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7 ways to decode men
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How evolution can explain some of men's most perplexing patterns
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By Diana Swift
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Tell us what you think about this article in our relationships forum.
My husband is not by nature aggressive -- no road rage, no attacking parents from an opposing peewee baseball team, a loving father to his kids. But when it comes to hi-tech gadgetry, he's as competitive as they come, being the first to snap up the latest gizmo and assert bragging rights in the company of male colleagues and friends.
Then there's my dad. Although his idea of athletics was walking to his car, he'd spend hours in front of the TV screaming for the Montreal Alouettes and Canadiens.
Evolutionary pressures
Although such behaviours appear puzzling, they can be explained by gene-driven evolutionary pressures still at work two million years after we came down from the trees. Like my partner, men have evolved to compete fiercely over almost anything -- stemming from the demands of attracting females and the risks involved in hunting. "Look at how many more men there are in the Guinness World Records -- even if only because they amassed a ball of elastic bands as tall as they are!" says Helena Cronin, a British evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics. "They want to be the first and best at something."
Here's what Cronin and other experts think about what might be behind these perplexing male patterns. Of course, not all men do these things; many have health-promoting, culinary and decor skills that would be the envy of most females.
1. The doc-shy guy
Why do so many men avoid going to the doctor? (Mine has to bleed from the eyeballs before he'll seek medical attention.) In the intensely competitive social environment in which humans evolved, explains Jerome Barkow, a social anthropologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, males were risk takers who competed, often violently, for status. "In such a competition, does a male want to be perceived as weak and ailing? No, so today it may be that men are automatically protecting their reputations by not advertising their problems by seeing a doctor," says Barkow.
Given the dangers they faced, males also have evolved to be more focused on the near future rather than the distant future, argues Dr. Martin Daly, an evolutionary psychologist at McMaster University in Hamilton.
2. Watch for curves
Why are men so annoyingly attracted to Marilyn-esque figures with tiny waists and prominent hips and derrieres? Males have adapted to prefer mates who display physical characteristics promising more offspring (even if they don't realize it), notes Frank Marlowe, an anthropologist at Harvard University. Since the female hormone estrogen encourages fat to deposit on hips and buttocks, a lower waist-to-hip ratio is linked to a higher estrogen-to-androgen ratio and thus greater fertility.
Fat stores below the waist might have indicated that a female was better fed, healthier and again more able to conceive, carry a pregnancy and survive to nurture her infants.
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