Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire–Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do (21 page)

Consistent with this explanation, studies show that an individual's risk preference is strongly related to his or her religiosity both across and within the sexes. Not only are women more risk-averse and more religious than men, but more risk-averse men are more religious than more risk-seeking men, and more risk-averse women are more religious than more risk-seeking women.
²⁷
Further, consistent with this explanation, the sex difference in religiosity is larger in societies where being nonreligious is considered risky (such as in fundamentalist Christian or Muslim societies) than in societies with greater religious freedom, where individuals can freely choose to be religious or not. The sex difference is also smaller in societies where there is no widespread belief that nonbelievers go to hell, such as Buddhist societies.
²⁸

In the previous section of this chapter (see “Where Does Religion Come From?”), we present the intriguing possibility that humans may believe in God and the supernatural for the same reasons of error management that men over-infer women's sexual interest in them and women underinfer men's sexual interest in them. Now, in our discussion in this section of the universal sex difference in religiosity, our suggestion is that women are uniformly more religious than men for the same reasons of risk preference that men are more criminal and violent in every society. Sex differences in risk preference, religiosity, and criminality are all direct consequences of sex differences in reproductive strategy. In all areas of life, it pays for men to take risks because avoiding risks has the disastrous consequence of ending up a total reproductive loser. Religion is just another area where men are more risk-seeking than women.

Q. Why Are Most Suicide Bombers Muslim?

According to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of
Making Sense of Suicide Missions
—a comprehensive history of this topical yet puzzling phenomenon—while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is
always
Islam.
²⁹
Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions?

The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines of its text). It may have nothing to do with religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a lot to do with sex—or, in this case, the
absence
of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major world religions (Christianity and Judaism) is that it tolerates polygyny. As we explain in chapter 2 (“Why Are Men and Women So Different?”), by allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all. If 25 percent of men have four wives each, then three-quarters of men don't get any reproductive opportunities and face the distinct possibility of ending their lives as total reproductive losers.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status, who are most likely to be left without reproductive opportunities when older men of high status marry polygynously. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates because they have little to lose and much to gain by doing so compared to men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny increases violent crimes, such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors like economic development, economic in equality, population density, the level of democracy, and world regions.
³⁰
So the first unique feature of Islam, which partially contributes to the prevalence of suicide bombings among its followers, is polygyny, which makes young men violent everywhere. This is the first line in the Koran that partially explains it.

Polygyny Is Not Enough

However, polygyny by itself, while it increases violence, is not sufficient to cause suicide bombings. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Ca rib bean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and Northern Africa; eighteen of the twenty most polygynous nations in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa and the Ca rib bean.
^[31]
Accordingly, nations in these regions have very high levels of violence, and sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars,
but not suicide bombings.
So polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of seventy-two virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. This creates a strong motive for any young Muslim men who are excluded from reproductive opportunities on earth to get to heaven as martyrs. The prospect of exclusive access to seventy-two virgins in heaven may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces a bleak reality on earth of being complete reproductive losers because of polygyny.

From the evolutionary psychological perspective, it is the combination of polygyny (and the resulting lack of reproductive opportunities on earth)
and
the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but also other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations, like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
³²

Some Puzzles in the “War on Terror”

Some of the puzzles of the current situation in Iraq and the Middle East may begin to make sense when you shed evolutionary psychological light on them. For example, the Iraqi insurgents have killed more than six times as many Iraqis as Americans (6,004 Iraqi police and military personnel plus 10,131 civilians vs. 2,466 American troops, as of January 29, 2007).
³³
From the evolutionary psychological perspective, the Iraqi insurgents may be unconsciously trying to eliminate as many of their male sexual rivals (fellow Iraqi men) as possible, rather than killing American troops (the infidels and occupiers). According to Yale University political scientist Stathis N. Kalyvas, this is precisely what happened in civil wars in two other Muslim nations (Algeria and Oman).
³⁴
While it is difficult to remember in light of the daily news reports from the occupied Iraq, insurgency has not always been a necessary response to foreign occupation throughout history. There was absolutely no insurgency against the Allied occupation after World War II either in Germany or Japan.

