Sex, shopping and thinking pink

Evolutionary psychology
Sex, shopping and thinking pink

Aug 23rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9682588

The brains of men and women are, indeed, different

WOMEN really are better than men at shopping. And they really do prefer pink. And, surprisingly, it is possible that these facts are connected. The first conclusion was drawn by Joshua New of Yale University and his colleagues. The second was drawn by Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of Newcastle University in England. The connecting theme is that in the division of labour that forms the primordial bargain of human hunter-gatherer societies, it is the men who do the hunting and the women who do the gathering.

Blackberry-picking aside, urban humanity does little gathering from the wild these days, so Dr New decided to look at what seemed to him to be the nearest equivalent—shopping at a farmers' market. There is a fair amount of evidence that men are better than women at solving certain sorts of spatial problems, such as remembering the locations of topographical landmarks. Many researchers suggest such skills may have been important in the past for man-the-hunter, who needed to be able to find his way round the landscape. If that is the case, then woman-the-gatherer might have been expected to develop complementary skills not shown by males. And that, as he writes in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society, is what Dr New found.

Dr New used the market to test two hypotheses. The first was that women remember the locations of food resources more accurately than men do. The second was that the more nutritionally valuable a resource is, the more accurately its location will be remembered.

To prove these conjectures he recruited 41 women and 45 men and led each of them individually on a merry dance around the chosen market. In the course of this peregrination, each participant visited six of the 90 food stalls in the market. At each of those stalls, participants were given a piece of food to eat. They were asked their preference for the taste of the food, how often they ate that food in normal life, how attractive they found the stall and how often they had made purchases from that stall in the past. After visiting all six stalls, they were taken to the centre of the market and asked to point toward those stalls, one at a time, using an arrow on a dial. In addition, they were asked to rate their own sense of direction.

In the pink
On average, women were 9° more accurate than men at pointing to each stall—a significant deviation if you have to walk some distance to get to a place. This was not because those women had more experience of visiting the market than the men had. Nor did the women rate themselves as having a better sense of direction—indeed the men rated their own navigating skills more highly.

Dr New suggests that these results show women are better than men at the particular task of relocating sources of food. That contrasts with the idea that men are better at navigation in general. In other words, women's minds are specialised for their ancestral task of gathering the sort of food that cannot run away.

That such food is in a different mental category from the one occupied by general landmarks was suggested by the answer to the second hypothesis. The higher the calorific value of the food sold by a stall, the more accurately Dr New's volunteers were able to point towards it. And that result applied to both sexes, though women still did better than men.

How much the participants liked the food did not have an effect on this accuracy. Indeed none of the secondary attributes of the food or stall in question (taste preference, the frequency of an item in a volunteer's normal diet, the appearance of the stall and how often a volunteer used that stall in daily life) were found to affect pointing accuracy. Only the calorific value of the item in question was relevant.

For their part Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling, who report their study in Current Biology, used coloured patches flashing on a computer screen to find the preferences of their set of volunteers. These volunteers were men and women of British and Chinese origin who were in their early 20s.

Mostly, the two researchers found that people of different sexes and from different continents did not differ in their colour preferences. But there was one exception. Among both the British and the Chinese, women preferred reddish hues such as pink to greenish-blue ones. Among men it was the other way round.

Moreover, though anatomical sex is binary, mental “gender” is more pliable. To see how masculine or feminine the brains of their participants were, Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling used what is known as the Bem Sex Role Inventory, which asks about personality traits more often associated with one sex than the other. This showed that the more feminine a brain was, regardless of the body it inhabited, the more it liked red and pink.

All this suggests a biological, rather than a cultural, explanation for colour preference. And Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling have produced one. They suggest that their result may be connected with the fact that the colour of many fruits is at the red end of the spectrum. An evolved preference for red, pink and allied shades—particularly in contrast with green—could thus bring advantage to those who gather such things. And if they can also remember which tree (or stall) to go and visit next time, then so much the better.

hazy memories

if you have been reading my blog, you’ll notice that a lot of my stories involve my shenanigans as a little girl. a few of my dear readers have commented on how good my memory is. not to be a braggart, but i do have a pretty good memory. ask me what we were doing when i first met you and 9 times out of 10, i’ll be able to tell you. i’ll also probably remember what you were wearing (e.g. audris shau: i saw you, you didn’t see me and you were wearing a hat. jen parks: first year, warren hall at a rugby meeting, you were wearing cool pointy shoes. sylvana sinha: on the bus, i just remember your eyelashes, chris pollak: on the rugby pitch eating cheetos).

