Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Pope Francis is a creationist



The media is giving much attention to a few things that the Pope said at The Pontifical Academy of Sciences (yes, you read that right) a couple of days ago.

Here are some quotes from Francis:
-“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so...
-“He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment...
-“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
-“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it...
-“God is not a divine being or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life...
Please, make no mistake about this: the Pope is a creationist.

His chosen sentences were seething with creationism. He's just not a young-Earth, Genesis-is-literally-true creationist. He is a God-used-whatever-science-tells-us-happened creationist.

I'm not sure which is more intellectually dishonest.

And despite what the Pope says, God surely is a magician to have gotten it all going.

In an age where magic is frowned upon more than it has been in history, it's in Francis' obvious interest to distance God from magic and approximate Him to the findings of science. Pity that he doesn't realize that as far as explanations go, magic and God are both horrible.

Monday, October 27, 2014

A few things I've learned about psychological gender differences and feminism

Queen Bey

In the outrage that followed some remarks made by author, Sam Harris, earlier this month, I set out to better understand what we know about psychological gender differences. When it became clear to me that there was very reasonable (though admittedly, not perfect) evidence that men tend to be more aggressive and women tend to be more nurturing, I suggested that the charges of sexism that many, including U of C Freethinker , HJ Hornbeck, were advancing and defending on social media just couldn’t stick. I gave Hornbeck a chance to defend his accusation here on Skepsis, and he took that opportunity to level two more charges of sexism against Harris. Hornbeck thought he did well enough defending himself that he did not retract his charges or apologize for any of them. I’m grateful that he did engage me and the evidence, and I'm happy to let you, my readers, look over all of our exchanges here and here and make up your own minds about whether Harris' comments were, in fact, sexist.

Now that the dust has settled, I thought it might be of interest to see just where the literature stands regarding gender differences. Thankfully, perhaps the foremost authority on the topic, Dr. Janet S. Hyde, published a thorough review just this year. Hyde is recognized as having coined the “gender similarities hypothesis”. Her 2005 meta-analysis of meta-analyses showed that, contrary to the popular opinion that men are from mars and women are from venus, the genders are much more similar than they are different. Here’s what she recently had to say among her concluding remarks:
“Overall, based on the numerous meta-analyses reported here, there is much evidence in support of the gender similarities hypothesis. Domains in which gender differences are small (around d = 0.20) or trivial (d ≤ 0.10) include mathematics performance, verbal skills, some personality dimensions such as gregariousness and conscientiousness, reward sensitivity, the temperament dimension of negative affectivity, relational aggression, tentative speech, some aspects of sexuality (e.g., oral sex experience, attitudes about extramarital sex, attitudes about masturbation), leadership effectiveness, self-esteem, and academic self-concept.

Nonetheless, the gender similarities hypothesis acknowledges exceptions to the general rule. Exceptions to gender similarities, where differences are moderate (d = 0.50) or large (d = 0.80), include 3D mental rotation, the personality dimension of agreeableness/tender-mindedness, sensation seeking, interests in things versus people, physical aggression, some sexual behaviors (masturbation and pornography use), and attitudes about casual sex.
 This review also reveals much evidence of the importance of context in creating or erasing gender differences. For example, deindividuation, which removes the influence of gender roles, erases the gender difference in aggression.”- Janet S. Hyde PhD, 2014 (bold emphasis is mine)

The first thing to note is that though similarities outnumber differences, there are some exceptions and they include an at least moderate difference in agreeableness/tendermindedness, which is the term used in this research that entails nurturing. This is precisely what Dr. Yanna Weisberg, whose 2011 work I referenced in my last entry, described and concluded. A moderate difference means that about 75% of women will rank above the mean agreeableness of men, and that there is a 2 out of 3 chance that a random female will exceed the agreeableness of a random male.

