Infant testosterone predicts toddler behavior

A new study from Hormones and Behavior:

The testes are active during gestation, as well as during early infancy. Testosterone elevation during fetal development has been shown to play a role in human neurobehavioral sexual differentiation. The role of early postnatal gonadal activation in human psychosexual development is largely unknown, however. We measured testosterone in 48 full term infants (22 boys, 26 girls) by monthly urinary sampling from day 7 postnatal to age 6 months, and related the area under the curve (AUC) for testosterone during the first 6 months postnatal to subsequent sex-typed behavior, at the age of 14 months, using the Pre-School Activities Inventory (PSAI), and playroom observation of toy choices. In boys, testosterone AUC correlated significantly with PSAI scores (Spearman's rho = 0.54, p = 0.04). In addition, play with a train and with a baby doll showed the anticipated sex differences, and play with the train correlated significantly and positively with testosterone AUC in girls (Spearman's rho = 0.43, p = 0.05), while play with the doll correlated significantly and negatively with testosterone AUC in boys (Spearman's rho = − 0.48, p < 0.03). These results may support a role for testosterone during early infancy in human neurobehavioral sexual differentiation.

Increases in suicide by sex

These graphs show 1999-2009 suicide trends for U.S. men (top) and women (bottom) separately (CDC) :

Both sexes ages 45-64 show large increases over the past decade.

Head Start does not work

A comprehensive study by DHHS shows that Head Start does not work:

Indeed, Head Start did work well in several pilot programs carefully run by professionals in the 1960s. And so it was "taken to scale," as the wonks say, as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.  

It is now 45 years later. We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program's effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work. 

According to the Head Start Impact Study, which was quite comprehensive, the positive effects of the program were minimal and vanished by the end of first grade. Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years, according to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, who said, "I guess they were trying to rerun the data to see if they could come up with anything positive. They couldn't."

More suicide among people in 40s and 50s

The graph below shows 1999-2009 suicide rates by age group (CDC data):

Rates (not shown) are stable for children, adolescents, and younger adults, but suicides have been increasing for middle-aged people. By contrast, they have been dropping among those 75 and over.

How do we explain these trends?  Have advancements in medical care improved the quality of life for the elderly? Are people in their 40s and 50s increasingly feeling like failures at work?  More relationship, marriage and family disintegration?

Rushton on the skin color/behavior correlation

Phil Rushton and colleagues at the journal Personality and Individual Differences continue to push the the theory that genes explain the worldwide correlation between skin tone and important behaviors:

Pigmentation of the hair, skin, cuticle, feather and eye is one of the most salient and variable attributes of vertebrates. In many species, melanin-based coloration is found to be pleiotropically linked to behavior. We review animal studies that have found darker pigmented individuals average higher amounts of aggression and sexual activity than lighter pigmented individuals. We hypothesize that similar relationships between pigmentation, aggression, and sexuality occur in humans. We first review the literature on non-human animals and then review some of the correlates of melanin in people, including aggression and sexual activity. Both within human populations (e.g., siblings), and between populations (e.g., races, nations, states), studies find that darker pigmented people average higher levels of aggression and sexual activity (and also lower IQ). We conceptualize skin color as a multigenerational adaptation to differences in climate over the last 70,000 years as a result of “cold winters theory” and the “Out-of-Africa” model of human origins. We propose life history theory to explain the covariation found between human (and non-human) pigmentation and variables such as birth rate, infant mortality, longevity, rate of HIV/AIDS, and violent crime.

As Razib Khan has explained on this blog, pleiotropy as the explanation of these correlations simply does not work. So what plausible theories remain? Any ideas?

Marital status and fertility among blacks

As a follow-up to the recent post on marital status and fertility, I used 2000-2010 GSS data to calculate the mean number of offspring for black women ages 40-59 by marital status. I looked at the low- and high-educated separately.


Mean number of offspring

Women with less than four-year degree (sample size = 440)
Married 2.65
Separated/Divorced 2.55
Never-Married 2.34

Women with four-year degree or more (sample size = 111)
Married 2.00
Separated/Divorced 1.62
Never-Married .71*

*significantly lower than corresponding married or separated/divorced groups


In the earlier post, we saw that white never-married women have fewer kids than married or separated/divorced women whether they are more or less educated. For black women, this is true only for educated women. Among less educated blacks, never getting married is not associated with significantly fewer kids.

If marriage disappears completely among blacks, its population will not drop dramatically as we see with whites; by contrast, only fertility among educated blacks--a comparatively small group--will shrink. Let's look on the bright side: the disappearance of your smart people is better than the disappearance of your race. 

Black rate of hate crimes against Hispanics is higher than for whites

Using FBI statistics, Audacious Epigone shows that blacks are much more likely than whites to commit an anti-gay hate crime. From the same table, I can calculate the difference for hate crimes involving Hispanic victims. The population-adjusted rate is 1.6 times higher for blacks than whites. This is another indication that blacks have a more serious problem with hate violence than whites. (The rate difference might be inflated some since the "white" numbers include Hispanics who are less likely to commit hates crimes against their own. On the other hand, keep in mind that "Hispanics" include many national groups, members of whom might not like each other.)

This FBI webpage lists the percentage of offenders of any type of hate crime by race. The population-adjusted rate for blacks is 1.8 times that of whites for 2010--the latest year available.

Marital status and fertility

In a chapter of the Meaning of Marriage, Roger Scruton claims that the move away from marriage reduces fertility below replacement level. Using GSS data since 2000, I calculated the mean number of offspring for white women ages 40-59 by marital status. If Scruton is right, married women will have the most kids, never-married will have the least, and separated/divorced women should be in the middle. Let's look at less and more educated women separately:


Mean number of offspring

Women with less than four-year degree (sample size = 1,759)
Married 2.23
Separated/Divorced 2.14
Never-Married .46*

Women with four-year degree or more (sample size = 866)
Married 1.88
Separated/Divorced 1.63
Never-Married .15*

*significantly lower than corresponding married or separated/divorced groups


Never-married women have fewer kids than married or separated/divorced women whether they are more or less educated. Educated single women have hardly any children at all. A society made up of these type of women would pretty much disappear in a historically short period of time. Next, I'll look at black women.

Growing support for gun rights

This Pew graph shows recent growth in support for private gun ownership. I suspect this is part of larger trend that favors maximum individual lifestyle freedom. Other examples include more people favoring legalization of marijuana and gay marriage. How nice it would be to see the acid of individualism attack minority race-loyalty.

Gender reversal on career goals

These two Pew graphs show how young women are now more ambitious than men. Sixty-six percent of females ages 18 to 34 say career success is "one of the most important things" or very important" in their lives. The corresponding figure for young men (seen below) is only 59 percent.

I expect this new gap will further weaken the institution of marriage. I'm not sure if the Girl Power crowd is aware of this consequence. Radical feminists, of course, are cheerleading the decline. If a man does not earn more than a woman, he is less attractive as a partner. Most women want a husband, but they are less likely to enter marriage and are quicker to exit it if the man offers fewer positives. Marriage is still comparatively strong among high status people, but economic incentives matter.

