Evolutionary sociology - a different perspective on social

issues

Preface

The 10.000 Year Explosion and the evolution of personality

Unifying Darwin, Marx, Freud and Jung

Personality, relationships and group dynamics

A possible origin of social classes

Patterns in history: hunter-gatherer rebellions and revolutions for a more egalitarian society

Work and productivity: night owls vs early risers

Modern hunter-gatherers at the workplace

Foundations of an Evolutionary Pedagogy

Normal sucks and why the levels of conformism are still so high

Patterns in history: technological innovation

Lone wolves, hikikomori, and online addiction

Evolutionary Economics - The iPhone, the long tail and the winner-takes-all economy

The real reason why Donald Trump was elected president and why he might be elected
again

Modern love or love and marriage…

Preface

This book is written for people who have always wondered why our society is the way it is.
Why it is so materialistic and goods and chances in life are so unequally distributed. Why
people are so conformist to the latest trends and why schools are so old-fashioned. Why
people deliberately decide to become outsiders and why university professors have fewer
children than the average. Why many intelligent people don’t amount to much in life and why
technological change is happening faster than most people can change their habits and
adapt to it and why most people end up buying iPhones when phones that are available for
less than half the price would be sufficient for them. And why the heck did so many people
vote for Trump (and why they might do it again).

While evolutionary psychology has been around for well over 30 years, sociology has been
particularly resistant to the idea that human behaviour is to a great extent the product of our
evolutionary history and therefore partially genetically determined. If you believe that there
are no innate differences between men and women and you and your fellow humans then
don’t buy this book - you might hate it. The genetic research of the past 20 years or so has
pointed only to one direction: our lives are more determined by our genes than we love to
believe. And so is our society. We don’t decide as a society what gender is for us, our genes
do as our attitudes to gender equality have a genetic basis.

This book rests on the premise that our personalities have evolved in our ancestral
economic environments, i.e. some of us are more hunter-gatherers, some farmers and some
pastoralist. Since the advent of agriculture, only some of us (by now the majority of people)
have become farmer types, while hunter-gatherer and pastoralist types have been
genetically integrated into farmer societies, forming different classes that have been partially
upheld by assortative mating (endogamy) until more recent times when societies became
more democratic.

This book is the product of my blog The Bigger Picture. You will find most of the “articles” for
free on the blog. I have put them together into a coherent whole for the convenience of the
reader, but there are still many repetitions which were hard to avoid - my apologies. A lot of
ideas in this book are much more simplistic than reality; the purpose of the book is not
getting every detail right but to provide the reader with a novel perspective.
The 10.000 Year Explosion and the evolution of personality

The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending is definitely one of
the most intriguing books on human evolution I have ever read. Despite being more than 10
years old now, it has proven to be quite accurate in many of its hypothesis (e.g. our genetic
Neanderthal admixture).

While many people will be aware of the fact that the agricultural revolution has brought along
genetic changes regarding our diet, few will be aware of the fact that it also has brought
along psychological changes. The authors discuss the human serotonin system which might
have made human “tamer”. This tameness would have made children more compliant in
helping with the chores (hunter-gatherer children are not forced to work) and being taught
the required skill. It also would have made adults more compliant to live in a more
hierarchical and less egalitarian society.

The authors make it clear that evolutionary psychologists got it wrong when they denied that
any significant evolutionary changes could have happened in the past 10.000 years since
the advent of agriculture, treating all people like hunter-gathers. In fact, the authors argue
that agriculture has led to Bourgeois virtues: being able to defer gratification, planning
ahead, being conscientious and hard-working. All these traits helped early farmers survive
and reproduce. On the flip side, they also had to become less egalitarian and became less
open to change (experience/ideas in the Big 5), as their work involved more routine than that
of hunter-gatherers (e.g. farmer types would be less open to trying new foods as adults).
With the advent of farming and pastoralism status could be acquired with the accumulation
of more material reproductive resources and be translated into more offspring. Of course,
the sharing-caring attitude of hunter-gatherers would have been an obstacle and also
reduced to a more in-group sociality. Conscientiousness, a love for routine and adherence to
tradition and community rules were advantageous traits of early farmers as these traits
increased their productivity.
Even though the majority of people in the past 10.000 years practised farming, I would argue
that not all of these humans had a farmer personality. A lot of hunter-gatherers and
pastoralists (the latter often through raids, like the Indo-Europeans who dispersed
throughout Eurasia from the Asian Steppe) were assimilated into the farming cultures, even
though these might have had a harder time living in a farmer society. Many hunter-gatherers
and pastoralists (e.g. gipsies with pastoralist origins) still refuse to integrate into modern
society, which with its 9-5 routine jobs and status-orientation (keeping up with the Joneses)
is mostly a farmer world.
Like Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, I have argued that our recent environments
have shaped our psychology, in particular, our ancestral subsistence economies: hunting-
gathering, farming and herding. The resulting personality groups correspond to the Myers-
Briggs types as well as groups Helen Fisher has found analysing dating sites:

Due to assortative mating, the personality traits of each group may have remained
somewhat bundle, (e.g. hunter-gatherers: fiercely egalitarian, hyperfocus when interested,
perhaps even more monogamous and less likely to accentuate gender display. Here is a
table with likely genetic traits for hunter-gatherer and farmer personality types:

hunter-gatherer farmer

High on personality trait “openness”, High on personality trait

(often) low on “conscientiousness” “conscientiousness”, low on “openness”

Strongly (actively) egalitarian status-seeking

Tendency towards out-group sociality, Tendency towards in-group sociality

more accepting of diversity (e.g. different (identifies more strongly with a core group,
sexuality, refugees, etc.) like family, religious group or sports team)

More liberal ideology More conservative ideology

Less sexual dimorphism More (display of) sexual dimorphism

Later onset of puberty Earlier onset of puberty

More monogamous tendencies Less monogamous tendencies

Tendency to wanting fewer children Tendency to wanting more children

Relaxed child-rearing attitude Authoritative child rearing, “helicopter

 parenting”

more likely to become night owls Early risers

“Lazier” (when it comes to physical work More hard-working

and chores)

highly rebellious when feeling personal individualistic, but also more conformist and
freedom and values are threatened highly loyal to their core group

Less interest in small-talk and gossip Higher interest in small-talk and gossip

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending also discuss possible genetic evolution leading to
the scientific revolution, leaving the question unanswered in the end, however. Anyone well
familiar with the Myers-Briggs test is well aware that most famous scientists from Galileo and
Newton to Darwin and Einstein were of the NT or Helen Fisher’s “director” type. So, the
scientific revolution was mainly a hunter-gatherer phenomenon. The reason can be found in
trait “high openness to ideas”, which correlates with intelligence. Why should hunter-gatherer
types be more intelligent than farmer types? The answer might lie in an evolutionary arms
race: being more egalitarian than the average person can be highly disadvantageous for
one’s reproductive potential, so higher intelligence and/or higher levels of social wariness
(neuroticism) might have evolved in hunter-gatherer types in the past 10.000 years.

