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1

Preliminary matters

1 December 9, 2010
2 Vancouver, B.C.
3
4 (DAY 11)
5 (PROCEEDINGS COMMENCED AT 10:00 A.M.)
6
7 THE CLERK: Order in court. In the Supreme Court of
8 British Columbia at Vancouver, this 9th day of
9 December 2010, calling the matter concerning the
10 constitutionality of section 293 of the Criminal
11 Code, My Lord.
12 MR. JONES: Good morning, My Lord. Perhaps just before
13 I get going, an update on our housekeeping matter.
14 We have the library now fully established in the
15 room outside and we'll be posting -- the materials
16 are in there, and we'll also be posting the
17 schedule of witnesses as it evolves in that room
18 as well.
19 THE COURT: Excellent. Thank you.
20 MR. JONES: My Lord, the first witness, the only
21 witness today and perhaps for part or all of
22 tomorrow, is Dr. Joseph Henrich. I am going to
23 spend a few minutes longer on Dr. Henrich's
24 qualifications and his CV than I ordinarily would,
25 and I just wanted to explain why that's necessary.
26 Dr. Henrich is the Attorney's principal
27 expert on the causes of polygamy and its
28 consequences, and in order to set these things
29 out, his testimony is going to have to move
30 quickly over a vast amount of territory in a
31 number of scientific disciplines. And in order
32 for him to do that with some authority and
33 credibility, it's necessary for me to establish
34 not only the breadth of his expertise but also
35 something of its depth, so I'm asking a little bit
36 of forbearance in the court in that regard.
37 Perhaps we could have Dr. Henrich sworn.
38
39 JOSEPH HENRICH, a witness
40 called by the AGBC,
41 affirmed.
42
43 THE CLERK: Please state your full name and spell your
44 last name for the record.
45 THE WITNESS: Joseph Henrich. My last name,
46 H-e-n-r-i-c-h.
47
2
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF ON QUALIFICATIONS BY MR. JONES:


2 Q Dr. Henrich, I've put a binder in front of you and
3 His Lordship has a copy and my friends as well. I
4 have one extra. And at tab 1 is your first
5 affidavit that accompanied your expert -- your
6 initial expert report, and perhaps I can just take
7 you to the first page of that.
8 It says you hold the tier one Canada Research
9 Chair in Culture, Cognition and Evolution at the
10 University of British Columbia; is that right?
11 A That's right.
12 Q Where you're a co-director of the Centre for Human
13 Evolution, Culture and Cognition?
14 A That's correct.
15 Q And just so His Lordship understands, this is my
16 understanding from the Government of Canada
17 website. There's two kinds of Canada research
18 chairs; is that right?
19 A Yes, right.
20 Q Tier one and tier two. And -- sorry, you'll have
21 to say yes rather than nodding.
22 A Yes, yes.
23 Q And the tier two chair is for scholars who have
24 the potential to lead in their field; they're
25 emerging researchers?
26 A That's right. It's usually used as a recruiting
27 tool for junior researchers. Graduate students.
28 Q And the tier one chairs are for -- and this is the
29 words I found online, "outstanding researchers
30 acknowledged by their peers as world leaders in
31 their fields." Is that your understanding?
32 A That's right.
33 Q Now, you're a member of the departments of
34 economics and psychology?
35 A Right.
36 Q But your PhD is in anthropology?
37 A Yes.
38 Q Is that right? Can you explain to His Lordship
39 this interdisciplinary field of culture, cognition
40 and co-evolution?
41 A Right. So the reason I'm able to have a PhD in
42 anthropology and be a tenured professor in
43 economics and psychology is because what I do is I
44 take tools from evolutionary biology and apply
45 them to human behaviour, and that allows me to say
46 things about human psychology, economic behaviour
47 or the kinds of questions that anthropologists
3
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 ask.
2 Q Thanks. As we go through perhaps your
3 publications we can elaborate a little on this and
4 the interdisciplinary nature of this field.
5 Now, prior to your arrival -- I'm just at
6 paragraph 2 of your CV. Prior to your arrival at
7 UBC in 2006, you were a faculty member at Emory
8 University?
9 A That's right, yes.
10 Q And that was, at least by the end of it, a tenured
11 position as well?
12 A Right. As I was being recruited to UBC for the
13 Canada research chair, I was granted tenure but
14 never actually took up the position to be an
15 associate.
16 Q I see. And you had a position in the University
17 of Michigan's department of organizational
18 behaviour?
19 A Yes, organizational behaviour's in the business
20 school at the University of Michigan. I had a
21 post doc -- yes, so I was a visiting assistant
22 professor my first job out of graduate school.
23 Q And your time at the Institute for Advanced Study,
24 Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.
25 A Right. So in my second year at the University of
26 Michigan, I was invited to be a fellow at the
27 Institute for Advanced study in Berlin, and the
28 German is Wissenschaftskolleg.
29 Q Okay. And then in paragraph 3 it notes that
30 you've received a number of awards for your
31 interdisciplinary work, most recently from UBC,
32 the Killam Research Prize?
33 A That's right.
34 Q The Human Behaviour and Evolution Society's award
35 for distinguished scientific contribution?
36 A Yeah.
37 Q 2009. And the President of the United States
38 award for early career scientists and engineers?
39 A Yeah, it's actually called the Presidential Early
40 Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
41 Q And that was in 2004?
42 A Right.
43 Q And did you go to Washington, DC, to receive that?
44 A Yeah. I actually received that at the
45 White House.
46 Q In the White House. Perhaps I can now go to your
47 CV, Dr. Henrich, which is at tab A to your first
4
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 affidavit, and I'll just start with the first --


