Decoding Love (9 page)
Authors: Andrew Trees
Deception, genetic warfare, measures, and countermeasures—we are a long way from the romantic story line. Although evolutionary psychology offers a great deal of insight into human mating and dating, it is not a pretty picture. Luckily, that is not the end of the story.
2 ½
The Dating Animal, Part II
How Dating Is What Makes Us Human or Darwin Reconsidered
B
EFORE WE BECOME TOO DISHEARTENED ABOUT THE level of deception between men and women, we need to consider the role of deception in the development of the human mind. The old saying is that to err is human, but a more accurate statement might be to lie is human because it appears that social manipulation is at the core of how we became who we are. According to one study, people lie in about 25 percent of their regular daily interactions, which means that even the simplest of human exchanges often involve deception. Take, for example, the smile. Ekman is probably the leading expert in the world at decoding what our faces are actually expressing. What he has found about our smiles is nothing to smile at. He has uncovered nineteen different kinds of smile. How many of those are genuine expressions of pleasure or happiness? One! That’s right. We have nineteen different ways to smile, and only one of them is a truly sincere expression of how we feel.
EFORE WE BECOME TOO DISHEARTENED ABOUT THE level of deception between men and women, we need to consider the role of deception in the development of the human mind. The old saying is that to err is human, but a more accurate statement might be to lie is human because it appears that social manipulation is at the core of how we became who we are. According to one study, people lie in about 25 percent of their regular daily interactions, which means that even the simplest of human exchanges often involve deception. Take, for example, the smile. Ekman is probably the leading expert in the world at decoding what our faces are actually expressing. What he has found about our smiles is nothing to smile at. He has uncovered nineteen different kinds of smile. How many of those are genuine expressions of pleasure or happiness? One! That’s right. We have nineteen different ways to smile, and only one of them is a truly sincere expression of how we feel.
Distressing though this is, our social skills (a much nicer expression than deception) are quite possibly the key to understanding how the human brain evolved. One of the leading theories for why human beings developed large brains is called the social brain hypothesis, also known rather chillingly as the Machiavellian intelligence theory. The idea is that the size of our social groups has played the essential role in pushing humans to develop larger brains. Many primates, such as chimpanzees, live in reasonably large troops, usually between twenty to fifty members. But no animal is more social and lives in larger groups than man. There are many advantages to larger groups, but there is one serious disadvantage: negotiating relationships with all the members of the group. Rewarding friends, seeking allies, and avoiding enemies all require more brainpower as the group gets larger. Researchers have found that the larger an animal’s group size, the larger the percentage of the brain devoted to the neocortex (the outer layer of the brain, which accounts for most cognitive abilities). For most mammals, the neocortex makes up 30-40 percent of the brain. For highly social primates, such as chimpanzees, the percentage rises to 50 to 65 percent. For humans, the neocortex takes up a staggering 80 percent of the brain (and our brains are seven times larger than you would expect for a mammal of our size).
According to social brain theorists, the size of human groups also played a key role in the evolution of language. For other primates, the glue that keeps the group in relative harmony is grooming—that staple activity of animal behavior, for example, when one chimpanzee combs through the hair of another to untangle fur or remove nits. This is done not just for reasons of hygiene but also to reaffirm the social bond between the two. Primatologists have charted a linear relationship between the size of the group and the amount of time spent grooming. But grooming is time consuming, too time consuming for humans once their group size began to grow beyond fifty. Imagine trying to use grooming to hold together a large corporation. Nothing would ever get done. So, language came to serve as a kind of accelerated social grooming, allowing group members to maintain relationships on a much larger scale. For social brain theorists, language developed not primarily for informational tasks, such as where to find a wildebeest, but so that we could gossip about one another. Gossip served not as a distraction from the task at hand but as the main business, establishing and defining our relationships with other members of the group. Who shares meat, which person can’t be trusted, who cheats on whom. Gossip became the means of handling our ever-expanding social networks. Lest you think we have evolved beyond that today, studies show that fully 60-70 percent of our conversations are devoted to social topics (i.e., gossip).
Of course, as Ekman’s eighteen lying smiles already revealed, social life and gossip are firmly intertwined with deception. You see, a larger neocortex doesn’t just predict the size of a species’ social group. It also predicts how much that species uses duplicity and social manipulation. The proponents of the social brain theory are still wrestling with perhaps the central question it raises about our development: is our brain growth directed more toward enabling us to connect with one another or more toward allowing us to manipulate one another? Now you can see why this theory is also called Machiavellian.
