I'll Try To Find Videos Explaining Risk Taking From An Evolutionary Perspective To Replace The Above Video That Explained Risk Taking By William Von Hippel.
The Psychology of the Extreme Risk-takers
“risk taking and other foolish things men do are not ‘pathologies’...rather they are evolved strategies that made perfect sense for our ancestors and probably continue to make reproductive sense today.”
Human mating mechanisms account for the puzzling finding that men die faster and earlier than women in all societies. Selection has been harder on men than on women in this respect. Men live shorter lives than women and die in greater numbers of more causes at every part in the life cycle. In America, for example, men die on average six to eight years earlier than women. Men are susceptible to more infections than women and die of a greater variety of diseases than women. Men have more accidents than women, including falls, accidental poisonings, drownings, firearms accidents, car crashes, fires, and explosions. Males suffer a 30 percent higher mortality rate from accidents during the first four years of life and a 400 percent higher mortality from accidents by the time they reach adulthood. Men are murdered nearly three times as often as women. Men die taking risks more often than women and commit suicide more often than women. The ages between sixteen and twenty-eight, when intrasexual competition reaches a strident pitch, seem especially bad for men. During those ages, men suffer a mortality rate nearly 200 percent higher than women.
The reason for men's higher mortality, like that of males of many mammalian species, stems directly from their sexual psychology, and in particular from their competition for mates. The use of risky tactics of competition becomes greater as the differences in reproductive outcome become greater. Where some males monopolize more than one female, there are tremendous reproductive benefits to being a winner and tremendous reproductive penalties for being a loser. The reed deer is a case in point. Male deer who grow larger bodies and larger antlers experience greater mating success on average than their smaller counterparts. They are able to best their intrasexual competitors in head-to-head competition. But their success comes at a cost to their survival. Precisely the same traits that give them their mating success lead to a greater likelihood of dying. During a cold winter with scarce resources, for example, the male is more likely to die because of failure to obtain enough food for his larger body. Larger size may also make the male more susceptible to predation and less agile at escape. To these possibilities must be added the risk of dying directly through intrasexual combat. All these risks follow from the sexual strategies of red deer, which generally pay off in the competition for mates but which also generally result in shorter lifetime for males than for females.
As a rule, throughout the animal kingdom, the more polygynous the mating system, the greater the differences between the sexes in terms of mortality. Polygynous mating selects for males who take risks - risks in competing with other males, risks in securing the resources desired by females, and risks in exposing themselves while pursuing and courting females. Even in a mildly polygynous mating system like our own, where some men acquire multiple partners through serial marriage and affairs and others are left mateless, competition among men and selection by women of men who are high in status and resources are ultimately responsible for the evolution in males of risk-taking traits that lead to successful mating at the expense of a long life.
Because the reproductive stakes are higher for men than for women, more men than women risk being shut out of mating entirely. Bachelors who are mateless for life are more numerous than spinsters in every society. In America in 1988, for example, 43 percent of men but only 29 percent of women had never been married by the age of twenty-nine. By the age of thirty-four, 25 percent of men but only 16 percent of women had never been married. These sex differences reach extremes in highly polygynous cultures such as the Tiwi, where literally all women are married, a few men have as many as twenty-nine wives, and therefore many men are consigned to bachelorhood.
The Young Male Syndrome
"Homicide is overwhelmingly a male affair...Victim and offender populations are almost identical, with unemployed, unmarried, young men greatly overrepresented...many, perhaps most, homicides concern status competition"
This adaptive logic suggests that the greater risk taking, and hence greater death rate, should occur among men who are at the bottom of the mating pool and who therefore risk getting shut out entirely. And that is in fact the case. Men who are unemployed, unmarried, and young are greatly overrepresented in risky activities, ranging from gambling to lethal fights. Among homicides in Detroit in 1972, for example, 41 percent of adult male offenders were unemployed, compared with an unemployment rate of 11 percent for the whole city. Sixty-nine percent of the male victims and 73 percent of the male perpetrators were unmarried, compared with an unmarried rate of 43 percent in the entire city. These homicides were also disproportionately concentrated between the ages of sixteen and thirty. In short, men low in desirability, as indicated by being unemployed, unmarried, and young, seem especially prone to risk taking, which sometimes crosses the line and becomes lethal. The point is not that killing per se is necessarily an adaptation but rather that men's evolved sexual psychologies are designed to respond to particular conditions by increasing the amount of risk they are willing to take.
