Soft Science's Ancient Roots
Another spate of bleedingly obvious studies telling us that we find attractive women attractive has finally sent Null reporter, Scary Boots, over the edge. What is it with evolutionary psychology?
On the savannah, a primitive evolutionary psychologist gains status amongst his peers for confidently explaining Ug’s thrashing behaviour as a mating dance designed to emphasise his loose joints, muscle tone and flexibility. In gratefulness for this explanation, the tribe would reward the narrator with a greater portion of food.
By the time they discovered Ug was actually in his death throes, having succumbed to a fatal mamba bite, the tribe felt very bloody silly for having fallen for such pseudo-science, and to cover up their embarrassment began to enact similar mating dances to the one described.
The evolutionary psychologist’s assessment finally proves true, reinforcing his status in the tribe and meaning that all the attractive young cave women with low waist to hip ratios would throw themselves at him. Thus, evolutionary psychology became a selected-for trait, and natural selection ensured that the species developed a refined talent for bullshitting and justifying the bleeding obvious with reverse-engineered logic.But how does this impact our highly advanced shiny civilisation today? Research has shown that in times when funding is scarce, universities follow their primitive intuition and listen to evolutionary psychologists.
Entering into long-term relationships with soft-science researchers whose work is easily understood by the layman leads to frequent references in the press, thus ‘bigging up’ the institution. Particular interest is given to research departments who display secondary sexual characteristics, such as ‘The effect of breast size’ or ‘Do you find Marilyn Monroe attractive?’. As an auxiliary benefit, such studies are frequently cheap, requiring just enough outlay to photocopy some line drawings from ‘How to draw fashion models’, borrowed from the Young Adult section of the library, and distort them with Photoshop (a bit like this).
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Previous work on the subject has hypothesised that this is a selection process evolved by funding bodies to select for the fittest, cheapest and most likely to be referenced in Marie Claire. The papers spawned by this reproduction will, according to Darwin’s theory of natural sexsellselection, be more viable for future referencing and cross pollination with other research groups to widen the meme pool, eventually producing offspring that will be able to command a 500-word article suitable for even the Metro, that bastion of hard-core scientific research.
The ideal characteristics in such an article, derived from a study of four that I found on the floor, are a reinforcement of current thinking on attractiveness, a justification for this in terms of reproductive viability that covers up the possibility of utter shallow, cultural conditioning on the part of the homogenous Western student subjects, and a generous use of the word ‘breasts’. (Knockers is generally frowned upon in serious scientific literature.) If the current rate of population growth continues, every scientist will be an evolutionary psychologist by the year 2020.
Evolutionary psychology studies always conclude that Scary Boots is an unattractive hermaphrodite, due to being a woman with spatial awareness, numerical ability, muscles and no discernible waist. In spite of this, we at Null are extremely fond of her. More of Scary's ramblings:
- Ethical shopping - Inorganic is inacceptible!
- Space is a crazy place - The galactic sandwich
- Believe it or not - Astrology
- Hot Totty - Scary's Mate
Image: buycostumes.com
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