adriaan

I didn't mean to say 'everything' is an adaptation. But the female need to signal she is 'up-to-date' is.

Wanting to look like you are up to date is still around because it used to be important for the survival of your genes. Saying something makes you 'feel good', is a good enough explanation for behaviour you see around you. But then you have to go back to where humans evolved to see why that love or hate could have evolved. You will find that it helped you in some way in your survival. We are talking life and death of the genes here. Small differences in individual survival rates are enough. And I am sure women hunted and men gathered too so we will share plenty of the behaviours typical for a hunter or a gatherer. But in general hunting fits a male better and gathering a female. Plenty of women love to compete in games, obviously. I believe the 'equal rights' movement is moving us back to the normal situation. The stereotypical differences between men and women are just remnants of our very recent history. But when men and women are completely free to do what they want, you may still see an 80/20 split or so between typical hunting and typical gathering behaviour.

This is a forum where you should be able to discuss ideas... not a compendium of everything true and proven. An idea on evolution should be in the section on evolution. People are smart enough to think whether it makes sense to them or not. Proving it is a later stage. You shouldn't use the capacity of moderators here as a filter for ideas, because then it seems nothing worthwhile will make it through.

pseudoscience huh? It's what you call an idea. Things tend to start with an idea. I mean you can shove it aside on the basis that you don't see it. But then again, what do you see..

Why do men care more about sports and career then women? Sure women care too, but for many men it seems they can't live without it. Why do so many men watch and compete in sporting games every day? Why do they pursue earning money long after they have satified every basic need? The reason lies in the requirements made by our ancient environment. We lived in small groups on the African savannah. Where women made a living from gathering fruits and vegetables. And where men brought in the meat through hunting. All though the lines wouldn't be all black and white, that was the general division. Hunting is a team effort. Whether you drive small animals to your fellow hunters or you track and stone larger ones, you are better of with a few others. But you don't want to bring anyone along that can't pull his weight. Nobody wants to share the meat and glory with a slacker. This means a man needs to earn his place on the best hunting party out there. That is what guarantees him and his family the most frequent supply of meat. How do you get to go with the best team? Every playful contest you can do with other men in the group can serve to impress. Depending on the intended catch, there may be a place for a good runner, an experienced tracker, a expert thrower or a really strong guy. The team nature and the skill diversity of hunting is the reason why men are so eager to compete in any game whenever they can. And why it is so much about impressing other men. It is the other men that decide who comes along with them and who doesn't. And when other men of your team compete, you better support them. When they win, the best young ones will want to be out on the hunt with you. Competing in games against neighbouring groups may be a good pasttime nowadays. But the population density throughout evolution has been too low to consider that the reason behind playing games as much as males do. Of course women better take notice who ends up bringing in the meat, but they care about many more attributes. It is your male brains that pushes you to accept any challenge. Playing games to show your ability lets everyone know where you can be useful in the hunt. Once your deserved place is secure, you can relax and the displays become few and far between. In modern times, besides sports, making money is a competition for most men, whether they realise it or not. It shows their ranking in ability. But because of the increased group size the game has become without end. The status game that once showed how useful you could be to others in the hunt, is incompatible with our large group size. There is always a higher league to get into. There is always someone closely behind and above you. And even though our social circle isn't bigger than it used to be, it has become much more homogeneous. The schooling system, the housing arrangements and our work floor have sorted us along the lines of our abilities. In response to the close competition, your brain tells you to step it up one more time and put in more effort displaying your strengths, or risk losing the precious meat you need for your family to survive. In the modern world, males have become stuck in their display behaviour, exhausting themselves and their environment. For a more complete explanation and some more ideas: http://adriaanb.blogspot.com

You have to see that clothes can carry more than one signal. Yes, they can show you are part of a group, they can make you look better and hide other signals like being terribly unfit, they can keep you warm and protect you too! But to a gatherer there is a seperate interest in using clothes to make you look up to date. That wouldn't have been possible before the availability of easily changeable, mass produced clothes, it may have just become the most efficient method to signal 'being up to date' in our modern times. That is seperate from the mating game, it is tied to the requirements in making a living through gatherering. Of course when you pick a mate, you might be better off with one that is good at gathering and showing off she is up to date. But that wouldn't be the primary function of the love to use trendy clothing. A gatherer might be attracted to any source of information that looks up to date. Whether that is a gossip tv program, a fashion magazine. Even men can attract women by looking fashionable, as long as they don't lose too much respect from their hunting team mates (see other post)! Although they may attract a lot of attention that doesn't translate into mating opportunities..