Single men are more likely to turn to crime and murder, gambling and drugs. With marriage, Testosterone goes down. We were built to bond.
In ancestral times, the great reproductive gains that risk-taking men generally achieved and the reproductive oblivion that usually awaited more cautious men have selected for traits that yielded success in competition among males at the expense of success at longevity. In the currencies of survival and longevity, selection via intrasexual competition has been hard on men.
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. Buss, 199-201
"Also men are more prone to creativity, because they are risk-takers and instinctively love to break established dogmas and oppose to current authority, because that is the best evolved strategy for climbing the status ladder and showing off with women. Women instead are more conservative and law abiding, because the best strategy for protecting their child and be sure of being helped during the pregnancy is to not break any taboo and to follow secure and already proven roads. This is why even if women are as mathematically capable as men, their discoveries or breakthroughs are much more rare than in men." - Freemen Muaddib
"He'd really have to do something wild to get my attention."
Males Who Were Willing To Take Greater Risks And More Frequent Risks Whether In The Form Of Verbally Disparaging Rivals, Engaging In Fights, Stalking And Killing Big Game, Stealing Goods, Luring Females From Their Male Mates http://vengeanceizmine.blogspot.com/2014/07/i-can-take-your-bitch-if-i-want-her.html, Etc. Had Higher Reproductive Success In Our Evolutionary Past, So This Risk-Taking Nature Spread Amongst Males And Is Now A Trait That Characterizes All Modern Males. However, This Risk-Taking Nature Comes With A Cost Because The Behavior And Psychology Associated With This Risk-Taking Leads To A Shorter Lifespan. (This Risk-Taking Behavior Tends To Peak In The Teens And Early To Mid-Twenties When Males Are Trying To Establish Themselves And Climb The Status Hierarchy. It Can Also Increase (The Frequency Of It) When Males Are Down And Out And Have Nothing To Lose, Loser.)
The high rate of death in young men due to accidents and violence means that men are selected for greater robustness in youth, at the cost of faster aging.
Why women live longer than men.
"male mortality...An important reason might it might be intensified during the late teens and early twenties is this is when women are at their peak fertility; men tend to adjust their priorities...Safety and well-being are not so important" a.co/d/57U2L7f
“In the animal kingdom, males tend to devote more time, energy, and risk to status competition, since this tends to pay more reproductive benefits for males than females.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201307/sex-differences-in-physical-risk-taking
For another mystery, not quite sexual but intimately linked nonetheless to maleness and femaleness, think about longevity. Women consistently outlive men, suggesting that even though men are stronger when it comes to measures of brute force, women are "biologically stronger." Why?
Maybe it's a result of hormones. Thus, there is some evidence that testosterone inhibits the human immune system, and that mentally retarded men who had been castrated in childhood live more than a decade longer than similar, intact men. Such an explanation, if confirmed, is nonetheless proximate only; it leaves unanswered the deeper "why" question. In addition, hormones alone don't seem sufficient since boys are significantly more mortality prone than are girls even during their first decade, before "raging hormones" become relevant.
