I'm Writing a New Book

Here's how you can help...

Hey folks, I’m writing a new book! The working title is The Peacock’s Predicament: The New Evolutionary Psychology of Sex Differences - and Why It Matters.

As the title suggests, the book is about the evolution of human sex differences and their real-world implications. I’ve got two main goals for the book.

• The first is to download everything I’ve learned about the evolution of sex differences over the last two decades or so, and provide the most thorough and balanced account of the topic on the market. As well as summarizing others’ ideas and findings, I’ll summarize my own, centering the book on a number of unique takes from my research and writing. These include such ideas as that sex differences in our species are real but relatively modest; that both sexes, rather than just the males, have their equivalents of the peacock’s tail; and that in our approach to making babies, we’re more like the average bird than the average mammal.

• The second goal is to do a deep dive into the implications of the science of sex differences for our personal lives, our work lives, and public policy. A key idea will be that exaggerating and moralizing sex differences is harmful, but that so is denying or minimizing them.

I’ve put together a book proposal and several sample chapters. I’ll post some excerpts from the proposal below. At a later date, I’ll start releasing the draft of Chapter 1 in installments for premium subscribers. (Read about the other benefits of a premium subscription here.)

In the meantime, here’s how you can help with the book, if you’re so inclined…

Trade Book vs. Academic Book

• I haven’t decided yet whether I want to publish The Peacock’s Predicament as a trade book (that is, a general-interest book) with an agent, or as an academic book… or alternatively, whether I want to self-publish on Amazon (a la Bryan Caplan). I probably won’t go with the third option, but I am torn between the first two.

• Perhaps you can help me find a tie-breaker! If you like my writing and the book idea, and you happen to know a good agent, please consider sharing this post with them.

• If you like my writing and the book idea, and you yourself are an agent, feel free to drop me a line. As mentioned, I’ve got a full proposal and several sample chapters ready and waiting. Perhaps we can work something out.

• My email address is zombiessw@gmail.com

The Title

• The working title, The Peacock’s Predicament, popped into my head in a dream. I like it, but I’m not wedded to it. If you can think of a better title, please put it in the comments below. I’ve opened the comments to everyone.

• If I use the title you suggest, I’ll give you a free lifetime subscription to the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter, as well as a free copy of the book when it’s published (with your name in lights in the Acknowledgements section).

• On the other hand, if you like the current title, that’s good information too - let me know!

The Proposal

• OK, enough beating around the bush. Here’s an excerpt from the book proposal. Hope you enjoy it!

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The Peacock’s Predicament: The New Evolutionary Psychology of Sex Differences – and Why It Matters

By Steve Stewart-Williams, PhD

Professor of Psychology

Elevator Pitch

Did you know that females in our species have the larger “peacock’s tail”? Did you know that, in our approach to making babies, humans are more like the average bird than the average mammal? And did you know that although men and women are different, the differences aren’t nearly as pronounced or profound as those in most other mammals?

These are just a few of the fascinating findings emerging from the evolutionary psychology of sex differences – a field I’ve been writing about and doing research in for more than two decades, and which is the subject of my new book, The Peacock’s Predicament.

The book has two main aims. The first is to share with readers the latest discoveries from this fascinating area of science. The second is to argue that our growing knowledge of human sex differences matters – a lot. Society is deeply confused and deeply conflicted about sex differences, and it’s causing us serious problems. It’s causing us problems in our dating lives, our parenting lives, and our work lives. It’s compromising our health and our mental wellbeing. And it’s hobbling our ability to deal with some of our most pressing social problems. By taking the science of sex differences seriously, we can set a new course to a better world.

Overview

In 1998, I fell in love. Awkwardly, I was on my honeymoon at the time. You see, I’d fallen in love in 1997 as well, with the woman who was now my wife. We’d married the week before, and were now travelling around New Zealand, my home country, seeing the sights. But we had some free time as well, and I spent a lot of it reading a book I’d picked up on a whim: The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.

People often talk about how a book changed their life, and sometimes they just mean “I really liked it.” But The Moral Animal really did change my life. It was my introduction to the field of evolutionary psychology, and reading it set the course of the rest of my career. It was the ideas contained between the covers of this book that I fell in love with on my honeymoon. More precisely, it was the evolutionary explanation for sex differences.

But of course, the course of love is never smooth, and over the following years and decades, my relationship status with evolutionary psychology switched to “It’s complicated.” Slowly but surely, I came to the view the field’s approach to sex differences, though definitely on the right track, needed a serious makeover. Much of that makeover has now been completed, and in many ways, the field as it exists today is very different from the one I first met in the 1990s. It’s grown and matured into what I’m calling the new evolutionary psychology of sex differences. Most people, however, haven’t yet got the memo.