If we take Darwin’s idea of sexual selection seriously, though, we can narrow the driving force behind brain growth even further. We may, in fact, be able to pin it entirely on the need to find a mate. In other words, the central purpose behind our enormous brains may be to help us negotiate the unruly world of dating. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, a leading proponent of this theory, has even gone so far as to call the human mind a “protean courtship device.”
The reason mating is a plausible force behind our brain growth is because of something known as runaway sexual selection, which occurs when both the trait and the preference for the trait are heritable. In this case, if the main social difficulty that we face as a species is securing a mate, and if the most essential trait to accomplish that is our intelligence, and if intelligence is heritable, then sexual selection will lead to greater intelligence. And if the
preference
for intelligence is also heritable, then sexual selection will boost human intelligence even more dramatically (this is where it becomes runaway). And what really supercharges runaway sexual selection in our species is that women are not the only ones looking for intelligence. Men also tend to want intelligence in their mates, although not quite as avidly as women. With both sides choosing for intelligence, you can see why “runaway” is a fairly apt description. I guess you could call this the Don Juan theory of human development.
preference
for intelligence is also heritable, then sexual selection will boost human intelligence even more dramatically (this is where it becomes runaway). And what really supercharges runaway sexual selection in our species is that women are not the only ones looking for intelligence. Men also tend to want intelligence in their mates, although not quite as avidly as women. With both sides choosing for intelligence, you can see why “runaway” is a fairly apt description. I guess you could call this the Don Juan theory of human development.
Once you look at things through the lens of sexual selection, there is almost no aspect of human culture that remains untouched by it. Geoffrey Miller argues that most of our cultural behavior is largely instinctual and derived from sexual selection—not that we’re conscious of it. This isn’t a crude and straightforward expression of our sex drive or a case of Freudian sublimation; rather, sexual selection has hijacked qualities that were quite likely already being chosen through natural selection. To bolster his claim, Miller looked at when artists in different fields were most productive, and what he found was that male artists tend to peak around the age of thirty, which is strangely youthful if you think about the importance of artists maturing and developing, but an age that makes perfect sense if you think of artistic production as a means of attracting sexual partners. He also found that men produce vastly more than women. Of course, there is a cultural element to this, but Miller suggests that there is also a sexual element—that men are under more pressure to attract women (remember—cheap sperm, precious eggs). So, sexual selection taken to its logical extreme can explain virtually everything in human development from Bach to skyscrapers, because, at the end of the day, our intelligence has developed largely thanks to the pressures of finding a mate.
Even as both men and women have developed an extraordinarily large and complex neocortex, though, their brains have not grown in precisely the same way, which is exactly what we should expect given that each sex faces different evolutionary challenges. Before I delve into those differences, though, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: these remarks should not be taken as confirmation of sexual stereotypes. They are based on averages. On average, men may have a greater capacity for math, and women may have a better facility with language. But that does not mean that women can’t be brilliant mathematicians or that men can’t be excellent writers. Our sexual prejudices are so ingrained that the first part of that statement is essential, while no one needs to be reminded about the second part.
These sexual differences are not simply the result of cultural conditioning. They exist in the physical structure of the brain itself and are the result of a surge of testosterone released in male babies during fetal development. For example, women have roughly 11 percent more neurons in the part of the brain that handles language and hearing. Also, the hippocampus, which is the principal location of emotion and memory formation, is larger in women than men (perhaps finally providing an answer to many women’s frustrated sense that men never remember anything). And the brain center for observing emotion in others is more developed in women than men. Men’s brains tend to have larger areas devoted to action and aggression, and male brains devote more than two and half times the space than women’s to sex, although scientists have not yet determined how large a portion is devoted to sports. Because of these differences, women on average tend to be better with language, and men tend to be better at math and map reading.
These differences are so fundamental that, according to one study, the way men and women find their way through the world is different. When you present men with a maze, they tend to use geometric reasoning to move through it. Women, on the other hand, use landmarks. Both groups struggle when you force them to use the other sex’s method. And it is quite possible that even this is related to finding a mate because, in a statement so obvious I almost blush to write it, first you have to literally
find
a mate. Men’s greater spatial skills when it comes to things like map reading likely aided them in their search. Women, as the precious egg holders, could sit around and wait for suitors to show themselves, much like Amanda Wingfield with her eighteen gentlemen callers in
The Glass Menagerie.