The situation with aggression, where moderate-large differences have been identified, is interesting, and Hornbeck pointed it out during our exchange. In one experiment, when gender identity was concealed, the difference in aggression disappeared, suggesting that socialized gender roles were involved in whatever differences existed, rather than underlying biology. While I suspect that this finding is not the last word on the subject, I am grateful to Hornbeck for bringing it to the table for discussion. Notice that it doesn’t suggest that women aren’t less aggressive in the specific context addressed by Harris’ comments where gender identity is out in the open (except for sometimes on the internet), or more importantly, that certain open contexts that select for aggression and against agreeableness might produce fairly large gender predominances. Furthermore Harris’ hypothesis doesn’t rely on the gender difference in aggression being biological as opposed to sociocultural, so while Hornbeck’s point here is interesting and true, it can’t rescue him.

Hornbeck is like many others who called Harris' comments and blog entry sexist in that many of these folks don't really seem to buy into there being any relevant psychological gender differences, so anybody who disagrees with them must be sexist, by definition.

Notice one of the bizarre and unwanted consequences of that position. If the claim of relevant psychological gender differences itself, is sexist, then Drs. Janet Hyde and Yanna Weisberg et al, who concluded in their research that some moderate and even large gender differences do exist, must be accused of sexism, too.

Should people doing science and drawing honest conclusions about data on psychological gender differences have to fear charges of sexism from those who think that such conclusions are unwarranted? Should Therese Huston (cognitive psychologist at Seattle University), Mara Mather (cognitive neuroscientist at University of Southern California), Nicole R. Lighthall (cognitive neuroscientists at Duke University), Stephanie D. Preston (cognitive scientist at University of Michigan), Ruud van den Bos (Neurobiologist at Radbound University in the Netherlands), Livia Tomova and Claus Lamm (University of Vienna) all close shop and jettison these questions, or should their work related to gender differences in decision making under stress be openly available is it was in the NY Times last week?

Shouldn’t we have an open conversation on this subject without having one jumping to conclusions about people’s reasoning, and dropping ugly accusations of sexism at every turn whenever others disagree with one about the state of the evidence? Why not just stick to a conversation about the evidence, without resorting to indirect (aka relational) aggression against individuals?

I’m going to let Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, have the last word on this one:

“The psychology of taboo is not completely irrational. In maintaining our most precious relationships, it is not enough to say and do the right thing. We have to show that our heart is in the right place and that we don't weigh the costs and benefits of selling out those who trust us. If someone offers to buy your child or your spouse or your vote, the appropriate response is not to think it over or to ask how much. The appropriate response is to refuse even to consider the possibility. Anything less emphatic would betray the awful truth that you don't understand what it means to be a genuine parent or spouse or citizen. (The logic of taboo underlies the horrific fascination of plots whose protagonists are agonized by unthinkable thoughts, such as Indecent Proposal and Sophie's Choice.) Sacred and tabooed beliefs also work as membership badges in coalitions. To believe something with a perfect faith, to be incapable of apostasy, is a sign of fidelity to the group and loyalty to the cause. Unfortunately, the psychology of taboo is incompatible with the ideal of scholarship, which is that any idea is worth thinking about, if only to determine whether it is wrong.

At some point in the history of the modern women's movement, the belief that men and women are psychologically indistinguishable became sacred. The reasons are understandable: Women really had been held back by bogus claims of essential differences. Now anyone who so much as raises the question of innate sex differences is seen as "not getting it" when it comes to equality between the sexes. The tragedy is that this mentality of taboo needlessly puts a laudable cause on a collision course with the findings of science and the spirit of free inquiry.”-
Steven Pinker, 2005

Thursday, October 9, 2014

H.J. Hornbeck should apologize to Sam Harris


Sam Harris has been accused of making some sexist statements about gender differences related to aggression and nurturing, and H.J. Hornbeck has opted to join that bandwagon of intellectual self-immolation with his own youthful exuberance (see comments).  At least he seems less twitchy than another of Harris' recent critics: The Dark Knight that Harris didn't deserve. The thread that ties criticisms of Harris' ideas together, whatever their source, is commonly a failure to thoughtfully and carefully consider what the man is actually saying. I fear that Hornbeck's zeal has clouded his judgement, too; while he manages to find sexism in just about every sentence that Harris makes, he has proven unable to demonstrate that they meet even his own definition of sexism.


