The Boston Globe notes an interesting finding:
One of the classic stereotypes about women is that they’re acutely terrified by snakes and spiders. Indeed, it has been found that women are four times more likely to suffer from these phobias, but there is ostensibly no gender difference for phobias related to modern-day life (e.g., injections, flying). What is the origin of this disparity? To find out, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University conducted experiments on 11-month-old infants. Although infants of both genders looked at isolated pictures of snakes, spiders, flowers, or mushrooms for about the same amount of time, girls looked at a picture of a snake or spider much longer than boys after first seeing a picture of a snake or spider paired with a picture of a fearful face. Because there was no such effect with pictures of flowers or mushrooms, the authors suggest that females are born with a “perceptual template that specifies the structure of snakes as well as spiders,” and speculate that it is a disposition that may have evolved to safeguard offspring.
September 14th, 2009 | 10:58 am
Stop. Wait. You’re both right.
(And that being said, should there be some statement on why snakes should beware of women?)
September 14th, 2009 | 11:13 am
Or maybe both.
September 14th, 2009 | 5:50 pm
I was mostly joking by pointing to Genesis since I think that passage is referring more to Jesus defeat of Satan than to an explanation of our fear of snakes.
But while I believe in evolutionary explanations for certain biological phenomena, I don’t (generally) accept it as an explanation for specific behaviors. Evolution would likely have imprinted the same template on both the male and female psyche if this explanation (which is plausible, at least) were true.
September 15th, 2009 | 9:27 am
There are certain very specific behaviors that are innate and therefore presumably evolved. For example, there are monkeys that emit one kind of warning cry when they see a predatory bird and a different one when they see a snake. These monkeys will look up when they hear the first kind of warning cry and look down at the ground when they hear the second. This is very specific behavior, involving a reaction to snakes, and if it can exist in monkeys, I see no reason why such things could not exist in humans. As far as specific sex-specific behaviors, it is hard to see the reason why they should not evolve. After all, much of our behavior related to courtship and mating differs between the sexes. A male who sees a female body reacts differently than a female seeing the same thing. Different “templates” in the male and female brain.
September 15th, 2009 | 9:28 pm
Who doesn’t love evolutionary psychology? We can make up stories all day long explaining any phenomenon we like, and then we can explain its inverse with equal élan, without even the remotest chance of our story being falsified. But is it science?
September 16th, 2009 | 1:45 pm
Dear Barry, Is evolutionary psychology all bad? A lot of it is just common sense. Consider a simple example: Why do men have more upper body strength and more aggressive tendencies? Is it possibly related somehow to the fact that women who were pregnant or caring for small children were in the circumstances in which we evolved more vulnerable and less able to provide for themselves, and that men had therefore to defend them and provide for them? Does anyone really doubt this quite obvious evolutionary explanation? Can it be “proven”? No. Science is not mathematics. It is not about rigorous proof, but explanatory power.
We should apply the same standards of reasonableness to scientific explanations as to other kinds. Suppose I see a man with a smoking gun in his hand standing over the body of a man who has just been shot. Can I “prove” he shot him? Probably not. Can the theory that he did be rigorously “tested”? Probably not. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence may be such as produce reasonable certainty. So it often is in science.
Many “stories”, both in science and everyday life, are very convincing and credit-worthy, without being “testable” in some rigorous way.
September 17th, 2009 | 12:05 am
[...] Over at the First Things blog Stephen M. Barr and I have the following exchange regarding a story about the latest evolutionary psychology explanation (Why Women Hate Snakes): [...]
September 17th, 2009 | 12:09 am
Dear Stephen: Should I conclude that you consider “abductive reasoning” (somethimes called “inference to the best explanation”) a valid form of scientific reasoning?
September 17th, 2009 | 12:24 am
Prof. Barr,
I sympathize with some of what you’re saying here. Yes, explanatory power is nice. So is having an explanation that matches common sense. But is that really enough to make the explanation scientific?
So I’d actually turn the question around on you. Sure, maybe some evolutionary psychology explanations at least sound plausible, or offer us an interesting insight/idea. But why pretend – when the speculations aren’t testable, when hard evidence is either thin on the ground or maybe even impossible to come by – that this is science? Surely something can have explanatory power, comport with common sense, and have some value but at the same time not be science?
September 17th, 2009 | 3:01 am
Why don’t you use ID science to answer these kinds of questions?
