A mind of her own : the evolutionary psychology of women PDF
Preview A mind of her own : the evolutionary psychology of women
A Mind of Her Own 00-Campbell-Prelims.indd i 16/04/13 9:54 AM This page intentionally left blank A Mind of Her Own The evolutionary psychology of women SECOND EDITION Anne Campbell 1 00-Campbell-Prelims.indd iii 16/04/13 9:54 AM 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2013 Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2002 Second Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2013937761 ISBN 978–0–19–960954–3 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Oxford University Press makes no representation, express or implied, that the drug dosages in this book are correct. Readers must therefore always check the product information and clinical procedures with the most up-to-date published product information and data sheets provided by the manufacturers and the most recent codes of conduct and safety regulations. Th e authors and the publishers do not accept responsibility or legal liability for any errors in the text or for the misuse or misapplication of material in this work. Except where otherwise stated, drug dosages and recommendations are for the non-pregnant adult who is not breast-feeding Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. 00-Campbell-Prelims.indd iv 16/04/13 9:54 AM To Jamie 00-Campbell-Prelims.indd v 16/04/13 9:54 AM Acknowledgments Books need researchers. Without frontline scientists doing research, there is nothing to write about. So my fi rst debt of gratitude is to all the academics whose ideas and results have fueled this book. It is in conversations that nebulous ideas take shape and get formalized into words and hypotheses. For these, I thank my work colleagues and graduate students (especially Kate Cross, Helen Driscoll, Simon Hampton, and Lee Copping). Durham University undergraduates have also kept me on my toes with incisive and enthusiastic questions. Closer to home, thanks to Table 7 for the anecdotes, debates, therapy, and laughs. Finally, I thank my family who have graciously shared their home with an “evolution” obsessive. In fact, my husband brought this on himself many years ago. I trace his responsibility to his disgusted expression when he learned that I was not familiar with (indeed had never heard of) the work of John Maynard Smith. Th ere was no choice but to remedy my parochialism by reading about game theory. (From whence it was a short hop to Martin Daly and Margo Wil- son, George Williams, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Sarah Hrdy, etc. . . . ). All this set me wondering if the sole role of women in evolution was to vet male genes. Aft er all, if women were all breeding at their maximum with little or no variation between them, that seemed the limit of their contribution. Th e inno- cence of this question is belied by the 18 years that I have spent struggling with it. Th is book is my attempt at an answer. 00-Campbell-Prelims.indd vi 16/04/13 9:54 AM Contents 1 Th e essential woman: Biophobia and the study of sex diff erences 1 2 Mothers matter most: Women and parental investment 42 3 High stakes and low risks: Women and aggression 77 4 Who does she think she is? Women and status 107 5 Like a sister: Women and friendship 145 6 But she that fi lches from me my good name: Women and mate competition 178 7 A coincidence of interests: Women and monogamy 221 8 Individual diff erences: Th e unique woman 266 9 Th e fl exible phenotype: Women and culture 303 References 343 Subject Index 407 Author Index 415 00-Campbell-Prelims.indd vii 16/04/13 9:54 AM This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 The essential woman: Biophobia and the study of sex differences Each of us lives only one version of a human lifetime. We live it as a man or woman. What would it be like to perceive, to think, and to feel as a member of the opposite sex? A few transgendered individuals may get a glimpse across that invisible wall but the sex chromosomes that we arrive with, whether XX or XY, are the ones we leave with. Th e psychological worlds of men and women have been a focal point of interest for scientists and feminists. But these two groups deal in diff erent currencies. Scientists see an enigma and want to understand it. Feminists envision a social utopia and want to engineer it. During the latter part of the twentieth century, feminist ideology infi ltrated science to such an extent that it was hard to tell the diff erence between the objective facts of sex diff erences and the political ambition to erase them. But the only way to fi nd a path to a social goal is to recognize where we currently stand. Evolutionary psychologists knew this, but they had a fi ght on their hands. Th ere were three camps that dominated the psychology of gender and that vocally opposed the application of evolutionary theory: social constructionism, cognitive learning theories, and social role theory. Since 1970, over one million studies of gender and sex diff erences have ap- peared in academic journals. Th e zeitgeist of the post-war years profoundly in- fl uenced the questions that researchers posed, the methods they used, and the recommendations they made. In the West, incomes rose, educational opportu- nity increased, and women began to discern their very unequal standing in the world of work, professional achievement, and public recognition. Th ese forces informed a belief that society was perfectible and that we should aim to equalize the standing of women and men. Quite right too. But the political ideology that drove this laudable quest for social equality began to drive psychological theo- ries too. Th e only acceptable account of sex diff erences was one which explicitly acknowledged the socially constructed, arbitrary, and malleable nature of sex diff erences. Women’s studies became steeped in a politically driven rejection of essentialism (the idea that the sexes diff er at a fundamental psychological level) and committed on one hand to social constructionism (there is no objective 01-Campbell-Chap01.indd 1 4/10/13 9:28 AM
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