I watched Senator Lieberman on Fox News Sunday. Am I off-base here, or is he the reincarnation of Droopy the Dog?

Are women catching up to men at being unfaithful?

According to this Huffington Post columnist, women are smarter than men at infidelity, and they are catching up to men in prevelance.

The GSS asked respondents if they ever strayed. I divided answers into two periods: 1991-1998 and 2000-2010. In the first period, 23.0 perent of men and 13.1 percent of women cheated (sample size = 8,103). The difference is statistically significant.

In the second period, the figures are 23.4 and 14.5 percent (sample size = 9,304). Again, men are significantly more likely to be unfaithful than women, but the latter estimates for both sexes are not significantly higher than their respective numbers from period 1. The GSS does not support the view that women are catching up with men. And I don't have any data concerning the cleverness of female cheating.

Are stay-at-home moms unhappy?

This Time columnist thinks that homemakers are so unhappy (and angry), social change is called for. What does the GSS say about their level of unhappiness?

I included mothers since the 2000 survey to maximize sample size. Respondents were asked how happy they are these days. Answers range from "very happy" (1) to "pretty happy" (2) to "not too happy" (3). I calculated means for mothers of all work statuses. Higher means indicate more sadness (sample size = 5,286).


Mean sadness score

Full-time 1.82
Part-time 1.78
Temporarily not working 1.90
Laid off 2.05*
Retired 1.82
School 1.83
Keeping house 1.83

*significantly sadder than full-timers


According to GSS data, there is no difference in mean level of happiness between mothers working full-time and homemakers.

People prefer male politicians with lower voices

Here's a new study from Evolution and Human Behavior:

It may be adaptive for voters to recognize good leadership qualities among politicians. Men with lower-pitched voices are found to be more dominant and attractive than are men with higher-pitched voices. Candidate attractiveness and vocal quality relate to voting behavior, but no study has tested the influence of voice pitch on voting-related perceptions. We tested whether voice pitch influenced perceptions of politicians and how these perceptions related to voting behavior. In Study 1, we manipulated voice pitch of recordings of US presidents and asked participants to attribute personality traits to the voices and to choose the voice they preferred to vote for. We found that lower-pitched voices were associated with favorable personality traits more often than were higher-pitched voices and that people preferred to vote for politicians with lower-pitched rather than higher-pitched voices. Furthermore, lower voice pitch was more strongly associated with physical prowess than with integrity in a wartime voting scenario. Thus, sensitivity to vocal cues to dominance was heightened during wartime. In Study 2, we found that participants preferred to vote for the candidate with the lower-pitched voice when given the choice between two unfamiliar men's voices speaking a neutral sentence. Taken together, our results suggest that candidates' voice pitch has an important influence on voting behavior and that men with lower-pitched voices may have an advantage in political elections.

I remember being annoyed in 2008 with McCain's Bruce Dern-like voice. Romney and Cain had the best voices during the recent primaries. Romney might have a slight advantage over Obama. Cain and Obama are definitely better singers.

The voting behavior of housewives

How do housewives vote?  According to the GSS, 63 percent voted for Obama (sample size = 131). Among married women (sample size = 73), 49 percent voted for him. One hundred percent of never-married stay-at-home women went for Obama (sample size = 19). Sixty percent of homemakers say they are political moderates. How large is the demographic? They are 16 percent of voting women.

Lesbianism among Jewish women

The question came up over at Steve Sailer's blog if Jewish women are more likely than other women to be lesbian. It wouldn't surprise me since data reported on this blog indicate that lesbians tend to be smarter than average, and they are more likely to come from wealthy homes. According to GSS data, here are the percentages of women by religion who say they are lesbian (sample size = 10,981):


Percent lesbian

Protestant 1.8*
Catholic 1.6*
Jewish 1.4
No religion 4.0

*significantly less than the no religion group


No evidence here for more Jewish lesbians.

From what I hear, straight Jewish women are plenty good at denying men sex.

The link between intelligence and cooperativeness

In a sample of almost 4,500 men, a positive correlation (.23) was observed between general intelligence and the general factor of personality (GFP). GFP captures one's ability to work well with others. According to the authors, general intelligence evolved to generate more resources while GFP evolved to secure a larger share of group resources.

The positive correlation suggests four types of people, two of which are more common and two of which are less uncommon. The more frequent types are smart-cooperative and dull-uncooperative people. Less common are smart-uncooperative and dull-cooperative folks.   

Disliking races might be a personality trait

The GSS asked respondents how warmly they feel about: 1) whites, 2) blacks, 3) Hispanics, and 4) Asians. Answers ranged from very cool to very warm. I correlated answers for whites. The mean correlation is .63. While there is substantial range--from .45 for white-white to .81 for Asian-Hispanic--the main story here is that if a person dislikes one group, he tends to have comparatively cool feelings for all groups, even his own. I found the same basic results when I limited the analysis to the black sample or a sample of those of some other race.

We can construct a typology here for all races. Roughly half feel warmly toward all races. Thirty percent or so are neutral toward everyone. Fifteen percent like their group but dislike everyone else, and five percent can't stand anybody. The consistent attitude for various groups leads me to think one's disposition toward groups is a personality trait. It's probably related to one's attitude toward people in general: trusting and warm versus suspicious and hostile.

Father's social class and homosexuality

Using GSS data, I calculated the mean father's socioeconomic index for women who are straight, bisexual, and lesbian (sample size = 8,551).


Mean Father's Socioeconomic Index

Straight 47.3
Bisexual 50.4
Lesbian 52.7*

*significantly higher than straight women


Compared to straight women, lesbians come from significantly higher status families. And for men (sample size = 7,867):


Mean Father's Socioeconomic Index

Straight 48.2
Bisexual 50.1
Gay 49.3

Gay men do not come from significantly higher status homes than straight men.

I'm not sure how to explain the pattern. Women from higher class homes might be more willing to admit lesbianism or might be more willing to adopt a lesbian orientation. There is evidence that lesbianism is more environmentally influenced than homosexuality. One might suggest that higher status fathers are more masculine (at least in some ways) and more likely to have masculine daughters.

Predictors of anti-Semitism

GSS respondents were asked to give a number between 0 and 100 that describes their feelings toward Jews. They were told that 0 to 50 indicates not being favorable to and not caring for Jews, while 50 to 100 indicates feeling favorable and warm. Among a sample of  4,487, 12.1% gave a number under 50. Multiple regression reveals which factors predict liking Jews:

Standardized OLS Regression Coefficients

Age .098
Sex .069
Race .059
Size of place -.037
South -.021
Education .071
Income .057
Church attendance .144
Political conservatism -.009


All predictors are significantly related to liking Jews with the two exceptions of conservatism and living in the South. Focusing on the negative, here are the characteristics of people more likely to dislike Jews: young, male, non-white, urban, uneducated, poor, and irreligious.  The strongest predictor is religiosity. Age and education are also important. It surprises me that people who are young and urban are more likely to be anti-Semitic.

