Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-22-2008

[andrewducker]

• Free Will and Ethics
  Fascinating results of what happens to people's ethics when you tell them they have no free will.
  (tags: psychology ethics philosophy)
• Polygamy is the key to a long life
  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.
  (tags: relationships marriage society sociology)

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* pokes the polygamy link *

All about the bloody MENS again. I want to see studies into polyandry and other forms of poly too!

[andrewducker]

Are there many polyandric societies?

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Damn you and your logic!

[drplokta]

Everything that is being said about men from polygamous cultures living longer, including the original article you link to, is rubbish. It's based on the assumption that men in polygamous cultures have more wives, which is plainly untrue. For every man who has two wives, there is another who has none, and the only things that can affect the average number of wives per man are the proportion of women who are married and the differential life expectancies of women and men. If men do indeed live longer in polygamous cultures, then men in those cultures probably have slightly fewer wives than men in monogamous cultures, on average.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

Word to wanting more polyandry studies and perhaps men who live longer in polygamous societies do so because they are wealthier and thus can afford more wives AND good food, health care, etc.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Hang on isn't your response also based on an untrue assumption namely that a population must consist of 50/50 men/women?
In fact at a guess, countries typically practicing polygamy might one imagines have nore women than men given higher infant mortality rates of boys esp in developing countries- in which case..? (One might also arge that this population skew might be why polygamy is culturally acceptable.. cf the emergence of "polyamory"in geek culture..)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Nepal.

[andrewducker]

I don't see where you get that from. They compared polygamous and monogamous cultures, and found a correlation. As it says in the article "Lummaa stressed that their monogamy score is a crude first stab, and they are working to find multiple ways to assess marriage patterns. The conclusions could evaporate under further analysis, she adds." - and it's not as if they've said "Being polygamous increases your lifespan", they've merely said that on average "men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones". There could be a whole load of reasons behind this, but the scientists themselves don't seem to be saying anything specific about polygamy.

[andrewducker]

As surliminal points out, there are a few, just not many.

Oh, and most of them seem to be fraternal - where a pair of brothers share a wife.

[andrewducker]

There are a few - just not many. And the ones I've looked into so far have all been fraternal polyandry - where a pair of brothers share a wife.

[drplokta]

The first two sentences of the article are "Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife." -- clearly implying that the increased longevity is due to men having more wives.