Who read NY Daily News this weekend? Did you see that article? One called “Extroverted men, neurotic women are the most fertile combination: study“?
If you’re anything like me (Jewish, New Yorker, and yes, neurotic) you glanced at this and were like “Really? Then how am I not pregnant already?”
But then you actually *read* the article instead of just skimming the headline, and realized the following:
First of all, the study took place in Senegal, where, as the Daily News points out, “residents practice polygamy and typically don’t believe in birth control [can we can a reliable confirmation?].” Still, the Daily News goes on to extrapolate:
- “But whether in Senegal or America, extroverted men tend to make more money and presumably have more sex. And more frequent sex leads to more babies.”
And
- “So why do neurotic women make more babies? They tend to have “attachment anxiety” and so are very motivated to have sex with their husbands, according to [study author Prof. Virpi Lummaa of Sheffield University in the U.K.].”
Which, wait, what? As for the money thing, I have dated a fair number of extroverted men. Most of them were broke. Their extroverted personalities may have been what attracted me to them in the first place, but it was that and not, you know, their earning potential that drew me in.
And as a slightly neurotic woman myself, I resent the idea that “attachment anxiety” would be driving me to have more sex. Is it the neurosis or my gender that’s preventing me from having sex because, let’s say, I want to, and not because I am anxious? You weigh in!
(I’m not even go down the road of how, depending on your neurosis, you could actually be *less* inclined to have sex, or at least unprotected sex, for health concerns/germs… That’s a whole other topic.)
Questions I would have liked to know the answers to (Which to my knowledge the study didn’t answer, but look for yourself to be sure!): Are extroverted men and/or neurotic women actually using birth control less often? Or are they just more fertile? Are they really having more sex? Or just more babies? And what does this mean for me exactly — be extra careful if I date someone with a boisterous personality? Are the results different for neurotic men and extroverted women? Also how, exactly, did they define neurotic?
I guess in the end, the lesson is this: don’t depend on the New York Daily News for reliable medical information, and if you don’t want to get pregnant, use birth control. But you knew that already.
Photo is mine, of my adorable nephew. Yes, this post may have been an elaborate excuse to post a photo of him. What?
I don’t have time to read the original article, but does anyone know if they considered the possibility of more children –> more neurosis for the primary caretaker, i.e., usually the woman? Or that the men may be extroverted because they’re in positions of power, not the other way around? And just because they don’t use birth control, doesn’t mean that couples who don’t want a ton of children have no choice. They can stop having procreative sex. People are creative when they have to be, especially about sex. Perhaps the man’s greater standing in society means that they have the funds for having more children.
Ugh, this is why I’m not a social scientist. TOO MANY FACTORS. HEAD EXPLODING.
Back to my nice, clean chemical reactions.
I am a neurotic woman who has pretty much exclusively dated extroverted men, not because they rake in the big bucks, but because I’m very shy, and it’s a yin/yang-y opposites attract kind of dealio. I’m wondering, too, how the scientists determined what constitutes a neurotic woman? The term was long ago eliminated from the DSM. So why the hell are a bunch of what might be very generously termed “scientists” structuring a study around female “neurosis” and getting published in 2010?
My current partner is far more extroverted than I am at least up front, though at times I am more extroverted than she is. I think the whole yin/yang thing is more complicated than it appears at first.
And as for babies, well. They’re fine for other people. But not for us.
Looking at what I can find about the study itself (I’m away from all my database passwords so I can’t pull the methodology section directly and the article’s abstract is pretty useless) they’re using the Big Five definitions of Neuroticism, which translates to more emotional reactivity and a tendency to respond to stimuli with “negative” emotions such as anxiety, fear, sadness, or anger, and Extraversion, which translates to having more energy, a greater propensity to “positive” emotions, and seeking out interactions with others. The Big Five theory was developed in the west, by predominantly middle class, white, researchers.
Given what we know about how Big Five scores port to gender, what this study really claims to have found is that socially dominant, stereotypically masculine men and socially submissive, stereotypically feminine women have 12% more children then less extreme pairings. Hardly ground breaking research when one considers that you’re talking about a poor, extremely patriarchal society which practices limited polygamy (the study itself notes that several of the villiages studied had polygamous households).
Thanks for weighing in William! It’s all interesting — and seems to me to be more correlation than causation maybe? But hey, what do I know, I just work in media…
I like how neurotic women having more sex with their husbands is independent of things like, you know, their libido. They have sex because of attachment anxiety! Surely not because they want to!
Or the other side – I’m quite anxious (not sure how we are defining neurotic), but, uh, I’m also asexual and not inclined to compromise on that front. Even if I were attracted to men and ended up marrying one, I don’t think a lot of babies would be resulting…
@William, I’m not terribly fond of the judgment present in your use of the term “stereotypically feminine.” See: Julia Serrano! This comes up *again* and *again* in feminist blogs. Seriously, people, read your copy of “Whipping Girl” until it’s dogeared, because some of you are not absorbing it. (I’m sorry if that sounds impatient, but it’s a recurring problem, fer sure.)
@Comrade Kevin, of course it’s more complicated. Absolutely. I’m just using shorthand for “not attracted to extroverts for the big bucks.”
The quality of journalistic reporting of scientific findings has seriously made me re-consider getting involved in a research profession. That is not an exaggeration.
That being said (and, hey, tying into Julie’s recent review of an impenetrable sociology text!), maybe better academic writing and more relevant research would help. I’m sure half the reason that journalists come up with the ridiculous, nonsensical “reporting” that they do with the results of research is that research is frequently written up in a way that makes it boring and inaccessible, even to many other academics, if it’s not their pet field.
Well on the big 5 personality scale, I’m very introverted and rank high on the neurotic scale. My boyfriend is marginally less introverted and barely neurotic at all, and does in fact make more money than me! Of course, that might be because he’s an engineering student with a nice techy job, while I’m a philosophy student. (The big philosophy firms aren’t hiring interns this summer due to the economy)
My guess is the sexual dynamics in a polygamous marriage structure where women have little formal or societal power wouldn’t translate directly to the US context. My guess is also the neurotic = more sex is rather neurotic = status insecurity, which in this context might lead to more sex, if sex is a way to exert power within a polygamous power dynamic.
Its a loaded term, to be sure, and I wasn’t as precise as I should have been. When I said “stereotypically feminine” and “stereotypically masculine” I was talking about social roles and expectations, not necessarily about the way men and women actually are or should be. I can totally see how what I wrote might have been read otherwise. What I was trying to say was that, in a society which trains men to be aggressive and women to be submissive, the results of the study seemed less than surprising. Sorry for being unclear.
One of the big problems, to my mind, is that the particular construct the authors of this study used to define personality features is badly tainted by gender roles and expectations. Men are taught to behave in such a manner as to score more highly on the Extraversion feature by being rewarded for showing those kinds of traits and ridiculed for not showing them. Women experience a similar social pull for what the construct defines as Neuroticism (and thats before we even begin to deconstruct what it means to define the experience and expression of painful emotions as bad).
@William, okay. That’s much clearer to me. Thanks for elaborating.
My dad is very introverted and my mom is very neurotic (also introverted). Yet somehow she got pregnant on the first try, both times. I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION, RESEARCH SCIENTISTS!
Keep waiting. Once you get beyond theoretical work and case studies “social science” research isn’t much more than bad stats, questionable methodology, and artificial constructs.