Getting the babes but not the babies

 

Still from the film Is Matrimony a Failure? (1922). Who's making more babies? "Good boys" or "bad boys"? Originally, the good boys were, thanks to parental monitoring of relations between single men and single women. The pendulum then swung toward the bad boys in the 1940s, only to swing back after the 1960s.

 

A recent Swedish study has found that "bad boys" are outbreeding "good boys":

Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. Importantly, the increased reproductive success of criminals was explained by a fertility increase from having children with several different partners. (Yao et al., 2014)

This study has been much talked about, yet few people have noticed its one big flaw. Sweden has many citizens of foreign origin whose crime and fertility rates exceed those of the native population (Crime in Sweden, 2014; Landes, 2008). Reproductive success may thus correlate with criminality simply because both tend to be higher among non-natives than among natives. Admittedly, this alternate explanation had been foreseen by the authors of the study and they tried to correct for it:

We included variables potentially associated with both criminal and reproductive behavior as covariates. [...] Immigrant status has been associated with both rule breaking, primarily through associations with other familial and socioeconomic risk markers (Moehling & Piehl, 2009), and adherence to cultural norms influencing fertility and monogamy-related outcomes (Coleman, 2006). The migration register provided information on immigrant status defined as being born in Sweden or not. (Yao et al., 2014)

Unfortunately, country of birth is no longer a satisfactory proxy for cultural identity, at least not in Sweden's case. There is now a large Swedish-born population that self-identifies as Pakistani, Somali, or Afghan, including the youths who rioted in Malmö last year. The Swedish crime rate is influenced almost as much by the Swedish-born of foreign background as by the foreign-born:

During the period 1997-2001, 25% of the almost 1,520,000 offences for which a perpetrator was convicted were committed by people born in the Middle East or Eastern Europe, while almost 20% were committed by people with a foreign background who were born in Sweden. (Crime in Sweden, 2014)

If we could examine only people of Swedish descent, I doubt reproductive success would still correlate with criminality or, more exactly, with a tendency to "love and leave" one woman after another. Such a correlation used to exist in the U.S. but disappeared almost half a century ago. This was the conclusion of Jason Malloy and JayMan (2012) when they used General Social Survey data to find out the number of children fathered by monogamous men ("good boys") versus men who had several female sex partners ("bad boys"). It seems that the reproductive success of bad boys has varied a lot over time:

 

Men born before 1920 - courtship under parental supervision 

In this cohort, good boys were the top breeders. No need to think hard to find the reason. Any man wishing to meet a single woman, other than a prostitute, had to run a gauntlet of parental supervision. The preferred form of courtship was still "calling." If a woman struck your fancy, you could "call" on her at her home. If she and her parents were favorably impressed, you could come back for further visits and eventually start taking her out to social events. Otherwise, that would be the end of it. A more direct approach could get you in big trouble, as a reference book for American lawmakers explained in 1886:

The state should punish, not only treacherous inducements to incontinence or to unchastity when accompanied by the violation of particular duties, and the seduction of minors, or girls under sixteen, but also seduction when it assumes a character dangerous to the interests of the community. It is not the duty of the state to make the individual moral, or to protect her against temptations to immorality; but it should endeavor to prevent all acts of immorality calculated to poison family life and the life of the nation. (Lalor, 1886, vol.III, p. 211)

The concern here is not just venereal disease, but also a family's genetic heritage. In the 19th century, people believed that a part of their essence was reincarnated in their children and grandchildren. Their concern over sex was fueled not by irrational hang-ups but by a very rational desire to maintain the integrity of their family line. Bad boys threatened that integrity, and it was not for nothing that many ended up in jail ... or at the end of a rope.

 

Men born between 1920 and 1939 - rise of dating, illegitimacy, and adoption

In this cohort, bad boys were the top breeders. Parental supervision had slackened with the replacement of calling by dating, thus creating new opportunities for them to sow their seed. A sharp rise in illegitimacy led to a sharp rise in adoption:

[...] The period 1945 to 1974, the baby scoop era, saw rapid growth and acceptance of adoption as a means to build a family. Illegitimate births rose three-fold after World War II, as sexual mores changed. Simultaneously, the scientific community began to stress the dominance of nurture over genetics, chipping away at eugenic stigmas. In this environment, adoption became the obvious solution for both unwed mothers and infertile couples. (Adoption, 2014)

Adoption had previously been very rare. As late as 1923, only 2% of children without parental care ended up in adoptive homes, the others going to foster homes or orphanages (Adoption, 2014). And a large chunk of that 2% involved adoptions between related families. These statistics are mirrored by my family tree: whenever children were left with no provider, they would be adopted by an aunt or an uncle or placed in a foster home. In those days, changing your family identity was as unthinkable as changing your religion or nationality.

