How personality is related to sexuality

This new, large meta-analysis of 761 effects sizes with a sample of over 400k people looks at the relationship between personality traits sand sexuality. 

People who score high on neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety) are less sexually satisfied (r = .18) and have more symptoms of sexual dysfunction (r = .16). 

Extraverts engage in more sexual activity (r = .17) and risky sexual behavior (r = .18) and have less sexual dysfunction (r = −.17). 

People who are open to experience are more likely to be homosexual (r = .16) and to have liberal attitudes toward sex (r = .19). 

Highly agreeable and conscientious (i.e., self-disciplined) people are less sexually aggressive (r = −.20; r = −.14) and are less like to be unfaithful (r+ = .18; r+ = .17). 

So, if you're looking for a trustworthy partner who enjoys sex, your best bet is to find a person who is even-keeled, cooperative, and diligent. 

By the way, these traits are highly influenced by genes, so don't assume you can change someone into a desirable partner. A major theme among people who take genes seriously is, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG).

Details on wolves and coyotes

We saw in the recent post that a statistic, the fixation index, that measures the genetic distance between two populations indicates that Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans are as far apart as wolves and coyotes.

This is a useful comparison because, while it is hard for humans to look at race without bias, who cares about wolves and coyotes?

I looked at Walker's Carnivores of the World to see what is says about these two species. Notice how I used the term species. Canis latrans (coyotes) and Canis lupus (gray wolves). The simple fact that blacks and whites are different as two (closely related) species is stunning. Coyotes and wolves interbreed, but biologists consider them separate species. But let's get specific.

First of all, the two species are obviously similar. Many of the major traits one would think of for one species is true for the other: carnivorous, keen sense of smell, cooperative hunting, etc. The two species live out their lives in very similar ways. So do blacks and whites.

But the two species are for from identical. Wolves are much larger: head and body length are 1,000 to 1,600 mm compared with coyotes at 750-1,000 mm. Wolves' tails are 350 to 560 mm, while those of coyotes are 300-400 mm. Coyotes have a narrower build, proportionally longer ears, and a much narrower snout. At birth, coyotes average 250 grams; for wolves, it's 450 grams. Coyotes appear to reach sexual maturity earlier than wolves, and their maximum longevity is 1.5 years shorter (14.5 vs. 16 years).

You might counter that perhaps they differ physically, but the real question is behavior, and the two behave the same. Not so. Wolves are more social. They run in significantly larger packs, they engage in cooperative hunting more often and on a larger scale, and they target much bigger game. While coyotes focus on rabbits and rodents, wolves don't focus on anything smaller than a beaver. They take down deer, moose, wapiti, caribou, bison, muskox, mountain sheep, etc.

Coyotes focus much more on scavenging. They are more likely to hunt alone or in pairs, and will even partner up with a badger. The coyote uses his superior nose to sniff out a rodent, while the badger uses his superior claws to dig up the meal they split. Coyotes can prey on sheep, but wolves also go after larger animals that are important to humans: cattle and reindeer.

The home range of wolves is much larger: the book reports a maximum of 13,000 sq km for wolves, but only 80 km for coyotes. Wolves need much more space: They can't get more dense than one wolf per 26 sq km while coyotes get as high as 2 per sq km.

You might counter again that behavioral differences in animals may be influenced by genes, but humans are controlled by culture. Over the years, I've read a number of studies on the heritability of animal behavior. It's often been of rodents--not known for their rich culture. I was stunned to learn that human conduct is influenced by genes just as much as that of animals. Heritabilities for animal behavior typically run from .2 to .4. Studies often give heritabilities for humans higher than that.

To see who we are more clearly, we have got to look at ourselves like we look at coyotes and wolves; as animals, plain and simple.

UPDATE: To clarify, I suspect that the environment is not as important for animal behavior as the heritability studies suggest. For both human and animal studies, anything not genetic gets thrown into the environment component, but it likely contains a lot of measurement error, random noise, and other factors that probably cannot be changed like the term "environment" suggests.