Unifying Darwin, Marx, Freud and Jung

Darwin, Marx, Freud and Jung were among the intellectual giants of the 19th and early 20th
century. Many people consider them a bit outdated and less relevant nowadays. With Freud,
Marx and Jung that may even be a bit obvious, however, I have read articles that doubt even
the relevance of Darwin for homo sapiens. Evolutionary Psychology has made a lot of
progress in the past 20 years but has hardly reached the level of mainstream awareness.
You can even find high school psychology teachers who have no familiarity with it
whatsoever.

Yet, despite some of Freud’s and Jung’s outlandish ideas, all the failed communist states
and the problems of applying evolutionary principles to a very complex and varied human
psychology, each of their theories has a core that is still relevant nowadays and which can
be unified in my opinion.

Karl Marx hypothesized that modern man was alienated from our ancestral hunter-gatherer
way of life in being too focused on production and status and less altruistic and caring. Jung
discovered different personality types he called “sensors” and “intuitives”. His types were
later grouped into four groups: SJ, SPs, NTs and NFs. Studying dating sites the psychologist
Helen Fisher found four similar groups: builders (dutiful, routine-loving and conscientious),
explorers (novelty-seeking and flexible), directors (logical and pragmatic) and negotiators
(creative and idealistic). Moreover, these types prefer to choose each other as partners (a
phenomenon called assortative mating).

Applying Darwinian logic to these groups, one has to ask if these traits are mere variations
within one ancestral environment or adaptations to different environments. Evolutionary
psychologists have tended to treat homo sapiens as a hunter-gatherer mostly. However, if
traits occur in clusters, it seems much more likely that they are cases of fine-tuning to a
specific environment. I have argued that these environments are our ancestral substance
economies:

With the advent of farming and pastoralism status could be acquired with the accumulation
of more material reproductive resources and be translated into more offspring. Of course,
the sharing-caring attitude of hunter-gatherers would have been an obstacle and also
reduced to a more in-group sociality. Conscientiousness, a love for routine and adherence to
tradition and community rules were advantageous traits of early farmers as these traits
increased their productivity.

Finally, Freud’s insight that early childhood is highly influential in the development and
mental health of a person is still true. Of course, not many psychologists will be great fans of
the “Oedipus complex” and similar Freudian ideas. However, we now know that even the
environment inside the uterus can influence a child’s life trajectory. Moreover, early
childhood adversity lies often at the root of many mental disorders, such a depression or
sociopathology. There is a differential susceptibility to mental disorders and children who
now often referred to as “orchid children” are at a higher risk. My hypothesis is that these
orchid children highly correlate with a “hunter-gatherer” personality type. These children are
often highly curious (openness), egalitarian and highly sensitive (to physical and/or social
stimuli). These are all traits that served hunter-gatherers well in survival an reproduction.
Reproduction is also one of Freud’s central themes. Here again, Freud was often much too
simplistic and crude. However, it is not unlikely that mental disorders are connected to
reproduction after all. Roughly half of all lifetime mental disorders in most studies start by the
mid-teens and three quarters by the mid-20s, i.e during the time when reproduction in our
ancestral environments started. Social anxiety is higher in teens who are less-status
conscious, less conformist and start puberty later. These teens are also more likely to be
bullied by teens who start puberty early and are more status-conscious.
The onset of schizophrenia is typically around the late teens and associated with a higher
degree of sociosexuality. It might be evolutions’ way of ensuring reproduction in a social
environment where the chances seem very low. Seems like Freud was onto something after
all. So were Darwin, Marx and Jung.
Personality, relationships and group dynamics
In a highly interesting paper, Friendship and natural selection Nicholas A. Christakis and
James H. Fowler describe that people tend to find their friends among genetically similar
people. That means that friends are more related to each other (the equivalent of fourth
cousins) than to people outside their circle. There might be several possible reasons for this
phenomenon. The possibility that fascinates me most is selection via personality types, i.e.
people choose other people with a similar personality type as friends and partners.
I have already discussed the similarities between Myers-Briggs types, Helen Fisher’s types
and possible adaptations due to subsistence economy. Here is a schema of the types who
like to pair in all different types of relationships with each other:

I do the Myers-Briggs test with all of my classes and each time I find a similar picture: similar
types sit next to each other. The ones who have the same MBTI often tell me that they have
been friends since early childhood.

What you can see that from this seating chart is that personality types tend to “bond” like
molecules. The more similar two individuals are the more similarly they tend to experience
the world and the more easily they bond. There is an empty seat between two types that are
opposites (ENFP/ISTJ) and an empty seat between the outsider (INTJ) who hasn’t found
anybody to bond with and the rest of the classmates in the back row.
Outsiders are almost always IN types, most typically INTJ/INFJ with social anxiety. IN types
are the rarest of all types and find it hard to connect to other types. These students are often
extremely difficult when it comes to collaborating with other classmates or giving a
presentation in front of the whole class. In general, the quiet students are introverts (no big
surprise) and occasionally also extroverted intuitive (EN) who haven’t found anybody to bond
with and are quasi outsiders despite being extroverts.
The “alphas” are usually extroverts sensors (ES), in particular, ESTJ and ESTP. When it
comes to class and school presidents, it is often the F types, who are more popular, so ESFJ
and ENFJ are overrepresented among them.
Typically the hardest types to mix are N/S (hunter-gatherer vs farmer/pastoralist). N types
generally mix well with S types that do not try to dominate them, i.e. often I/F, but also the
respective T types, when treated as a friend rather than a rival. If there is a conflict between
the two major groups in class, the two groups are usually made up like this: one group in
which ES types are predominant and usually led by one or more ST types, with the other
group more “egalitarian”, typically without a leader, made up of mixed N/IS/SF types.