To deal with the surge of illegitimacy, progressive-minded people now turned toward a seemingly great idea. On the one hand, there were babies abandoned by deadbeat dads. On the other, there were middle-class families with loving homes. Why not transfer these babies from the dads who don't love them to the ones who can?

The 20th century is littered with great ideas that proved to be not so great. Adoption is no exception. One negative outcome, which could have been foreseen, is that adopted children tend to replicate the psychological profile of their biological fathers. In one study, Gibson (2009) notes:

Adoptees were more likely than genetic offspring to have ever received public assistance, been divorced or been arrested. They also completed fewer years of schooling and were more likely to have ever required professional treatment for mental health, alcohol and drug issues.

[...] This supports other research showing that, compared to genetic children, American adoptees have a higher overall risk of contact with mental health professionals, specifically for eating disorders, learning disabilities, personality disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [...] They also have lower achievement and more problems in school, abuse drugs and alcohol more, and fight with or lie to parents more than genetic children [...]

These problems are not due to adoptive parents shortchanging adoptees. In fact, the reverse seems true:

This study categorically fails to support the hypothesis that parents bias investment toward genetically related children. Every case of significant differential investment was biased toward adoptees. Parents were more likely to provide preschool, private tutoring, summer school, cars, rent, personal loans and time with sports to adopted children. (Gibson, 2009)

Adoption does seem to improve the behavior of these children. It lowers their risk of committing violent crime, although they remain just as likely to commit other offences:

The possibility that genetic factors are among the causes of criminal behavior was tested by comparing court convictions of 14,427 adoptees with those of their biological and adoptive parents. A statistically significant correlation was found between the adoptees and their biological parents for convictions of property crimes. This was not true with respect to violent crimes. There was no statistically significant correlation between adoptee and adoptive parent court convictions. Siblings adopted separately into different homes tended to be concordant for convictions, especially if the shared biological father also had a record of criminal behavior. (Mednick et al., 1984)

With respect to intellectual capacity, adoptees likewise seem to benefit from their new homes, although the benefit tends to wash out over time. When children with two white biological parents were adopted into white middle-class homes, they initially did somewhat better than their non-adopted siblings, as seen on IQ tests at the age of 7. By the age of 17, however, the situation had reversed, with the adoptees falling behind their non-adopted siblings in terms of IQ, GPA, class ranking, and school aptitude (Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, 2014).

Clearly, adoptees are getting some benefit although the benefit is less than what some may think. It also comes at a price. When the family unit is reoriented toward social welfare goals, it can no longer serve its original purpose of perpetuating a genetic heritage.

 

Men born after 1939 - separation of sex from reproduction

In this cohort, good boys have once again been the top breeders. This might seem counterintuitive. After all, sexual morality has become even more liberal since the 1960s, and this change has paralleled a growing infatuation with thuggish males in popular culture. Yet something seems to have kept bad boys from translating their sexual success into reproductive success.

That "something" is easier access to contraception and ... Roe v. Wade. More and more good girls are making out with bad boys, but fewer and fewer are making babies with them.

Pro-lifers see this as proof that pro-choicers are secret eugenicists. I think it's just an unintended consequence. Paradoxically as it may seem, modern culture is favoring the reproduction of stable couples who plan for the long term and invest in their children. 

Just think. What is the core message of modern culture? It's live for today, live for yourself, and avoid long-term commitments, such as family and children. And who responds the most to that message? It's people whose time orientation is already focused on the present and who already invest as little as possible in their offspring. Modern culture is sterilizing those individuals who are most susceptible to its message.

And so, when it comes to having babies and raising them to adulthood, America's white middle class is slowly but surely closing in on first place (Frost, 2012).

 

Conclusion

Perhaps this is all for the best. What other choices are there? Conservative politicians talk a lot about traditional values, but not one in ten believe what they say. To judge by their personal lives, many seem happy with the current climate of sexual permissiveness. Anyhow, if conservatives really do try to turn back the clock, their efforts will be blocked by the libertarian right and the liberal left. And if they manage to outflank both groups, they'll be lucky to take us back to the policies and practices of the 1950s. Unfortunately, this is one case where half-measures will make things worse. We've come to where we are because of the 1950s. 

