The Hunter-Gatherer Divide

[differenceblog]

Much of evolutionary psychology appears to hinge on the idea that men were hunters and women were gatherers, and that gendered traits evolved in response to the different needs of these goals. Hunter-Gatherer economies are thought to be the only mode of subsistence for humans for 2 million years, ending somewhere between 5,000-10,000 years ago.

Comments

[ukelele]

That reminds me! The current issue of the Economist mentions someone's study where they found that women were better than men at pointing toward the source of food in a farmers' market, despite men's supposed superiority at navigation, and how much better they were was linked solely to the caloric content of the food (a trait the researchers said would be useful for gatherers).

[differenceblog]

Is this the online version of the article you're talking about?Sex, shopping and thinking pink

I had ignored it when I found it Googling, because I thought it was just about the Hurlbert and Ling study we covered last week. The farmer's market navigation looks worth investigating, though: (New et al (2007)

[ukelele]

Yes, the New et al part of it.

[deadkytty9]

I want to know how many of the women used in the study were on restricted-calorie diets at the time, vs. the men. Maybe they remembered where highly caloric food sources were located better because it was more relevant to them; I know when I try to diet, I think about food *constantly*.

[differenceblog]

That's a really interesting question. They asked the people how much they liked the foods they were attempting to locate, but not whether they were dieting. Here's the items New et al controlled for:

" the effect of caloric density on pointing accuracy remained significant even after controlling for how much subjects liked the taste of each food, how often they eat each food, how attractive they found the stall selling the food, and how often they had purchased food from that stall. Indeed, none of these other variables made a zero-order or unique contribution to performance"

[thespaceace]

Women in our society are socialized through very severe dieting requirements to be able to tell what has how many calories, etc. I think that even if the women weren't dieting, they had dieted significantly in the past. The tendency to diet would cause an 'edge' in the ability to determine caloric values as well as the ability to seek the items out.

BTW, I tripped onto this discussion group. I hope that you don't mind my contribution.

Julie

[differenceblog]

I don't mind at all.

The women weren't asked to identify how many calories were in each food, although they were given samples to taste. If anything, the caloric information seems to have been subconscious.

The men were also more accurate at pointing at higher calorie foods than lower calorie foods.