Fashion and gossip can work as a demonstration of the quality of your information network. And that information network has been all important in getting food through gathering. That is actually the main point, that gathering is a far from simple task.

With fashion I mean the change in clothing style, that just seems to be for the sake of changing. Handbags and shoes go in and out of fashion without most men ever realizing it. So you can assume it is a signal between women. Clothes have many other functions, but they have taken on the role of signalling a woman's ability to be up to date. You can't say if that always was the case or if that has just happened after mass production and advertising made it possible. Just like cars are used as status symbols between men, that would obviously not have been possible before 1900. The succes in gathering depends on the information you get. You can't rely on your own finds. Women have a need to signal that they are always in on the latest so others will let them in on their finds. That is the point I am trying to make. How they signal it may not be fixed. And of course nothing is black and white. Men follow fashion and women like cars. But if you look at who buys magazines on fashion, gossip, beaty, cars, politics and sports, the lines are pretty clear cut.

Why do women find it important to be in on the latest fashion trends? It couldn't be just to look nice for the opposite sex, because most men hardly notice it. I believe the reason lies in our evolutionary background. We evolved as hunter-gatherers. Hunting requires plenty of skill, obviously. Compared to hunting, gathering seems a pretty simple task. What I want to show is that the occupation of gathering wild fruits and vegetables is far from simple. It is a highly information intensive occupation. A tree full of fruits is a temporary store of valuables you encounter by chance. The female that finds it comes home with enough fruits for her family, and one important bit of information. Where others can find wat she has. Who should she share that information with? In her best interest, she should share it with someone who will return the favour another day. So she can go and get fruits and vegetables and feed her family another time. The best person to share that with is the one that always seems to be in on the latest finds. She is the most likely to be able to let you in on the next bargain to be had. This is why it is important as a woman to always show you are in on the latest finds. It will get others to share the information on their finds with you, which in the end is what gets you that regular stream of fruits and vegetables you and your children need. Fashion is the present-day signal between women intended to sort the ones in the know, from the ones out of it. Female status is geared towards showing you are close to the information through signals like fashion and gossip, because gathering is all about getting the information in time. Women still dedicate a lot of effort to keeping up with the latest finds, because once it really was a matter of life and death. For a more complete explanation, and some other ideas: http://adriaanb.blogspot.com/

It is the combination of storytelling and laughter that may play a role in calibrating our social morals to those of the group. TV just inherited our love for stories. Whether it works the way storytelling would have is another case. We are missing the vocal reactions of our group so it's effect will be less than that of the original storytelling. In any case, I am not saying that TV is having such an effect on the way we think. But the group can have an effect on our thinking for sure. Because our morals need to be similar to those of the group for us to function well.

Maybe the idea can tie together some loose ends in existing knowledge. Like the origin and contagiousness of laughing, the fondness of social stories, the differences and flexibility in moral rules between societies, mass psychology tactics and the attraction of television.

Glad you liked it. It seems to fill in some of the gaps in present thinking nicely: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13tier.html?ex=1331438400&en=d38e64fbaa7b19f3&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink But for some reason it isn't getting much response. Maybe that is a good sign, it sound pretty obvious. I would love to hear some more reactions.

I wrote something on why we laugh together and why we spend so much time watching TV. My idea is that it stems from the brain's evolved mechanism to calibrate our social do's and don'ts to those of the group that we live in. http://adriaanb.blogspot.com/ Living in a group, our social emotions like pride and shame guide us to overcome the many prisoner's dilemmas that we encounter, they make us choose the neighbour friendly options in life. But because there are so many kinds and levels of social rules possible, we need to constantly stay in tune with the rules followed by our group. The brain's way to calibrate our sensitivities with those of our group is to make us enjoy listening to social narratives, while constantly taking into account the reactions of the people surrounding us. It is these vocal reactions like laughing, booing, cheering etc. that adjust our own attitudes and get our social behaviour in tune with that of our group. Now that we've automated the tribal storyteller into a TV set, we still enjoy the stories but it has become a 'waste' of time because it lacks the vocal reactions of our group. (Unless of course there is the poor substitute of canned laughter like in the Seinfeld episodes for example..) Please look at the blog for a better explanation. I was hoping you might think this is an interesting idea. I am trying to get some comments from experts in the field. http://adriaanb.blogspot.com/ Present research points at the social function of laughter, but it doesn't explain the actual mechanism behind it, see this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13tier.html?ex=1331438400&en=d38e64fbaa7b19f3&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink Thanks, Adriaan