Or maybe genes are involved, not so much that women have better ones, but more of them. Aside from the sex chromosomes, there are no genetic differences between men and women. But don't forget that women are XX and men, XY, and that the Y chromosome is a real slacker, almost lacking in useful genetic material. As a result, women have literally more DNA upon which they can draw, a difference that might be consequential since a woman possessing a deleterious gene on one of her X chromosomes might find its harmful effect overridden by a more fitness-generating gene on her other X. (Contributing to this prospect is the fact that health-promoting genes tend to be dominant.) By contrast, men are stuck with an "unprotected" X, because their underachieving Y chromosomes cannot compensate for anything disadvantageous on the X. Men may therefore be more vulnerable to genetically related troubles, or simply they may have a shallower genetic "bench" when called upon to deal with life's slings and arrows.
This would suggest that as a general rule, the "heterogametic sex" should have a shorter life span than the "homogametic" one...
Alternatively, maybe women are protected, not by their genome, but rather by cultural traditions and social expectations, which make it far more likely that men will engage in exhausting, physically dangerous, and likely life-threatening activities, whether job related or recreational. It is men, after all, who are prone to be coal miners, farmers, animal herders, construction workers, and soldiers. This undoubtedly accounts for some of the male-female differences in longevity, but not all. It doesn't explain, for example, why the same consistent 7-year difference in male-female life span has been found when comparing cloistered monks and nuns, both of who are isolated from the hurly-burly of modern life and who do much the same things.
This leads us to another hypothesis for why women outlive men, based once more on evolutionary considerations. The point is that human beings show all the signs of being polygynous, that is, biologically inclined toward harem formation: Men are typically larger and more aggressive than women, and they become sexually mature significantly later (to be successful in mating with numerous partners requires defeating a comparable number of same-sex competitors and selection therefore rewards would-be harem masters who enter into the reproductive fray when somewhat older and larger). In any event, it is characteristic of mildly polygynous species such as Homo sapiens for males to be more likely than females to engage in vigorous same-sex competition, which typically manifests via huffing and puffing and sometimes literally trying to knock each other down, as well as engaging in show-offy behavior - all of which are, quite simply, risky.
To be sure, natural selection has dictated that for males generally and men in particular, such risks are worth running, if only because to a greater extent for males - and not necessarily at all for females - evolutionary fitness is a zero-sum game. A woman is likely to become pregnant regardless of what transpires for other women; by contrast, reproductive success by a man is liable to occur at the expense of another man's evolutionary fitness, since the reproductive potential of many women can be monopolized by a relatively small number of men.
Not only are men and boys more violent, but they are also more prone to risk taking, more inclined to take greater chances, because for them, the payoff to success is greater, as is the consequence of failure. As sperm makers and potential harem keepers, males simply play for higher stakes, and this, in turn may help account for the higher morbidity and mortality that they experience.
This hypothesis is closely allied to one of the better-established theories in evolutionary biology, concerned with the question of senescence generally. One might ask (as many evolutionary biologists have), Why do organisms get old? More precisely, Why do they "senesce," that is, experience higher morbidity and mortality over time? The most widely accepted explanation, first proposed by the great theorist George C. Williams, concerns the genetic phenomenon known as pleiotropy. Genes are pleiotropic when they influence more than one character. Accordingly, imagine a gene that contributes to an individual's fitness early in life but which also has detrimental effects that show up only later, when the individual is postreproductive. Such as gene would on balance be selected for, since it would contribute to survival and reproduction, but would be only weakly selected against at the other end of life, when selection is greatly reduced or even absent altogether. Another way of looking at this is that selection is generally more potent early in life than later, resulting in accumulated costs that reveal themselves late in life.
The pleiotropic theory of senescence applies to all living things, not just human beings, and to both sexes. Thus, by itself, it doesn't explain the male-female disparity in life span. However, combined with the other male-female differences just described, William's concept could be insulting indeed. Since males have been selected to engage in male-male competition to a degree not found in females, selection for success in such competition - especially when young - would likely have been stronger among men than among women. If so, then men would be more vulnerable to comparatively early death not only as a direct result of their more risk-prone, competitive behavior, but also because genetic tendencies would be favored that generate reproductive success early in life, albeit at the expense of eventual longevity. Men in a sense have evolved to "live fast, love hard, and die young," with younger dying being a consequence of the faster living and the harder loving.