For evidence of this in the animal world, you only need look at the humble vole. We are interested in two particular species, the pine vole and the meadow vole. Pine voles are monogamous. The males and the females have similar brains, and each sex does about the same when required to run through a maze. The meadow vole, however, is polygamous, and males have to cover much greater distances than the females because they have to visit the different burrows of their various female partners. Not only does a male meadow vole have a bigger hippocampus than the female, he also is much better at finding his way through a maze. This may finally explain men’s unwillingness to ask for help when lost. Before the age of GPS, the ability to find one’s way was probably one of the tests of a man’s genetic fitness.
find
a mate. Men’s greater spatial skills when it comes to things like map reading likely aided them in their search. Women, as the precious egg holders, could sit around and wait for suitors to show themselves, much like Amanda Wingfield with her eighteen gentlemen callers in
The Glass Menagerie.
For evidence of this in the animal world, you only need look at the humble vole. We are interested in two particular species, the pine vole and the meadow vole. Pine voles are monogamous. The males and the females have similar brains, and each sex does about the same when required to run through a maze. The meadow vole, however, is polygamous, and males have to cover much greater distances than the females because they have to visit the different burrows of their various female partners. Not only does a male meadow vole have a bigger hippocampus than the female, he also is much better at finding his way through a maze. This may finally explain men’s unwillingness to ask for help when lost. Before the age of GPS, the ability to find one’s way was probably one of the tests of a man’s genetic fitness.
Needless to say, there are some fairly obvious differences when it comes to sex and the brain. When researchers scanned the brains of people watching a neutral conversation between a man and a woman, the male brains immediately showed activity in the sexual areas, while the women’s brains did not. As Louann Brizendine aptly put it in her fascinating book
The Female Brain
, men have an eight-lane superhighway in their brains when it comes to sex, while women have an eight-lane superhighway when it comes to emotion. But it’s not just sex. It appears that men and women also tend to fall in love differently. For men in love, the visual areas of the brain are the most active, while for women a number of different areas are involved.
The Female Brain
, men have an eight-lane superhighway in their brains when it comes to sex, while women have an eight-lane superhighway when it comes to emotion. But it’s not just sex. It appears that men and women also tend to fall in love differently. For men in love, the visual areas of the brain are the most active, while for women a number of different areas are involved.
This confirms what we have already found about human behavior, but what is fascinating is how the female brain has developed in ways that help women counter the ferocious sex drives of men. This is where her greater facility with language and emotion come into play. As we have seen, men are perfectly willing to lie about themselves or about their commitment in order to have sex, so women have to be good at spotting that deception. And a number of studies have found that women
are
better at reading the facial expression and emotional nuances of an encounter. For example, in one study, men were able to pick up signs of sadness in a female face only 40 percent of the time, while women succeeded 90 percent of the time. Women’s brains are also designed to remember the emotional details of an encounter. So, even on the level of brain development, men and women appear to be locked in an evolutionary struggle, what Geoffrey Miller has called “a never-ending arms race of romantic skepticism and excess.” And women continually hone their abilities as well. As I discussed in the last chapter, researchers have found that women often have detailed talks decoding encounters with the opposite sex or analyzing the character of a man, while men tend not to talk about those things very much. This will hardly come as a shock—women, after all, flock to
Sex and the City
, while men tune in to
Entourage.
are
better at reading the facial expression and emotional nuances of an encounter. For example, in one study, men were able to pick up signs of sadness in a female face only 40 percent of the time, while women succeeded 90 percent of the time. Women’s brains are also designed to remember the emotional details of an encounter. So, even on the level of brain development, men and women appear to be locked in an evolutionary struggle, what Geoffrey Miller has called “a never-ending arms race of romantic skepticism and excess.” And women continually hone their abilities as well. As I discussed in the last chapter, researchers have found that women often have detailed talks decoding encounters with the opposite sex or analyzing the character of a man, while men tend not to talk about those things very much. This will hardly come as a shock—women, after all, flock to
Sex and the City
, while men tune in to
Entourage.
One controversial theory is that autism might be the result of an overly masculinized brain. I don’t want to make light of a serious condition, but given the vast differences on average between men and women when it comes to dealing with the intricacies of human relationships, such as intuiting the emotions of another, I think many women might find it useful when dating and even in long-term relationships to think of most men as slightly autistic compared to women.
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