Wednesday, January 21, 2004
"girls don't like boys
girls like cars and money"
Grash wrote that yesterday on my notes in Advanced Behavioural Decision Making, nicely encapsulating the statistically-insignificant secondary results of the paper we were critiquing, "Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future?" (Wilson and Daly, 2003)
The authors, Margo Wilson and Martin Daly, claim their study shows that men start making more impatient choices about less money soon vs. more money later (discounting the future) after looking at pictures of "hot" women, as compared to men looking at "not" women or women looking at either "hot" or "not" men. Their study also showed women start discounting the future more after looking at pictures of "hot" cars, as compared to them looking at "not" cars and men looking at either beaters or Ferraris, but then statistical tests made that difference insignificant.
Wilson and Daly state in the introduction:
"A sex difference in discounting is predictable. Because men have always had some chance of gaining fitness from short-term expenditures of mating effort, whereas successful reproduction typically requires more prolonged parental investment by women, men should have evolved to discount the future more steeply than women"but then they don't show the raw data that bears this out. Which is a bit suspicious. Plus Wilson and Daly were comparing changes in raw values instead of changes in logs, which might have been more statistically valid. Whatever. I'm not convinced by the study, but I still find it entertaining.
I am, however, depressed by the whole sociobiological argument that our stone age ancestry makes men just care that their mates are attractive (as a proxy for being healthy and genetically well-endowed) and causes women to evaluate men by the size of their wallets. If true, I'm a total failure as a girl. Not only do I much prefer money I earn myself, I am not so impressed by cars (except Jaguars. Jaguars are very, very pretty and probably make me discount the future.), and I really like boys a lot.
Especially my new dance partner. He leads well, he doesn't let me get away with rushing, and he's very funny. He also thinks I look and sound Texan. "That dog won't hunt," I told him, which dissuaded him not at all.
On the way home from dance class, I was reading and forgot to transfer to the Central line at Tottenham Court Road, so waited until Embankment and took the Circle line. I picked up a section of the Independent off the floor of the Circle line train (Germs Are Weak is my motto this week) and loved the DAYS LIKE THESE from 21 January 1969:
Tony Benn writes in his diary:
"Caroline and I went to dinner with Arnold Weinstock and his wife. They live in a flat that is fantastic - it's a like a first-class cabin on the QEII, with no evidence of human habiatation. Arnold is a very complex character. I don't know his background, except that he did go to university and he married the daughter of Michael Sobell, who ran an electrical company, and got into business that way. He began doing very well, bought up General Electric and then AEI, and then English Electric. He is now in the same scale of operations as Philips or Siemens. I find him eagreeable, easy to work with, but incredibly primitive politically. Not so much reactionary, just primitive; he doesn't know what it's all about. He described Brian Abel-Smith at the LSE as a trouble maker, when he is a middle-aged, respectable Fabian social-engineer."
COMPILED BY IAN IRVINE
The very long list of other boys I like a lot includes John and Pranav. John and I went to the Solemn Mass at the Brompton Oratory on Sunday, with the singing in Latin and the bell ringing and the incense. I think the incense got to John, as he somehow took something I said as meaning that I am turning 30. NO! I WILL ONLY BE 29! THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW! I AM NOT FREAKING OUT! But I did laugh when John reported Pranav muttered "30-year-olds sure move slow," as I was taking too long to log off the computer and head off for dinner with the two of them this evening. Over dessert they used SMART analysis on each other to evaluate strategic career options. I really like this degree, even if it doesn't turn me into a respectable Fabian social-engineer.
According to Dr Susan Blackmore, Psychologist and Writer (again from the Independent) "If you really think about evolution and why we are human beings are here, you have to come to the conclusion that we are here for absolutely no reason at all. That can be very scary, but it can also be comforting." I am comforted: it means I don't have to feel like a Darwinian failure for not being a golddigger, and even if I use the wrong decision-making technique to figure out what to do when I grow up, it doesn't really matter.
Whee!