A possible origin of social classes

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in a classless, egalitarian society. Agriculture allowed
harder-working individuals to accumulate more goods and therefore also status. However,
social hierarchy doesn’t explain the creation of social classes. Many animals evolve
hierarchies, but no other animal has ever evolved classes. Classes are different from mere
hierarchies in being at least partially impermeable through endogamy or assortative mating.
Interestingly the tripartite social division we know nowadays (upper, middle, lower class) also
characterizes early agricultural societies, in particular in the Fertile Crescent, e.g all Indo-
Europeans had very much a three-class system. Of course, the longer and more complex
these societies got, the more stratified they tended to become (as in the case of Egyptians).
The three classes typically comprised:

Upper class king, priests, landowners, high-ranking

soldiers

Middle class warriors. artisans and merchants

Lower class labourers, slaves (who often constituted the

lowest class)

Social stratification is often explained in terms of division of labour and functional. However,
the division of labour doesn’t explain endogamy and why not all people strove to achieve an
occupation with a higher status.

We now know that social class partially genetically determined, with individuals with high IQs
and the personality traits conscientiousness and openness achieving the highest status in
our contemporary society and at the same time these are also some of the most important
criteria in assortative mating. Somebody who struggles in school, might not strive to become,
say, a manager or university professor.
Going back to complex ancient farming societies, the development of classes might have
been influenced by genetic traits. The earliest farmers had to become extremely hard-
working and conscientious, working from dawn to dusk during the planting and harvesting
seasons. This is in contrast to hunter-gatherers who rest frequently and work in short bouts.
Moreover, farmers would have had to become more “planning” and forward-looking than
hunter-gatherers.

Fast forward a few thousand years and evolution might have selected for the above-
mentioned traits in farmers. Moreover, the descendants of those early farmers had not only
inherited theses genes but also a lot of property. Their surplus goods most likely attracted
neighbouring pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, the latter probably increasingly less able to
feed themselves due to overpopulation and destruction of animal habitats.

I have argued before, that these early modes of subsistence had an impact on personality.
Farmer types (SJ in Myers-Briggs - J types being known as "planners") being high in
serotonin. Pastoralist types being high in dopamine, with higher activity levels. In fact, what I
call “pastoralist” types are often called “artisans”, entrepreneurs”, or even “warriors” in the
Myers-Briggs groupings (SP-types). It seems therefore not unlikely that these herders traded
goods with the rich farmers, leaving the hunter-gatherers (N-types) with low-skilled, low-
wage work.
Fast forward again a few thousand years and you will a tripartite class system in a complex
agricultural society, whose members will prefer to choose their partners from their own class
due to evolved sexual preferences: farmers according to productivity and wealth, pastoralists
according to physical strength and dexterity, and hunter-gatherers according to their
egalitarian mindset.

Upper class: early farmers (SJ) king, priests, landowners, high-ranking

soldiers

Middle class: pastoralists (SP) warriors, artisans, and merchants

Lower class: hunter-gatherers (N) labourers, slaves (who often constituted

the lowest class)

Of course, the system was rarely this neat. Take the Magyars, as an example: this
pastoralist tribe invaded Hungary, established themselves as a ruling class and imposed
their language on the local population. However, they left few of their genes, due to
intermarriage. Being pastoralists, their descendants got replaced by hard-working farmer
types on top of the social hierarchy again.
Something similar might have occurred in Rwanda.
The Twa were the earliest hunter-gatherer inhabitants. The Hutu were Bantu farmers that
settled the region around 500 AD. The Tutsi were a nomadic (pastoralist) people that most
likely superimposed themselves as minority rulers over the Hutu. However, centuries later,
not all Tutsi constitute the upper class and they are often indistinguishable from the Hutu
from a socio-economic point of view. The Tutsi are genetically similar to Bantus but also
have some Cushitic pastoralist admixture. Genetic studies found 22.2% of E1b1b in a small
sample of Tutsis from Burundi, but no bearers of the haplogroup among the local Hutu and
Twa populations, which suggests that the ancestors of Tutsis in this area may have
assimilated some Southern Cushitic-speaking pastoralists
Even though there is no class system due to ethnic origin nowadays, it isn’t hard to see that
there once was one, with the Tutis (also defined as the ones close to the king) as former
upper class, the Hutu as middle class and the Twa hunter-gatherers as lower class.

Social class is much more permeable nowadays and mostly defined by income. If we have a
look at the distribution of income according to MBTI types some interesting patterns emerge:
P types tend to populate the lower-income-class and J types the upper-class. N types
(hunter-gatherer types) also populate mostly the lower half of the income spectrum, but also
part of the top (ENTJ/INTJ). N types are typically characterized by greater “openness” in the
Big 5 inventory, being more “planning” and conscientious than the NP types enables them to
compete with the SJ types.
Patterns in history: hunter-gatherer rebellions and
revolutions for a more egalitarian society
Karl Marx defined revolution as a return to the “original” egalitarian social organization of
hunter-gatherers. I have argued that different subsistence economies have left their
evolutionary mark on human personality so that nowadays we have got mostly “farmer”
types, followed by “pastoralist” and “hunter-gatherer” types. We, therefore, live in a
predominantly materialistic farmer world. However, due to repeated hunter-gatherer
rebellions, we also have predominantly idealistic hunter-gatherer values when it comes to
social organization: egalitarian, democratic, tolerance of diversity. The Enlightenment and
the French Revolution were hunter-gatherer movements. Liberté, égalité, fraternité were
not only brought about by the French revolution but have been hunter-gatherer values for
millennia before the advent of farming.

Therefore it seems likely that Marx himself was a hunter-gatherer type (intuitive, or N in
Myers-Briggs). Indeed he is usually typed INTJ and it can be expected that other
communists are also N types. It seems they are so without exception: Lenin, Pol Pot
(INTJ), Stalin (ENTJ), Mao, Castro, Che (all ENFP), Engels (INTP). Many of these people
turned from well-intentioned leaders to evil dictators, though. How come? It is impossible
to turn a mixed society of farmer, herder and hunter-gatherer personalities into a
communist utopia. Even if society consisted only of hunter-gatherer types, such
organisation would not possible on a large scale. The communist leaders knew this
intuitively and that is why they became paranoid and started to see enemies everywhere.
Even before the French and communist revolutions, there were hunter-gatherer
revolutions. Many of them religious and fighting the inequalities that arose due to
agriculture: Jesus (INFJ), Muhammad (INTJ), Buddha (INTP) and later religious rebels
when religions became too “farmerized”, like Martin Luther (INTJ) and Jan Hus (INTP).
Going back to the times of early farming you find hunter-gatherer personalities fighting for
a more equal society. Hammurabi (INTJ) and his famous Codex come to mind.
The 20th century saw civil rights hunter-gatherer figures like Martin Luther King (ENFJ),
Malcolm X (ENTJ) and Gandhi (ENFJ), as well as protagonists for feminism (hunter-
gatherer egalitarianism also includes women), like Simone de Beauvoir (INFJ).
The 21th-century hunter-gatherer movements have mostly been about tolerance towards
diversity (Obama, ENTP has been a champion) and the discussion about universal basic
income. The list of advocates for basic income features some really big name hunter-
gatherer personalities: Elon Musk (INTJ), Mark Zuckerberg (INTJ) and many other Silicon
Valley tech billionaires.
 What about the common folk? The era of hippie, punk and metal rebellions seemed to
have passed in popular culture. The protests have become much quieter now, but they are
still there and manifest themselves in phenomena like Greta Thunberg (INTJ), the green
movement, hipsters and purple and green-dyed hair.

