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The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

by hpb42 on 12/15/23, 4:24 PM with 80 comments

  • by jvalencia on 12/15/23, 5:33 PM

    For those who didn't make it to the end, it's worth noting that there's a fair bit of tongue in cheek in there.

    > We believe MIT deserves further investigation, and, with the festive season upon us, we intend to follow up with observational field studies and an experimental study—males and females, with and without alcohol—in a semi-naturalistic Christmas party setting.

  • by sjducb on 12/15/23, 5:05 PM

    I feel like the paper lacks a discussion about why males are more likely to take risks.

    Typically extremely reproductively successful men like Chengis Khan take enormous risks to get the power and status that leads to high reproductive success. Unfortunately we are all descended from those men.

  • by grepLeigh on 12/15/23, 5:02 PM

    This conclusion comes from 2 studies:

    The first observes 1,000 students over 20 days at a single bus station in Liverpool. The second observes a single crossing point near the university.

  • by yedava on 12/15/23, 5:43 PM

    Do Darwin Awards look at all of humanity or only a subset of it? Maybe there is a cultural component to behavior. Maybe there are cultures which don't treat men as idiots. How can anyone assert that men are genetically stupid without controlling for culture?

  • by photon_lines on 12/15/23, 4:42 PM

    Haha...I'm surprised to find this on HN. Just to comment on a note made in this study: "While MIT provides a parsimonious explanation of differences in idiotic behavior and may underlie sex differences in other risk seeking behaviors, it is puzzling that males are willing to take such unnecessary risks—simply as a rite of passage, in pursuit of male social esteem, or solely in exchange for “bragging rights.” Northcutt invokes a group selectionist, “survival of the species” argument, with individuals selflessly removing themselves from the gene pool."

    The reason this happens is due to risk-taking behavior. Males take way more risks than females do - and you can find other studies which confirm this (i.e. for example this one: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470490800600...). When I read the Northcutt explanation for this I laughed -- it makes absolutely 0 sense and I can't believe that someone expanded energy in proposing this. It's absolutely ridiculous that someone would even suggest this, but meh.

  • by setgree on 12/15/23, 5:51 PM

    If only more academic papers were written so clearly and engagingly:

    > According to “male idiot theory” (MIT) many of the differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency department admissions, and mortality may be explained by the observation that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.

    > there can be little doubt that Darwin Award winners seem to make little or no real assessment of the risk or attempt at risk management. They just do it anyway. In some cases, the intelligence of the award winner may be questioned. For example, the office workers watching a construction worker demolishing a car park in the adjacent lot must have wondered about the man’s intelligence. After two days of office speculation—how does he plan to remove the final support to crash the car park down safely?—they discovered, on the third day, that he didn’t have a plan. The concrete platform collapsed, crushing him to death and flattening his mini-excavator.

  • by readthenotes1 on 12/15/23, 8:17 PM

    Is the MIT just the low side of the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis?

  • by elzbardico on 12/15/23, 5:41 PM

    This is so deliciously meta:

    A study about Darwin Awards worthy of an Ignobel Prize.