I am, however, thankful for his acknowledgement that this conflict reduces to a question about empirical evidence which he, more than most, has been willing to discuss. We agree that his burden is to show that Harris’ original comments are, as all that upon which bigotry is ultimately founded, unwarranted or false. Today, I will again focus mainly, though not exclusively, on the seminal work of Janet S. Hyde, PhD, who coined the “gender similarities hypothesis” in her detailed meta-analysis of over 20 years of psychological studies that showed that the genders are much less different than we think. This is Hornbeck’s defiant position and he would have us believe that it is incompatible with Dr. Harris’ remarks.


But is that really the case?


There is a clear gender difference in (even non-physical) aggression


Hornbeck has been correct to point out that the gender difference related to physical aggression is greatest, but the problem for him is that it just doesn’t follow that there are no relevant differences in non-physical aggression.



Table 1 in Dr. Hyde’s study (reproduced in part above) provides information from 5 different meta-analyses of aggression between the genders.  Every single one of those studies found that males were more verbally (or otherwise non-physically) aggressive than females, with the magnitude of that difference overwhelmingly ranging from small to moderate (values in the right column from 0.11-0.65)*. Hyde analyzed 6 studies concluding that males were moderately more verbally aggressive. Eagly and Steffen analyzed 20 studies concluding that males were mildly more psychologically (as opposed to physically) aggressive. Knight analyzed over 50 studies concluding that males showed moderately more verbal aggression and aggression in a variety of emotional arousal contexts. Bettencourt & Miller analyzed over 50 studies concluding that males were moderately more aggressive under both neutral and provocative conditions. Archer analyzed almost 100 studies concluding that verbal aggression had a mild to moderate male predominance.


Consider this data from the perspective of evolutionary biology. Hornbeck does not challenge Hyde’s finding of large and moderate sized gender differences in physical prowess and physical aggression. But ask yourself, why would evolution build males this costly way and not provide them with psychological inclinations (that can be amplified by sociocultural influences) towards aggressive conflict? We simply should not be surprised that small to moderate differences between the genders in non-physical aggression shine through reams of data.


Hornbeck equivocates that because this gender difference isn't large, non-physical aggression "doesn't have much of a gender divide"[emphasis is mine], but as numerous investigators have shown over and over, the notion that males are, on average, mild-moderately more aggressive, including more aggressive in non-physical ways than females, seems unopen to dispute. And if you think that small-to-moderate effect sizes just can't be relevant in the real world, I encourage you to read Dr. Hyde's discussion on that topic in her paper^.


But there is more with which Hornbeck must contend ...


What about nurturing?


Ironically, Hornbeck claims that I’m “equivocating between aggression and not nurturing”, but this is a red herring. I wonder if what he really meant was that I’ve been conflating being aggressive with being less nurturing. Doing so is not as inappropriate as it may at first seem because these two personality variables lie in contrast to each other. Aggression is about attack, and hence, is offensive in posture, while nurturing is more about fostering and protecting, which is more defensive. Just as evidence that men are taller is relevant if one believes that women are shorter, evidence that males are more aggressive is relevant if one believes that females are more nurturing. And besides, only the most uncharitable reading could lead one to conclude that Harris doesn't weave both concepts into his comments.


But if Hornbeck specifically wants evidence that females are, on average, moderately more nurturing, well, that exists, too. In 2011, Yanna Weisberg, PhD, and colleagues examined personality traits between the genders in a variety of cultural traditions. It is noteworthy that this work was written after Hyde's meta-analysis, so its conclusions regarding both the general state of the evidence and the particular findings of that investigation regarding nurturing are more contemporary. In their introduction, they wrote:

“Gender differences in personality traits are often characterized in terms of which gender has higher scores on that trait, on average. For example, women are often found to be more agreeable than men (Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001). This means that women, on average, are more nurturing, tender-minded, and altruistic more often and to a greater extent than men.”