Here is a final possible evolutionary explanation for the male-female life span discrepancy. Maybe it's not a matter of evolution favoring men whose behavior shortens the average male life span, but of selection acting primarily on women, extending theirs. Think back to the grandmother hypothesis for the evolution of menopause, and view it from a different perspective: Instead of women having been selected to cease reproducing at a certain age, we might say that selection has acted upon women, more than upon men, to extend their postreproductive life, because of the genetic payoffs they can accrue, especially via their grandchildren. If so, then maybe women who are middle-aged and older can thank their grandchildren - and evolution, too - for their own longevity, no less than for their nonreproductive status.
Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature. Barash, p. 79-82.
Maybe it's a result of hormones. Thus, there is some evidence that testosterone inhibits the human immune system, and that mentally retarded men who had been castrated in childhood live more than a decade longer than similar, intact men. Such an explanation, if confirmed, is nonetheless proximate only; it leaves unanswered the deeper "why" question. In addition, hormones alone don't seem sufficient since boys are significantly more mortality prone than are girls even during their first decade, before "raging hormones" become relevant.
Or maybe genes are involved, not so much that women have better ones, but more of them. Aside from the sex chromosomes, there are no genetic differences between men and women. But don't forget that women are XX and men, XY, and that the Y chromosome is a real slacker, almost lacking in useful genetic material. As a result, women have literally more DNA upon which they can draw, a difference that might be consequential since a woman possessing a deleterious gene on one of her X chromosomes might find its harmful effect overridden by a more fitness-generating gene on her other X. (Contributing to this prospect is the fact that health-promoting genes tend to be dominant.) By contrast, men are stuck with an "unprotected" X, because their underachieving Y chromosomes cannot compensate for anything disadvantageous on the X. Men may therefore be more vulnerable to genetically related troubles, or simply they may have a shallower genetic "bench" when called upon to deal with life's slings and arrows.
This would suggest that as a general rule, the "heterogametic sex" should have a shorter life span than the "homogametic" one...
Alternatively, maybe women are protected, not by their genome, but rather by cultural traditions and social expectations, which make it far more likely that men will engage in exhausting, physically dangerous, and likely life-threatening activities, whether job related or recreational. It is men, after all, who are prone to be coal miners, farmers, animal herders, construction workers, and soldiers. This undoubtedly accounts for some of the male-female differences in longevity, but not all. It doesn't explain, for example, why the same consistent 7-year difference in male-female life span has been found when comparing cloistered monks and nuns, both of who are isolated from the hurly-burly of modern life and who do much the same things.
This leads us to another hypothesis for why women outlive men, based once more on evolutionary considerations. The point is that human beings show all the signs of being polygynous, that is, biologically inclined toward harem formation: Men are typically larger and more aggressive than women, and they become sexually mature significantly later (to be successful in mating with numerous partners requires defeating a comparable number of same-sex competitors and selection therefore rewards would-be harem masters who enter into the reproductive fray when somewhat older and larger). In any event, it is characteristic of mildly polygynous species such as Homo sapiens for males to be more likely than females to engage in vigorous same-sex competition, which typically manifests via huffing and puffing and sometimes literally trying to knock each other down, as well as engaging in show-offy behavior - all of which are, quite simply, risky.
To be sure, natural selection has dictated that for males generally and men in particular, such risks are worth running, if only because to a greater extent for males - and not necessarily at all for females - evolutionary fitness is a zero-sum game. A woman is likely to become pregnant regardless of what transpires for other women; by contrast, reproductive success by a man is liable to occur at the expense of another man's evolutionary fitness, since the reproductive potential of many women can be monopolized by a relatively small number of men.