my first real, cohesive memory takes place in San Diego, circa 1982. the kim family had just moved to san diego from los angeles, the city where i was born. we chose a nice cul-de-sac that had a mere 6 houses on it at the time. it was peppered, however, by empty construction lots that would one day be filled with homes that would one day be filled with families who would one day experience laughter, sadness, love, divorces, contentment, scandal, empty-nest syndrome, dog bites, pet deaths and lost baby teeth.

side story: a man who would eventually become my ophthalmologist moved in across the street in 1987 with his family. he was softspoken and gentle. his name was dr. montgomery. my dad (and i swear every other korean dad with a korean accent will do this) called him dr. MUNGLEMERRY. it wasn’t until i was 16 yrs old and getting fitted for glasses at his office that i realized my mistake. “DR. GORDON MONTGOMERY” was written in neat golden block letters on his door. i had called him dr. munglemerry for 6 yrs. heh).

my family and i went to the construction lot almost every day to see how the house was coming along. it was fun for me and my brother because we would find neat things like arrowheads and dead birds and interesting shaped pieces of wood.

one day i saw a nice big piece of white sidewalk chalk just hanging out in the dust. i could hardly believe my good fortune! what a serendipitious day! today, i thought, will be the day where big smiley faces are drawn on the sidewalk. but when i tried to pick it up, i realized that it was not a piece of chalk. it was a piece of dog shit that had been bleached white by the sun. it just looked like a piece of chalk. the white log of shit crumbled into a fine powder between my fingers when i touched it and i felt disgusted. i remember thinking "this thing fell out of a doggy bung hole. grody."

i wasn’t really sure what to do. i walked over to the adults trying to decide if i should tell them what happened. they were too busy talking to each other and i remember feeling ignored. so i just stood there with my fingers outstretched as far away from each other and my palm as possible. i was contemplating my next move. but then something really funny happened: my parents and the contractor were sniffing the air and lifting up their shoes to see if they had stepped in something like poo. i found this really amusing bc they still didn't realize i was there and certainly had no idea that the odorific fumes were emanating from my tiny right hand.

so, i never did tell them what happened. it was too complicated and i just wanted to go home and wash my hands. when we got back into the car, i sat in the backseat and rubbed my hands on the fuzzy underpart of the car seat over and over again until my fingers were burning.

everyone should try it. think back to your first memory and see what you come up with.

Milkshake bah buh better than yours, ba boo buh better than yours

04:07PM jparks1: What are the lyrics to the Milkshake song?
04:08PM jparks1: its been in my head all day, and I just realized I actually only know 3 of the words I'm singing
04:08PM ikim3: "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's better than yours, damn right it's better than yours i can teach you, but i have to charge, my milkshake...
04:08PM jparks1: awesome!
04:08PM jparks1: thanks
04:08PM ikim3: it used to be my ringtone.
04:08PM ikim3: why?
04:09PM jparks1: I was singing. Milkshake bah buh better than yours, ba boo buh better than yours

sky mall is an undiscovered gem

i take a lot of flights. whether it's to my home home in san diego or any one of my client locations, i always do two things as soon as i settle into my seat: (1) i check to see if the arm rest is in its horizontal position and if it's not, i make sure it is. this sends a firm signal to the person sitting next to me that i am in no mood for small talk, and (2) i study the SkyMall magazine.

SkyMall is an underdiscovered gem. i have found many relevant gifts for loved ones from 35,000 feet in the air.

here's a list of six things - categorized into "cool" and "why why why?"

(1) COOL:

if there's EVER a reason to do the Beyonce Bounce in the shower, here it is. a wall mountable back scratcher.

(2) COOL:

i am SO MAD at myself for not thinking of this portable pillow myself. it's so much better than the neck pillow. the only drawback is the slight embarrassment of blowing it up and then feeling awkward about deflating your breath into recycled airplane air after you land.

(3) COOL:



also useful if you're into sex with little people. i'm just saying that there are other uses to this Pet Staircase. i'm just saying.

