A mind of her own : the evolutionary psychology of women

440 Pages·2008·2.65 MB·English

A Mind of Her Own
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A Mind of Her Own
The evolutionary
psychology of women
SECOND EDITION
Anne Campbell

1
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1
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First Edition published in 2002
Second Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
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To Jamie
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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.
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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

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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
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