Mind Hacks linked to a study showing that ingroup-preferences in women increased when they were ovulating or reported high subjective risk of coercion. Interesting, but fairly-standard for evolutionary psychology. Perhaps more interesting is the response in the comments section. The first complains, without reference to any detail in the study, that merely by studying the topic they further entrench harmful stereotypes. When ignorant stereotypes abound it would seem all the more important that we find out the actual facts so that we may replace our uninformed beliefs with accurate ones. Instead a common reaction is complete indifference to the results of any study in favor of an obsessive focus on stereotypes themselves. I would even concur with the commenter that we should have more studies on hormonal fluctuations in men (and indeed there have been some interesting psych studies which involve “priming” them). Rather than an actual proposal for a study that might be done, the comment is more along the lines of the old Fark cliche “B-b-b-but Clinton”. That is exemplified to an even greater extent by the second commenter, who stereotypes the British right off the bat and then proceeds to complain of positive discrimination towards protected groups. A perfectly relevant comment for a different blog discussing a different topic. Hopefully Anonymous has complained that a blog as great as Mind Hacks requires commenters to register first, and while one interpretation might be that they are still on the low end of the Laffer-curve of comment restrictions another is that their current filtering mechanism isn’t producing any benefits.
Completely off-topic, but Philip Giraldi knows what he’s talking about, at least when it comes to Honduras.
Finally, Aschwin de Wolf directs my attention to a Stirnerite egoist blogger.
Entitled to an Opinion 
June 30, 2009 at 12:38 am
merely by studying the topic they further entrench harmful stereotypes
Blah blah blah . . . you know, you don’t have to pay attention to those comments any more than you have to pay attention to comments that advertise penis enlargement formulas.
I agree with you that this result seems fairly obvious, but it’s important nonetheless, especially given the cultural position of evolutionary psychology. Ev-psych is obvious, but the more it’s supported by findings, the more inescapable its conclusions are (except by those who see it as an un-study-able question, I suppose).
June 30, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Maybe I shouldn’t pay attention to some comments. But I think this reflects a common attitude, as opposed to the people who clog my filter with “afdalk sfdniun [insertcelebrityhere]nude inasdf canadian pharmaceuticals akljsd runescape gold”.
June 30, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Yeah, the comments are silly, yet I don’t much mind because they do provide a cultural snapshot, which is always interesting.
What caught my eye was this:
The authors explain the findings as suggesting that women show a preference to their ‘in group’, those who more closely match their own background and lifestyle, when most fertile.
Does anyone know if this is an accurate summary of the authors’ interpretation? Seems to me the most you could say, based on the information provided, is that “white women show a preference to their ‘in group’…”
Have other studies found similar hormonally bound “in group preferences” with women of other races? If so, I’d say this might really be a significant finding, rather than just another EP footnote.
June 30, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Women of all races show in-group biases. I believe black women do to the greatest extent, asian women to the least (sometimes not at all). Other studies on racial preferences I’ve heard of don’t take into account hormonal variation.
I’ll add that n/a of the race/history/evolution notes blog has a post in response to mine, though without much added content at the moment.
July 1, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Funny, at RHE, the second comment reads, “Interesting. Nature’s defense against miscegenation.” Which is just as dumb, in a different way, as the stuff percolating at Mind Hacks.
In-group sexual preferences may be easy to demonstrate sociologically, but documented biases are usually subject to cultural explanations. I think this line of research — tracking female in-group preference with the hormonal cycle — may be especially important because it’s almost impossible to explain in terms that don’t fit most comfortably with a model of kin-selection that favors distant ethnic cues. If such biological favoritism was selected to impose an behavioral ovulation-peaked mating script, then the foundational reasoning of Salter’s “genetic interests” theory (which is often dismissed as a modern example of crude “group adaptation”), is strengthened, even if his ethical conclusions remain a non-sequitur. It will be interesting to see if the experiment is repeated, and tested across races.
July 1, 2009 at 5:58 pm
In the hunter-gatherer era I think most neighboring tribes were closely related enough that interbreeding would not the standards of “miscegnation” in the modern globalized world.
That actually reminds me of a bit I read in John Maynard Smith’s The Theory of Evolution. Animals normally prefer to mate with hybrids (although that may merely be a side effect of their more vigorous nature) but speciation can also cause preferences to go the other way. It usually begins with incompatible mutations in different populations resulting in hybrid depression, which then results in selection for behavioral barriers to mating.
Speaking of Salter, I noted elsewhere a recent study that seems to conflict with his theories (which I admit to not actually having read in anything other than summary form).
It is commonly observed that women are more religious and conscientious, in addition to having these ingroup preferences for mating (men in contrast will chase anything in a skirt and sometimes out of it). One explanation is that their status is more tied into their relationship with the small-group community. Men are more likely to be immigrants, as they are permitted to reach for high status in a more autonomous sense. In the “jealousy” belt of polygamy women are essentially owned by their family/clan to be sold into marriage by their fathers/brothers. It would be considered very bad for a woman to signal disloyalty and independence. Men can get away with being more “uppity” and wanting to sow their wild oats with foreign women. That’s an explanation that doesn’t require group selection, but selection on individuals of the group by their group environment. I also believe that the impulse toward war is not that adaptive for the group itself, but a way of jockeying for position within the group.