Weisberg found few surprises relating to nurturing:

Replicating previous findings, there was a significant gender difference in Agreeableness [ie. being more nurturing, tender-minded, and altruistic] such that women tend to score higher than men, and this pattern was the same for the aspects, Compassion and Politeness, when measured in terms of raw scores or residualized scores. Compassion most clearly represents a tendency to invest in others emotionally and affiliate on an emotional level, encompassing traits such as warmth and empathy. Politeness describes the tendency to show respect to others and refrain from taking advantage of them, and is related to traits such as cooperation and compliance. Our findings that women score higher than men on both aspects are consistent with previous research showing women are more trusting and compliant than men (Costa et al., 2001)" - Weisberg et al 2011

But I found what came towards the end of Dr. Weisberg's paper most striking:

"We would caution against adopting such a dramatic interpretation of the pervasive gender differences in personality that we report in this study. All of the mean differences we found (and all of the differences that have been found in the past – e.g., Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001) are small to moderate. This means that the distributions of traits for men and women are largely overlapping. To illustrate this fact, in Figure 10 [see graph below] we present the male and female distributions from our sample for the trait which showed the largest gender difference, Agreeableness. One can see that both men and women can be found across a similar range of Agreeableness scores, such that, despite the fact that women score higher than men on average, there are many men who are more agreeable than many women, and many women who are less agreeable than many men.” -Weisberg et al 2011
Figure 10. Weisberg et al.

Weisberg's last paragraph is written with many of the same cautionary words that Dr. Harris himself  employed to characterize his position:

“My work is often perceived (I believe unfairly) as unpleasantly critical, angry, divisive, etc. The work of other vocal atheists (male and female) has a similar reputation. I believe that in general, men are more attracted to this style of communication than women are. Which is not to say there aren’t millions of acerbic women out there, and many for whom Hitchens at his most cutting was a favorite source of entertainment. But just as we can say that men are generally taller than women, without denying that some women are taller than most men, there are psychological differences between men and women which, considered in the aggregate, might explain why “angry atheism” attracts more of the former ... How much is explained by normally distributed psychological differences between the sexes?” – Sam Harris

Harris went out of his way to ensure that his message would not be received as an endorsement of the idea that large, purely innate, psychological gender differences are the only explanation for the entire apparent gender imbalance in question, but this is what his critics would have you believe. To have done so would be to have made sexist remarks, but Harris' suggestion is clearly, and, as usual, more nuanced and sophisticated than the straw men from which his critics have been making much hay of late. He really isn't the sexist pig they're looking for.


The glaring irony here is that it is those who distort Harris' message that spread false and unwarranted claims. His remarks and later his explanation over at his blog convey notions supported by a significant body of literature that, while generally highlighting gender similarities, nevertheless points directly at psychological gender differences related to aggression and nurturing. Accordingly, it is entirely reasonable for Dr. Harris to consider that these real, albeit small to moderate, specific differences may play a relevant role in explaining the apparent gender imbalance in active, North American atheism. Note that the magnitude of the trait differences in studied populations don't have to mimic the magnitude of the apparent male predominance in active atheism. The former must only be large enough that certain contexts may tend to attract more males than females, helping to explain the latter.


It's time for Hornbeck to retract his charge of sexism and apologize. He either has to do that, or else show that none of this evidence could reasonably be believed, for only if that were the case would Hornbeck's own definition of sexism (that Harris' comments were false or unwarranted) run through. As you can see by looking at the evidence, that can't possibly be the case.


I hope that Hornbeck will use his voice on campus and in social media to help remove this ugly and penetrating stain on Dr. Harris' reputation, and encourage others to follow suit.


1. The Gender Similarities Hypothesis. American Psychologist 2005;60:581-92.
2. Gender differences in personality across the ten aspects of the big five. Frontiers in Psychology 2011; 2:178


*Archer found that females may have a greater propensity than men for indirect or relational aggression, which amounts to behaviour such as backbiting and gossiping to harm others by undermining their relationships, though the effect size crossed unity, indicating that in at least one study, males were more inclined towards this type of aggression.

^d values of 0.2-0.6, which seem to be the case for aggression, would be expected, based on Rosenthal's analogy, to result in absolute differences between men and women of 10-25%.