Work and productivity: night owls vs early risers

In the past decades, there has been a growing body of research regarding night owls and
early risers. Night owls do not only need more coffee to get through the working day, but
they also have serious health risks.
“A growing body of research suggests that being a night owl could have negative effects on
health, including the possibility of increasing a person's risk of early death. Many of these
effects may be attributed to a misalignment between a person's internal clock, or circadian
rhythm, and the socially imposed timing of work and other activities.” from this source
What makes someone a night owl? Being a night owl is partially heritable and genetic
researchers have found out that being a night owl correlates with mental problems such as
depression and schizophrenia. There were, however, no real night owls in our evolutionary
past, we aren’t a nocturnal species after all. So it does seem likely that night owls do suffer
from a misalignment of their circadian rhythm, instead of being programmed to be night owls
by evolution. So, what keeps us awake at night?

Surprising personality might give us the key to the answer here.

Night owls often have the following traits:

● able to be highly focused/hyperfocused (pulling an all-nighter just to finish the code)

● are more intelligent (but tend to earn less)
● are less conformist
● tend to procrastinate
● tend to struggle with routine 9-5 jobs
● have a more addictive personality (alcohol, cigarettes, video-gaming)
● seek out novelty (openness to experience)

Larks, on the other hand, tend to be

● conscientious
● driven and hard-working
 ● more cooperative
● tend to procrastinate less

I have argued before that our personality types are determined by our evolutionary ancestral
mode of subsistence, farming vs hunting-gathering. The chronotype “lark” goes hand in hand
with the personality type “farmer”. Early farmers had harder lives than hunter-gatherers, they
had to get up early to get their work done, and typically only had little time to rest in between
and they had to be very cooperative to work their fields and animals. They had to be able to
conscientiously focus on rote work for long periods of time.

Hunter-gatherers on the other hand frequently often woke up at night. They had to be more
alert to potential dangers. Studies among the Hadza (African hunter-gatherers) have shown
that they often wake up at night and rarely anybody sleeps from dusk to dawn. It can be
assumed that hunter-gatherers are more sensitive to physical stimuli (such as noise) that
wake the up when potential danger threatens. Hunter-gatherers work in bursts rather than
routinely, i.e. they hyperfocus when required and rest for much of the time in between.

So, how do hunter-gatherer types become night owls? My guess is, they are simply better
able to focus in the late (or very early) hours when nobody is around. They have higher
sensibilities and are therefore more easily destructible during the daytime, in particular at
work when the workplace is buzzing with people.

In our modern world stress might keep hunter-gatherer types awake more easily than farmer
types as stress makes them hyperfocus, fall asleep harder due to not being able to switch off
and wake up more often during the night. In fact, this is exactly the pattern that can be
observed in night owls: being a night owl and the risk of insomnia go hand in hand.
Scientists know that night owls have worse sleep than larks. This can't be an adaptation per
sé, being a night owl is something like a forced and/or necessary evil.

Modern hunter-gatherers at the workplace

The world of work with its 9-5 routine jobs is pretty much a farmer (SJ) world. Consequently,
it is also the farmer types who are happiest with their jobs as well as the highest earners. In
particular, the XSTJs are among the highest earners:
High serotonin (J) predicts higher income. So does high testosterone (T). Introverts have
higher stress levels in an extroverted work environment and typically would not have
positions in upper management, therefore. Hunter-gatherer types earn less than
framer/pastoralist types as materialistic goods and display of status (e.g. expensive cars)
aren’t as important to them as self-actualization.
Ironically there is almost an inverse relationship between giftedness and financial success.
With the exception of the INTJs (typically found in jobs such as university professors,
engineers and lawyers), all of the IN types are among the low earning group. High IQ,
therefore, doesn’t necessarily predict financial success and sometimes it is even negatively
correlated. Most N types are very humble and non-competitive, in a typical hunter-gatherer
fashion.
You might be able to spot a hunter-gatherer type by the amount of coffee they need to get
through a typical workday. Hunter-gatherer types often struggle in the modern workplace for
several reasons:
❏ They find routine jobs boring
❏ Routine jobs also kill their creativity
❏ They haven’t got the sustained 9-5 focus farmers have, but the can focus even
harder when working on interesting tasks (working all-nighters is not rare for them)
❏ They might suffer from ADHD which actively interferes with 9-5 jobs and they might
not be able to hold a job
❏ They are highly sensitive hand have higher cortisol level in an extroverted work
environment
❏ Unlike farmer types, they find it hard to switch off after work and typically don’t
separate work and relaxation
❏ Their problems are more likely to interfere with regular sleep
❏ They are at a higher risk of bourn-out

In particular, the fabled INTPs have a hard time being successful. As they are the archetypal
orchid children they might end up as the founders of Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin
are both INTPs), but just as well as hobos.I have seen many people on Quora (a social
network with mostly HG types on it) ask the question: “What job can I do with high openness
and low conscientiousness [=NP]?”. Here is a table from a recent database that describes
typical personality profiles for a variety of jobs (in OCEAN)::

here is a link to a database: behavioral-ds/VocationMap

It is interesting to note that many employers would probably avoid employing people with
such a low conscientiousness level as INTPs have. And this is definitely one shortcoming of
the OCEAN model, low levels are usually considered negative traits (at least true for low
conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeability). The MBTI on the other hand, also
highlights the positive sides of the P (perceiving) trait, i.e. flexibility and versatility. Paired
with big-picture thinking these are great qualities in software developers.

Google is a great hunter-gatherer workplace. Even though INTPs only make up about 3% of
the population, they make up an estimated 30% of the highly skilled workforce at Google.
Google provides ample possibilities for hunter-gatherer types to de-stress and develop their
creativity with fringe benefits such as floating working hours, lots of possibilities to relax or
exercise during the workday, 20% creativity time plus plenty of free healthy foods.