Please show me the white privilege

This table was taken from this article titled, "Deconstructing White Disadvantage." These are percentages of 25-year-olds in England having a college degree. Please show me where the famous English white supremacy is?

Table 1: Proportion of 25 year-olds with degrees by social class of family at age 13/14.

Family class background	White	Black	Mixed	Indian	Pakistani, Bangladeshi	Any other	Total
Prof / mgnr	38%	41%	39%	67%	55%	68%	40%
Intermediate, routine	17%	39%	26%	43%	34%	39%	20%
Others	21%	41%	18%	46%	21%	28%	24%
Total degree	25%	40%	29%	49%	30%	48%	27%

Source: own analysis of ‘Next Step’ waves 1 and 8, previously known as the Youth Cohort Survey or the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE).[4]

Sex-Ratios and Rape

Here's an interesting article arguing that an excess number of males in an area drives more marginal men to compete with other men with high-risk strategies like rape. The graph below shows the correlation between a surplus of men and the rate of rape. The size of the relationship--.42--is moderate. Race is a strong state-level predictor of violence crime, but percent black should also be associated with a surplus of women. It would be good to see the sex-ratio/rape correlations with race adjusted for.

Wolves and coyotes

The fixation index, Fst, measures the genetic difference between two populations. From Greg Cochran's blog:

"According to wiki, Fst between Europeans (CEU) and sub-Saharan Africans (YRI) is 0.153.

"According to this study, Fst between North American wolves and coyotes is … wait for it..  0.153."

UPDATE: Was it the wolves or the coyotes who decided the wolf/coyote distinction was a social construction? 

UPDATE II: I see the same wiki article indicates the Chinese/sub-Saharan African Fst is .192.

A big black-white difference in a gene affecting the immune system

This new study looks at genetic differences in black and white women that affect immune system response. The top hit the researchers identified was a genotyped variant rs2814778, which is called the Duffy-null allele. 66% of black women carried the CC variant; 29% had the CT and 5% had the TT genotype. Compare this to white women: 100% of them have the TT genotype.

Now, the "experts" tell us race is not real. For example, they tell us that, say, whites differ among themselves much more than they differ from blacks. But look at this study: there is ZERO variation among whites, black women are fairly uniform too, and where they differ among themselves, it is due to having varied amounts of white ancestry.

It is widely thought that this geographic genetic diversity is the result of a strong positive selection for protection from malaria infection found in West Africa thousands of years ago. Blacks have faced different environments over tens of thousands of years, so what kind of researcher would claim that any genetic differences between blacks and other groups would be minimal or unimportant? Being able to survive malaria is pretty damn important, and the magnitude of the black-white difference in rs2814778 speaks for itself. The kind of researcher who would minimize and dismiss this is a dishonest researcher.

Trendy trends in identifying as a sexual minority

This Gallup poll is from a survey of over 300k Americans in 2017. You can see a dramatic uptick from 5.8% to 8.2% among Millennials identifying as LGBT over the past 5 years. Kinda dumb to lump the sexes: for all generations, 3.9% of men and 5.1% of women now identify as a sexual minority (table not shown). This is the first time I've seen women with higher numbers than men. Trendy trends on display.

Postjudice

I learned as an undergraduate in social psychology that "prejudice" refers to judging people before knowing the facts. I was told that it was bad to do that. Now young people are taught that it's bad to judge AFTER getting the facts; for example, making a judgment about a group after looking at data presented at this blog. I guess we need a new word for this transgression. "Postjudice" seems a bit awkward.

Group differences in gonorrhea

This new study examines US patterns of gonorrhea from 2000 to 2015. In 2015, there were almost 400,000 cases reported. Over the 16-year study period, there were 21 million cases. There are two distinct epidemics currently occurring in the US: one among young black heterosexuals, and one among men who have sex with other men (MSM). (Can we attach some meaning to the fact that MSM also stands for 'mainstream media'?)