Not only are men and boys more violent, but they are also more prone to risk taking, more inclined to take greater chances, because for them, the payoff to success is greater, as is the consequence of failure. As sperm makers and potential harem keepers, males simply play for higher stakes, and this, in turn may help account for the higher morbidity and mortality that they experience.
This hypothesis is closely allied to one of the better-established theories in evolutionary biology, concerned with the question of senescence generally. One might ask (as many evolutionary biologists have), Why do organisms get old? More precisely, Why do they "senesce," that is, experience higher morbidity and mortality over time? The most widely accepted explanation, first proposed by the great theorist George C. Williams, concerns the genetic phenomenon known as pleiotropy. Genes are pleiotropic when they influence more than one character. Accordingly, imagine a gene that contributes to an individual's fitness early in life but which also has detrimental effects that show up only later, when the individual is postreproductive. Such as gene would on balance be selected for, since it would contribute to survival and reproduction, but would be only weakly selected against at the other end of life, when selection is greatly reduced or even absent altogether. Another way of looking at this is that selection is generally more potent early in life than later, resulting in accumulated costs that reveal themselves late in life.
The pleiotropic theory of senescence applies to all living things, not just human beings, and to both sexes. Thus, by itself, it doesn't explain the male-female disparity in life span. However, combined with the other male-female differences just described, William's concept could be insulting indeed. Since males have been selected to engage in male-male competition to a degree not found in females, selection for success in such competition - especially when young - would likely have been stronger among men than among women. If so, then men would be more vulnerable to comparatively early death not only as a direct result of their more risk-prone, competitive behavior, but also because genetic tendencies would be favored that generate reproductive success early in life, albeit at the expense of eventual longevity. Men in a sense have evolved to "live fast, love hard, and die young," with younger dying being a consequence of the faster living and the harder loving.
Here is a final possible evolutionary explanation for the male-female life span discrepancy. Maybe it's not a matter of evolution favoring men whose behavior shortens the average male life span, but of selection acting primarily on women, extending theirs. Think back to the grandmother hypothesis for the evolution of menopause, and view it from a different perspective: Instead of women having been selected to cease reproducing at a certain age, we might say that selection has acted upon women, more than upon men, to extend their postreproductive life, because of the genetic payoffs they can accrue, especially via their grandchildren. If so, then maybe women who are middle-aged and older can thank their grandchildren - and evolution, too - for their own longevity, no less than for their nonreproductive status.
Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature. Barash, p. 79-82.
In the world of chimpanzees, too, young males take the greatest risks - in order to get a better position in the hierarchy. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11
"male mortality...An important reason might it might be intensified during the late teens and early twenties is this is when women are at their peak fertility; men tend to adjust their priorities...Safety and well-being are not so important" a.co/d/57U2L7f
http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/research/bitstream/handle/10453/5864/2005002228.pdf?sequence=1
Definitions of the word "risk" emphasize the costs of risk taking. For some risks, such as Russian roulette with a six chamber revolver, the magnitude and probability of cost are easily quantified (luce & Raiffa, 1989). For more commonly attempted risks, both the magnitude and probability of cost are far less certain. However, the supposed costs of risk taking are routinely presented in the media and by concerned individuals. Without attempting to determine the accuracy of these presentations, what might be the effect of discrepancies between the presented costs and the costs estimated by the adolescent risk taker upon their risk taking?
One aspect of the analysis of risk taking has been strongly influenced by recent developments in animal behavior. Zahavi and Zahavi (1997) proposed the Handicap Principle as an explanation for what appeared to be gratuitously risky behavior in animals, such as "stotting" (jumping in place) by gazelles in the presence of a predator. It is generally accepted that such behaviors act as signals of quality, in this case informing the predator that the gazelle is likely to escape. Such displays, while exacting a cost from the actor, do appear to divert predation onto other, presumably less fit, prey (Zahavi & Zahavi, 1997). "Costly signaling" has become accepted as a model of many risky behaviors, advertising individual quality to conspecifics as well as predators (Grafen, 1990; Leal, 1999).
