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.