Hispanics have an infection rate that is 1.8 times higher than among whites. For blacks, it's 9.6 times higher than for whites. Even though MSM's are a tiny sliver of American men, they account for 67% of all infections in males.

The authors claim that one's number of sex partners is an inadequate explanation for what we see. I'm sure there are other factors (e.g., differences in condom use), but gonorrhea rates have got to be an alternative to measuring sexual behavior with self-reports. Surveys don't indicate such enormous group differences, but the pattern of disease suggests that compared to straight white people, blacks and MSM's get around.

Oh the crushing power of Patriarchy!

Here's a table from a new AEI study that shows the US 2016 Bachelor's degrees by major and gender. My nieces and the female teens at my church were all encouraged to go into a STEM field, but I guess some sinister, mysterious force is hypnotizing girls to major in Family Sciences. Notice how almost 300,000 more girls than guys graduated with a degree. Oh how the Patriarchy is CRUSHING these girls!

UPDATE: Okay, I'll confess--I basically majored in Family Sociology. How low-T can you get!

Black-white differences in glaucoma

Glaucoma is a progressive condition caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors and is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is the most common form of glaucoma and is often associated with elevated intraocular pressure (IOP).

The additive heritability of POAG ranges from 24 to 42%. This new study analyzes data on 4,986 POAG cases and 58,426 controls from 4 race/ethnicity groups. The authors found 24 loci linked to POAG.

The authors found more than double the prevalence of POAG among African-Americans compared to whites--16.1% vs. 7.4%. (The prevalence for East Asians was 9.9%; for Hispanics, it was 7.9%). The figures below shows the relationship between genetic ancestry and POAG. 

Hold it--I thought, as Jonathan Marks instructs us, that race is a cultural and political phenomenon, not a biological one?

Teens who use marijuana around the time of sex are less likely to wear a condom

In a new meta-analysis of eleven studies, teens who use marijuana around the time of sex were only 62% as likely to use a condom as those not using the drug. One more reason why pot is dumb.

Are conservatives happier than liberals like Rush says?

You constantly hear Rush Limbaugh claiming that liberals are miserable people. Is this true?

The  General Social Survey asked 3,322 people: 1) who they voted for in 2012 and 2) how happy they are, generally speaking. Here's the breakdown:

Percent Very Happy
Obama Voters  27.9%
Romney Voters  36.8%

Percent Not Too Happy
Obama Voters  13.9%
Romney Voters  9.3%

Myself, I'm sad I voted for Romney. But it looks like Rush has a point even if he exaggerates a bit. Personality traits might explain the difference: Liberals are more prone to negative emotions, they are less conscientious (self-disciplined), and both of these predict less life satisfaction. 

My bet is that if I looked at social factors, I'd find that conservatives are more religious and more likely to be married, and both predict happiness (believe it or not). Maybe in a later post.  

Are immigrants superior to Americans?

David Brooks in a NYT's piece claims that immigrants are superior to Americans--they "outhustle" us. Is this true?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asks non-retired participants about their work status. Let's use full-time employment status as our measure of "hustlers." According to the data, 61.3% of white and 53.4% of black Americans work full-time. For immigrants of all races, it's 56.3%.

Where exactly is the mind-blowing hustle Brooks is referring to? I think Brooks is doing what liberals often do: take a black reality that's troubling and then pretend it's whites who have the problem. For example, private gun ownership is portrayed as scary, and images of white rednecks are drummed up, but progressives are actually afraid of blacks having firearms.

People like Brooks have an instinctive dislike of ordinary whites because this group is seen as actually being capable of organized nastiness, while brown people are not. He is wrong about this. I'm no historian, but I do seem to remember something about whites not doing very well in Haiti around 1791.  