The application of this model to human behavior is straightforward, with the major difference that humans have a wide variety of costly signals that they may choose to display in different combinations. Involvement in mountaineering, skateboard stunting, or skydiving places individual at some risk which they accept as a demonstration of their superiority. It has often been observed that risky rituals in primitive societies (National Geographic, 1976) bear a striking similarity to the risky behavior of adolescents in more advanced societies. Risky behaviors thus fit into the general class of costly signals, their performance imposing direct costs as well as the possibility of reduced survival.
To the extent that behavioral displays are unrelated to underlying fitness, individuals may be able to advertise a level of fitness that they do not possess. The simulation of costly signals can survive at equilibrium in populations (lohnstone & Grafen, 1993). Indeed, as long as the simulated signal increases the overall reproductive success of the individual, it will remain a viable strategy (Candolin, 1999).
Grafen's (1990) analysis of costly signaling included a "strategic choice" option which has become important in the analysis of this type of behavior and is particularly appropriate for costly signaling in humans. In this option, the signaler evaluates the costs associated with particular behaviors, estimates his/her own level of fitness, and tries to optimize the return from costly signaling by choosing behaviors and levels of risk within these behaviors that will produce the most effective signals with the least cost to the individual.
In other words, if one wishes to send a deceptive signal of fitness by engaging in risk taking. it is wise to choose a risk-taking behavior with the largest excess of apparent cost over the perceived actual cost. One factor affecting this is that humans tend to rate the probability of negative events occurring to themselves as lower than occurring to others (Weinstein & Klein. 1995) even in high-risk situations (Middleton. Harris & Surman. 1996). This provides a ready made difference even if the receiver (R - who rates the probability slightly higher for the other person) has the same overall appreciation of the risk as the signaler (S - who rates it lower for himself/herself).
Additionally, participation in risk-taking behaviors is associated with lower estimates of the costs of those behaviors (Benthin. Slovic & Severson. 1993). To the extent that S has a lower estimate of the cost than a nonparticipant R, the behavior will be attractive as an adaptive signal. Beyond this, the well-known tendency of authorities to exaggerate the costs of socially disapproved behaviors provides an additional excess of apparent cost when signaling to Rs who accept the inflated cost estimates presented to them. It is clear that a number of factors can produce cost discrepancy.
Personal characteristics such as courage, strength, hardiness, skill, and luck are valued universally. As mentioned above, the first four appear to be closely related to costly signaling in animals, while the last is certainly important to humans (Smith, Wiseman, Harris, & Joiner, 1996). Engaging successfully in a risky activity such as skateboard stunting would signal strength and skill, while purchasing a winning lottery ticket would be accepted as a signal of luck by many.
Consider cigarette smoking as a risk behavior. If the smoker is using smoking as a signal of quality, it is almost certainly signaling hardiness. In contrast, speeding while driving would appear to signal skill and perhaps luck. Engaging in unsafe sex might signal a reliance on the presumed luck of avoiding pregnancy or disease. Finally, defying risks in general might signal courage. If cost discrepancy interacts with what quality is signaled, it should differentially affect risk taking on that basis.
Another way of analyzing risk behaviors is to examine the magnitude of cost and the probability. Smoking and getting drunk have a low cost per occurrence, but a high probability of cost. That is to say, they represent an incremental risk. Speeding while driving or engaging in unsafe sex exposes one to high costs, but at a much lower probability per occurrence. It is also possible that the magnitude and probability of cost interact with cost discrepancy in risk-taking decisions.
http://www.cepec.ugent.be/research/research-projects/deep-rationality-of-dark-consumption-unhealthy-behavior-as-signaling-behavior/
“A man is more than twice as likely as a woman to have a car accident and almost three times more likely to have two car accidents. Even when not driving, men are more careless; twice as many men are killed simply crossing the street” amzn.to/2NmNxWu
A central goal of this article is to extend the developmental psychopathology model to address, at a foundational level, “what’s in it for the kids” who engage in risky adolescent behaviors.
