Why Men Are At The Top Of Society (and the bottom) - Roy Baumeister

You say that cultures flourish by exploiting men. What's that mean?

Well, um, there are multiples a- multiple aspects to it, but, uh, uh, first of all, men are more expendable, uh, than women, uh, probably for basic biological reasons. If a, a small group loses half its men, the next generation can still be full size. Loses half its women, it'll be a long time to, uh, to recover. So it takes, it risks men, uh, puts men to work, um, to, to produce things. Most of, uh, um, you know, the structures of society are really created by men. Um, I was talking to Carol Huven at Harvard, and she said, uh, th-there was a feminist who had an epiphany one point. She was looking out the window and said, "The whole world was built by men." [chuckles] Uh, you look at the buildings and the roads and the cars and the, uh, all those things and, uh, and that's, that's just the physical world, the institutions too, the, uh, the banks and the, uh, the schools and the, uh, armies and the governments and the marketplaces. Um, I mean, women do plenty of wonderful things, and they're important partners in the flourishing of our species. Uh, but, uh, creating large social systems, that seems always to be the men's job. Um, and so our cultures compete against other cultures, which is mostly groups of men competing against other groups of men. And now women have joined the groups in many places, but still the institutional structures are created, created by men.

Why is it the case that men have been over-represented as the builders in that case, both cognitively, uh, systemically, physically?

Oh, why is it? Um, it's 'cause m-men do those things and, and, and women don't. Um, what I realized fairly early on, and I have some publications of this and, and it was, um, an early part of my thinking, um, is that the way people are being social, there are a couple ways. There's interacting one-to-one or there's doing things in large groups. Now, I noticed this 'cause in my field, social psychology, people were starting to say women are more social than men, um, because they're really invested in the relationships, the one-to-one relationships, uh, which is a big area of study in my field. But if you start looking at things that people do in groups, um, men do those much more than, uh, than women. And I think probably again, it's a, uh, innate, uh, tendency. Uh, the most important relationship in biology is the mother to child, uh, one and so that's a one-to-one relationship. Uh, in humans, uh, women got particular men to, uh, uh, form a one-to-one relationship with them, uh, to protect and provide and do all those things which, uh, really enabled the larger brain to grow and, you know, made everything else possible. Um, whereas men do things more in, in larger groups, and so competition between groups is, is, is men against men, whether it's on the battlefield or in the business marketplace or, or scientifically. Um, um, men compete, uh, uh, in groups. It's, it's, it's not something that, uh, women naturally do and form large groups. There are even experiments when I was researching this they would do with children, and they'd have two boys playing together, and then the experimenter would bring in a third boy. Uh, and the boys would say, "Okay, sure, come on, join the game." But if it's two girls, they don't really want the third girl. They, they exclude her and reject her. Z- Suggests there's this mental focus on the one-to-one relationship. Again, it's better for intimacy. A, a lot of the differences, psychological differences between men and women, uh, can be, you know, understood this way. For example, most data show that women are more mo- emotionally expressive, uh, than men. They sh- share their feelings directly and, and so on. Um, well, in a one-to-one relationship, that's what you wanna do, so the other person understands you, so you can, uh, share your feelings and the other person can take care of you and respond to you and so on. In a large group, showing your feelings all the time is not so useful. Obviously, in the economic marketplace, uh, if you go, "Oh, this is wonderful. I gotta have it," well, the price is gonna be higher, [chuckles] uh, than if you say, "Oh, I'm not sure. Uh, maybe not today." "Wait a minute. Come back. I'll give you a better deal." Um, and, uh, you may have, in a large group, you have rivals and, uh, competitors, so again, you don't wanna give away too much. So the, the emotional reserve of men is more suited to the large group where the expressiveness of the woman, uh, is suited to the, the one-to-one relationship. And, uh, um, that's why love and family and all those things women are, are sometimes considered they are the natural experts at these things and, uh, you know, some of the researchers tell the men, "Well, listen to your, your wife on this." But it also explains why women haven't ever organized themselves in large groups to, uh, [coughs] to, to get things done. I mean, why didn't women ever, 50 women build a boat and sail off into the unknown to explore things? You know, men did things like this, you know, throughout history and all over the world. Um, but, uh, y-you don't do that as one or two people. You do it in a larger group. Um-So again, uh, the, the men in groups seems to be a natural pattern. There's even some evidence about this in, in the other great apes. Uh, I was reading like Michael Tomasello's work on there, and he says, uh, groups of male chimpanzees will go out and get in a battle with others, or sometimes they'll go hunting together. It's not real cooperation, he says. Each one's really out for itself. But you have more opportunities if you, if you go out in the group. Uh, but the females don't do that. He said about the only thing you see cooperation among adult female chimpanzees is sometimes if, if one of them has a, a cute little baby, a, a couple of the other adult females will join together and, and come and, uh, go over to that woman and, uh, that, that ape and beat her up and steal her baby and kill it and eat it. Uh, which is fortunate we don't seem to see much of that [chuckles] in our species.