New research on testosterone and behavior

A retired researcher friend asked for my help. He has been linking male sex hormones to behavior for more than three decades. Since he is retired, he has no access to students to volunteer as research participants. I can't help him because there is no way the IRB committee at my university will approve this study.  He needs volunteers to complete this 5 minute survey. Please help if you can, and invite others. We need the broadest sample we can get. Warning: you will need to measure a body part!  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NKBRYYR

UPDATE: Of course, this study is very exploratory. He wants to see if it looks promising. 

Addiction among American Indians

I ran across a new study reviewing the research on race and addiction. The authors find that: 

In these studies, both past year and lifetime rates of alcohol, nicotine, and drug use disorders were consistently higher in Native Americans and lower in Asians,with Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites in between. 

It looks like any theory of American Indians (AIs) that limits itself to alcohol (e.g., the notion that AIs have not been exposed to it long enough to adapt to it) is missing part of the story. Addiction to drugs in general tends to be more common in this population.

Also--the stark differences between Northest Asians and Natives--addiction differences being only one illustrative trait--show how quickly significant genetic change can occur (the differences surely can't be 100% due to environment). It's not like these groups split 100k years ago. 

Liberal men, sexist pigs?

I analyzed General Social Survey data a few years and showed that liberal women are more likely than conservatives to report being victims of sexual harassment. My take at the time was that liberal ideology makes women define normal sexual advances as inappropriate and abusive. But now I'm wondering if liberal women simply work around many liberal men, and liberal men simply lack the old-fashioned chivalry found more often among conservatives.


Here's a replication:

Percent reporting sexual harassment over past 5 years

Extremely liberal  23.7
Liberal  18.9
Slightly liberal  19.5 
Moderate  16.7  
Slightly conservative  19.3
Conservative  15.9
Extremely conservative  10.3

99 genetic loci related to IQ in a sample of 280k

Recent studies of the genetics of IQ have been AMAZING. The latest--posted just today--is a sample of 280,000 subjects, and it found 99 loci (and 9,714 SNPs) significant related to IQ. Many of these loci also predict information processing speed, general cognitive function and health variables. The picture emerging is that a well-functioning, healthy brain is a smart brain, and genes are responsible for much of it.  Intelligent people, for example, are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's.

The importance of self-discipline

The Alt-Right makes a big deal about IQ, and rightly so, but I just ran across this meta-analysis of dozens of studies that shows that the supertrait of conscientiousness--basically self-discipline--is just about as predictive of academic performance as intelligence.

Race and gang membership

I ran across this self-report study of youths in seven cities. According to my calculations, Hispanics are 3.3 times as likely to be gang members as whites. For blacks, it's 3.1 times more likely. And these estimates include a lot of wannabe gangsters, so the racial/ethnic gaps are likely to be larger among serious gang members. Not surprisingly, the researchers find that members of gangs commit a lot more crime than people not in gangs. Gangs are not just social clubs. 

Another look at ancestry and IQ

It's been a few years since I looked at verbal IQ data listed by ethnicity. It's important to look at recent data since so many immigrant groups have such small samples sizes, estimates are not very reliable. Using GSS data, here is the ranking of scores to a 10-point vocabulary quiz--a quick measure of verbal IQ. I omitted people not born in the US since the quiz is biased against non-native speakers:

Vocabulary Ranking by Ancestry

Austria   7.27
Russia    7.12 
Lithuania   7.08
Romania   6.95
Denmark   6.85 
England/Wales   6.84
Hungary    6.78
Scotland   6.75
Yugoslavia   6.73
Sweden   6.71
China   6.70
Norway   6.68 
Switzerland   6.65
Arab   6.61
Finland   6.58 
Greece   6.53
Czech   6.56
Ireland   6.46 
Poland   6.46
Japan   6.47
Italy   6.42
France   6.34
French Canadian   6.30
Germany   6.29
Belgium   6.28
West Indies   6.19
Portugal   6.18
Netherlands   5.99
Philippines   5.84
Spain   5.83
India   5.53
American Indian   5.31
Africa   5.16
Mexico   5.00
Puerto Rico 4.99

