Data: There is NO sexual equality among men

According to evolutionary theory, sexually reproducing animals can invest more in parental effort (providing for offspring) or mating effort (pursuing copulations). The advantage of the first strategy is that the success one's offspring is enhanced; the advantage of the second is that one can potentially produce many offspring with little effort per child.

This theory would expect sex differences in the strategy taken, and it also predicts that some men will chase skirts while others will focus on being family men. Since evolutionary theory sees competition as fundamental, we would also expect some men to fail at either strategy.

Recently, there was a discussion about whether the losers feel so aggrieved that they might, like the poor, act out with violence and begin to organize politically to gain sexual equality.

This sounds like joke, but a recent analysis of high school data, motivated by the discussion, concluded that sexual inequality is a myth. It's funny how analysts can so easily dismiss hypotheses derived from the only theory of humans we know is true with one cherry-picked data set of high school kids, many of whom are not mature enough to have even entered the "sex market," but hey that's the state of contemporary social science.

I will avoid cherry-picking by doing what I always do -- relying on the General Social Survey to answer empirical questions.

The focus seems to be young men, so I limit the analysis to those ages 18-30. Here are estimates (N = 3,201):

First, trends seem pretty stable for the past four decades, but, do you see sexual equality here among men?  I don't.  If we remove the gay men, 12.7% of men ages 18-30 had ZERO partners last year; 60.2% had one; 14.2% had two; 9.5% had three; 6.5% had four; 7.0% had 5-10; 1.8% had 11-20; 0.5% had 21-100; and 0.1% had 100+ (if you believe them). If this looks equal to you, you can borrow my glasses.

What emerges here and typically with other data (unlike others, I don't ignore the body of research) is what we could call the "Sexual 1 Percenters." Many men have zero partners, while others have dozens. And even the difference between 0 and 1 is enormous enough.

Massive inequality! But liberals, the implacable enemies of inequality, yawn because the affected group are men.

UPDATE: Another approach appears to be to look at these kinds of numbers, and to simply deny there is inequality there. I will use this strategy the next time an employee complains that my salary is double his. My response will be, "For all intents and purposes, Tom, we make the same."

Which religion holds on to its members best?

The General Social Survey asked Americans their religion at age 16 and also at their current age. The first number you see includes results from 2000 to 2016 (N = 22,659), and the next number shown in parentheses refers to the period 1973-1999 (N = 36,286):

Percent of members not changing their religion
Jewish  81.7  (85.1)
Protestant  79.9  (89.2)
Hindus  71.1  (40.0)
Islam  69.4  (60.0)
Catholic  68.5  (80.2)
Orthodox Christian  68.4  (80.8)
None  59.2  (47.8)
Buddhism  55.0  (66.7)

First, most people do not switch, but Jews switch least.  You'd expect Protestants to be toward the top since they are a huge group, and one could switch from one denomination to another and still say he didn't switch away from Protestantism. This is not the case for small groups like Jews. It is impressive that members of some small groups, surrounded by a sea of people from other faiths, tenaciously hold on to their religion. I consider this to be a measure of a group's chauvinism.

Look how the general trend has been more switching in the more recent period. Don't trust percentages for small groups because they are based on tiny sample sizes. By contrast, the greater tendency of "Nones" to stick with their non-affiliation is probably real. More switching by people who grew up Catholic also seems to be a thing.

When people switch, where do they go? Let's list the modal category for the later and earlier period (in parentheses):

Most popular (non)religion to which one switches

Jewish  None  (None)

Protestant  None  (None)

Hindus  None  (None)

Islam  None  (None)

Catholic  None  (Protestant) 

Orthodox Christian  Protestant  (Catholic or None, tied)

None  Protestant  (Protestant)

Buddhism  None  (None)

In both time periods, the most common switch is to no religion. Quite a few Nones switch to Protestant in both periods -- I assume this is often evangelical.  The numbers are too small to make anything of the Orthodox pattern, but Catholics used to most commonly switch to Protestant, but now are more likely to switch to nothing.

Keep in mind that all this switching to no religion doesn't mean people drop all religious belief and practice.  In the latter period, 58.1% of Nones pray. There has been an increase in disbelief but also an increase in the deinstitutionalization of belief. (On the other hand, 88.6% of Nones prayed in the earlier period.)