I didn't include IQ as a predictor since it is collinear with education, but if it takes the place of educational level, it is a comparatively strong predictor of liking Jews (the coefficient is .177).

Interracial murder

The Trayvon Martin case is an opportunity to remind people of the reality of interracial crime in the United States.

For the purposes of this analysis, I'll use the term "whites" to refer to whites plus Hispanics since they get lumped together in the data. According to FBI data for 2010,  218 blacks were murdered by whites. Blacks murdered 447 whites. But this is comparing apples and oranges since whites are 6.4 times the size of the black population. If we calculate murders per 10 million in the race-specific population (interracial murder is rare), the rate is 8.82 for whites and 114.89 for blacks. So blacks kill whites at a rate 13 times higher than that of whites killing blacks.

Another way to look at it is multiply the black population by 6.4 to make it as large as whites. If it were as large, 2861 whites would have been murdered compared to the 218 blacks killed by whites.

Predictors of racism

As a follow-up to the last post, let's do multiple regression to see which factors predict feeling cool toward blacks (sample size = 958 whites):

Coolness toward blacks (standardized OLS coefficients)

Age .088*
Sex -.096*
Size of place -.036
South .025
Education -.011*
Income -.027
Church attendance -.105*
Political conservatism .082*

*p < .05, two-tailed

So cooler feelings are associated with being: older, male, less educated, less religious, and more conservative. Population size, income, and being from the South do not matter.

And here is the model for blacks feeling cool toward whites (sample size = 117):


Coolness toward whites (standardized OLS coefficients)

Age -.003
Sex .013
Size of place .239*
South .109
Education -.134
Income .077
Church attendance .106
Political conservatism .114

*p < .05, two-tailed


Living in a more populated area is the only significant predictor of coolness among blacks. The sample size is small, so if we ignore significance and focus on the size of the cooefficients, it looks like the following are associated with not liking whites: living in the South, less education, more income, more church attendance, and more political conservatism. Age and sex don't seem to matter. It's interesting that church seems to discourage racism among whites but encourage it among blacks.

What percent of whites don't like blacks?

I have a white friend who is married to a black woman. "Converts make the best zealots" certainly applies to this guy. He rants constantly that George Zimmerman proves that white racism is still alive and well. After reminding him that Zimmerman is Hispanic and that anecdote is the weakest form of  evidence, I bring out the big guns: the General Social Survey.

Respondents were asked in 2002 how warmly or cooly do they feel towards blacks as a group. Answers ranged from "very warm" (1) to very cool (9). Among whites (sample size = 2162), only 11.4% percent gave a cool answer (answers 6-9). Only 2.3% said "very cool." (Blacks were asked the same question, and 5.9% gave a cool answer for fellow blacks.)

Next, I calculated median education and income for whites giving cool answers. It is 12.0 years of school and the income range between $25,000 and $29,999. So whites that don't like blacks are, on average, uneducated, and they have low status jobs. They don't run anything and so are in no position to deny blacks jobs, etc.

While we're at it, 15.6% of blacks (sample size = 405) feel cool toward whites. Four percent answered "very cool." And the share of whites who are cool toward whites: 4.7%.

A black-white difference in cortisol level

A new study from Homones and Behavior reveals a black-white difference among children in cortisol levels throughout the day. A flatter diurnal slope is associated with more chronic stress and health problems.

As shown in the graph, whites wake up with a significantly higher level which then falls more quickly throughout the day. The different slope remains even when the following factors are controlled: age, gender, non-steroid medication usage, sleep, wake time, socioeconomic risk, psychosocial risk, perceived discrimination, harsh parenting, and parental monitoring.

Compared to blacks, the slope for Hispanics is more similar to whites, although Hispanics do have lower cortisol levels than whites by evening time.

The authors suggest that since morning levels of cortisol are known to be influenced by genes, the racial difference might be due, in part, to genetic differences.

IQ is more important than social class

This is a structural equation model of a cohort of Swedish men. It shows that IQ is an important determinant of income and especially occupational position.  Much of its influence is indirect: it is a strong predictor of educational level which, in turn, is a powerful determinant of both income and especially occupational position. Parent's social class, by contrast, is comparatively less important. It has little to no direct influence on income or job position, and predicts educational level only moderately.

A whole academic field--sociology--developed on the view that social class is of critical importance. If disciplines emerged as a result of empirical support, students could major in IQiology.

Why do wealthy white conservative women have more children?

In the recent post on the fertility of wealthy white women, a reader raised the question of why conservative women have more children. He suggested it was greater religiosity and less involvement in the workplace.

We can use OLS regression analysis to help answer the question. I included white women ages 40-59 in households earning at least $100k in 1986 dollars. First, I regressed the number of offspring onto political orientation. The unstandardized coefficient is .161 (p < .05) which indicates that conservative women have significantly more babies. If we include church attendance, the coefficient drops to .120. If, instead, we include hours worked last week, the political coefficent drops to .132. If, instead, we include years of schooling completed, the political slope falls to .131. (The correlation between education and conservatism among wealthy white women is -.16--liberals tend to be more educated.) If all three controls are included in the model, the results look like this:


Number of offspring (sample size = 231)

Conservatism .081
Church attendance .098*
Hours of work -.007
Education -.081*

*p < .05, two-tail


With the three controls included, the link between poltical views and number of offspring falls to non-significance. In this full model, number of hours worked also has no significant effect on fertility.  To put it in plain English, the data indicate that wealthy white conservative women have more children because they are more religious and less educated than liberal women.

One caution: education's effect is not the influence of IQ. Among this demographic, IQ is unrelated to fertility. The correlation between IQ and number of kids is .02--basically zero. Education's influence appears to be cultural.

Sexual selection and small female feet

This new study in Evolution and Human Behavior provides evidence that the smaller female foot length to body length ratio is due to intersexual selection. Evidently, men perceive small feet to be more attractive since they are associated with youth and thus greater potential fertility.

Fertility among wealthy white liberal and conservative women

The issue of fertility among wealthy conservative and liberal white women was raised at Steve Sailer's blog. I calculated the mean number of children for the two groups (ages 40-59, households making at least 100k in 1986 dollars):


Mean number of offspring

Wealthy liberal women (n = 35) 1.60
Wealthy conservative women (n = 43) 2.49

The difference is statistically significant. Wealthy white conservative women average 55 percent more kids than their liberal counterparts.

Are moderates smart?

The media gives the impression that only moderate Republicans are intelligent. The truth is that the dumbest spot on the political continuum is the center.

Using data on the GSS vocabulary test, I created an IQ score for all respondents. I've listed the mean IQ for those who voted for McCain, Obama, and those who describe themselves as moderates (sample size = 944).


Mean IQ

McCain 102.28
Obama 100.06
Moderates 97.72

The difference between people who voted for McCain and self-described moderates is statistically significant.

Catholics are NOT social conservatives

I scratch my head every time pundits refer to Catholics as social conservatives. As a group, they simply are not. Exit polls show that in the Michigan primary a plurality of Catholics voted for Romney, not Santorum. The church has little influence over parishioners.

