Slashdot Log In
Possible Monogamy Gene Found In People
Posted by
kdawson
on Tuesday September 02, @02:56PM
from the walking-the-line dept.
from the walking-the-line dept.
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."
Related Stories
[+]
Trust in a Bottle 658 comments
flosofl writes "The BBC has a report on oxytocin and its ability to skew our trust levels. 'The participants in the study played a game, in which they were split into "investors" and "trustees." The investors were then given credits and told they could chose whether to hand over zero, four, eight or 12 credits to their assigned trustee.' Some of the investors were given oxytocin via nasal spray. The results were surprising: 'Of 29 investors who were given oxytocin, 13 (45%) displayed "maximal trust" by choosing to invest highly, compared to six (21%) of the 29 investors who were given the dummy spray.' When the trustee was a computer, there was no difference between the two test groups."
[+]
Research Suggests Polygamous Men Live Longer 483 comments
Calopteryx writes "Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife. A study reported in New Scientist suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones. After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations."
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
George Clooney dubs it: (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Re:George Clooney dubs it: (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Parent
Re:George Clooney dubs it: (Score:5, Funny)
Of course.
Those in monogamous relationships get sex on demand and home cooked meals!
All my married friends tell me that.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:George Clooney dubs it: (Score:5, Insightful)
They lie to you. Oh man do they lie. They probably do it so that you will join them in their misery, misery loves company and all that.
Anyhow, now that there's a gene for it and I obviously don't have it, I have a scientific excuse. ;)
Reply to This
Parent
A whole new round of testing (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Re:A whole new round of testing (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Parent
And the Slashdot Gene (Score:5, Funny)
which renders someone unable to get any at all.
Reply to This
Re:And the Slashdot Gene (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Parent
Re:And the Slashdot Gene (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly; would ANYONE want to cuddle a meadow vole?
Too much time, large research grant on their hands...
Reply to This
Parent
Re:And the Slashdot Gene (Score:5, Insightful)
And like winning the lottery twice, the slashdot men that do marry are quite unlikely to find another. A predisposition for involuntary celibacy is a predictor for monogomy.
Reply to This
Parent
Great!!! [whatever] Control pills (Score:5, Funny)
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
Reply to This
Re:Great!!! [whatever] Control pills (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to kick the barstool out from under y'all, but Jeebuz, you folks act like a gene sequence removes all thought from the equation.
I don't sleep around because I love my wife and extra-marital affairs have a tendency to remove MARRIAGES. Quite frankly, it is my head, and the thoughts within, that decide my actions, not the genes passed on to me. Genes may have some effect, but if the result is not acceptable to the thinking part of me, they are simply over-ridden.
Reply to This
Parent
Not always a gene... (Score:5, Funny)
In my case, it's a "Martha" that has the greatest influence over my monogamous inclinations.
Reply to This
Oxytocin? (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Exciting news. (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Reply to This
Re:Hhhmm, (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Hhhmm, (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Hhhmm, (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Hhhmm, (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Hhhmm, (Score:5, Insightful)
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.?
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Disablites Act (Score:5, Funny)
"No really babe, I've got a mutation in my monogamy gene. I HAVE to sleep around, or I'll die."
Reply to This
Parent
Re:i don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
I've never had the slightest interest in anything except strict monogamy.
You sir, lack imagination.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:No Monogamy Gene (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:No Monogamy Gene (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Reply to This
Parent