...on to "why why why":
(1) WHY WHY WHY:


there's really nothing i can say about these tailgate chairs. it left me speechless.

(2) WHY WHY WHY:


i can see this conversation piece kicking up a lot of trouble at cocktail parties. one drink too many and a compromising photo of you and the sumo wrestler will be tagged in facebook faster than you can say "yokozuna".

(3) WHY WHY WHY:

this is a FAKE security camera. i've seen similar burglar retardant devices and think they are all dumb. included in this list is the fake dog barking tape and the blowup man.

check it out for yourself: www.skymall.com

also, learn about the etymology of the word "midget" and why it's not politically correct: http://www.arturogil.com/m_word.htm

look a little closer and you will see...

A few months ago I blogged about the quadri-colored trousers by Vineyard Vines (Blog "not sure what to say" 6/12/07).

If I ever saw someone wearing those trousers, I would (after I pick myself up from the ground from shock) immediately look around to see if I was at the entrance of the Octagon, New York City's first municipal insane asylum, around closing time.

If I were, I would probably also see someone wearing these (tip sent in by loyal blog reader Sylvana):



All I have to say is that it's lucky for her (and for us) that she wasn't fibbing like the rest of us when she put down "attention to detail" as one of her more marketable attributes on her resume. "what's wrong with that skirt" you ask? Well, look a little closer:



HOT TRAMP? Who thought this was a good idea? I'd really like to be in the design room when this skirt was being discussed. It may have gone something like this:

X: I think the problem with fashion these days is that nothing really sticks out anymore. Everything looks the same. It's always blah blah blah.
Y: I agree with you. We live in a homogenous society filled with fashion lemmings. We need something that SAYS something. Something that makes a statement. Something that makes me say, I AM WOMAN. HEAR ME ROAR!".
X: I got it!! HOT TRAMP.
Y: It's brill. Break out the Beadazzler*, everyone.

Come on people. Hot Tramp?

*The Beadazzler: a popular gadget from the 1980's, the beadazzler is still a stunner at just $19.95. this little blue plastic object, closely resembling a stapler, can be used with special sets to add sparkle to just about anything from scrapbooks to clothing TO THE BUTT OF REALLY EXPENSIVE SKIRTS WITH THE WORDS "HOT TRAMP" ON IT. When you purchase the beadazzler, it comes with plastic rhinestones and studs as well as amini version of itself (cute! but what for?). Since today's fashion is all about glimmer (Paris Hilton's phone is crystallized with Austrian crystals) girls might really enjoy having this handy little bling tool to add a little magic to their wardrobe, OR THE WORDS "HOT TRAMP" TO THE BUTT OF YOUR REALLY EXPENSIVE JEAN SKIRT.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/69809/ten_great_gifts_for_teen_girls_under.html (with some editoralizing by irene j. kim in BOLD)

the hungarian guy spy

my parents were extremely inventive when it came to halloween costumes. i find this very impressive considering that Halloween is a tradition that is nonexistent in their homeland of korea. My parents were REALLY good. as in, my brother and i won contests.

My earliest memories of Halloween begin in San Diego, around age 5. at the time, I was attending the allan school which was just down the hill from where i grew up. One day, as I was running down our big ass hill, my feet wanted to go faster than my hip joints were capable of churning out rotations. do you know what i mean? anyway, i fell on my face and for a moment it felt like inertia was going to lift my feet clear over the top of my head. “i’m going to be the world’s first human slinky!” i thought. it got me kind of excited even tho i was in a lot of pain. alas, i only did one flop down and before i knew it, my mother was already picking me up and giving me a good shake to make sure nothing was broken. "Irene, you have a hard head!" Apparently, even tho my mother was a good 20 feet behind me, she could hear the loud crack of my forehead against the sidewalk.

allan school had an annual Halloween fair. i entered the costume contest, as did my brother. My parents got creative. They put an itchy rainbow clown wig on my head, dressed me up in my father's hospital scrubs and his white coat, and wrote "MAD SURGEON" in squiggly letters on the back of it with a red "Marks A Lot" permanent marker. Fake blood stained operating gloves hung out of my side pocket and a stethoscope was draped around my neck. Sarah P, my best friend at the time, ran up to me in her sugar plum fairy costume. blond and angelic, she asked me if i was a crazy clown. i rolled my eyes and said, "i'm a mad surgeon", as in, "you are so dumb for not getting it, sarah" but wished that i was also in a princess costume. I stuck the stethoscope on her forehead and said very gravely "I'm very sorry, but you only have 3 days to live. let's go do the cakewalk."