The pattern hasn't changed much since the last time I looked. What jumps out at me: 1) Mex-Ams and Puerto Ricans are still at the bottom, even lowers than blacks; 2) recent data indicates that American Muslims might assimilate better than European Muslims--the data here indicates that US Arabs are pretty smart; 3) Asian Indians (n = 40) still have a low average despite their reputation for intelligence; 4) it looks like southern Europeans don't do as well as northern Europeans (but Romania and Yugoslavia are high); and 5) central and Eastern Europeans might get a boost toward the top of the list by the large numbers of Jews (with a mean of 7.56) among their ranks.

And if you're thinking, this is just all environment, you're wrong: According to this meta-analysis, vocabulary is 62% genetic among children, and it is certainly higher than that among adults.

Oh, and if you think the differences are no biggy, again you're wrong: The gap between the top and the bottom is huge: well over 1 standard deviation. 

Does ignorance or familiarity breed contempt?

Does ignorance or familiarity breed racism against blacks?

To answer this question, I correlated how cool a white person feels towards blacks with the percent of the population in their region that is black (General Social Survey data). The correlation across nine census divisions is .48--a strongly positive correlation.

In other words, whites who live in areas with more blacks--an indication that one has had more actual experience with blacks--tend to feel cooler toward them.

The data suggests that familiarity breeds contempt, not affection. 

 

Conservatism does NOT predict hatred for blacks, but liberalism STRONGLY predicts hatred for conservatives

Using General Social Survey data, I calculated the correlation between conservatism and feeling cool toward blacks. It's practically non-existent--a trivial .07. Next, I correlated a correlation between liberalism and coolness toward conservatives. It's large--.45.

To put this in plain English, conservatism does NOT predict hatred for blacks, but liberalism STRONGLY predicts hatred for conservatives.

The polls suggest that most of the undecideds will go for Trump

Let's take another look at the Trump v. Hillary polls.

It looked to me like the polls that nudge people toward choosing one candidate or another--as opposed to giving some other answer like undecided, don't know, etc--tend to yield a smaller gap.

I calculated a correlation between the size of the gap and the percentage of people NOT saying Trump or Hillary for the 13 recent surveys listed on either RealClearPolitics or the Huffington Post. I threw them all in there, including the ones I considered to be not-so-great surveys.

The correlation is .38 which means of moderate magnitude. In other words, when techniques are used to get people to take a side, Hillary's lead decreases. When nudged, the uncommitted tend to go for Trump. To illustrate, 23% of Reuters participants fail to give either candidate as their answer, and this poll shows Trump behind by 7 points. With the UPI/CVOTER poll, which managed to get all but 4% to make a choice, Trump came out on top by one point.

So this seems like evidence that the undecideds are leaning Trump, and in the end, most will vote for him. 

These polls are closer to the truth: Gravis, PPP, Rasmussen, YouGov, UPI/CVOTER, LA Times/USC, and Zogby

The Huffington Post has a useful interactive website where you can compare poll results by several factors. I wanted to look a little closer to see if polls tend to be biased against Trump because some supporters are shy about admitting that they plan to vote for him, and that the methods fail to fully capture the enthusiasm for him.

What you see below is the average Hillary lead by poll characteristics:

Partisan/Registered Voters/Live Phone  11.0

Non-Partisan/Registered Voters/Live Phone  6.2
Non-Partisan/Likely Voters/Live Phone  7.3
Non-Partisan/Registered Voters/Non-Live Methods  5.9
Non-Partisan/Likely Voters/Non-Live Methods  4.8

You can see that partisan polls REALLY favor Hillary. Non-partisan polls that are otherwise the same produce a gap that is 4.8 points smaller (11.0 vs. 6.2 points).