How does the new differ from the old? Most of the differences revolve around ways in which humans are oddities of the animal kingdom. In most species, females alone are choosy about their mates, and males alone compete for as many females as possible. As a result, males evolve sexual ornaments like the peacock’s tail, and built-in weapon systems like the deer’s antlers.

Humans aren’t like that. In our species, both sexes are choosy about their long-term mates, and both compete for the best mates on offer – and for that reason, both have their equivalents of the peacock’s tail and of the deer’s antlers.

This strange arrangement has an even stranger origin: our big brains and extreme intelligence. For various reasons, as we evolved our giant watermelon heads, we also evolved to fall in love and form pair bonds, and both sexes, rather than just the females, evolved to help care for their young. Pair bonding and biparental care lowered the ceiling number of offspring that males could produce, bringing it closer to the ceiling for females. And as that happened, males evolved to be choosy, females evolved to compete for investing males, and sex differences in our lineage shrank.

Despite the shrinkage, however, many important differences remain – and evolutionary psychology provides a beautiful, deeply satisfying explanation for that fact.

Sadly, though, the whole topic of sex differences has been caught in the crossfire of a rather unpleasant culture war. On one side, some people minimize or deny any sex differences above the neck, or insist that they’re due solely to discrimination and sexist socialization. From this perspective, the only good sex difference is a dead sex difference, and we should make every effort to wipe all sex differences from the face of the planet – or even to reverse them to make up for past injustices.

On the other side, some people exaggerate and moralize the differences, arguing not only that the sexes do differ, but that they should differ. If society starts deviating from the gender roles bequeathed us by God or nature, we should make every effort to restore things to their natural state, just as we’d restore a broken bone to its natural state by putting it in a cast.

With these options dominating the public discourse, almost everyone gets sex differences wrong: laypeople, policymakers – even many scientists. Getting sex differences right, however, matters. It matters for our dating lives, our parenting lives, and our work lives. It matters for our physical and mental health. It matters for solving the social problems that plague us, from domestic violence to sexual harassment to disparities in the workplace and home. And it matters for reducing discrimination – not just against women but against men.

I have two main aims for The Peacock’s Predicament. The first is to download everything I’ve learned about sex differences over the last quarter century from my brain to the pages of the book, so readers can upload it into their own brains. The second is to do a deep dive into the personal and cultural implications of this exhilarating new science. There are several popular introductions to evolutionary psychology on the market, but few dealing with the evolutionary psychology of sex differences specifically – and none dealing with what I’m calling the new evolutionary psychology of sex differences. Moreover, no book on the market today deals with the practical and culture-war issues associated with taking the science of sex differences seriously. We need an up-to-date, approachable guide to the topic that takes on both these tasks.

I’m the right person to write that guide. I’ve been doing research on sex differences for more than two decades now, and have an international reputation for my work on this topic. I’ve field-tested much of the book’s content in my psychology classes over the last 15+ years, so I’ve got a good idea of how to effectively to present it. And as you might have noticed, the subject of sex differences isn’t just an academic specialty for me; it’s a personal passion. I want nothing more than to share it with the world.

Combining the latest research with stories and humor, The Peacock’s Predicament will pull back the curtain on the exciting, sometimes controversial subject of evolved sex differences. It will challenge readers to question their assumptions about men and women, the origins of sex differences, and how these differences shape everything from sex and romance to power and politics. And it will inspire readers to imagine a world in which uncoerced sex differences are celebrated rather than pathologized, and in which people who buck the trends are celebrated as well, rather than being forced into his-and-hers gender roles.

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Table of Contents

1. A Can of Worms

   Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex Differences but Were Too PC To Ask

Part I: Foundations

2. What’s the Difference?

   The Landscape of Human Sex Differences

3. Born and Bred

   The Nature and/or Nurture of Human Sex Differences

4. Nature’s Blueprint

   How Evolution Shaped the Differences between Men and Women

Part II: Getting Specific

5. Sex on the Brain

   Men and Women in the Bedroom

6. Sex, Love, and Rock ‘n’ Roll

   Mating, Dating, Deviating

7. Breaking Bad

   Sex and the Dark Side of Human Nature

8. Family Matters

   Mom, Dad, and the Green-Eyed Monster

9. Sex at the Frontier

   New Directions in the Science of Sex Differences

Part III: Implications

10. Why Sex Differences Matter

    The Dangers of Exaggerating versus Denying Sex Differences

11. Sex at the Crossroads

    The Future of Sex and Gender

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