my brother was darth vadar. he wore black cords and a black long sleeve t shirt with a black polyester cape. brother had a complicated 2 part mask that dad bought from Kay B toy store. the piece de resistance, however, was the tape recorder that hung from his neck. in the tape recorder was a tape that had 60 minutes of "hhaaaaaaaaaa huuuuuuuuuuuuu hhhaaaaaaaaaa huuuuuuuuuuuuuu" over and over and over again. and in case you were wondering what "ha hu" is, that was my onomatopoetic version of darth vadar's creepy breathing. can you believe it? my dear father spent an hour breathing into a tape recorder! 3 years later, he would spend an hour blowing up a 5 foot inflatable raft for my 8th birthday. I sat in it gingerly, holding my breath to make myself lighter. I was deathly afraid of popping the raft and then marinating in the miasma of someone else's breath. Ingrate that i was.

Anyway, my brother and i handily won the Halloween contest.

In 8th grade, my mom got really inventive. She dressed me up in her long skirts (several of them), wrapped my head in a colorful scarf, clipped 5 earrings on my earlobes and bought me a ba-zillion bangles. I was a gypsy...a HUNGARIAN gypsy, in fact.

Again, people asked me what i was. "Are you a bag lady?" And again, i sighed and explained, "no, i am a gypsy, a HUNGARIAN gypsy". By this point, i was kind of used to explaining my costumes every year. "i'm a traditional korean girl wearing a traditional korean dress. it's called a HAN BOK. a HAN BOK."... i'm charles dickens - can't you see that this jacket is English tweed? feel it"... "i'm a orthopedic surgeon, look how strong my hands are. they can fix your bones," i would say with a bored look in my eyes.

As expected, I won the costume contest tho my victory was severely undermined by the fact that my teacher introduced me as a HUNGARIAN GUY SPY. "WTF? You actually have credentials to educate young minds?" I thought. "What the hell is a guy spy?"*

It was during one Halloween that my heart broke for the first time. It happened when my best friend forever erin and i were trick or treating. we heard a pitiful mewing in the distance. it sounded just awful, like a squeaky hamster wheel. no, like a squeaky hamster wheel where the exercising hamster was also singing the rodent version of "rigoletto". we discovered that the noise was coming from a beautiful Persian cat who was trapped under its owners garage door. the door was pressing on the cat's back and a stream of urine was zigzagging down the driveway. erin and i gasped in horror and we ran to ring the doorbell. "your cat your cat! peeing on your driveway! open the door NOW." i am pretty sure our voices dropped a couple of octaves when we said the word "NOW". I may have even rolled my eyes into the back my head for special effect.

the owner lifted up the garage door and picked up the cat as if it was dryer lint. he didn't even canoodle it or ask it if it was ok. i ran up to the cat and tried to speak to it through my eyes. "If you want me to rescue you from your horrible horrible owner, lick your nose, okay? lick your nose, you hear me? i'll rescue you!" the cat didn't lick its nose so i tried another method, "mew mew meeeeeeeeeewww. mew mew, mewmew!!!!"

The weird thing is, i don't even like cats very much. I think they are sneaky. But no one wants to see a beautiful thing suffer. no one wants to see an ugly thing suffer. later, i found out that the cat had broken its back and died. and i cried as if it were my own cat. i cried because no one cared and my heart felt sad for weeks. it felt even sadder than when i accidentally starved my own pet turtle, shelly, to death and found him dessicated atop his rock. Because indifference is colder than ignorance.


*Actually, there is a Guy Spy. "Guy Spy and the Crystals of Armageddon: In this interactive cartoon, you are brave English soldier, who must stop Fascist Von Max, who wants to build a Doomsday Machine with the special crystals. http://www.mobygames.com/game/guy-spy-and-the-crystals-of-armageddon"
Fine. But in 1990, there was no such thing.

sorry, mole

the mole came back benign.

i *really* miss it now.

http://www.justicedenied.org/