Why are women more afraid of snakes then men? Because an invisible, intangible, unnameable Designer wanted it that way.
That should be easy to test.
/sarcasm
September 17th, 2009 | 3:58 am
The explanatory power of evolution (and I use the term in its broadest possible sense as the dominant paradigm of the secular west) is not in question; it can explain everything from the order of the cosmos, the origin of life and eventually man. So its ability to explain fear of snakes is a doddle.
Instead of using the term “evolution” I suggest we use the term “magic” because when you think about it ,that is what “evolution” really is: atoms spontaneously arranging themselves into stars, galaxies, planets, life and finally man.
The use of “billions of years” to explain its possibility is just a smokescreen to cover up its fundamental impossibility. Even if it was a billion billion years these things just won’t happen.
Evolution is like religion in that it requires a belief in things that are contrary to the laws of nature. It is certainly not scientific at all but ironically it is the belief most scientists hold on to. It is dear to their hearts and very aggressively defended, like any other religious belief..
September 17th, 2009 | 8:22 am
Thanks to Mr Barr for so clearly expressing the methodology of evolutionary psychology:
1. Pose a question or scenario.
2. Provide an untestable speculation that “answers” quesiton.
3. Declare that no one (ie, no “reasonable” person) can or should “doubt this quite obvious evolutionary explanation.”
I myself would be happy if advocates of evolutionary theory would just have enough intellectual credibility to play by their own rules. When evaluating ID claims for example, they insist on rigor, math, repeatability, testability and the like—anything less is “not science.” When peddling evolution, “common sense” and “explanatory power” passes the bar.
September 17th, 2009 | 8:27 am
BTW: if I were a Freudian, I could concoct a perfectly “plausible” story rooted in the rich soil of evo-psych about why women hate snakes, but it almost certainly wouldn’t pass the moderation filter…
;-)
September 17th, 2009 | 10:25 am
Stephen M. Barr:
It sounds plausible, but the opposite would also be plausible. That is, if women had more upper body strength, it would make perfect sense to say that they evolved it out of a need to protect themselves and their young while they were pregnant and immobile, and their men were out chasing after mastodon.
There are *some* evolutionary explanations that make sense and are tough to argue against, but they are very few and far between, and even then can usually be put in simple terms of functional necessity without speculating on how they evolved.
September 17th, 2009 | 4:12 pm
CeilingCat:
You say “Why don’t you use ID science to answer these kinds of questions? Why are women more afraid of snakes then men? Because an invisible, intangible, unnameable Designer wanted it that way. That should be easy to test.”
Me thinks you have a fundamental misperception regarding ID. ID isn’t interested in WHY something might have been designed in a given way. It is only interested in detecting design in the first place. If you applied your logic to the work of a medical examiner, you would be unable to find the medical examiner’s rulings credible unless he/she could ALSO explain WHY a person was murdered in a particular way. ID is searching for evidence that leads to design as the best inference. Period. So, just as a medical examiner can rule for death by homicide without being required to identify the murderer or his/her motivations, ID is merely seeking to develop the math and science necessary to reliably detect design within biology and attacking it for not being able to explain WHY something was designed in a given way or WHO the designer is are red herrings.
September 18th, 2009 | 3:56 am
Mike Treat, I think Dembski expressed your sentiments better: “… it’s not ID’s task to match [evolution's] pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories.”
That pathetic excuse might have gone over a little bit better if ID had actually found a way to detect design, but we’re past the ten year mark now and the results so far are zero:
The Explanitory Filter was a truly pathetic attempt: If something isn’t either entirely random or entirely the result of the laws of physics, it’s designed. Unfortunately, Darwinian Evolution is the result of random variation PLUS natural selection, which obeys the laws of physics, so there’s no possible way to even feed it into the EF. I think even Dembski realized this when he ditched the EF (and then semi-unditched it when the whole world laughed at him. I think it’s current status is “Something we don’t talk about.”)
Then there was Complex Specified Information. Which is exactly what Darwinian Evolution produces. Oops. But CSI (and its variations) is still talked about.
Then there was Behe’s Irreducable Complexity – every example of which has turned out to be reduceable.
So while we’re waiting for ID to find a reliable way to detect design, how about using ID science to explain the inherent fear of snakes that women (and men) seem to be born with?
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