Slashdot Mirror
Possible Monogamy Gene Found In People
Calopteryx sends in a New Scientist summary of research from Sweden pointing toward the existence of a gene that influences monogamy in men. (The article doesn't mention women, and the study subjects were all men at least 5 years into a heterosexual relationship.) "There has been speculation about the role of the hormone vasopressin in humans ever since we discovered that variations in where receptors for the hormone are expressed makes prairie voles strictly monogamous but meadow voles promiscuous; vasopressin is related to the 'cuddle chemical' oxytocin. Now it seems variations in a section of the gene coding for a vasopressin receptor in people help to determine whether men are serial commitment-phobes or devoted husbands."
The pussy gene.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I see a whole brave new world of testing before pre-nuptials . . . But, if I have a defective gene, will that qualify me as handicapped under something like ADA? Will there be a high risk pool that I will be forced to "date" out of? So many questions . . .
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
which renders someone unable to get any at all.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
In the early 60's we got birth control pills, which (some say) facilitated women being promiscuous. Now, we have 'husband control pills'
What happens if we miss a day? Do we take two then next and use alternate husband control methods. -- Sarcasm transmits across TCP/IP as well as it does other media
When confronted by large quantities of beer protein.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
In my case, it's a "Martha" that has the greatest influence over my monogamous inclinations.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
That's not the cuddle chemical we used when I was in college
Just as a guess, which strategy works better (from a 'survival of the genes' perspective) probably varies in different circumstances. This would explain why neither gene sequence has dominated.
Shouldn't evolution sided with either monogamy or polygamy? I mean even if there is only a one percent difference between the successor rates should that have not been reflected by now?
If monogamy or the lack thereof were genetic and there were an evolutionary advantage to either strategy, then you're right: that should have been reflected in the general population.
Since it doesn't seem to be, that would seem to indicate that perhaps there is no evolutionary advantage to either side. With no advantage, there is no pressure for humanity to tend in one direction or the other. That could yield a pattern closer to what we are seeing now.
"No really babe, I've got a mutation in my monogamy gene. I HAVE to sleep around, or I'll die."
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
No. It shouldn't have, because either strategy can lend itself to evolutionary success for men.
If you're a powerful man, polygamy is an excellent strategy. You want to be impregnating every woman you can get your hands on, and you can by force and/or intimidation (among other motivators). Genghis Khan is an exemplar of this (at least according to one study that something like 6% of the world's men are his descendants). With that many kids, you don't need to invest very much in making sure each kid survives long enough to reproduce.
If you're a powerless man, then your best strategy is monogamy: you aim to have one woman who you reproduce with, and devote lots of time and energy into making sure that those kids survive. This leads to the nerds who will love a woman forever and stick with her through sickness and health.
If you're somewhere in between on the power scale, then the strategy seems to be pretending monogamy while having at least one mistress on the side. The theory here is that you get the greater number of kids and genetic variation from having more partners, but a fallback position of the kids from your "monogamous" relationship. Hence middle-management types cheating on their wives.
I am officially gone from
In our current society, monogamy makes more sense.
Until you see the hot little redhead that just moved in across the street from me. Then polygamy starts looking pretty damn good again.
Because which strategy works better would depend on what strategy everyone else in the local population is following. You end up with an stable equilibrium proportion where both strategies work equally well, all things being equal, but if you perturb it slightly the one becomes slightly more advantageous than the other and reproduces faster until the equilibrium is restored.
Does this mean we may be able to finally develop a cure for monogamy?
I've never had the slightest interest in anything except strict monogamy.
You sir, lack imagination.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Being polygamous I wonder if I have this gene...hehe I know my wife her girlfriend, and my two other partners don't. ;)
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
The day nerds become a protected subspecies is the day I give up on humanity.
Why would a man not screw around as much as possible?
In short, because our young are vulnerable after birth, require a fairly large energy investment, and are few in number.
Monogamy actually appears in a number of different animal species.
Let's say that we go 10,000 years back. Why would a man not screw around as much as possible?
Lots of reasons...
Inability to find good mates... Ideal mothers for your children would reject you knowing that you wouldn't provide for them?
Low chance of offspring surviving... mothers would be unable to care for your children, and unable to find mates willing help them?
Societal acceptance... e.g. The other men would stone him? Stone the women he cheated with? Stone his offspring?
Monogamy exists in nature. There are reasons for why it works where it exists.
And if love existed, who's to say that it lasted for long periods?
Indeed. Monogamy isn't necessarily 'till death to we part' in modern society at least it simply means not cheating on your partner. It is entirely possible to marry, raise a child, separate, marry someone else, and even raise another child, all within the confines of monogamy.
Hell when I was a teen, most of us were pretty monogamous; its not that we all married our first crush, but rather that our teen years were a succession of monogamous relationships of varying lengths, some quite brief, and punctuated with periods of being 'single'.
And yes some people who were supposedly 'in a relationship' cheated, and when caught it carried a stigma, one that I would say definitely impacted their dating prospects in the circles where it was known that they cheated (applied to both males and females).
I think you might be wrong there.
In a welfare/socialist society, polygamy and promiscuety make more (evolutionary) sense for men.
Which would you rather be: 1) the guy that sleeps around with lots of women and gets lots of kids, or 2) the guy that stays with a single woman and gets taxed to death to support all the single mothers, left over from the first guy.?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
This is slashdot. Which means that a lot of those non-polys ain't mono, they're zippo.
If I had one of those monogamy genes, I'd want to help it thrive - so I'd go find a bunch o' girls and get 'em pregnant...
Bow-ties are cool.