Hispanics in the Arizona primary

How exactly does the Republican candidate who talks the toughest against illegal immigration get the highest share of Hispanic votes in the Arizona primary? I suspect that Hispanics are not quite as race-faithful as liberals wish they were.  Not to worry, folks: they'll vote for you anyway because that's what perennially poor people do.

Do blacks value education?

Elites, even many conservatives, think racial preferences are justified because blacks are disadvantaged due to a lack of culture which puts a premium on education. Bill O'Reilly said exactly that on his show tonight.

From the data I've seen, blacks as a group think getting educated is very important. The GSS asked respondents to list in order of importance those factors that should be used to determine an employee's pay. Only 103 blacks were asked this question, so I merged those who listed education as either first or second most important:

Percent thinking education is important for determining pay (sample size = 1,090):

Blacks 29.1
Whites 22.2
School teachers 24.1

More blacks think education is valuable than whites or even teachers.

Race and sex differences in infant digit ratios

This recent study examined 2D:4D digit ratios for 364 infants from birth through the second birthday. (Digit ratios are thought to reflect prenatal exposure and/or sensitivity to testosterone.) Six measures were taken: during the first month, the first and second birthdays, and both the left and right hands at each visit. I averaged the six measures for both boys and girls: Cohen's d for the difference between the boys'and girls' means is .167--a small difference.

The authors gave Cohen's d for the black-white differences for each of the six measures. I averaged them and got .383--a moderate difference with blacks being more masculinized. (The number might be an underestimate because they ignored the fathers and based racial classification on the mother's race alone. Mixed-race babies might have blurred the difference.) Anyway, in this study of prenatal testosterone, the size of the racial gap is more than double the gender gap.

Racial differences in childhood myopia

There is a stereotype of the nerdy Asian or white kid with thick glasses, but research presents a more complex picture of myopia (nearsightedness). Based on three studies of children (most are 11 or under) (here, here, and here), prevalence rates look like this:

Myopia prevalence among children

Chinese (Singapore) 40.1
Indians (Singapore) 34.1
Chinese (Malaysia) 30.9
South Asians (British) 25.2
Malays (Singapore) 22.1
Asian Americans 18.5
Hispanic Americans 13.2
Indians (Malaysia) 12.5
Black African Caribbeans (British) 10.0
Malays (Malaysia) 9.2
Black Americans 6.4
White Americans 4.4
British whites  3.4

So the ranking goes: Asians, Hispanics, blacks, and whites on the bottom--not quite the stereotype.

UPDATE: It looks like the black-white gap reverses by adulthood. More later...

More on the black-white difference in sexual dimorphism

Reader Fenris suggests that if I am interested in black-white differences in sexual dimorphism, I shouldn't look at indirect measure like life expectancy, but should investigate height differences. I thought I had done it previously, but turns out that it was blacks and Asians that I compared before.

To make the best comparison, it makes sense to look at populations with environments that are as equal as possible. How about young blacks and whites measured recently? In fact, the data indicate that racial differences have reversed in the U.S. over time. I used Fenris' source and also found a newer one.

Here is the black sex difference in height minus the white sex difference for different age groups and periods:

Ages 40-59 (1988-94) -1.4 cm
Ages 20-39 (1988-94) -.2 cm
Ages 20-39 (2003-06) +.7 cm

As conditions have improved for blacks, their sexual height difference has changed from being smaller than that of whites to becoming larger.

Jews and vegetarianism

OneSTDV and Half Sigma have been writing about the link between Jews and vegetarianism. That made me wonder if: 1) Jews as a group are more sympathetic toward not eating meat; and 2) if so, is it simply a reflection of their liberalism. Back when I was a liberal in college, I was a vegetarian for two years. (It sucked.)

Following Half Sigma, let's look a the GSS question, "And how often do you refuse to eat meat for moral or environmental reasons?" (This is a weird question. Most people avoid meat for putative health reasons.)

I reverse-scored the answers and regressed the numbers on whether someone is Jewish or not (sample size = 2,882). The standardized regression coefficient is .049 (p < .01) which means that Jews refuse to eat meat more often than others. Next, I looked to see if, among Jews, the tendency is related to religious commitment. The beta is .165 which suggests more abstaining with more religious service attendance (but the relationship falls short of statistical significance, probably because of the small sample--only 70 people) .

Finally, I added a measure of political orientation as a control to the model with the full sample.

Standardized Regression Coefficients

Jewish .041*
Conservatism -.097*

*statistically significant


Including political orientation does little to reduce the link between being Jewish and favoring vegetarianism, so the correlation is not just a reflection of liberalism; it appears to be a cultural difference.

By the way, I despise having to reassure people (I HATED Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate because he defended himself every other sentence) but I don't blame Jews collectively for anything, not even for Howie Mandel.

Another by the way--I really can't be too opposed to vegetarianism as an Orthodox Christian. I'm supposed to abstain from meat and dairy every Wednesday and Friday, and during fast periods like Lent. (I suppose I could blame the Jew Jesus for fasting 40 days.)

Are blacks more sexually dimorphic than whites?

We know that some species are more sexually dimorphic than others. Species with big differences are polygamous and are called "tournament" species (due to the intense male-male competition) while those with small sex differences are monogamous and are called "pair-bonding" species. (Small) differences might exist across human races as well.

One indication of the degree of dimorphism is the gender difference in life expectancy. According to the NCHS, current life expectancy is 80.6 years for (non-Hispanic) white females and 75.8 years for white males. So among whites, women live 4.8 years or 6.3 percent longer. Expectancies among (non-Hispanic) blacks are 76.5 for women and 69.6 for men. So black women live 6.9 years or 9.9 percent longer. I take this as evidence that blacks are more sexually dimorphic than whites. (Keep in mind that racial differences are reduced since American blacks have roughly 20 percent European ancestry.)

Scientific views and deviant behavior

In the Folly of Fools, Robert Trivers describes experimental research which shows that people are more likely to cheat after being told that behavior is determined by a combination of nature and nurture. The idea that scientific views corrode morals made me wonder what the GSS might tell us. I looked to see if biologists are more likely to cheat on their spouse. Only 15 of them were asked about cheating, but their numbers are similar to the general population. Twenty percent of male biologists and ten percent of females have strayed. The corresponding numbers for the overall population are 23 and 14.

Predictors of a big penis

I doubt that many Inductivist readers want to know how to predict which men have big penises, but what the hell. In a study of 3,762 college males, a list of characteristics reflecting the level of one's masculinity was found to be positively correlated with self-reported criminality. All these factors were also intercorrelated. Here are the correlations with penis length:

Correlations

Lower body strength      .386
Upper body strength      .378
Amount of body hair      .312
Strength of sex drive     .248
Physical strength           .248 
Masculine mannerisms   .231
Masculine body build      .222
Low-deep voice             .148 

So forget the stuff about big hands or big feet: Look for the strong hairy dude with the deep voice. But don't forget he might be a criminal, too.