Einstein (INTP) had a hard time finding a job after graduation. Fortunately, he found a job as
a patent clerk (he wasn’t a good employee, definitely never nominated for the employee of
the month) that allowed him enough free time to develop his ideas. You can’t pay creative
people by the hours they work. That is not how creativity works.

One of the biggest obstacles for creative people like the NPs in becoming financially
successful might be education to begin with. As this table shows (N)P types consistently get
worse grades at school than what can be predicted from their actual skill-level. This is
because they struggle with sequential and rote learning.
Foundations of an Evolutionary Pedagogy
I have been a teacher for 20 years now despite having been confronted with a lot of
pedagogical and methodological ideas and theories none of those had an evolutionary
approach to teaching. Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn is a notable exception. Gray’s ideas
are based on learning in hunter-gatherer societies, in which there is no formal learning, no
coercion, little extrinsic motivation for learning (grades, “stars”, praise, etc.” and still children
become fully functioning members of their groups due to their inborn instincts to survive, play
and learn form older children and adults.

Formal teaching and schooling is basically an invention of agricultural societies as

agriculture made a certain degree of coercion necessary. Modern hunter-gatherers
consistently refuse to become farmers as it is too much trouble and work for them.
I have argued before that modern people are more or less the descendants of either early
farmers or hunter-gatherers, genetically kept partially apart by assortative mating through the
past 12 millennia since the origin of agriculture. This distinction corresponds roughly to the
distinction between intutitives and sensors in the Myers-Briggs/Jungian personality
framework.

In pedagogy, I have often encountered opposing ideas that correspond to “farmer” vs

“hunter-gatherer” (HG) “instincts” or values in education. Here are some of them:

farmer values hunter-gatherer values

objective is the integration of the learner objective is the independence of the

into society learner

fosters conformity forsters independence

standardization individualization

Extrinsic motivation (grades, “stars”, Intrinsic motivation (passion), non-

praise), partially driven by competitive competitive (the only competition is the
thinking and comparison between students learner him/herself)

Learning is “work” attitude Learning is “growth” attitude

Sequential learning Big picture, integrated learning

Teacher-centred Student-centred

Rule-based learning Explorative learning

Mastery of sets of skills Lifelong learning and flexibility

Current trend towards more formal Current trend towards homeschooling or

 schooling unschooling

Peter Gray is optimistic that in the near future the trends will shift towards hunter-gatherer
values and traditional schooling will be perceived as barbaric soon. Unfortunately, this is not
what I am experiencing as a teacher, the trends are more towards “farmer values”, i.e.
crammed curricula, more schooling and more (international) competitive thinking.
Apart from the fact that most students lose their curiosity, motivation and interest in the
subject matters themselves and study for grades and credits instead of developing a passion
for learning. This trend seriously hurts the “hunter-gatherer” kids, in particular, the highly
creative ones. These kids get filtered out by our school system because have difficulties with
the sequential learning, rote memorization and are often considered disorganized and lazy
by their teachers.

One can imagine that children who are programmed to learn freely struggle with the
coerciveness of elementary school. My gifted son who was able to read at age two and who
had been a highly curious child until elementary school suddenly became defiant and even
aggressive in first grade. He would rather cry an hour over homework that would have taken
him five minutes to do. This seemingly irrational behaviour can only be explained by inborn
instincts.
My research into personality types has led me to assume that the majority of children with
ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), ADHD and ASD children are probably among the
hunter-gatherer personality type and can therefore often be found in special ed. HG kids
might seem slow, lazy, dreamy and unmotivated in elementary school.
On the flip side also the majority of the gifted kids I have taught belong to the hunter-
gatherer group, which leads me to assume that hunter-gatherer children are very much the
same as “orchid children”, who might thrive or fade depending on their environment. They
might be hyperlexic (or at least early readers - pretty much all people I know who taught
themselves to read before school are HG people) or dyslexic. If my son hadn’t been able to
read fluently at age two, he might have easily turned out dyslexic. His teacher only saw a
slow, dreamy and sloppy kid in him and given his inattentive ADHD and defiant behaviour
this might easily have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The objective of an evolutionary pedagogy should have as a scope an evolutionary

perspective on learning styles, not just categorizing them by three different types of sensory
input or eight different kinds of intelligence. Sequential learning vs. pattern learning style
might be a more meaningful category or rule-based vs explorative learning styles, as well as
a preference for being taught vs self-directed learning.

HG children are different from “farmer” children in the following traits:

● Relatively immune to extrinsic motivation like grades

● High performers when intrinsically motivated
 ● Special interests/passions way beyond the ordinary (e.g. knowing the names of 300
instead of 30 dinosaurs)
● they are quicker to adopt digital media for their learning
● Criticism can be absolutely detrimental to learning motivation
● Coercion most likely causes defiant rather than compliant behaviour
● May appear physically younger and emotionally less mature than their peers
● Preference for self-directed learning
● Highly sensitive to noise, light and other physical stimuli
● Less stress-resistent or resilient

HG children suffer more from stress and react with higher cortisol levels, which can often
lead to physical illness such as allergies, asthma or anaemia (especially high in children with
ADHD). I am afraid that schools actually might be partly to blame for their ailments and hope
that scientists and polygenic scores will be able to shed more light on the matter.

In middle and high schools, HG children are much more likely to be among the students who
drop out, get bullied (they are generally non-violent and frequently loners), self-harm or even
commit suicide. On the other hand, they are also among the high performers and highly
creative (a trait that hardly matters in many schools) children. As HG children are big
pictures thinkers it should be in the interest of schools, the economy and society that
education for them is an empowering experience rather than an obstacle in their lives.

Normal sucks and why the levels of conformism are still

so high
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in
the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You
can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t
do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward,
and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones
who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Most people are familiar with the above quote from a famous Apple advert. Reading
Normal Sucks by Jonathan Mooney and The Power of Different: The Link Between
Disorder and Genius by Gail Saltz I have been reminded how people who don’t fit in
have the power to change the world. People with dyslexia become innovative
entrepreneurs (e.g. Richard Branson), people with ADHD and ASD develop exciting
theories (Einstein) and people with bipolar and schizophrenia create outstanding
works of art (Vincent van Gogh).
On the flip side, the majority of people are actually quite conformist. Of course,
conformism has certain advantages like regulating social life, but more often than
not it serves no other purpose than not being different, like the uniformity of
American suburbs illustrates.