Likely voter polls do not necessarily yield smaller gaps than registered polls, so there is no clear evidence here that registered voter polls are failing to capture the greater support for Trump. On the other hand, it is possible that there are more Hillary supporters who say they are likely to vote but won't actually do it because they can't get excited about her.


Finally, there is clear evidence that the gap shrinks when private methods are used so participants don't have to tell real humans their preferences. The gap shrinks .3 points for registered voter polls and 2.5 points for likely voter polls.

So, the most reliable polls use non-live methods. On the other hand, registered voters polls are not necessarily inferior at this point in the race. Still, it makes sense to give preference to likely voter polls since many registered voters will not actually vote. Based on this, the surveys to place the most trust in (at least the ones that come out frequently) are: Gravis, PPP, Rasmussen, YouGov, UPI/CVOTER, LA Times/USC, and Zogby.  Reuters should also be on the list, but my confidence in them has been shaken. The results are sometimes really weird, and of course, we've seen reporting that suggests they monkey with the data. The good polls indicate Trump is down 4 or 5 points.

The best polls indicate a small gap between Trump and Hillary

All the forces that hate Trump--the Dems, the Media, and the NeverTrumpers--are all chanting the phrase that Trump is toast, but the polls have seemed a little off to me for a long time. Audacious has addressed this kind of thing before. The Clinton lead seems to be larger in registered voter polls than likely voter polls, and the gap seems to be smaller with online polls. The first suggests more enthusiasm among registered voters for Trump, and the second suggests that some people might hide their preference for Trump from telephone interviewers.

I created a list of polling companies that were not off by more than an average of 1.5 points in the 2012 election that have also conducted polls in the last two weeks. I predict that the nationwide candidate gap will be largest for telephone surveys of registered voters, and smallest for online surveys of likely voters.

Three polls are live interviews of registered voters--IBD, CNN, and Marist. The mean is a lead of 10.3 points for Hillary.

One poll is an online poll of registered voters--YouGov. It gives Clinton a 7 point lead.

Reuters/Ipsos is the only online poll of likely voters that made my list.  Now Audacious and others have rightly criticized this survey, but I'm assuming they've gotten things straightened out over there. They give Hillary a 4 point lead.

Long story short, Hillary definitely seems to be ahead, but the best methodology produces a small gap between the two candidates, not a large one. And keep in mind that most media polls are of registered voters interviewed by telephone, so the gap is repeatedly exaggerated in the news.

UPDATE:  I checked Reuters latest poll, and it looks like their sample is 44% Democrats and 34% Republicans. That sounds biased to Republicans, but these kinds of numbers are used by polling companies that have been accurate in the past. Evidently, a big chunk of the country has screwy political views, and it's an uphill battle for us to win on the national level.  

Part of the reason Hispanics are so liberal is because they are young

I showed recently that some of the reason that Asians tend to vote Democrat is that they are, on average, younger than whites. Let's now see if this is true of Hispanics. Using GSS data, here are the percentage who voted for Romney in 2012:

Percent Voting for Romney

Hispanics
Ages 18-44  15.5
Ages 45+  24.1

Whites
Ages 18-44  47.8
Ages 45+  49.1

You can see than young Hispanics are very liberal. Older Hispanics are liberal, too, just a little less so.  The mean age of whites in 2012 was 49.4. It was only 40.9 for Hispanics, so they are a much younger group. Conclusion: Part of the reason why Hispanics are so much more liberal than whites is because they are younger, but even if their average age was that of whites, they would still be a liberal group.

Elites vote Democrat, not Republican

I'm tired of the old Democrat myth that the Republican Party is the party of elites. Looking at General Social Survey data, it's not surprising to see that only 24% of high school dropouts voted for Romney in 2012, but how many people with advanced degrees voted for him? A whopping 32%. Most highly successful people vote Democrat because their competitors aren't the poor. Their enemies are America's Middle. They seek an alliance with the poor so they have the numbers to subjugate ordinary Americans.