

Study: Men's Biceps Predict Their Political Ideologies - thetabyte
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/study-mens-biceps-predict-their-political-ideology/275942/

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hcarvalhoalves
> (...) it is a fitness error for weaker contestants to attempt to seize
> resources when they cannot prevail and for stronger ones to cede what they
> can cost-effectively defend

I call bullsh __* on that one.

How can biceps circumference relate so strongly with evolution when nowadays
bulging muscle is largely a result of gym training and nutrition (which, btw,
costs money, biasing this study even further)?

I would say it's more about ego relating to muscle mass than the other way
around. Egotistical rich men are more likely to be focused on their appearance
and willing to turn into gym rats.

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jmduke
The argument that only the egotistical care about physical fitness is
hilarious.

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hcarvalhoalves
Please point where I say "only".

All I'm saying is that rich, "alpha" male are in the best position to frequent
gyms heavily and bulge muscle. They have the drive, the time and the money. I
think the study reached at this data, then (IMHO, wrongly) concludes there's a
correlation (strong men choose competition over collaboration) instead of a
causation (egotistical rich men have bigger biceps).

Also, biceps circumference only relates to fitness or strength up to a certain
point, hypertrophy is left to bodybuilders. Just look at the average tribesman
for examples of extreme fit people with average body measures.

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doctorpangloss
Or, biceps and support for redistribution are both correlated to something
else, the far more likely and simpler explanation.

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glomph
They didn't claim causation.

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Draco6slayer
Why not link them the other way? The article claims that individuals who are
stronger physically will try to claim socio-political highground, but it seems
much more realistic to me to observe this data and say that people who aren't
as competitive or interested in gaining from others don't have the bent to
exercise their biceps.

A better experiment for this hypothesis would be to take these original
subjects and have some of them adopt an exercise system and others to abandon
one. Then test if ideologies actually change as a result of physical strength.

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randomknowledge
Lets see, amongst the poor, blue collar workers (doing manual labour) tend to
be more conservative. Amongst the wealthy, feelings of entitlement are
correlated with time to go to the gym. Evolutionary psychologist: if you keep
publishing nonsense like no one will take your field seriously.

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TheEzEzz
FTA:

"These associations remained significant even once the researchers controlled
for political party."

This seems to rule out the correlation coming from manual labor being
associated with conservatism.

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randomknowledge
The headline was "Men's Biceps Predict Their Political Ideologies" you can't
rule out political idealogical in a study about political Ideology. There is a
spectrum of belief within political parties which explains why the association
remained.

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mgarfias
These nerds have never thrown a punch if they think bicep size is responsible
for fighting ability.

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endtime
CINC. Willingness to fight and larger muscles are both a consequence of higher
testosterone.

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shard
What does CINC stand for?

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mhartl
My guess is "Correlation Is Not Causation".

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BasilAwad
Journalists really like substituting 'correlated with' with 'predict'...

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hkmurakami
I have to wonder if the biceps size is correlated with something like
geography, which in turn is correlated with political affiliation.

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gavanwoolery
Maybe I missed it, but I did not see a sample size. Without this, the study is
meaningless - the odds of a correlation between two variables each with two
possibilities is not that improbable (i.e. flipping two coins and hitting
heads both times in one group, and tails in the other group, with 20 percent
error).

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ronaldx
N.B. the headline does not match the original article

better:

'men's biceps predict economically rational self-interest'

