An alternative view, developed from an evolutionary psychology perspective, is that differences in people’s preferred reproductive strategies influence their views on other issues in ways that reflect their strategic self-interests. More specifically, some people prefer a strategy involving long-term commitment to a single partner, whereas others prefer a more promiscuous lifestyle. People who prefer monogamy feel threatened by promiscuity, because when people in one’s community are promiscuous there may be a greater risk that sexual rivals will try to tempt one’s partner into infidelity. On the other hand, those who prefer promiscuity would prefer that many other people have a similar preference so that they will have more sexual opportunities. There is evidence that recreational drug use actually is linked with greater sexual promiscuity in both men and women, although so are alcohol use and tobacco smoking (Zuckerman & Kuhlman, 2000), so from an evolutionary perspective it makes a kind of sense that people tend to either condemn or condone drug use based on their preferred reproductive strategy.
Two published studies have provided support for this theory (Kurzban et al., 2010; Quintelier, Ishii, Weeden, Kurzban, & Braeckman, 2013). In a series of five studies, participants were asked about their attitudes to the morality and legal status of recreational drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy, as well as sociosexuality (willingness to engage in casual and uncommitted sex), their political views (i.e. how generally liberal or conservative they were, as well as their views on a number of specific issues), and how religious they were. Additionally, they completed brief measures of the Big Five personality traits. Across all five studies, attitudes towards recreational drug use were most strongly related to sexual attitudes. Specifically, people who agreed with statements like, ‘Sex without love is OK,’ and ‘I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying “casual” sex with different partners,’ and who approved of internet pornography had more favourable attitudes towards recreational drug use. Furthermore, the associations between sexual attitudes and views on drugs remained strong even when controlling for non-sexual variables, such as religiosity, political conservatism, and personality. On the other hand, for the most part, non-sexual variables were not significantly associated with views on drugs when controlling for sexual variables (exceptions tended to be inconsistent across studies). These relationships were found in a sample of US students, and an internet sample (Kurzban et al., 2010), as well as in samples from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Japan (Quintelier et al., 2013). These results suggest that sexual attitudes may be more fundamentally relevant to people’s views on drug use than their general political ideology, in line with the theory that people uphold views that support their reproductive interests.
Not only that, but there are a whole bunch of other questions that did a better job at predicting people's views on whether or not recreational drugs should be illegal. Before I tell you what questions those are, what do you think the answer is? Suppose that you just met someone, and I would pay you one dollar if you could accurately predict their views on drugs. You can ask them one question, with the obvious exception of their views on drugs (and related, leading questions, of course). What would you ask them?
You might think it's all about personality, and ask about their "openness to new experiences" or some such. You could go the religious route, and ask about how often they go to religious services...
But here's the best one: "Is sex without love OK?"
If they answer yes, it is OK, then you can predict with a certain degree of accuracy that they will be in favor of legalizing pot. If they answer no, then, obviously the reverse.
…
So, there's the question. Why should the same people who think sex without love is OK be the ones who also favor the legalization of marijuana? Or, put the other way, why do people who think sex without love isn't OK oppose recreational drug use?
Remember in your answer to this question, you can't go back to the Color Theory of Morality, that it's political views that are causing both: you can't guess someone's views on drugs from their political views as well as you can from the question about sex.
So, is could opposition to drugs really be all about sex? And if so, why?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mind-design/201108/why-do-you-really-oppose-drugs-part-iii
Sexy penguins, of course, opposed the rule. Any rule that inhibited them - on threat of punishment - from pursuing their favored reproductive strategy was, to them, a bad idea. Again, from the standpoint of evolution, they didn't have to know why they thought it was a bad idea; they simply had to find it so, and work against it.
Different moral rules can work for or against penguins, depending on whether they are Sexy or Loyal, and we should expect penguin minds - subject to various constraints and caveats - to be designed to find those rules that promote their own reproductive success appealing, and rules that harm their own reproductive success unappealing.
Now, we can imagine that if our penguins were debating this among themselves, they might not actually talk about these strategic implications. Loyal penguins might talk about family values and the sacredness of the monogamous pair bond. Sexy penguins might talk about freedom, liberty, and the right of a penguin to do as he or she pleases. But beneath these arguments is the strategic element, using morality to advance one's own fitness interests.
So, to return to where I began in the first post in this series, recall that one of the best questions you can ask someone if you want to guess their position on drugs was: "Is sex without love OK?" We put that question, and questions getting at the same issue in the survey because we thought that people might be just a little bit like our fictitious penguins, using moral views about recreational drugs as part of the strategic game we all play with one another, favoring moral rules that give us advantages.
The broader point to take from all this is about the nature of morality. Morality is often portrayed as a very positive thing, in part because people often use the term as a synonym for "altruism." But moral rules have a sinister side, and can be used to constrain people's freedom of action, sometimes to the detriment of one group or another. This helps to explain moral disagreements: when moral rules have harmful effects on one group, but helpful effects on another, we can expect that there will be debate over the rule.
While many items predict to some extent whether people are opposed to recreational drugs, the most closely related predictors are people's views on sexual promiscuity. While people who are more religious and those who are more politically conservative do tend to oppose recreational drugs, in both study samples the predictive power of these religious and ideological items was reduced nearly to zero by controlling for items tracking attitudes toward sexual promiscuity.