I have argued before that a lot of those misfits and creatives have hunter-gatherer
minds (intuitive types in Myers-Briggs), whereas the majority of people, in particular,
the ones who are conformist have farmer minds (SJ types in Myers-Briggs). Intuitive
types also happen to have the highest rates of gifted and high IQ people. Studies
have shown that it exactly high IQ people tend not to be conformist: Majority Rules:
We Tend To Conform, Unless We Have A High IQ

High IQ people aren’t inherently antisocial or rebels, but they can become rebels when
their values are threatened. Sometimes it is about banal things, like traditional music, for
which high IQ people often have a distaste. Why? High IQ people tend to be freedom-
loving hunter-gatherer types whereas the majority of people are farmer types, who are
more likely to conform, because a high degree of conformism was likely necessary when
early farming started, whereas hunter-gatherer bands consisted more of independent
collaborators.

“[…] when the Spanish began their conquest of South America, one of their earliest
settlements was at the site of modern Buenos Aires. The settlement was a colonial failure
and soon abandoned because the local hunter-gatherers refused to work for the Spanish,
even under extreme duress. When the Spanish ventured farther inland and encountered
agriculturalists in Paraguay, they easily subjugated the local people by conquering and
replacing the aristocracy […]” (from: William von Hippel The Social Leap)

What was the difference between the hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies the
Spanish met? Agricultural societies are hierarchically structured. Conformism is an
absolute must in order to avoid hierarchical conflicts. The Paraguayans agriculturalist,
therefore, didn’t find it too hard to live under Spanish domination (after some initial
resistance). However, the egalitarian hunter-gatherers could never have lived as slaves
for the Spanish.

You will find the same pattern over and over again in history - the Native Americans, the
Aborigines, the Hadza, who were offered land to farm, they don’t easily integrate into
“farmer” societies.
Early farmers, on the other hand, needed both hierarchy and conformism to accomplish
the required levels of productivity. Conformism and status-thinking go hand in hand. It’s
playing keeping up with the Joneses. Interestingly, out of all companies exactly Apple -
who two decades ago used their think different campaign - has become a poster child
for this level of conformism and status-thinking.
Patterns in history: technological innovation

The percentage of innovative individuals in a population is rather low, at around 2,5%. If you
look at famous inventors and innovators, you will find a lot of common psychological traits
among them, e.g. there is a tendency for them to be outsiders and to see the world with a
childlike curiosity.

In fact, high IQ and creativity are related to the traits “openness” and “low
conscientiousness” in the Big 5 inventory. These traits roughly translate to N (openness)
and P (explorativeness and flexibility) in the Myers-Briggs inventory (MBTI). The technical
part of innovation (vs.e.g innovation in art and social innovation) is due to higher
testosterone levels, i.e. T in MBTI or low agreeability in the Big 5 model.
In fact, when you look at technical innovators they more often than not have an NTP profile
in MBTI: Leonardo da Vinci (ENTP), Einstein (INTP), Edison (ENTP), Alexander Graham
Bell (ENTP), Marie Curie (INTP) and Feynman (ENTP). There are also many high
conscientious (high serotonin) people among the innovators, though: Newton (INTJ), Tesla
(INTJ) and Mark Zuckerberg (INTJ), just to name a few. The latter types tend to become
experts in one particular field rather than the more explorative P types, who tend to be more
explorative in width.

As an example: Google vs Facebook. The Google founders, Larry Page (INTP) and Sergey
Brin (INTP) have a wide variety of interests ranging from Search to self-driving cars and
extending human life-spans. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, tends to stick with social
media, not only extending his own Facebook all the time, but also buying up the competition
like WhatsApp and Instagram.

I have argued that N-types have more hunter-gatherer genes than S-types in MBTI, who
have more genetic heritage from early farmers. How come, that hunter-gatherer types make
the majority on inventions when they didn’t invent much before the advent of farming? One
possibility is the admixture of Neanderthal genes, as the “Great Leap Forward” occurred
around the same time as the Neanderthal admixture, around 40.000 years ago.

However, the majority of human inventions still happened after the advent of farming and
some, like the domestication of fire, weapons and musical instruments (e.g. flutes) happened
before the neolithic. What is more likely: the patters of innovation we see in history are the
result of an arms race between farmers and hunter-gatherer types who lived in farmer
societies. Hunter-gatherer types are not cut-out for routine work like farmer minds.
Traditional schooling is such a routine activity and many famous inventors and scientist did
struggle in schools. Isaac Newton hated farming and did poorly in school. So did Edison and
many others. In fact, it seems there is hardly any Nobel-prize winner who didn’t hate school
(see here).
It can, therefore, be safely assumed that hunter-gatherer types did worse in farmer societies
than farmer minds. A lot of innovations in history might have been due simply to necessity. A
famous proverb says that necessity is the mother of invention. What kind of necessity? The
necessity not to be regarded as lazy or inferior human beings. The necessity to be respected
and loved and the necessity to live an authentic life according to one’s evolutionary
programme, aka self-actualization.
Looking at the technological innovation adoption life-cycle, we can make some interesting
inferences regarding the hunter-gatherer/farmer hypothesis.

Innovators are most likely INTP/ENTP types with INTJ/ENTJ types working out the details
and making the technology more usable for farmer types. The innovators are driven by their
need of self-actualization, their open-mindedness and playfulness (characteristic traits of
hunter-gatherer minds.

Early adopters are most likely hunter-gatherer types too. They are open-minded and curious
about new technology, just like children are curious about new toys. For early adopters, the
technology doesn’t have to be perfectly developed or user-friendly, not even very practical
yet. Early adopters can see the future potential and are therefore interested in the
technology.
The majority are mostly farmer types who might have varying motives to adopt the new
technology. For the early majority, it is most likely status and prestige, whereas for the late
majority it is more likely the practical aspect of the technology. Farmer types are usually
more set in their routines and therefore slower to adopt new technology. What about the
laggards? One thing that is highly important in farmer societies is conformism, and it is most
likely conformism that drives the laggards to finally adopt the new technology.
The people who never adopt new technology are most likely to have hunter-gatherer minds
again. If they find no real use for the technology hunter-gatherer minds are not moved by
status and conformism to adopt it.
Lone wolves, hikikomori, and online addiction

Many years ago while I was visiting the Czech Republic, a local told me a story about a lone
wolf who one day had retreated into the mountains to live there without any human contact. I
was impressed by so much courage and asked how the story went on. “Well, he shot himself
a couple of years later. He had gone crazy” was the reply.

