Speaking of testosterone, why did risk-taking evolve in men?
That’s the subject of a lot of speculation in evolutionary psychology. A lot of it comes down to showing-off behavior. It’s a peacock type behavior — among peacocks, the male with the best tail gets all the females. It’s possible that over the long history of humanity men who did incredibly risky things and survived would be like the peacock with the best tail. They would be the heroes, whether it was for beating up someone from an enemy group or hunting a dangerous animal. Males are under more evolutionary pressure than women to stand out from the crowd. Every study shows that men are more likely to do risky things of all kinds. Women simply have a little more common sense when it comes to drinking, driving, guns — that sort of thing. What are we to make of the fact that the Y chromosome is actually shrinking? I’ve talked at great length to the first scientist to propose that the Y chromosome was shrinking, and she was shocked that people got so up in arms about it. It would take mi
