The Moral Animal - Robert Wright - ****

People's minds were designed to maximize fitness in the environment in which those minds evolved.
The disjunction between our design and our lives is probably responsible for much psychopathology and suffering.

Since sex is a bigger investment for a woman than a man, men favor quantity and women favor quality.
In one experiment, three-fourths of the men approached by an unknown woman on a college campus agreed to have sex with her. The women on campus, approached by an unknown man, all refused.



Monogamy is most common in species with vulnerable offspring and in meat-eating species, where the additional protein makes family-raising practical.

For a species low in male parental investment [humans are high-MPI], the basic dynamic of courtship is pretty simple: the male really wants sex, the female isn't so sure.
Females in low-MPI species won't compete over a man because their dream is to copulate with him, not monopolize him.

One effective way to deceive someone is to believe what you're saying. In this context, that means being "blinded by love". . . this, indeed, is the great moral escape hatch for men who persist in a pattern of seduction and abandonment.

A woman's fear is that the man will withdraw his investment; a man's fear is that his investment is being misplaced.

resource extraction: when give sex means get gifts

Throughout the world, men tend to group desirable women into two categories: wife material and mistress material
-- this relates to the strategies played by men and women in The Selfish Gene, but adds an extra layer: the complications that arise when the strategy a woman plays isn't the same as the one a man sees, and vice versa

The more attractive a girl is in adolescence, the more likely she is to "marry up", to marry a man of higher socioeconomic status.
The more sexually active a girl is in adolescence, the less likely she is to marry up.
Trivers asked if it was possible "that females adjust their reproductive strategies in adolescence to their own assets"?

How have societies coped with sexual asymmetry? Asymmetrically. 980 of the 1154 societies for which anthropologists have data have permitted a man to have more than one wife, though 43% of those classify polygyny as "occasional".
The danger of polygyny is that women who move up the ladder by wedding married men aren't available to the rest of the men. Assuming equal sex ratios, every time a woman moves up the ladder, all the women move up (there's a vacancy) and every man except the one she married moves down (the pool of women has worsened and one man will not have a mate).

Serial monogamy, in some ways, amounts to polygyny. Attractive men are given the opportunity to monopolize women: a top male can get a top prospect, use her for years, then discard her for another top prospect. Since the cast-off women can no longer attract top men, they bounce to next-tier men, their best option at the time, who can repeat the process. In this way, a scarcity of quality women trickles down the social scale.

Hints of mortality can draw a man into marriage, though it is often these same hints, much later, that drive him to seek fresh proof of his virility.

An unmarketable commodity is a contented one.

Feelings, in their fine contours, are proxies for calculation.

Mothers in poor condition are likely to favor daughters over sons: boys are most competitive in prosperity, whereas girls can attract sex partners in almost any condition.

No life experiences (except, say, exposure to radiation) affect the genes handed down to offspring.

Reciprocal altruism differs from kin selection in that kin selection actually requires others to be helped; with reciprocal altruism, only the appearance of helping is required before the reward is obtained.

One striking feature of the rewards and punishments dished out by the conscience is their lack of sensuality. The conscience can't make us feel bad the way hunger makes us feel bad, or good the way sex makes us feel good.

"I would give a thousand pounds for your good name."
"Why?"
"Because I could make ten thousand by it!"

Exploitation is most commonly found where interactions are not likely to be repeated.

One theory regarding hierarchy is that it makes the group so cohesive that most or all of the members benefit, even if they benefit unequally.

pecking order: a hierarchy established by combat

The most prolific human parent in the world is credited with 888 children -- about 860 more than a woman could dream of having, unless she had a knack for multiple births. His name and title: Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian emperor of Mococco. It's a little chilling to think that the genes of a man nicknamed "Bloodthirsty" found their way into nearly 1,000 offspring. But that's the way natural selection works: the most chilling genes often win.

Man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness. These latter qualities seem to be his natural and unfortunate birthright.

The story of Mike the chimp:
Mike, though not a hulking specimen, discovered by running towards more manly chimps while propelling empty kerosene cans loudly in their direction, he could earn their respect. Sometimes Mike repeated this performance as many as four times in succession, waiting until his rivals had started to groom once more before again charging them. When he eventually stopped, often in the precise spot where the other males had been sitting, they sometimes returned and with submissive gestures began to groom Mike. . . Mike made determined efforts to secure other human artifacts to enhance his displays.

Power through expertise.

Humans tend to compare themselves to those very near them in the status hierarchy - to those just above them, in particular.

"There is evidence that the worst parts of human nature are always near the surface, ready to rise when cultural restraint weakens. We are not blank slates, as some behaviorists once imagined."
-- the title of the next book in my lineup: The Blank Slate

The best liar is the one who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

You could say that low self-esteem evolved as a way to reconcile people to subordinate status when this reconciliation is in their genetic interest.
Don't expect people with low self-esteem to hide it. It may be in their genetic interest to convey their acceptance by behaving submissively so that they aren't treated like a threat.

Feeling bad about yourself is a way of discouraging the repeat of status-reducing behaviors.

The split-brain story
-- Rationalization is a defense - this is proof that why means justify

beneffectance: the tendency of people to present themselves as both beneficial and effective

When we ask friends for help, we are often asking not only that they use their status, but that they raise ours in the process.
Backing a friend means verbally defending him when his interests are in dispute -- and, more generally, saying good, status-raising things about him.

We feel genuinely in awe of those to whom we might profitably grovel.

Language evolved as a way of manipulating people to your advantage; cognition, the wellspring of language, is warped accordingly.

What was best in Freud is his sensing the paradox of being a highly social animal: being at our core libidinous, rapacious, and generally selfish, yet having to live civilly with other human beings -- having to reach our animal goals via a torturous path of cooperation, compromise, and restraint. From this insight flows Freud's most basic idea about the mind: it is a place of conflict between animal impulses and social reality.

The courts would do better to spend less time deliberating the circumstances under which a crime occured and more time deliberating what the practical effect of possible punishments will be.

metanorm: a norm for punishing people who do not punish deviants