License to use Creative Commons Zero - CC0

A psychologist would say that lone wolf had schizoid personality disorder. I have known
many cases of lone wolves myself. When I was a kid there was this elderly lady who almost
never left her house and kept her chickens inside. We were scared of her and considered
her a witch. In the same village, there was a fool on a hill who set himself on fire. In the place
where I live now as an adult, there is a loner who lives in a tiny house with his cats and
almost never talks to anybody. And there is the hobo who built himself a shelter by the river
and tries to survive by catching fish.
However, what turns a human into a lone wolf in the first place? The simple answer, that has
become very popular nowadays: genetics. Yes, genes are responsible for almost anything
from ASD and depression even to personality disorders. Poor lone wolves, blame it on their
genes, there is nothing much that can be done about it. Ironically enough, lone wolves don’t
reproduce genetically. Humans are programmed to be social animals, not meant to survive
on their own. So, genetics can't be the whole story.
Literature might provide a clue here, as literary experience often is human experience
expressed in words that make the experience relivable for anybody. Many famous writers
have celebrated outcasts and hoboism, from Steinbeck to Kerouac. In Hermann Hesse novel
Steppenwolf, the protagonist Harry Haller is a lone wolf, a pacifist, once successful member
of society, now turned outsider (who adores Buddha). Harry divides humankind into three
tribes: the bourgeois, a more relaxed fun-loving folk and his own kind, the wolves, to which he
counts artists and intellectuals. Interestingly Haller’s division almost corresponds to the fourfold
division of many theories in personality psychology. I am using Myers-Briggs and Dr Helen
Fisher’s terminology below:

I have argued for an evolutionary origin of these types before, bourgeois = farmers, fun-loving
folk = pastoralists and wolves = hunter-gatherers. Why out of these three different “neurotribes”
should hunter-gatherers be the ones who become lone wolves most frequently? The answer lies
in their genetic programme: they are not programmed to value material goods over human
relationships, status and a hierarchical social structure/authority. What is more, hunter-gatherer
types, in particular in the original introverted form (IN types), have become rare, only
approximately 10% of the population. A lot of introverted intuitive (IN) types actually don’t know
any other person of their type in real life (they might also not be aware of them as they tend to
keep their circle of acquaintances small). However, they do get to know others like them online,
usually the more remote and the fewer users there are the more likely they will find them. Quora
is such a place, a social network that has comparatively few users and is relatively unknown. A
social network made up of mostly lone wolves.
You will also find a lot of lone wolves in online gaming. Here is the statistic for a video game that
should illustrate the idea that lone wolves are mostly IN types:
In Japan, a phenomenon called hikikomori has become famous. Thousand of adolescents
withdraw in their own homes and become modern-day hermits. Social isolation and online
addiction are two common traits. These young people are often compared to autistic people (to
whom they are related in their neurotribe). What makes those young people become recluse? It
seems an enigma to science, but it isn’t that hard to guess - ever-increasing pressure to high
achievement, starting in preschool.

Often hikikomori start out as school refusers. Hunter-gatherer types do not take kindly to coercive
education, it kills their intrinsic motivation to learn. Tragically the once so innovative Japan has
managed to kill off its creative potential with as school system that was meant to produce more
and more creative minds. All it produces now are duty- performers. Hunter-gatherers minds can’t
blossom under such circumstances. They have highly sensitive minds with a higher stress
response than farmer minds. Stress is toxic to such minds and kills all the inherent creativity.
Japan, you have got to change your attitude towards education in order to become an innovative
country again!
Lone wolves are not meant to live alone evolutionary speaking as they can’t reproduce. They are
genetically programmed to find a pack where they belong, their own tribe. Online is where they
find it nowadays.
Evolutionary Economics - The iPhone, the long tail and the winner-takes-
all economy

Classic economic theory had homo economics at its centre: a completely rational being that
maximizes utility and wealth. When buying, say a smartphone then people should buy
according to these economic principles. However, this model totally fails to predict actual
human buying behaviour. The most desired smartphone model is not the most economic
one, but the most expensive one: the iPhone. How can this phenomenon be explained?
The long tail theory (Chris Anderson) is an extension of the classical model. It predicts that
quasi perfect markets that are possible because of the web would cater to many different
needs. In the case of smartphones, this means there should be smartphones for every type
of person (e.g. outdoor people, geeks, fashionistas, etc.) and this is true. As far as budgets
go, you can buy smartphones from $50 to $1000+, yet among the thousands of smartphone
models there is one model that exceeds all others and one company that gets the lions’
share, while the majority of smartphone makers don’t make any profit at all.
Many people simply claim they pay a superior price for a superior innovative product.
However, that is not true. There are cheaper models than the iPhone that beat the iPhone on
specs like camera, speed, battery life or whatever features people desire most. The iPhone
hasn’t been innovative since Steve Jobs died, either. It mostly copies over features from
successful Android makers that catch the eye of the market. NFC, triple cameras, night sight
are all features Android phones had long before the whatever current iPhone model when it
was launched. And still, iPhones are selling like hot cakes.
How can we make sense of such behaviour? Evolutionary psychology would answer that
“utility” can only be obtained when an item increases survival chances and/or an individual’s
reproductive potential. The economist who came closest to this thinking was Thorstein
Veblen with his idea of “conspicuous consumption”. According to this theory, people buy
iPhones not because they need them, but because they want to show off their status and
how much money they have got to spend.
There is, however, considerable variation in spending behaviour. Extroverts tend to spend
much more than introverts and it seems likely that they have a higher need to display their
status. Another factor that classic economy theory neglects is conformism. Some people
tend to be more conformist than others. Some people start to show off their status and the
rest plays “keeping up with the Jones, er… influencers”.
In my theory of evolution of personality according to subsistence type, the most conformist
type would be “farmer” (SJ in Myers-Briggs). As farmer types make up the majority of the
population (around 50%), this would explain the winner-takes-all economy we can see
around us everywhere. Instead of the long-tail, people tend to buy the same products, watch
the same TV shows, consume the same goods.
The long tail does work much better for hunter-gatherer personality types (N types in Myers-
Briggs), who tend to care less about social conventions and have their own passions. Adam
Smith and Chris Anderson are, after all, INTPs, i.e. hunter-gatherer types. Personally, I was
an early adopter of Amazon when they were still only selling books I got my first book about
Evolutionary Psychology from the US via Amazon.com for which I was much more willing to
spend my money on than I would have been willing to spend it on an iPhone.
The real reason why Donald Trump was elected president and why he
might be elected again
Well, no, it wasn’t interference by Russian secret services (at least not on a massive
scale), it wasn’t Facebook, nor YouTube. No grand conspiracy theory will explain the
Trump phenomenon. It was, unfortunately, the Americans themselves, or rather the
American majority who voted for Trump. And they might do it again, despite a
disastrous first term, despite the obvious ignorance of their president, who doesn’t
even read the newspapers, may it be out of a lack of reading skills or out of fear of
destroying his grand illusion of being almost universally loved (most probably a
combination of both).

