Glass Ceilings At Altar As Well as Boardroom
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
December 14, 2004 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section F; Column 5; Health & Fitness; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 665 words
HEADLINE: Glass Ceilings at Altar As Well as Boardroom
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
BODY:
Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame, psychology researchers at the University of Michigan reported last week.
The study, in which college undergraduates were asked to make hypothetical choices, suggests that men in search of long-term relationships prefer to marry women in subordinate jobs rather than women who are supervisors, said Dr. Stephanie Brown, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and the report's lead author.
Dr. Brown said the findings, reported in the current issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, could have far-reaching implications. ''These findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less accomplished women,'' she said.
The researchers asked 120 men and 208 women, all undergraduates, to rate their hypothetical attraction to people they might know from work. The men, for example, were shown pictures and asked, ''Imagine that you have just taken a job and that Jennifer is your immediate supervisor,'' or peer, or assistant. The participants were then asked to rate, on one-to-nine scale, how much they would like to go to a party, date or marry the person.
Women in the study, which was financed in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them on the corporate ladder. And men did not show a preference when it came to the possibility of a one-night stand.
But when asked about long-term relationships, the men showed a marked preference for the subordinates as opposed to the bosses.
The findings, which seem to confirm an uncomfortable number of male stereotypes and many mothers' admonitions to their daughters, reflect more than male vanity and insecurity, the researchers argue. Dr. Brown and her co-author, Brian Lewis of the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that ''pressures associated with the threat of paternal uncertainty'' shaped the men's decisions.
In other words, a subordinate woman might be less likely to fool around, and ''female infidelity is a severe reproductive threat to males'' in long-term relationships, the researchers wrote.
In fact, the evolutionary interpretation of human mating behavior is controversial. In an e-mail interview, Dr. Ellen Berscheid, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, took a slight jab at ''these florid psychoevolutionary interpretations of human behavior that wholly ignore the influence of contemporary, mundane social institutional forces."
Relational dominance, she said, could mean different things in a different study -- like one that created hypothetical mates who were richer or poorer than the research subjects. With a money comparison, she said, ''the results may well have been quite different.''
So, Dr. Berscheid wrote, while ''the results may be interesting in terms of assessing probability of workplace romantic relationships'' under some circumstances, ''I think they probably say little about evolution and human behavior.''
In an interview, Dr. Brown acknowledged that the work was likely to stir dispute.
''It bothers people to think about this in terms of evolution that males could be programmed in any way, or have a predisposition to control another person or member of the opposite sex,'' she said. "I think it's something we wouldn't like to say about males; it's something males wouldn't like to say about themselves.''
In fact, she said, ''I lost a lot of collaborators on this piece.''
She conceded that evolutionary causes could not always be teased out of behavior, saying, ''I don't think it's ever possible to really separate out what proportion of a behavior is shaped by evolutionary history and which parts are shaped by our environment or culture.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: December 14, 2004
The New York Times
December 14, 2004 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section F; Column 5; Health & Fitness; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 665 words
HEADLINE: Glass Ceilings at Altar As Well as Boardroom
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
BODY:
Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame, psychology researchers at the University of Michigan reported last week.
The study, in which college undergraduates were asked to make hypothetical choices, suggests that men in search of long-term relationships prefer to marry women in subordinate jobs rather than women who are supervisors, said Dr. Stephanie Brown, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and the report's lead author.
Dr. Brown said the findings, reported in the current issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, could have far-reaching implications. ''These findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less accomplished women,'' she said.
The researchers asked 120 men and 208 women, all undergraduates, to rate their hypothetical attraction to people they might know from work. The men, for example, were shown pictures and asked, ''Imagine that you have just taken a job and that Jennifer is your immediate supervisor,'' or peer, or assistant. The participants were then asked to rate, on one-to-nine scale, how much they would like to go to a party, date or marry the person.
Women in the study, which was financed in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them on the corporate ladder. And men did not show a preference when it came to the possibility of a one-night stand.
But when asked about long-term relationships, the men showed a marked preference for the subordinates as opposed to the bosses.
The findings, which seem to confirm an uncomfortable number of male stereotypes and many mothers' admonitions to their daughters, reflect more than male vanity and insecurity, the researchers argue. Dr. Brown and her co-author, Brian Lewis of the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that ''pressures associated with the threat of paternal uncertainty'' shaped the men's decisions.
In other words, a subordinate woman might be less likely to fool around, and ''female infidelity is a severe reproductive threat to males'' in long-term relationships, the researchers wrote.
In fact, the evolutionary interpretation of human mating behavior is controversial. In an e-mail interview, Dr. Ellen Berscheid, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, took a slight jab at ''these florid psychoevolutionary interpretations of human behavior that wholly ignore the influence of contemporary, mundane social institutional forces."
Relational dominance, she said, could mean different things in a different study -- like one that created hypothetical mates who were richer or poorer than the research subjects. With a money comparison, she said, ''the results may well have been quite different.''
So, Dr. Berscheid wrote, while ''the results may be interesting in terms of assessing probability of workplace romantic relationships'' under some circumstances, ''I think they probably say little about evolution and human behavior.''
In an interview, Dr. Brown acknowledged that the work was likely to stir dispute.
''It bothers people to think about this in terms of evolution that males could be programmed in any way, or have a predisposition to control another person or member of the opposite sex,'' she said. "I think it's something we wouldn't like to say about males; it's something males wouldn't like to say about themselves.''
In fact, she said, ''I lost a lot of collaborators on this piece.''
She conceded that evolutionary causes could not always be teased out of behavior, saying, ''I don't think it's ever possible to really separate out what proportion of a behavior is shaped by evolutionary history and which parts are shaped by our environment or culture.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: December 14, 2004
posted by maryann at 7/01/2004 03:44:00 PM
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