Trivers on genes and mental traits

From Robert Trivers' The Folly of Fools:

By some estimates, more than half of all genes express themselves in the brain: that is, more than ten thousand genes. This means that genetic variation for mental and behavioral traits should be especially extensive and fine-grained in our species--contra decades of social science dogma.

Florida Hispanics don't care about illegal immigration

Here's one more bit of evidence that Hispanic "representatives" lie about their community being obsessed with the illegal immigration issue.

According to a Miami Herald poll of likely voters, Romney beats Obama by 16 points (53% v 37%) among Florida Hispanics. Now how does a Republican who says that all illegals should go home and get in the back of the line for legal permission to enter this country do so well among Latinos in Florida? Because they're mostly Cubans and Puerto Ricans who simply don't care about the illegal issue. Like other Americans, their first priority is more jobs. (Of course, Cubans care about Cuba, too.) Romney shows that you can talk tough about illegals and still win.  

Explanations of rape

Here's new research from Evolution and Human Behavior:

We use data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System to examine the effects of offender and victim age on whether male offenders commit sexual assault while robbing women. Restricting analyses to robberies reveals the offenders' age preferences since it allows one to control for the effects of opportunity. We find that robbers of all ages are most likely to sexually assault women at ages 15–29 years, ages when their reproductive potential is highest. However, in contrast to the idea that rape is a direct adaptation, victims are no more likely to be raped than sexually assaulted at these ages. The age of the offender is also a strong predictor of sexual assault. The likelihood that a robber commits a sexual assault increases from age 12 years until he reaches his early thirties when it begins to decline. This age pattern corresponds, to some extent, to age differences in the male sex drive.

The findings contradict the feminist theory of rape. Given a robbery, criminals are more likely to use the opportunity to sexually assault a female victim if she is young. According to feminists, rape is a way to put a woman in her place. If this were the motivation, I would expect men to target powerful women. A criminal would get a much bigger power rush from raping Hillary Clinton than a little 15 year old nobody. I imagine the feminist would respond that Hillary is a high-risk target--perps target weak victims because they are more likely to get away with it. I would agree with the view that rapists are opportunists, but that just supports a rational choice theory of rape.

IQ and drug use

New from the journal Intelligence:

One motivation for trying recreational drugs is the desire for novel experiences. More intelligent people tend to value novelty more highly and may therefore be more likely to have tried recreational drugs. Using data from a national survey, it is shown that intelligence tends to be positively related to the probabilities of having tried alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and several other recreational drugs. Evidence is also presented that those relationships typically disappear or change sign at high levels of intelligence. These patterns persist after accounting for a wide range of personal characteristics.

In addition to greater openness, the results point to hedonism among smart people. The authors speculate that drug use drops among those with the highest IQs because this is a rare trait that may be socially isolating (there is a strong social component to the consumption of drugs).

Race and self-enhancement

Robert Trivers claims in The Folly of Fools that blacks explicitly self-enhance but subconsciously feel that they are inferior. Consistent with this blog's analyses, Trivers cites research indicating that, when asked, blacks inflate themselves more than whites. But Trivers then describes studies that show that blacks implicitly associate whiteness with goodness and blackness with undesirability. They also perform worse on IQ tests when reminded that they are black. Whites, by contrast, associate whiteness with goodness and do a bit better on tests when reminded that they are white. Trivers explains this in terms of identfying with the oppressor: to reduce conflict, victims self-deceive and adopt the view of the exploiter.

In my view, Triver's goofy leftism runs him off the rails here. The fact is that whites are not the oppresors of blacks, and have not been for several decades. It is also a fact that whites are better suited than blacks to life in a civilized society. Perhaps blacks sense this inferiority subconsciously--which is revealed in these studies of subconscious attitudes--but their excessive self-enhancement is manifested consciously. This helps explain phenomena like clownish Afro-centrism. Or perhaps the truth is as simple as whites creating a dominant culture which minorites tend to absorb because it's the water you swim in. The culture doesn't portray whites as superior, but it is mostly made by whites. You might identify with the leader, not because he is exploiting you, but because he is the leader.

For whites, their subconscious self-enhancement is most simply explained as natural: if Trivers is correct, people naturally self-enhance unless there is something to override it.     
 

Do smart people lie more?

In his new book The Folly of Fools, Robert Trivers hypothesizes that smart people are more likely to tell lies. This surprised me since I usually assume that intelligent people tend to act more prosocially. According to Trivers, if you compare across species, deception increases with intelligence. Better deception and manipulation require more mental ability.   

Add Health participants (teens and young adults) were given a vocabulary test and were asked how often they lie to their parents about their whereabouts. I looked at the correlation between the two questions: it is a tiny .07 (sample size = 6,168). For males, it is a bit stronger--.10--while it is .only .05 for females. So, there is a tendency for smarter youths to lie more frequently, but it is very weak.

Anecdotally, I can see that my smartest child is the most dishonest.  His lies are pretty clever for a 4 year old.  A few more years, and he'll probably outsmart his old man. I'd like to think that I can teach him to be more honest, but behavioral genetic research makes me less optimistic.

By they way, Trivers seems to think that bright people not only deceive more; they are also more likely to self-deceive, which is contrary to what most intelligent people think about themselves.

Agreeableness and marital status among men

According to the Game theory of male/female relations (correct me if I'm wrong), women tend to control whether a relationship is made or continued, and her decision depends on the guy's alpha-ness. She won't want to be in a relationship if the guy is too agreeable. If this is so, I would expect disagreeable men to be more likely than cooperative men to be married. The MIDUS study measured Big Five personality traits and asked about marital status. I dichotmized this variable into married (1) and not married (0).  I looked at the relationship between the agreeableness scale and being married, and included age in the model as a control:


Logistic regression coefficients (sample = 1,788)

Age .01*
Agreeableness -.04

*statistically significant


Older men are more likely to be married, but being an agreeable guy doesn't hurt one's chance of marriage at all.

I suspect that the Game perspective is flawed by oversimplifying. As we learn from evolutionary psychology, women tend to look at men from two different perspectives: as short-term and long-term partners. They tend to be more attracted to the Alpha for short-term relationships but focus more on the Beta for marriage. Betas are at a disadvantage if they just want to get laid, but their cooperativeness does not appear to keep them out of long-term relationships. (Nor are they more likely to lose a wife through separation and divorce: the mean agreeableness scores for married, separated, and divorced men do not differ.)

Race, gender, and self-deception

In his fascinating book The Folly of Fools, Robert Trivers theorizes that people are very prone to self-deception in order to better deceive others to one's advantage. You lie more effectively if you believe the lie yourself. Since having status is particularly important for men, they are more likely than women to inflate their abilities. To test this, I looked at Add Health data. I examined the relationship between gender and self-described intelligence, controlling for objective intelligence (based on a vocabulary test). I also added race/ethnicity to the model to see if groups differ in the tendency to exaggerate one's intelligence. All minority groups are compared to whites (who serve as the reference category):


Standardized OLS regression coefficients (sample size = 6,169)

Objective IQ .32*
Male (vs. female) -.02
Black .17*
Hispanic -.02
Asian .02
American Indian -.01 

*statistically significant


First, people do have a tendency to rate their intelligence correctly--self-described intelligence is positively correlated with measured IQ--but the tendency is only moderate. Next, males are not more likely than females to inflate their smarts. By contrast, blacks are significantly more likely to--compared to whites. The other racial/ethnics groups do not differ from whites.