Best 2018 movie scene

Thanks to Steve Sailer, I learned that the Coen Brothers were coming out last Friday with a new Western on Netflix. This scene split into two parts is the best I have watched in some time. I wish they started the first clip a couple minutes earlier, but you'll get the idea.  It's just so real, so un-PC, and reminds us how heroes used to be portrayed by Hollywood: fearless, capable, and chivalrous.   

Data: Which ethnic groups think art should aim for beauty?

Americans participating in the General Social Survey were asked by interviewers: "Please tell me which statement is closest to your opinion: 1. Art works should celebrate what is most beautiful about the world and the human spirit 2. Art works should freely express the artist's deepest thoughts and emotions, good or bad."

Here are the percent who agreed with the beauty option, listed by ethnic background (at least 25 respondents):

Percent agreeing that art should aim for beauty (N = 1,389)

Mexican  59.7

American only  51.7

Black  48.7

American Indian  43.1

German  38.2

Scottish  37.5

Whites  37.0

Irish  33.9

Italian  35.4

English  30.7

French  30.0

Polish  29.6

Jewish  0.0

There is a tendency for smarter groups to favor the "expression" school of art.  Look how zero Jews (n = 25) prefer beauty. (This reminds me of the anti-Semitic belief that Jews are responsible for ugly art.)  I suspect that more intelligent individuals are influenced by the elite view that beauty is old-fashioned. 

I stand proudly with my less enlightened brothers. Who cares about an artist's "deepest thoughts and emotions"?  Confessions by Jeffrey Dahmer would be fascinating, but it's not art.  Now, if it's Nabokov putting sublime language into the mouth of a hebephile, that's art because the words are beautiful. 

Beauty takes many unexpected forms, some of them very dark, so don't think that I am arguing for the Thomas Kinkade school of art.  His paintings are beautiful like Smarties are delicious.  I'm sure those of us who favor beauty would often disagree about what is beautiful.   

    

 

Data: People who waiver in their belief in God have the lowest self-esteem

Over the years, I've done a number of analyses that indicate that the psychologically most healthy people are both atheists and people who know God exists. The groups in the middle who are uncertain about God are, for example, less happy and are more likely to drink too much.

General Social Survey participants were asked how often did they feel worthless in the past 30 days.
Answers ranged from "all of the time" (1) to "none of the time" (5). Here are the means for a sample of 1,218 people:

Mean self-esteem score

Don't believe  4.88
No way to know  4.49
Some Higher Power  4.57
Believes sometimes  4.09
Believes but doubts  4.55
Knows Gods exist  4.63

Atheists have the highest mean, while confident believers come in second. At the absolute bottom are those who believe sometimes. This group is one standard deviation lower than atheists, which in English means a huge difference.

This is the pattern we've seen previously. The confident on either side are psychologically better off than those in the squishy middle. Personality might explain this. Decisive, confident people trust their abilities, and if they take a position on God, dammit they know they're right.

People who frequently doubt themselves also doubt their beliefs. One's uncertainty about oneself seems to go hand-in-hand with uncertainty about everything else.  

Also--these results contradict the view that atheists will have a low view of themselves because they are likely to believe they are the accidental product of natural forces, not the children of God. Personality seems to be much more important than people realize.  Self-esteem seems to be in your brain, not your beliefs.

Data: Liberals are more dishonest than conservatives

With all the vote counting shenanigans we see going on now, are liberals simply more dishonest people than conservatives? The short answer is, yes.

The General Survey asked participants, "Do you feel it is wrong or not wrong if a taxpayer does not report of all his income in order to pay less income taxes."  Let's compare answers for those who describe themselves as "extreme liberals" with those who are "extreme conservatives."  Percent answering tax cheating is wrong (extreme libs/extreme conservatives, sample size = 2,396) Seriously wrong 10.9/43.7 Wrong 60.0/43.7 A bit wrong 21.8/5.6 Not wrong 7.3/7.0 Conservatives are much more likely to think cheating on one's taxes is seriously wrong (43.7% vs 10.9%), while liberals about 4 times more likely to think it's only a little bit wrong. I'd bet money many liberals feel voter fraud is only a "little bit wrong," and that it's actually righteous if it strikes a blow against Orange-Headed Lucifer. UPDATE: Look at Hollywood, for example. Does anyone disagree that Hollywood has more per capita liars than any city in the world? Okay, maybe Washington, DC does, but both places are crawling with liberals.