While Muslim suicide bombers are collectively known as “the terrorists,” they are very different from traditional terrorist groups, such as the Irish Republican Army, ETA (Basque Fatherland and Liberty), the Japan Red Army, and other Marxist revolutionaries. Terrorists, traditionally, have clear political goals and are willing to resort to violence and destruction in order to achieve them. For traditional terrorists, what is most important are political goals, and violence and destruction are means to their goals. For example, while the IRA has assassinated many targeted individuals (mostly politicians and British soldiers), they do not aim to kill random civilians. That is why when the IRA sets explosive bombs on commercial targets in Britain, it usually gives a 45-minute advance warning, enough time for the occupants of the buildings to evacuate them safely, but not enough time to call the bomb squad to locate and defuse the bombs.
³⁵
While the members of Greenpeace and other “eco-terrorist” groups often endanger their own lives, they are not known to intentionally endanger the lives of others. Traditional terrorist groups let the whole world know that they are responsible for the violence and destruction and often court media attention, because such publicity helps spotlight their political agenda.

Our enemies in the current “War on Terror” are very different. They aim to endanger as many lives as possible, including their own, and they do not seem to have clearly stated political goals.
³⁶
They do not give advance warnings of their attacks, and they do not even publicly claim responsibility for the violence after the fact.
³⁷
(Many of the claims of responsibility on various websites are usually false.) It appears that murder and destruction
is
the goal, rather than the means to political goals. This may be why, for example, the Palestinians did not stop their suicide bombings even when the Israeli government under Ehud Barak conceded virtually everything that the Palestinians demanded (the total withdrawal of Israelis from the West Bank and the control of Jerusalem).
³⁸

Many of these puzzles begin to make more sense when you look at the situation from the evolutionary psychological perspective. Maybe these devastating suicide bombings are not “terrorist” acts, as the term is usually used. Maybe they have nothing to do with Israel or the American and British troops. Maybe they're all about sex, as everything else in life is.

Q. Why Is Ethnic and Nationalist Conflict So Per sis tent throughout the World?

If you pay attention to the world news, you know that ethnic and nationalist conflict has unfortunately been a constant feature of human history. It is no exaggeration to say that there has not been a region or a historical period that has not been affected by some sort of ethnic and nationalist conflict, and this is unfortunately still true at the dawn of the third millennium of recorded human history. The history of human civilization has in large part been a history of ethnic and nationalist conflict.

Why is this? Why is ethnic and nationalist conflict so persistent throughout history and the world?

Nationalism and other forms of ethnic movement pose a puzzle—especially for a school of the Standard Social Science Model called the rational choice theory.
³⁹
All benefits of successful nationalist or ethnic movements, such as ethnic independence, political autonomy, and state recognition, are shared equally by everyone. So, for example, once ethnic independence is granted to a nation (say, Quebec in Canada), all members of the nation are equally in de pen dent, and no one can be excluded from enjoying the newly acquired ethnic independence. It means that those members of an ethnic group or a nation who did not contribute at all toward the cause (the “freeriders”) get to enjoy the benefits of successful ethnic movements as much as those who risked life and limb in order to achieve the success (the “zealots”).
⁴⁰
Freeriders and zealots enjoy the same level of freedom and independence. Why, then, would anybody risk injury and death in order to bring about the change? In any situation like this, it is always rational to freeride, and no rational actors will ever contribute.
⁴¹
If everyone is rational, then no one will contribute to the cause, and it will not get off the ground, let alone succeed. How, then, can any ethnic and nationalist movement ever succeed?

Evolutionary Psychology Is Rational Choice for the Genes

Once again, evolutionary psychology can solve puzzles left unresolved by the Standard Social Science Model in general or the rational choice theory in particular.
⁴²
Joseph M. Whitmeyer was a student of Pierre L. van den Berghe, whom we have encountered a couple of times earlier. Whitmeyer argues, and mathematically proves, that any gene that inclines its carriers to help others whom they might marry, or those whose children their children might marry, or those whose grandchildren their grandchildren might marry, etc., will be favored by evolution and thus spread.
⁴³
By contributing toward the welfare of other members of such an “extended family” or tribe, so to speak, you are essentially providing benefits for your genetic offspring, both distant and near. Whitmeyer argues that what usually passes as an ethnic group is essentially such an extended family because members of ethnic groups tend to intermarry.