Regarding blacks, I'm not sure if this is a racial trait or something that is induced by living in a society with a high average IQ. Hispanics and American Indians have lower than average IQs, but do not inflate their intelligence more than whites, which makes me suspect that above-average boastfulness is a black thing.

One other item--the results do not support the claim that Asians underestimate their IQs (out of cultural modesty). The tendency for Hispanics to do so falls just short of statistical significance.

Religiosity and single-parent kids

With religion's prohibition against abortion, I wondered if religious people might be more likely to have children and not be married. Using GSS data, I looked at white households with minor-age children. Here is the breakdown of marital status by church attendance (sample size = 611):

Never attends
Married 54.1
Widowed 5.2
Separated 6.2
Divorced 17.7
Never Married 16.8

Attends weekly
Married 76.5
Widowed 4.9
Separated 2.0
Divorced 9.5
Never Married 7.1


Religious people with kids at home are more likely to be married, and are less likely to be separated, divorced, or never-married. All comparisons are significantly different except for the widowed category.

Racial differences in autism

Dr. Charlton asked about data concerning racial differences in autism. I merged the four National Health Interview Surveys from the past decade (sample size = 43,774) which yielded 193 autistic kids. The rate for whites is 4.5 per 1,000. It's 4.1 per 1,000 for blacks. I don't see much of a difference here.

Digit ratios and celebrity worship

A new study in Personality and Individual Differences looked at Korean teenagers and found that girls with more feminine digit ratios are much more likely to worship celebrities. The authors interpret this to mean that celebrity worship is a form of submissiveness seen in feminine girls ("feminine" meaning the girls were feminized by sex hormones prenatally):

The current study tested the hypothesis that digit ratios would be associated with celebrity worship, especially among adolescents. Our sample consisted of 45 male and 61 female participants aged 12–14 years (M = 13.20, SD = 0.71). We measured the digit ratios on the participants’ right hands and used the 23 items of the revised Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to explore the degree to which participants engaged in celebrity worship. The average digit ratio was 0.95 (SD = 0.04) among male participants and 0.97 (SD = 0.05) among female participants. The mean CAS scores were 50.06 (SD = 20.63) for male participants and 64.49 (SD = 18.04) for female participants. The digit ratios for the entire sample were positively correlated with CAS scores (r = 0.29, p < 0.005). However, the digit ratios were positively correlated with CAS scores among female (r = 0.51, p < 0.001) but not male (r = −0.13, p = .394) participants. Our research found evidence of a significant positive correlation between 2D:4D ratios and celebrity worship in females but not in males, which indicated that females with lower digit ratios were less likely to worship celebrities.

I thought it was a sexist society that makes girls but not boys go crazy for rock stars.

Religious preference and nihilism

The MIDUS Study asked participants if they agree that they have a sense of direction and purpose in life. Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree (7). Here are the means by religious preference (sample size = 3,978):


Mean nihilism score

No religious preference 2.54
Agnostic 2.49
Buddhist 2.46
Episcopalian 2.24
Atheist 2.23
Lutheran 2.22*
Roman Catholic 2.20*
Methodist 2.19*
Presbyterian 2.17*
Jewish 2.09*
Pentecostal 1.93*
Mormon 1.91*
Born-again Christian 1.90*
Jehovah's Witness 1.71*

*significantly lower than those with no religious preference


Lower levels of nihilism are associated with having a religious affiliation and especially with belonging to a more conservative faith. For example, the gap between those with no religious preference and Jehovah's Witnesses is more than sixth-tenths of a standard deviation--a fairly large difference.

Atheism and nihilism

I categorized GSS participants as atheists or non-atheists, and as nihilists or non-nihilists. Nihilists answered strongly agree, agree, or neutral to the question that life serves no purpose. With a sample size of 3,708, I found that 17.8 percent of atheists versus 8.2 percent of everyone else are nihilists. This difference is statistically significant. So atheism more than doubles the risk of believing that life is without purpose.   (On the other hand, the vast majority--more than 80 percent--of atheists believe life serves a purpose.)

Attitudes toward blacks by race/ethnicity

Drug Use Trajectory participants were asked: "Based on your experience, a person could be counted on to do what they say if that person was Black." Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree" (5). Here are the means by race/ethnicity (sample size = 1,795):

Mean "can't count on blacks" score

Whites 1.61
Hispanics 1.90*
Black Hispanics 2.28*
Blacks 2.88*

*significantly higher than whites

Blacks--both Hispanic and non-Hispanic--are much less likely to agree that blacks can be counted on. The gap in attitude between blacks and whites is huge--1.1 standard deviations. Whites have nicer views of blacks than Hispanics do, and they have a much more positive view of blacks than blacks have of themselves. So much for the idea that white attitudes make blacks feel bad about themselves.

Religiosity and tax fraud

Here's a study that uses World Values Survey data and finds that greater religiosity is associated with less acceptance of tax fraud:

Religion provides an important basis for social integration and the prevention of deviant behavior, such as tax fraud, a crime that costs society billions of dollars in lost revenue. The literature on tax fraud and tax fraud acceptability (TFA) has neglected religiosity as a social bond that may deter this type of behavior. Furthermore, existing work is based on the United States; there are no systematic cross-national studies. In particular, there is no research exploring the "moral communities" hypothesis that religiosity's effect on deviance will vary according to the strength of national moral communities. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature by analyzing data on 45,728 individuals in 36 nations from the World Values Surveys. We control for other predictors of TFA, including social bonds, economic strain, and demographic factors. The results determined that the higher the individual's level of religiosity, the lower the TFA. Results on the moral community's hypothesis were mixed. However, in a separate analysis of individual nations, the presence of a "moral community" (majority of the population identifies with a religious group) explained 39 percent of the variation in the presence or absence of the expected religiosity-TFA relationship. Furthermore, the presence of a communist regime in a nation, often known for the oppression of religious groups who then may view the regime as illegitimate, diminished the impact of religion on TFA.

Racial differences in antisocial personality disorder

A reader asked if I know of data on racial differences in psychopathy. I did find a sample of young adult South Floridians (called Drug Use Trajectories) which recorded DSM-IV diagnoses. Here are the percentages diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (APD) by race/ethnicty (sample size = 1,792):

Percent with APD

Non-Hispanic white 12.3
Non-black Hispanic 13.2
Black Hispanic 30.8*
Black 19.0*

*significantly higher than non-Hispanic whites


Blacks--both Hispanic and non-Hispanic--have significantly higher numbers than whites or non-black Hispanics. Keep in mind that many of the Hispanics in this sample are Cuban. The pattern of findings suggests that race matters, not ethnicity or culture.