High-risk behaviors can result in net harm in terms of a person’s own phenomenology and well-being (e.g., producing miserable feelings or a shortened life), the welfare of others around the person, or the society as a whole but still be adaptive in an evolutionary sense. Consider, for example, risky behaviors that expose adolescents to danger and/or inflict harm on others but increase dominance in social hierarchies and leverage access to mates (e.g., Gallup, O’Brien, & Wilson, 2011; Palmer & Tilley, 1995; Sylwester & Pawlowski, 2011). “Risky” in this context does not equal “maladaptive.” Although the problems associated with risky adolescent behaviors are real and there is a strong need to reduce them, regarding them as dysfunctional does not point to a solution. Rather, from an evolutionary perspective, viable solutions involve understanding the functions of risk taking in the contexts of adolescents’ lives. As articulated below (Risky Adolescent Behavior: Five Key Insights From an Evolutionary Perspective), successful intervention depends on working with, instead of against, adolescent goals and motivations.
We call the study of risky adolescent behavior from an evolutionary perspective the evolutionary model, in contrast to the developmental psychopathology model. The two models are not mutually exclusive, and both share the same practical goal of reducing problem behaviors for the long-term benefit of individuals and society (regardless of the evolutionary adaptiveness of the behavior). The evolutionary model, however, can help achieve that goal through increased understanding of the adaptive logic and motivation that underlie so many risky adolescent behaviors. As discussed below, even when risky behavior is genuinely pathological (i.e., maladaptive from both an evolutionary and a developmental psychopathology perspective), a detailed understanding of adaptations in the context of past and present environments is often needed to understand the nature of the pathology (see Key Insight 5)...
Taking a risk can be beneficial or costly. The riskier the choice, the greater the potential benefits but the less likely they are to be realized; thus, higher risk means greater variability in outcomes. Given the alternatives available to a person, risk taking can be the best choice in some situations. Furthermore, a given choice might seem dysfunctional according to others’ views of how to behave but still be the best choice for the person in question. Indeed, frequent losses do not, by themselves, make a choice maladaptive. The costs of losing must be weighed against the benefits of winning. This is how human-related fields such as economics and animal-related fields such as behavioral ecology study risk (Daly & Wilson, 2001; Figueredo & Jacobs, 2010). Because evolution by natural selection is driven by differences among individuals in reproductive success, the evolutionary significance of any risky behavior ultimately depends on its costs and benefits with respect to the organism’s fitness (i.e., the contribution of offspring to future generations). Individuals are not necessarily adapted to strive for reproductive success directly but rather to strive for more tangible goals such as food, safety, status, sex, and optimal parental investments that reliably led to reproductive success over evolutionary history. Cultural evolution adds another layer of complexity in humans, causing people to strive for culturally defined goals that do not necessarily contribute to genetic fitness
Because (a) adolescence is a critical time for establishing status and long-term trajectories, (b) “anything worth having is worth fighting for,” and (c) position in social hierarchies is a zero-sum game with winners and losers, status, popularity, and social success are not easily attained or readily surrendered. According to the handicap principle (Zahavi & Zahavi, 1997), behaviors that confer status must be costly to produce (i.e., they must be valid and reliable signals of the individual’s sociocompetitive competencies, or fitness, that cannot be faked; otherwise, everyone would engage in these behaviors). For this reason, risk-taking behaviors among adolescents often have an important signaling function; successful risk taking (e.g., fighting, stealing something valuable, daredevilry, substance use, risky sports), where real danger is involved, is often admired and confers status, especially to males (Daly & Wilson, 1988; Weisfeld, 1999). Thus, reckless driving, substance abuse, and crime are all much more likely to occur among adolescents, but not among adults, in the presence of peers (Chassin, Hussong, & Beltran, 2009; Simons-Morton, Lerner, & Singer, 2005; Zimring, 1998). These realities constrain the options for intervention but also suggest possible ways forward.