High vs low mating success among never-married men

This graph displays the number of sex partners since age 18 for never-married men ages 30-39.  You can see that this is a very diverse group.  More than 10% have had zero partners ("40 year-old virgins"), and 41% have been with five or fewer.  By contrast, 35% report a dozen or more partners.

If we divide these men into a low (0-5) and high group (12+), the median for the low group is 2, and it's 25 for the high group. That's 12.5 times more women than the low group.

The high group --roughly one-third of never-married men -- looks like it is following the high mating effort strategy that was discussed in the last post, while the low group, with a median of two women, seems to be doing poorly at any strategy.  

Do men with a history of many sex partners avoid marriage?

According to evolutionary theory, there is a tradeoff between mating effort and parental effort. If you put more time and energy into pursuing sexual partners, this is less time and energy to devote to raising children. High mating effort or high parental effort are seen as alternative "strategies."

So, are men with lots of sex partners less likely to be married -- a measure of parental effort? Or is it generally the case that men with many partners follow a combined strategy of marriage plus lots of women? And on the low side, does a man with undesirable traits have few partners and fail to convince a woman to marry him?

The General Social Survey asked men how many sex partners they have had since 18, and they asked about current marital status. Let's focus on men in their 30s. Here are the mean number of partners (I exclude men who say more than 100 because these outliers throw off the mean) by marital status:

Mean number of sex partners since 18 (N = 2,827)

Never Married  14.2
Married  9.0
Widowed  6.6
Separated  14.8
Divorced  17.1

Widowed and married men have had the fewest partners, while never-marrieds and separated/divorced have had the most. Put very roughly, the anti-marriage group has had double the partners compared to the pro-marriage group.

I suppose you could argue that marital status is driving the number of sex partners rather than reverse -- the idea being that marriage reduces promiscuity -- but the average never-married has been with as many women as the typical separated guy. It looks to me like men who are good at getting partners avoid marriage or are weakly attached to it. Many of them do get married, but it's less likely to last. There does seem to be some tradeoff going on here.
 

Because of mass immigration, the US is becoming a second-rate country

Anyone who pays any attention to trends in intelligence knows that the average American IQ is falling. We're down to perhaps 97, and if current immigration trends continue, we'll probably be in the mid-90s by mid-century.

What does a country look like when it has around a 95 mean IQ?  Looking at a world table, I see the following: Argentina (93), Bosnia (94), Bulgaria (93), Greece (92), Israel (95), Hungary (97), Italy (97), Kazakhstan (95), Malaysia (92), Poland (95), Portugal (95), Russia (97), Slovakia (96), Slovenia (96), Ukraine (95), and Uruguay (96).

Take your pick: it doesn't look good for the US. And we're becoming much more ethnically diverse than many of these countries. Ethnic diversity generates identity politics and ethnic spoils systems, which will only add to the dysfunction.

China with its 105 IQ is smiling.

Pew Study: Jews are the most beloved religious group

This is an interesting graph from a new Pew study. It gives the average warmth score for various religious groups as rated by various religious groups.

In the wake of the Pittsburgh shooting, the main number that jumps out me is that Jews are the most beloved of all groups (not counting warmth towards one's one group). People who dislike Jews are a tiny slice of American society.  Not surprisingly, Muslims are the least liked religion. Black Protestants like them best, probably because many American Muslims are black.

If you thought atheists were the enlightened lovers of humanity, you were wrong. The lowest mean on the graph is the feeling of atheists toward evangelical Christians. There is a good strong streak of hatred among "brights." Evangelicals don't like atheists either, but every educated person knows to expect this from Neanderthals. Atheists also have a strong dislike of Mormons. Every intelligent person knows Mormons are awful, awful people. Agnostic folks are clearly warmer people than atheists.

Jews give high numbers. My impression is that Jews do tend to have warm feelings toward others, or at least they express how one should feel. Who would have thought that one of the highest numbers on the graph (except numbers given for one's own group) is how Jews feel toward Catholics?