So what political option is left for someone like me? I wish to preserve our existing genetic heritage, if only because we don't fully understand what we are about to lose. If you feel the same way, the best course of action seems to be the present one of separating sex from reproduction. Call it "tactical liberalism" if you wish, but I see no other realistic alternative.

 

References 

"Adoption" (2014) Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption 

"Crime in Sweden" (2014). Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden  

Frost, P. (2012). Obama: White America's bogeyman? Evo and Proud, November 24

http://evoandproud.blogspot.ca/2012/11/obama-white-americas-bogeyman.html  

Gibson, K. (2009). Differential parental investment in families with both adopted and genetic children, Evolution and Human Behavior, 30, 184-189.

http://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/media/Course_files/anth-260-edward-h-hagen/evil_step-parents.pdf 

JayMan. (2012). Some guys get all the babes - not exactly, JayMan's Blog, November 8

http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/some-guys-get-all-the-babes-not-exactly/ 

Lalor, J.J. (1886). Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, Chicago: A.H. Andrews & Co.

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=AsM6AAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Cyclopaedia+of+Political+Science,+Political+Economy,+and+of+the+Political+History+of+the+United+States&ots=VqItRo_7kY&sig=aL3srydNpIpMoKOlKnd5gXqnp0g#v=onepage&q=Cyclopaedia%20of%20Political%20Science%2C%20Political%20Economy%2C%20and%20of%20the%20Political%20History%20of%20the%20United%20States&f=false  

Landes, D. (2008). Higher birth rates among Sweden's foreign born, The Local, November 3

http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15408

Mednick, S.A., W.F. Gabrielli Jr., & B. Hutchings. (1984). Genetic influences in criminal convictions: evidence from an adoption cohort, Science, 224, 891-894

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/224/4651/891.short  

"Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study" (2014), Wikipedia

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/224/4651/891.short

Yao, S., N. Langstrom, H. Temri, and H. Walum. (2014). Criminal offending as part of an alternative reproductive strategy: investigating evolutionary hypotheses using Swedish total population data, Evolution and Human Behavior, in press

http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2814%2900077-4/abstract

What happened in the 1980s to reaction time?

 

A steady increase in reaction time seems to begin circa 1980 in Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States (h/t to hbd* chick)

 

Has reaction time been steadily increasing from generation to generation? This was the finding of a paper last year, which argued that mean IQ had fallen in Britain by 13 points since Victorian times (Woodley et al., 2013). The problem here was not the extrapolation from reaction time to IQ, which in any case should not have changed over the past century. The problem was the possibility of sampling bias. The early samples (from the Victorian age) were slanted toward people of elite origin. In one case, they were University of Chicago students; in the other, museum visitors who had paid to take the reaction test. In contrast, the recent samples were much more representative, largely because the educational system had become more universal. Thus, the drop in reaction time over time may be largely, if not wholly, an artefact of better sampling of the general population (hbd* chick, 2013).

This criticism seems less applicable to a study of this drop in more recent times. This study was presented as a conference paper and only the abstract is available. But it does seem interesting:

Here, we show that change in genetic intelligence can be estimated, independently of the Flynn effect, by way of simple reaction time (RT). Data from three studies with different samples from Sweden, UK, and USA converge at an RT increase of 0.7-0.9 ms per year, which corresponds to a decrease in intelligence of between 4 and 5 IQ points per generation, or 1.3-1.7 points per decade in these countries. (Madison, 2014)

That’s a big jump in reaction time. Moreover, most of the increase seems to be squeezed into the last six years of the study, from 1980 to 1985 (see above chart). No selection pressure could have produced such a change over such a short time. So what could possibly be going on here?

Keep in mind that Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States are not closed systems. All three countries are open to the world, and the early 1980s corresponded to a time when they became much more open. Consequently, we are not looking at change within a population, but rather the replacement of one population by another, and this change would have been most noticeable in the school classrooms where these tests were conducted.

The other finding of this study is that the Flynn Effect has been masking a decline in intellectual capacity. Yes, we’re getting better at giving standardized answers to standardized questions, but this change doesn’t reflect an actual increase in intelligence. We’re just allocating more and more mental resources to the task of test-taking. The reaction time data suggest that real intellectual capacity has been declining since circa 1980.