Focus on money by political orientation

In his wonderful political novel The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that socialists obsess about their own money more than anyone. Anecdotally, the flaming lesbian socialist professor whose office is next to mine is constantly on the phone with someone talking about her investments. (I can see why she worries. She has a lot more money than the rest of us. Her salary is 20 percent higher than any faculty I know.)

The General Social Survey asked respondents who is in charge of family finances (sample size = 208). This might not be the perfect measure of concern for money, but it's the best one I could find.

Twelve percent of liberals compared to 24 percent of conservatives said their spouse takes care of the money. (Gender is not a factor. Also--most couples share the responsibility.) So, by this measure, twice as many conservatives don't focus on money.

Coulter on the best illegal immigration candidate

Merry Christmas to me when mainstream pundits start sounding like us race realists. From Ann Coulter:

In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently.

Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die.

But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back.

By the way, Ann goes on to conclude that Bachmann and Romney are the best on illegal immigration, but that only Romney can win.

Racial differences in felony sentences

Using various sources (NCVS, UCR, BJS), I put together three tables which help explain why state prisoners are roughly half black even though African Americans are only 13 percent of the U.S. population. The disparity is divided into differences in commtting serious violent crimes (i.e., robbery, aggravated assault, and rape/sexual assault), differences in the chance of arrest, and differences in the probability of conviction. (One limitation is that government statisticians are idiots and lump Hispanics in with whites, so "whites in the following table actually means "whites plus Hispanics.")

For all three types of violent crime, most of the racial disparity is due to blacks committing crimes at much higher rates. You might think this is obvious, but many liberals think the gap is due to a racist criminal justice system. Some of the difference in convictions is due to a greater black risk, given a crime, of being arrested. Some of this might be due to lower average black intelligence which leads to riskier crimes.

Finally, little or none of the racial gap is due to blacks being more likely to be convicted of a felony (which is likely to land one in prison for at least a year). In fact, given an arrest for rape, a white man is more likely to be convicted than a black man. This might be, in part, due to less willingness of African American  jurors to put a fellow black behind bars for a crime that can be difficult to prove. Or perhaps victims of black offenders--often black themselves--tend to be less reliable.

Overall, if liberals are bothered by the racial disparity in prison (myself, I care about punishing bad guys), the data suggests that they should focus on black criminality, not the system.

Study: Sex differences in brain volume are related to specific skills, not to general intelligence

A new study in the journal Intelligence of 100 Spaniard male and female college students reports that men, on average, have more total brain volume (TBV) and more gray matter volume (GMV), but these do not translate into higher general intelligence (g). Sex differences only appear for specific mental abilities. TBV and GMV are positively correlated with greater visuospatial skills (i.e., mental rotation). By contrast, higher specific verbal skills are associated with lower: 1) visuospatial skills, 2) total brain volume, and 3) white matter volume. From these results, the researchers conclude that larger male brains provide more total neurons needed for mental manipulation of 3D objects, while smaller female brains might work more efficiently to give enhanced verbal skills (that are unrelated to g).

Charlton's Thought Prison

Do yourself a favor and read Thought Prison: The Fundamental Nature of Political Correctness--a new book written by the distinguished scholar (and reader of this blog) Dr. Bruce Charlton.  I've read 500-page books before (e.g., Interpretation of Dreams) that taught me very little, but Dr. Charlton's 2-hour book might change your worldview.  If asked, many people might say that the most serious problem facing the West today is economic, but Thought Prison makes the compelling case that the ideology of political correctness will eventually destroy us. According to Charlton, there is a small chance that we can beat it with a populist Right movement, but the more realistic response is personal defiance. What does he mean by this? I'm not going to give the whole thing away. Read the book and find out. Then comment here if you feel like it.    

Homosexual voting over the past three decades

Have homosexuals moved left over time? According to the GSS, it looks like they have.  Shown below are the percent (of all gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians) who voted for the Democrat in the presidential election:


Percent who voted for the Democrat

Obama 88
Kerry 73
Gore 66
Clinton 75
Clinton 62
Dukakis 63
Mondale 57

The Democrat share rose from 57 percent in 1984 to 88 percent in 2008. It looks like the culture war may have pushed non-heteros to the left (although they started this period somewhat to the left anyway) .

Characteristics of smart people who don't go to college

In the comments section of the last post, reader SFG wonders about the characteristics of people who are smart but who do not go to college.

Using GSS data, I created a two-category variable where people with eight through ten out of ten questions correct on a vocabulary quiz but who never went to college are assigned a one, and everyone else is given a zero. Those in the first category make up about 11 percent of the total adult population surveyed over the past 40 years.

Next, I chose eight variables as predictors. Here are the logistic regression coefficients (sample size = 16,215):

Logistic Regression Coefficients

Year -.02
Age .02
Sex .42
Race 1.45
Father's education .03
Church attendance -.04
Political conservatism .01
Number of offspring -.03

All of the predictors are significantly related to the outcome variable except for political conservatism. So what is the profile of someone who is smart but went no further than high school?  I'll attempt to list factors from most powerful to least: older, white, being surveyed in earlier years, female, having an educated father, going to church less often, and having fewer children.

I also compared the mean incomes of the two categories. The smart group that didn't go to college made about $1,000 more a year than the average for the other group.

Many of the factors make sense. Older people from earlier cohorts were less likely to go to college, even if they were intelligent. The same for women. Blacks are much less likely to be bright people who fail to attend college. Having a successful father can sometimes open a good career path that requires no higher education. Perhaps irreligiosity indicates unconventionality. Political attitudes appear to have no effect on choosing to avoid college.

IQ and spanking

GSS respondents were asked: "Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking?" I assigned the following scores to answers: strongly agree (4), agree (3), disagree (2), and strongly disagree (1):

Mean spanking scores (sample size = 13,506)

Smart group 2.71
Mediocre group 2.98*
Dull group 3.05*

*significantly higher than smart group

There is a four-tenths of a standard deviation between the smart and dull group--a medium-size gap.  It is not clear to me that the view that spanking is never necessary is the rational one. Smart people do seem to be leading the charge against strict discipline.

Scientists, artists, and empathy

In The Science of Evil, Simon Baron-Cohen reports research that found that artists are more empathetic than scientists and engineers. I replicated this with GSS data. Respondents were asked how well does the following statement describe them: "Sometimes I don't feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems." Answers ranged from "does not describe very well" (1) to "describes very well" (5). I reverse-scored the answers so that high numbers reflect high empathy. Here are the means (sample size = 124):


Mean empathy score

Scientists/Engineers 3.34
Writers/Actors/Painters/Dancers/Musicians  3.77

This is four-tenths of a standard deviation difference--a medium-size gap--but it is not statistically significant.

Skin color and occupational prestige among blacks

As a follow-up to the last post, I looked to see if skin color among blacks is related to occupational prestige. Interviewers rated skin color from very dark brown to very light brown. Here are the mean prestige scores (GSS data, sample size = 454):


Mean occupational prestige scores

Very dark brown 28.3
Dark brown 28.4
Medium brown 35.3*
Light brown 33.2
Very light brown 42.7*

*significantly higher than the very dark brown group

Lighter groups tend to have better jobs than darker groups. This is consistent with the common observation that elite blacks often look like they have more European ancestry.

