Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA29228 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 14 Dec 2000 15:17:48 GMT Subject: Fwd: Who knew genes could get mean? Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 10:13:32 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "memetics list" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <20001214151225.AAA22225@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Who knew genes could get mean?
By Globe Staff, 12/12/2000
Why do we humans so often fail miserably at losing weight, saving money,
remaining sexually faithful, or quitting smoking?
Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan, two researchers armed with a wildly diverse
array of data and a sly sense of humor, say we can blame it on the genes
we've inherited from our hunter-gatherer forebears.
Our genes, the pair argue, encourage us to behave in ways that were
helpful to our early ancestors but that today put us at risk of obesity,
addiction, and divorce. In ''Mean Genes,'' Burnham, an economist at
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Phelan, a biology professor
at the University of California, set out to explain why we do the things
we do, and to help us short-circuit some of these impulses by
understanding them better.
Globe reporter Vicki Croke talked with Burnham about wealth, happiness,
and romance.
Q. You make the point that, in many ways, our genes are outdated for
current society: We want to eat as much as we can in times of plenty, we
have trouble saving money, we can be sexual cheats. How does
understanding our genetic impulses help us curb our behavior? Can a fat
person become thin after reading ''Mean Genes''?
A. When giving advice on a topic like weight loss, it is impossible to
come up with entirely novel suggestions. By more clearly seeing the
problem, however, we predict which routes are likely to lead to success.
While I can't summarize our whole chapter in a few words, one of the key
conclusions is that people will not succeed in remaining hungry. In other
words, calorie restriction is not the road to health and fitness, or even
to losing weight.
Better to outsmart your passions than to attempt to overpower them with
willpower alone. We provide the insights to help people outsmart their
destructive passions. [For instance, since humans are genetically
programmed to eat more than they should, the book suggests that people
plan ahead and have a low-calorie snack available to avoid temptation by
chocolate when the urge strikes.]
Q. What about comparing ourselves to other animals? (Burnham and Phelan
compare human gender relations to those of the animals, noting that the
gender that does the most nurturing of young tends to live the longest.)
It seems this is dicey business - picking and choosing certain behaviors
from a huge repertoire in the animal kingdom. Can we really compare our
romantic partners to aggressive elephant seals who are the size of, as
you put it, fully-loaded Cadillacs? Or male bush crickets who lose a
quarter of their body weight during sex?
A. Throughout ''Mean Genes,'' we have selected stories that are true and
are representative of the vast scientific literature. For example, male
moorhens provide the bulk of baby bird care. Female moorhens are bigger
than males, females compete for males, and females are particularly picky
when it comes to male body shapes. Females prefer small fat males ideal
for sitting on eggs. If moorhens had prisons, we speculate that all the
inmates would be female.
The lesson isn't that males should take care of the offspring; it's that
if one sex has the higher minimum investment (i.e., gestation in mammals
or egg-sitting in moorhens), then the sex that does the investment is
sought after and the sex that does the seeking dies at an earlier age
because of the pursuit itself.
Q. ''Mean Genes'' is a surprisingly fun read, filled with amazing data
that could keep any reader talking through many cocktail parties: The
Mayan practice of using a ''toad enema''; the fact that the total energy
investment of one pregnancy for one woman equals about 300 McDonald's
hamburgers; a tablespoon of semen is enough to impregnate every woman in
North America. What's your favorite ''Mean Genes'' factoid?
A. I love the attempts animals make to keep their mates from cheating.
Most people know that female black widow spiders eat their mates. Less
well known is that male black widow spiders break their sex organs off in
females, forming a primitive but effective chastity belt.
In some species, a male will sit upon a female for days after sex seeking
to prevent her from having sex with his rivals. In other species, males
seeking paternity carry females on their backs for prolonged periods. In
one species of worms, males use ''cement glands'' to seal their rivals'
sperm tubes shut.
Q. You are an economist, and you say that understanding genetic impulses
helps inform your field. Are you saying all disciplines could benefit
from a healthy dose of ''Mean Genes'' 101?
A. Absolutely. Anyone interested in behavior of organisms that arose by
natural selection should understand genetic evolution and science.
Psychology is the furthest along in this process, called ''Consilience''
by E.O. Wilson. Economics, sociology, philosophy, and political science
are still working with models of human nature that don't incorporate
Darwin's insights.
And I've devoted my life to improving economics, also known as ''the
dismal science.'' One of my research projects looked at why negotiations
so often fail. The answer, in my study, is that high-testosterone men are
willing to walk away from deals that low-testosterone men accept.
Negotiation breakdowns of the sort that I studied are not supposed to
occur (according to standard economics). The role of testosterone in this
area removes the paradox. More generally, the rebuilding of economics on
a better model of human nature will produce more accurate and useful
results.
Q. Could this help us understand the political battle between Gore and
Bush?
A. There's no data, as far as I know, on testosterone levels in
politicians.
Q. You take a potshot at the loyalty of dogs. Do you believe there is no
such thing as altruism in dogs or, for that matter, in people?
A. Both humans and dogs sometimes help others without any expectation of
repayment. So, at one level, both we and they are altruistic. These
behaviors evolved, however, for different reasons.
Dogs are domesticated versions of wolves and they have accompanied humans
for at least the last 10,000 years. Those dogs that were nice to
ancestral humans lived long enough to have puppies. Those that didn't pay
attention to their owners, didn't have puppies, or at least not as many.
Over many generations, human selective breeding has produced dogs that
are keenly sensitive to their owners.
So dogs are built to care about people because caring paid off for
ancestral dogs in the only currency that genes care about - offspring.
Similarly, we know that humans evolved as the great cooperators. By
working in groups, ancestral humans were able to eat, and avoid being
eaten. Accordingly, we - the descendants of those who survived - are
built with instincts that mediate cooperation.
As a consequence, humans are altruistic in certain settings. Not random
acts of altruism, but specifically the sorts of behaviors that redounded
to the benefit of ancestral humans.
Q. The book isn't really a self-help guide. And it's too funny to be a
dry text on evolution and human impulse. What is it?
A. Short, sassy and bold was our goal in the writing of ''Mean Genes.''
We hope it will be the first of a new genre of books. It provides advice
built on a bedrock of scientific knowledge without being boring.
Furthermore, it allows people to generate their own solutions, built upon
a better understanding of human nature.
Q. What do you think is ''Mean Genes'''s most elegant solution to an
everyday human impulse problem?
A. In order to save, people need to hide the money from themselves. In
fact, ''hidden'' money is the only source of retirement funds for average
Americans. That is, Social Security, pensions, and accumulated home
equity. The median American head of a household who is nearing retirement
has under $10,000 in liquid financial savings. In other words, no savings
at all that can be spent.
While there's no simple cure for drugs or obesity, savings rates are easy
to improve. At the national level, we've done this by forcibly setting
aside a chunk of income. At the individual level, we can do this by
setting up payroll deductions that go to accounts that can't be touched
for years.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 12/12/2000. © Copyright
2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
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