rigid gender differences that are part of our evolutionary psychology.

As Amy points out, there is just not really any empirical evidence to suggest that women are born with the dish washing gene -- much though I would appreciate it.

I think the crucial point is the difference between individual traits, which are often inherited and innate versus what I'll describe as "class" traits, i.e. women are this way, blacks are that way, etc. and they just "are" that way. The latter category of claims I find to be dubious and dehumanizing.

[big bad wolf]

corvus, i think that article was in the new yorker. this may be it: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_seabrook

[big bad wolf]

let's see if i can get the whole http thingie (pardon my lnaguage, that's the manly, technical name) copied:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_seabrook

[kathy a.]

corvus -- apologies, because i think we are actually on the same page, more or less, and i certainly meant no insults.

i absolutely believe, and believe there is science to prove, that some of us are at risk for depression and anxiety -- that these are brain-based problems, not someone's fault. those disorders do NOT implicate a person's morality. they are not generally "caused" by bad parenting or poor schools, etc., although those environmental situations can certainly make the problems worse.

[on the flip side, actually, environmental factors such as major trauma or neglect can lead to really serious lifelong problems -- think PTSD. some of us are more vulnerable, and some more protected by what we were born with, and other protective factors, such as having people who care about us.]

sociopathy and psychopathy are in the "born bad" category in popular culture. the diagnosis in the DSM is "anti-social personality disorder," and in my opinion, this is totally a junk science diagnosis -- it is based totally on a checklist of behaviors, with no thought at all to causes. a person who is mentally retarded and hideously abused can easily fall into that diagnosis. a person who is severely neglected in youth and then suffers combat PTSD, same thing. this is not a diagnostic category aiming to find out the causes and aid with treatment -- it is invented to brand people in trouble as deserving to stay in prison, no matter the circumstances of that individual. it is no accident that prison inmates are the subjects; that is practically the definition of "anti-social personality disorder." i have seen case after case where prosecutors pulled out the DSM and asked jurors to diagnose the defendant -- no experts necessary! who needs to hear all those unhappy details of what went wrong! this is the worst kind of pseudo-science, with enormous implications not just for the individuals, but also the criminal justice system, social services and education, and i think society as a whole.

[big bad wolf]

How can they do that with the DSM, kathy a.? that's just absurd and unfair?

i suppose the ultimate prosecutorial move would be the DSM in the left hand and the Bible in the right, both books used to call for damnation (maybe slamming them together; god and caesar converging in what they demand).

[Corvus9]

bbw,

That is indeed the article I was referencing. Thanks!

[kathy a.]

bbw, that's pretty much the ticket, when they can get away with it. which is more often than one would think, even in these enlightened times. any time there is an expert called re mental health issues, the good old DSM is fair game. witnesses swear to tell the truth, so the bible is in play, either literally or figuratively.

i'd like to say that the bible has gone out of vogue in criminal prosecutions, but that "eye for an eye" stuff may be all that some remember, even without a specific citation. the secular coat it wears is along the lines of "the defendant gets due process, but the victim here didn't." cue to the queen of hearts in alice in wonderland: off with their heads! sentence first, and then the trial!

[Sir Charles]

bbw and kathy,

I had never been in a courtroom with a Bible in it until I tried a case in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria -- which is not exactly a backwater. They actually swore witnesses in on the Bible. (Probably not a shock to either of you, but I was blown away by the impropriety of it.)

And a couple of the witnesses on the other side were Muslim. Amazing. I asked opposing counsel if he wanted to join me in objecting to this and he said no way.

Corvus,

You know we love you, right?

[kathy a.]

corvus, what SC said. xoxox

i'm sorry about the tangent re psychopathy, but this really is junk. still not done with the article corvis mentioned and bbw linked, but i'm in code orange on the brain 'splosion scale. do you think your personal self could be summed up in a 20-point checklist [such as the PCL], or a brain scan with about zip in the comparison group? what really burns my butt is assuming some simple test can tell the story, and neither hare nor his underling is doing investigation of the family history or personal history of these subjects -- they do not know if there are major mental illnesses in the family tree, do not care about any other influences on behavior. if your personal doctor is this sloppy, fire him/her.