Skin color and desirable traits

Donald Templer and J. Phillippe Rushton have recently published a study of the 50 U.S. states which finds strong correlations among the following varaibles: skin color, IQ, infant mortality, life expectancy, violent crime, HIV/AIDS, and income. This pattern mirrors what Templer has observed internatioanlly. Skin color tends to be more strongly correlated to the list of variables than does income, so the authors conclude that this points to biology rather than economic environment as the more important explanation of the pattern of correlations. They rely on Rushton's life history theory and Lynn's cold climate theory to make sense of why the variables hang together, but whatever the explanation, there seems to be a worldwide pattern of desirable (or undesirable traits) running together, and this is closely associated with skin color.  

They review some interesting research by Ducrest et al. (2008) which found that in 20 wild vertebrate species, darker individuals are more aggressive, sexually active, and resistant to stress. They also tend to have a larger body mass and greater energy and physical activity. For example, darker maned male lions are reported to be more aggressive and sexually more active, and darker barn owls show stronger immune response. Darker coloration is associated with enhanced fertility, female sexual receptivity, male sexual motivation and performance, and higher levels of testosterone. Ducrest et al., however, cautioned that these findings might not apply to humans.  

I love American elites

Zbigniew Brzezinski said on Morning Joe this morning that the U.S. is the most socially unjust country in the world because our GINI coefficient is the highest in the world. He's close: We are 40th.

I love American elites. They import tens of millions of poor immigrants over the years and then point and say, "The U.S. is evil because it's so unequal!"

Rootedness of illegal aliens

Newt Gingrich says we shouldn't deport illegals who have roots here. The Pew pie chart shows that only 15 percent of illegal aliens have been here less than 5 years. According to the lower graph, 46 percent have minor children here in the country. By Newt's standard, few of the ten million (Pew's estimate) should be sent home.  (I love the term "unauthorized immigrant." That's like calling a burglar an "unapproved entrant.")

Predictors of wanting porn to be illegal

GSS participants were asked if they thought that porn should be illegal. I looked to see which characteristics predict answering yes (sample size = 12,246):


Logistic Regression Coefficients

Age .03
Sex .81
Educ -.04
IQ -.01
Income -.01
Church attendance .19
Conservatism .21
Year -.01

All the relationships are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level (two-tailed test).  Making porn illegal is favored by people who are: older, female, less educated, less intelligent, poorer, more religious, and more conservative. In addition, support for getting rid of the stuff has dropped over the past 40 years.

The coefficients are not standardized, so don't try to estimate the strength of a relationship from the numbers. Actually, it looks like the most powerful predictors are: age, religiosity, sex, and conservatism, in that order. I was surprised to see that almost half of women support banning pornography, and this number has changed little in 40 years.

Dana Carvey was on to something with his SNL "Church Lady." Funny stuff, but call me crazy: I respect old religious women.

Height and family size

A study reported by the BBC (H/T Jason Malloy) found that, contrary to expectations, tall men do not have the most children. Men of average height do.

I replicated the study with MIDUS data on 2,316 white men, and found the following:


Mean number of children

Tall men 2.43
Average men 2.57
Short men 2.46

The results are similar to the study's (the numbers are high because stepchildren and adopted children are included). The difference is attributed to average men marrying earlier. The thinking seems to be that taller men hold out longer before getting married--because of greater attractiveness--and end up marrying women who are also older and who have fewer married years in which to have children.

Which major has the smartest students?

Using GSS data, I calculated the mean IQ for people who graduated with degrees in popular majors (sample = 855)

Mean IQ

English 112.0
History 111.3
Law 110.1
Art 110.0
Political Science 107.9
Biology 107.1
General Sciences 106.6
Education 106.1
Communications 105.9
Math 105.6
Finance 105.4
Psychology 105.2
Marketing 105.0

Overall average 104.3

Liberal Arts 104.0
Engineering 103.8
Law Enforcement 103.8
Social Work 103.6
Business Administration 102.4
Computer Science 102.2
Health 101.9
Accounting 101.7
Nursing 101.3
General Studies 101.1

Keep in mind that IQ is measured with a vocabulary test which favors verbal intelligence. Notice how the smartest students tend to major in the least practical fields.

I divided majors into practical and not practical, and found a difference:

Mean IQ

Not practical 106.5
Practical 103.4

Smart people tend to choose majors which are least likely to translate into a job. This is another indication of how smart people are not necessarily the most rational.

Regional traditionalism and marriage among black men

Blacks seem to do a little better in more conservative regions.

Using GSS data for the nine U.S. regions, I calculated the Pearson correlations between: 1) the percent of black men who are married, 2) the mean level of church attendance (for all races), and 3) the mean level of political conservatism (for all races).

All correlations are positive and very strong: percent married/church attendance, .84; and percent married/political conservatism, .66. (While we're at it, the correlation between attendance and conservatism across the nine regions is .89. Religiosity and conservatism are, empirically, practically the same thing.)

Hispanics are now the face of American poverty

This graph from Pew shows that if the poverty rate is adjusted for such items as medical expenses, tax credits, and non-cash government benefits, Hispanics become the poorest large group of Americans. Over the past 45 years, we have imported a population which is now bigger and poorer than the black community. Our worst enemies could never have done this to us.

On the measurement of energy

Steve Sailer says, "It's unfortunate that social scientists don't seem to have a reliable quick test of energy the way they have tests of intelligence, since it's obvious that energy differs widely among individuals and is important in influencing life outcomes."

The GSS has asked participants the following: "How much of the time during the past 4 weeks did you have a lot of energy?" Turns out, the answers are roughly normally distributed (sample size = 1,409):


Percent having a lot of energy over the past month

All the time 10.4
Most of the time 34.5
A good bit of time 22.6
Some of the time 18.4
A little biit of the time 9.5
None of the time  4.6

And here are the correlations with several variables:

Age -.18
Education .12
Income .15
Occupational prestige .05

As expected, energy decreases with age, and is associated with more education and income. (The correlation with occupational prestige is trivial).

These findings provide evidence that this single item is not an invalid measure of energy. The correlations are small, but I would expect just that, given that we are measuring a trait at one moment in time that has exerted its influence over a lifetime.  Add to that the fact that energy level is probably not as stable over time as, say, IQ.

Like Steve, I see energy making a big difference. I would be a much more accomplished person if I had the energy. Reading my blog, you might think I have a preference for brevity. Truth is, I'm too lazy to write more. I'd like to do the research to find out how to boost my drive, but it makes me tired even to contemplate it. I'll lie down and let the impulse pass.
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I see that the J. Edgar Hoover biopic opens today. Why do I suspect that the Spielberg movie on MLK will not be quite as honest?

The fresh Penn State scandal and the old Catholic priest abuse scandal remind me of an important sociobiological truth: members of a brotherhood protect each other, even when they shouldn't.