Fads and Fallacies in the Social Sciences by Steven Goldberg: Part II

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=910 ^ | William Briggs

[mattstat]

Environmentalism cannot explain all behavior

It is obvious and true that one’s environment influences one’s behavior. A Chinese will tend to act differently than a Russian; for example, they will tend to celebrate different holidays and show variation in respect to their elders, purely because of socialization. No one disputes this.

It is also true and obvious that one’s physiology and biology, one’s neurochemical makeup, influences one’s behavior. A 250-pound, muscle-bound man is more likely to play for the NFL than is a short, 150-pound, desk-bound man. Goldberg is fond of repeating, “an adult male’s ability to grow a moustache is not caused by our telling little girls that facial hair is unfeminine” (emphasis in original).

Bizarrely, however, many dispute this. Not about all aspects of behavior, of course—there are only a few (but still they exist) that deny that the anatomical differences between males and females lead to differences in behaviors, even in reproductive terms—but usually in those behaviors related to intelligence. That is, a sociologist might allow that men taller than six feet would, on average, make better professional basketball players than men shorter than six feet, but she would dispute that some men might, say, evince greater mathematical aptitude than others except that those differences are caused by differences in socialization and not innate ability. Even stronger would she deny that there could be any differences in intellectual ability between males and females, or between other groups.

Before we get to that, let’s take care of a common statistical argument against the importance of group differences. People often say that “within-group differences are almost always greater than between-group differences” and so the between-group differences do not matter. Goldberg offers this brilliant analogy (all emphases in the original):...