[Corvus9]

You know, I have to say in all honesty that the apologies and attempts at reconciliation are just not accepted. i think there is daylight between, and kathy, I think you did accuse me of having views that are a close cousin to racism, and you can't just state that our views are actually quite close or whatever and paper over that. So no, claims of togetherness are not appreciated. This discussion has, if nothing else, clarified for me that there are fundamental differences in the way that certain liberals view and approach science, and that it is almost impossible to hold a legitimate discussion on these issues.

[kathy a.]

corvus, i was not accusing you of racism or anything close, and regret very much this rift. the thoughtfulness of your comments is something i appreciate very much.

i am grateful that you spoke of depression and anxiety as brain-driven states, which is well demonstrated -- i don't think we are in any disagreement there at all. there is depression through my family and my husband's, and i have anxiety problems myself.

i went on a tangent about psychopathy. and where i'm coming from is this: psychopathy is used only to punish. it is not a useful label for what is not working right in a person's life, especially when the underlying mix of causes is not being explored at all.

usually i do not write quite so much about things that come up in my work. sorry to say that a prosecutor's cry of psychopathy is liable to trump any real information about why an individual might lose it at a particularly hard time. that label is used to trump everything from mental retardation to paranoid schizophrenia, and the entire range of life experiences and immediate stressors as well. this is why i hate that label. it is also why i think we are in general agreement.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

I'm sorry too guy -- none of us meant to suggest that your point of view was illegitimate.

[Corvus9]

I said I was moody.

Kathy, I was in no way referring to the type of rhetoric and justifications that ethically challenged prosecutors use to get nice little old racist white ladies to throw young black men in prison forever. What justifications such people use I am uninterested in, because how their rhetoric plays out in ultimately unrelated from the issue at hand, which, as I see it, is this:

In situations where a person is incapable of feeling empathy for other individuals, cannot grasp conceptually the personhood of others, there is a genetic component that contributes to such an orientation, and most likely, one that is overwhelmingly the cause of such a state.

I don't really see how such a statement is inappropriate or dangerous.

[Sir Charles]

I believe Jim Bunning could legitimately be described as a sociopath. Possibly Mark Sanford as well.

[Corvus9]

No, Sanford is just an asshole. After all he loves his mistress.

Bunning, yeah, he is fine sociopath material.

Ayn Rand, however, was about as pure a sociopath as you could ask for. Though I wouldn't.

Other sociopaths: Mengele. Cheney. Stalin.

[Sir Charles]

Wasn't that a famous double play combination for the Yankees -- Mengele to Cheney to Stalin -- "another twin killing!"

And yes, Rand, was as deeply fucked as a human being can be.

[Corvus9]

And funnily enough, I doubt that Hitler was a sociopath. After all, he probably loved Eva, and from what I hear he really did dislike the suffering of animals. That's pretty far from the archetype of torturing animals. i think he was more just consumed by rage, bitterness and hatred, which is very different from the somewhat alien state of psychopathy. Just goes to show that evil comes in a variety of forms.

[Sir Charles]

Evidently Eva's father was a serious Catholic and did not approve of her shacking up with der furher. He wrote Hitler a letter expressing his feelings, which Eva is said to have intercepted before Hitler could read it.

Too bad -- I think there was a possible romantic comedy plot there. Of course, with the unusual ending of the gruff but beloved paterfamilias being hanged from piano wire.

[big bad wolf]

i turn, as i often do, to the notable philosopher bruce springsteen and the words he gave to charlie starkweather: " you want to know why i did what i did/well, mister there's just a meanness in this world"

whose meanness and how all those meannesses interacted can be hard to sort out. that, i took kathy a to counsel, requires that we e cautious in our sense of knowledge and in the practical real-world applications of our own (societally exercised) power. i saw nothing more than caution in that caution.

me, i get softer-headed every year and so would even offer up extentuation for bunning. his actions are terrible, but there are and have been significant signs of cognitive decline and possible dementia. that's sad from a human perspective. at this rate, i shall be (more) unfit to comment with each passing year.

but it provides a useful yardstick: when i start to excuse cheney or stalin, it's time to take away my keyboard

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Remember -- Bunning may be both senile and a sociopath. I was thinking that if I were Durbin I would have said to Bunning "look we're going to make you stay our here until you piss your pants -- not that it would be the first time."

But then again I'm really not collegial enough to be a senator.

[big bad wolf]

your collegiality talents, SC, run more to internet hosting :)

i think that once dementia sets in even a sociopath is only senile. but i am, as i mentioned weak. perhaps we need a 28th amendment for the removal of senators. as if.