At the same conference, Armstrong (2014) likewise argues that the Flynn Effect may be illusory for the most part:

However, "general intelligence", the biological substrata which cause the positive manifold amongst different IQ tests, has not increased, since the sizes of Flynn effects on different tests are inversely related to those tests' g loadings. The same pattern holds amongst items. Thus, for example, vocabulary size (generally the most or among the most g loaded tests) has shown a small Flynn effect, and by some measures even a decline. However, the "Coding" test (from the Wechsler) or the "Draw-a-Man" test both have low g loadings and have shown very large Flynn effects.

To date, Madison’s paper is unavailable. All we have is an abstract that raises more questions than it answers. We will have to wait for the full paper before a thorough assessment can be made.

 

References

 

Armstrong, E. (2014). LCI14 Elijah Armstrong on Rule Dependence, London Conference on Intelligence, Psychological comments, May 1

http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/lci14-elijah-armstrong-on-rule.html  

Hbd* chick (2013). a response to a response to two critical commentaries on woodley, te nijenhuis & murphy (2013), hbd* chick, May 27

http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/a-response-to-a-response-to-two-critical-commentaries-on-woodley-te-nijenhuis-murphy-2013/  

Madison, G. (2014). Increasing simple reaction times demonstrate decreasing genetic intelligence in Scotland and Sweden, London Conference on Intelligence, Psychological comments, April 25

#LCI14 Conference proceedings
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/lci14-questions-on-intelligence.html  

Woodley, M.A., J. Nijenhuis, and R. Murphy. (2013). Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time, Intelligence, 41, 843-850.

http://lezgetreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/were-the-victorians-smarter-than-us.pdf   

Compliance with moral norms: a partly heritable trait?

 

Election poster from the 1930s for Sweden’s Social Democratic Party (source). Is the welfare state more workable if the population is more predisposed to obey moral norms?

 

Do we differ genetically in our ability, or willingness, to comply with moral norms? Please note: I'm talking about compliance. The norms themselves can vary greatly from one historical period to another and from one society to another.

Apparently some people are more norm-compliant than others. This is the conclusion of a recent twin study from Sweden (Loewen et al., 2013). A total of 2,273 individuals from twin pairs were queried about the acceptability of four dishonest behaviors: claiming sick benefits while healthy (1.4% thought it totally or fairly acceptable), avoiding paying for public transit (2.8%), avoiding paying taxes (9.7%), and accepting bribes on the job (6.4%).

How heritable were the responses to the above questions? The heritabilities were as follows: 

Claiming sick benefits while healthy - 42.5%

Avoiding paying for public transit - 42.3%
Avoiding paying taxes - 26.3%
Accepting bribes on the job - 39.7%

Do these results indicate a specific predisposition to obey moral norms? Or is the genetic influence something more general, like religiosity or risk-taking, both of which are known to be partly heritable? To answer this question, the authors ran correlations with other factors:

Significant correlations were exhibited for age (r=.10, p=.00), sex (r=.12, p=.00), religiosity (r=.06, p=.00), preferences for risk (r=-.09, p=.00) and fairness (r=-.10, p=.00), locus of control (r=-.03, p=.01), and charitable giving (r=.09, p=.00). However, these significant correlations were relatively weak, suggesting that our measure is not merely standing in for these demographic and psychological differences between individuals. There were no significant correlations with behavioral inhibition (r=-.00, p=.81) or volunteering (r=.01, p=.29). (Loewen et al., 2013)

The jury is still out, but it looks like compliance with moral norms has a specific heritable component.

 

Population differences

Does this heritable component vary from one population to another, just as it seems to vary from one individual to another? The authors have little to say, other than the following:

Replication in other countries should occur, as the exact role and extent of genetic and common environment-influence could change in different national and cultural contexts. Such a multi-country approach could thus offer some clues on the generalizability of our findings. (Loewen et al., 2013)

Swedes seem to be better than most people at obeying moral norms. Only 1.4% think it acceptable to claim sick benefits while healthy! Maybe that's why they've been so successful at creating a welfare state. So few of them want to be free riders on the gravy train:

Gunnar and Alva Myrdal were the intellectual parents of the Swedish welfare state. In the 1930s they came to believe that Sweden was the ideal candidate for a cradle-to-grave welfare state. First of all, the Swedish population was small and homogeneous, with high levels of trust in one another and the government. Because Sweden never had a feudal period and the government always allowed some sort of popular representation, the land-owning farmers got used to seeing authorities and the government more as part of their own people and society than as external enemies. Second, the civil service was efficient and free from corruption. Third, a Protestant work-ethic—and strong social pressures from family, friends and neighbors to conform to that ethic—meant that people would work hard, even as taxes rose and social assistance expanded. Finally, that work would be very productive, given Sweden´s well-educated population and strong export sector. (Norberg, 2006)

This is not how most of the world works. While studying in Russia, I noticed that the typical Russian feels a strong sense of moral responsibility toward immediate family and longstanding friends, more so than we in the West. Beyond that charmed circle, however, the general feeling seems to be distrust, wariness, or indifference. There was little of the spontaneous willingness to help strangers that I had taken for granted back home. People had the same sense of right and wrong, but this moral universe was strongly centered on their own families.

In sociology, the term is amoral familialism. Family is everything and society is nothing, or almost nothing. It was coined by American sociologist Edward Banfield:

In 1958, Banfield, with the assistance of his wife, Laura, published The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, in which they explained why a region in southern Italy was poor. The reason, they said, was not government neglect or poor education, but culture. People in this area were reluctant to cooperate outside of their families. This kind of "amoral familialism," as they called it, was the result of a high death rate, a defective system of owning land, and the absence of extended families. By contrast, in an equally forbidding part of southern Utah, the residents were engaged in a variety of associations, each busily involved in improving the life of the community. In southern Italy, people did not cooperate; in southern Utah, they scarcely did anything else. (Banfield, 2003, p. viii)

 

Where did Western societies get this desire to treat family and non-family the same way? To some extent, it seems to be a longstanding trait. English historian Alan Macfarlane sees a tendency toward weaker kinship ties that goes back at least to the 13th century. Children had no automatic rights to the family property. Parents could leave their property to whomever they liked and disinherit their children if they so wished (Macfarlane, 2012).

Indeed, Macfarlane argues that "Weber's de-familization of society" was already well advanced in Anglo-Saxon times (Macfarlane, 1992, pp. 173-174). This picture of relatively weak kinship ties is consistent with the Western European marriage pattern. If we look at European societies west of a line running from Trieste to St. Petersburg, we find that certain cultural traits predominate:

- relatively late marriage for men and women

- many people who never marry
- neolocality (children leave the family household to form new households)
- high circulation of non-kin among different households (typically young people sent out as servants) (Hajnal, 1965; see also hbd* chick)

Again, these characteristics go back at least to the 13th century and perhaps much farther back (Seccombe, 1992, p. 94).

Historians associate this model of society with the rise of the market economy. In other words, reciprocal kinship obligations were replaced with monetized economic obligations, and this process in turn led to a broader-based morality that applied to everyone equally. In reality, the arrow of causation seems to have been the reverse. Certain societies, notably those of northwestern Europe, were pre-adapted to the market economy and thus better able to exploit its possibilities when it began to take off in the late Middle Ages. The expansion of the market economy and, later, that of the welfare state were thus made possible by certain pre-existing cultural and possibly genetic characteristics, i.e., weaker kinship ties and a corresponding extension of morality from the familial level to the societal level.

 

References

Banfield, E.C. (2003). Political Influence, New Brunswick (N.J.): Transaction Pub.

Hajnal, John (1965). European marriage pattern in historical perspective. In D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley. Population in History. Arnold, London. 

Loewen, P.J., C.T. Dawes, N. Mazar, M. Johannesson, P. Keollinger, and P.K.E. Magnusson. (2013). The heritability of moral standards for everyday dishonesty, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 93, 363-366.

https://files.nyu.edu/ctd1/public/Moral.pdf  

Macfarlane, A. (1992). On individualism, Proceedings of the British Academy, 82, 171-199.

http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/TEXTS/On_Individualism.pdf  

Macfarlane, A. (2012). The invention of the modern world. Chapter 8: Family, friendship and population, The Fortnightly Review, Spring-Summer serial

http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2012/07/invention-8/  

Norberg, J. (2006). Swedish Models, June 1, The National Interest.

http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=151  

Seccombe, W. (1992). A Millennium of Family Change. Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe, London: Verso.