Sad as it may seem, the real reason for Trump’s election has got to do with sexism
(“Yes, we rather want to have a strong groping alpha male than a woman president
who fights for equal rights, peace and education”).

How do I know? Well the data are here. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in his book
Everybody Lies analysed big data Google Searches via Google Trends and
found that searches for "Trump for president" peaked in areas with racist and
sexist searches.

But can that be really true? The majority of Americans are sexist and racist? No, of
course not, however, the connection is there.
For simplicity’s sake let’s assume there are two kinds of people: the includers (who
do not exclude people without any a priori reasons and the excluders (who exclude
people a priori for fear their communities are threatened). These tendencies have
both a genetic component as well as an environmental one (mostly education).
The excluders tend to quickly establish hierarchical relationships and punish
deviation from the norm as they see their community under threat. (NB: this was an
early post of mine, includers would be people close to the hunter-gatherer end of life-
history spectrum, whereas the excluders would be more frequently found on the
pastoralist end).

The includers (people with a high level of the hormone oxytocin) have made great
progress in the past decades: (near) equal women’s rights, gay rights, inclusion of all
kinds of divergent people.

The excluders have seen their world view increasingly under attack due to these
developments and they are afraid of going any further. Feeling threatened in their
core values, they are fighting back voting for an incompetent alpha male rather than
a competent female politician. Yes, sadly, for many people nowadays it seems more
ok that an alpha male gropes women without being punished as long as he builds
walls and keeps potential threats away.

Those people long for they old order, in which they can orientate themselves more
easily. Rapid social and technological changes scare them. Trump epitomizes
everything that stands for that old order: America first, men first, white people first,
American cars first etc.

However, that is the world of yesterday and it won’t come back and politicians like
Trump can only promise to bring it back. People have to wake up. If these
tendencies increase the world will become an even sadder and more depressed
place than it is already nowadays.

Most young people usually have no big problem with the challenges of this rapidly
changing world. They are the first to embrace diversity, technology. It’s the old folks,
who have lost their openness and flexibility who are scared of diversity, technology
and many more imaginary threats. What the old folks don’t realize they are harming
the most precious thing they have: their children.

A globalized world can’t work without a high amount of openness. And this
is what we are seeing everywhere in the world right now. A crumbling world
community. Another current example is called “Brexit”. And it doesn’t stop
there. It is time to listen to our children, like Greta Thunberg and Malala
Yousafzai, even if some of us might not feel that comfortable with their
message.
Modern love or love and marriage…

don’t go together like a horse and carriage anymore, like Frank Sinatra once sang.
What has happened? As you can see from the statistic (English and Wales)
marriages have gone down since the 70s and divorce rates have gone up rapidly.
Divorce rates have been slightly decreasing recently, but only because people aren’t
getting married anymore. Accounting for this fact, divorce rates are probably at a
historic high.

Let’s start our investigation in the 1960s when the contraceptive pill was started to be
used widely.
As you can see there is an almost perfect correlation between women using the pill
and rising divorce rates. There is a lag of approximately seven years, though. This is
the famous “Seven Year Itch”. There have been a lot of speculations about this
correlation. A common one I have read is that the pill makes women unattractive
(putting on weight). If even that makes sense to some people, I wouldn’t say that
most people would be so shallow to leave their partner because of a few more
pounds.

The real reason can be expressed in terms of evolutionary psychology: if a partner

hasn’t produced offspring after a longer period of time (studies show that on average
it is actually rather six years than seven years), it is the best strategy to leave the
partner and find a new mate.
Of course, the pill has had many upsides too, above all letting people choose when
to have children. It allowed women to choose long term careers, reduced abortion
rates and probably also reduced crime rates considerably (fewer unwanted children
means fewer children in danger of becoming delinquents).

The pill in combination with our capitalist economic system has made it possible that
people can postpone having children and pursue a career instead. This the average
age for the first child has jumped up to around 30 years compared to around 20
years in the 1950s.
For many people having children has become a luxury, which is absurd considering
how well off economically we are nowadays. If and how many children people want
to have nowadays is greatly determined by people’s personality. The more traditional
personality types still want to have children, they merely start a little bit later than
they used to because everybody wants to have a good education nowadays.

If you check the above table of distribution of personality types (MBTI), you will find
that the more traditional S types have a higher distribution. This simply means that
more traditionally-minded S types have more children. Also, the more ambitious
types (TJ), who on average have higher incomes, have more children. A male
ISTJ/ESTJ female (ISFJ/ESFJ) pair would have the highest number of children
nowadays, say a hospital doctor and his stay-at-home wife.
The more traditional types have a certain genotype of the OXTR rs53576 gene. GG
types have been found to have more stable relationships and report higher marital
satisfaction than carriers of the AA/AG genotypes.

It has been interpreted that the AA/AG types are less social. However, I think those
types are frequently intuitives and have a different kind of sociality. Intuitives might have
lower social cognition (recognition of feelings, memory for names), however, they
have a “thinner skin”, when it comes to emotions. That’s probably one of the reasons
why intuitives are more prone to divorce. Personally, I know many intuitives who
don’t want to have children in the first place. My hypothesis is that intuitives were
programmed by evolution to survive during hard and unsettled times and a prone to
postponing settling down until more settled times. The problem is that the right time
might never arrive in these unsettled times. Intuitives are already programmed by
evolution to invest all their resources in fewer children. This would be the most
advantageous parental strategy in hard times.

In order to cement my hypothesis, I want to point out that contrary to traditional S

types the more ambitious types among intuitives (NJ) have in fact fewer children,
rather than more. How can this obvious paradox be explained? It does make sense
when you consider that NJ types are willing to postpone reproduction longer than NP
types and of course they want to have fewer children too, in order to optimise their
resources on even fewer offspring.

The consequences of these patterns of marriage and child-bearing is that we will see
an increase of SJ personality types in the near future and a (further) decrease of N
(in particular NJ) types.