“This provides evidence that views on sex and views on drugs are very closely related,” said Robert Kurzban, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and director of the Pennsylvania Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology at Penn. “If you were to measure people's political ideology, religiosity and personality characteristics, you can predict to some degree how people feel about recreational drugs. But if, instead, you just measure how people feel about casual sex, and ignore the abstract items, the predictions about people's views on drugs in fact become quite a bit better.”
From a theoretical perspective, the study also concludes that considering morality from the standpoint of strategic reproductive interests is a potentially useful way to understand why humans care about third-party behavior.
According to the researchers' evolutionary model, people develop complex differences in their sexual and reproductive strategies. One key difference that creates strategic conflict arises in people's orientations towards casual sexual activity. The relationships of people following a more committed, monogamous reproductive strategy are put at greater risk when casual sex is prevalent. On the other hand, people pursuing a less committed lifestyle seek to avoid having their choices moralized, forbidden and punished.
The researchers cite prior work showing that recreational drug usage is often associated with promiscuity. The results of the study imply that attitudes against recreational drugs are part of a larger attempt to advance the cause of committed, monogamous reproductive strategies.
“Condemnation of drug usage might be best understood in the context of strategic dynamics, with individuals influencing moral rules in a way that favors their own competitive reproductive strategies,” Kurzban said. “We expect that this relationship between sexual strategy and moral stances will occur in other areas as well, such as attitudes toward prostitution, sexual education or abortion.”
Women who have sex with more than 2 people per year are 10x more likely to have a drug problem: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2340051 Men too, but less so.
Sex, drugs and moral goals: reproductive strategies and views about recreational drugs
"men’s sociosexuality prospectively predicted drinking quantity, frequency, and binge drinking. Contrary to our predictions, men’s sociosexuality also predicted blackouts"
People who use more alcohol and drugs generally also have higher numbers of sex partners, but not due to drug effects but due to a shared disposition affecting both behaviors. link.springer.com/article/10.100
https://twitter.com/DrZhana/status/932671200182132736
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201006/is-opposition-pot-smoking-really-just-fear-sex
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201006/is-opposition-pot-smoking-really-just-fear-sex
The researchers were able to predict people's views on drugs by ignoring their political beliefs and personality and just asking a few questions about casual sex, such as "Sex without love is OK." Contrary to the traditional causal models, once you know about someone’s casual sex attitudes, you don't gain much of anything by also knowing their religiosity, political ideology, or personality traits.
https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/935395411854069760
As Weeden puts it:
"This is an important finding because it lets us compare two competing hypotheses about where moral attitudes about recreational drug come from in the first place. One model claims that people oppose recreational drugs or not because of how religious they are, how liberal or conservative they are, and their personality traits (for example, how "open to experiences" they are). The other model views sexual and reproductive strategies as really important in determining people's attraction to churches, or political views, or personality traits. The data clearly supported the reproductive strategies model."
Prospective study: Casual sex increases girls’ psychological distress, alcohol/drug consumption (boys no effect) tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10
The moral condemnation of recreational drug use is derived from a genetically based strategy to keep down casual sex. psyarxiv.com/zj4wu/
The moral condemnation of recreational drug use may be part of an evolved, genetically grounded strategy that promotes sexual restrictiveness. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11
Short-term Mating Orientation as a Predictor of Alcohol-related Risky Sexual Behavior Among College Students cdmcd.co/AYQWjg #ABCT2020
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201003/how-does-marijuana-affect-your-sex-life
Then, in 2003, Canadian researchers interviewed 104 Toronto adults about their reactions to marijuana. Did it increase libido? One-quarter said it "often" or "always" did, 40 percent said "sometimes," and one-third said it "seldom" or "never" enhanced their sexual desire. About half called the drug sex-enhancing, but half said it was not. One-third said sexual enhancement was a key reason they used weed, but half said sex played little if any role in their use of the drug.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/202007/the-latest-the-sexual-effects-marijuana
Study #1
University of British Columbia researchers surveyed 216 marijuana users recruited online who said they had used it during lovemaking.
- 74 percent said it increased their sensitivity to erotic touch.
- 74 percent said cannabis improved their sexual satisfaction.
- 70 percent said it helped them relax and feel more present during sex.
- 66 percent said marijuana boosted the pleasure of their orgasms.
- 59 percent said it increased their sexual desire.
- Among those who admitted problems working up to orgasm, half said cannabis helped them climax.
- 41 percent said it had mixed impact, improving some aspects of sex but detracting from others.
- 39 percent called marijuana always sex enhancing.
- Only 5 percent said it always spoiled sex.
Compared to marijuana and ecstasy, alcohol leads to greater willingness to have casual sex - and to greater regret afterwards. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10
Men who consumed more cannabis had more fun in bed. sciencedirect.com/science/articl
- Men and women who consume cannabis have more frequent sex than nonusers. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609517314170 …
"Individuals who use cannabis more frequently tend to report higher levels of sexual activity." link.springer.com/article/10.100
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Further Reading:
Lil B-Stone FreeStyle - Grimmnie Wreck TV
12 gauge shottie - 7 blunts