Daily Game: Never speak on your moves until they are LOCKED in SOLID.. That way you will APPEAR not to lose as much…’Deep Game'
WHY ARE MALES, ESPECIALLY MALES FROM THE GHETTO (PARTICULARLY BLACK ONES) SO DISINCLINED TO SHOW WEAKNESS WHETHER THAT WEAKNESS IS IN THE FORM OF PHYSICAL PAIN (SICKNESS OR INJURY), EMOTIONAL PAIN (GRIEVING THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE OR MALE-FEMALE RELATIONSHIP), OR FINANCIAL RUIN? BECAUSE THEY'RE GENETICALLY WIRED TO BE THIS WAY. WHY? BECAUSE SHOWING ANY SIGNS OF WEAKNESS MAY LEAD TO THEM LOSING STATUS, BEING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF, DOMINATED, AND EVENTUALLY KILLED BY RIVAL MALES (RIVAL MALES WHICH INCLUDES MALES WHO ARE A PART OF THEIR PEER GROUP AND KIN GROUP). READ BELOW.
Amos
was one of the most handsomest males I have known, except perhaps on
the day he stuffed two entire apples in his mouth, which taught me again
that chimpanzees can do things we can't. He had large eyes in a
friendly, symmetrical face, a full, shiny coat of black hair, and
well-defined muscles on arms and legs. He was never overly aggressive,
as some males can be, yet supremely self-confident during his heyday.
Amos was beloved. Some of us cried when he died, and his fellow apes
were eerily silent for days. Their appetite took a hit.
At
the time, we didn't know what the problem was, but we learned
postmortem that in addition to a hugely enlarged liver that took up most
of his abdomen, he had several cancerous growths. He had lost 15
percent of his weight from a year before, but even though his condition
must have been building for years, he had acted normally until his body just couldn't hold out any longer. Amos must have felt miserable for months, but any sign of vulnerability would have meant loss of status.
Chimps seem to realize this. A limping male in the wild was seen to
isolate himself for weeks to nurse his injuries, yet would show up mow
and then in the midst of his community to give a charging display full
of vigor and strength, after which he'd withdraw again. That way, no one would get any ideas.
Amos didn't betray his condition until the day before his death...
The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates. de Waal, p.25-26.
But
things change radically when men enter a competitive mode, such as when
they're advancing their interests or career. Suddenly, there's little
room for softer feelings. Men can be brutal toward potential rivals:
Anyone who stands in the way has to be taken down...Male primates may be
similar. Robert Sapolsky, who occasionally tranquilizes wild baboons,
learned the hard way how dangerous it is to dart a male in front of his
rivals. As soon as the darted male's walk becomes unsteady, others close
in, seeing a perfect opportunity to get him...male baboons are always
ready to take advantage of another's weakness. This is why vulnerabilities are hidden.
I have known male chimps who went into unusually vigorous intimidation
displays during times that they were sick or injured. They'd be licking
their wounds one minute, looking miserable, but then their main rival
would show up and suddenly they'd be full of muscle power, at least for
the few minutes that mattered. In the same way, I imagine a group of
human ancestors in which men camouflaged for as long as possible any
limp, reduced eyesight, or loss of stamina so as not to give others any
ideas. This is why the Kremlin used to prop up its ailing leaders,
and why enterprises sometimes hesitate to disclose the health problems
of the CEOs, as Apple did with Steve Jobs. In modern society, it's often
said that men don't go to the doctor as easily as women because they
have been socialized to act tough, but what if there's a much deeper
reason? Perhaps males always feel surrounded by others hoping for them
to stumble. (Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains why We are who We are.)