2 sometimes it makes sense to work through these
3 things backwards, but I think for my own sanity
4 I'll work through it forwards.
5 We've touched on your prizes, but there is a
6 more complete list there. Your university
7 education, you have bachelors degrees in
8 anthropology and aerospace engineering?
9 A That's right.
10 Q A masters degree in anthropology from UCLA? And a
11 PhD in anthropology from UCLA?
12 A That's right.
13 Q And then underneath the major awards and
14 fellowships, there's a listing of major grants, I
15 understand the subject of keen interest in
16 academia. The second one down, you have a
17 $633,000 grant for studying or measuring cultural
18 variation?
19 A That's right. So it's a grant from the National
20 Institutes of Health to Rob Boyd at UCLA and
21 myself, and we're looking at different ways to
22 measure cultural variation in different societies.
23 So we have field workers in Peru and Los Angeles
24 and Fiji.
25 Q And over the page, just at the top of the page
26 there's one from SSRC or the Social Science
27 Research Council, folk sociology, a cross cultural
28 and developmental investigation of how groups
29 influence thinking about individuals. Can you
30 encapsulate that for me.
31 A Yeah. So the idea is that people have sort of
32 reliably developing aspects of mind that they use
33 to make inferences about groups, so it leads to
34 group stereotyping and ethnicity and whatnot. So
35 in the same way that you learn one fact about a
36 lion, you may see a single lion hunting at night,
37 think lions hunt at night. That's an immediate
38 inference you make. So we wondered to what degree
39 do humans do that about people. You learn one
40 thing about one member of a certain ethnic group;
41 how readily do you generalize it as a property of
42 the whole group.
43 Q I see. So that's a series of experiments in
44 different places. And as we go further down the
45 list here, you received a grant for building and
46 interdisciplinary program in culture and
47 cognition. I presume that was at Emory?
5
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 A Correct.
2 Q And they didn't have a -- they didn't have that as
3 a discipline, if I can put it that way, prior to
4 this?
5 A Right. So you know one of the things about
6 academic departments is you have sort of your
7 anthropology, your economics and your psychology,
8 and my approach to all this says that we shouldn't
9 have those disciplines. We should create these
10 integrated programs so we use tools from different
11 disciplines.
12 Q I see. And is there an umbrella description that
13 would embrace these discipline -- I mean, is this
14 sociology broadly?
15 A There's no good term that you're accustomed to
16 hearing. I mean, so I use these collections of
17 terms like culture, cognition and evolution.
18 Q I see.
19 A But it speaks to sociological questions the same
20 way it speaks to economic questions.
21 Q I see. Okay. And we've touched a little on your
22 work experience. You've been at UBC since 2006
23 initially as tier two and now as a tier one Canada
24 research chair. Prior to that you were at Emory
25 University and you've done the other fellowships
26 and visiting professorships that we've discussed
27 in others. I notice -- looks like prior to your
28 academic career you were actually a rocket
29 scientist of some description?
30 A So my first job out of undergraduate was as an
31 engineer with GEF Aerospace and Martin Marietta
32 where I worked for two years. Satellite
33 operations.
34 Q I see. And now we turn to publications and
35 forthcoming contributions, and I appreciate that
36 this list is somewhat outdated now. It's only
37 from this summer and you've had some more
38 publications since this time, but I wanted to go
39 through it. Are all of the publications that
40 we're going to be talking about peer reviewed?
41 A You mean everything on here, or?
42 Q Yes, I suppose. Yeah. Is this a list of your
43 peer -- are all these journals?
44 A Let's see. So books, peer reviewed, edited by
45 peer review, all the journal articles are peer
46 reviewed. So there's a page 6 or page 7, the
47 official number.
6
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 Q Right.
2 A That's re-publication of earlier journal articles.
3 Q Right.
4 A And that's where someone is trying to make an
5 edited volume of classic papers and they republish
6 one of your earlier ones, so there's no peer
7 review.
8 Q I understand.
9 A And the book chapters -- book chapters are
10 technically reviewed, but they're very rarely
11 rejected.
12 Q I see.
13 A So it's not a full ...
14 Q Okay. So perhaps we'll just pass over for the
15 moment the forthcoming journal articles and we'll
16 go to the published journal articles beginning at
17 page 5. And the first three struck me because the
18 only magazine I subscribe to is New Scientist
19 Magazine, and the WEIRD research that you've done
20 has featured in this magazine lately, hasn't it,
21 sir?
22 A Yes.
23 Q This is the English New Scientist?
24 A So they wrote an article -- a feature actually on
25 a paper that we published in the Behavioural and
26 Brain Sciences, and so we use the word "WEIRD" in
27 the title; I used the word WEIRD. WEIRD stands
28 for Western Educated Industrialized Rich
29 Democratic. And we use this term because we
30 wanted to characterize a particular group of
31 people who, when we looked at a large array of
32 different psychological studies from different
33 societies, always came out on the strange end of
34 the distribution. They were always sort of
35 outliers or different from other places. So one
36 of the -- the reason why this gets so much press
37 is because it's sort of saying westerners are
38 sociologically unusual compared to the rest of the
39 species.
40 Q I see, I see. So this writing that you've done in
41 the area, and perhaps we'll just go to numbers 56
42 and 7. I'll just read the titles starting at
43 number 7 and we're working up. The first one is
44 "Beyond WEIRD: Toward a broad-based behavioural
45 science" and that's in Behavioural and Brain
46 Sciences?
47 A Well, that was -- yeah. Right.
7
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 Q And then the next one up, "The WEIRDest people in


2 the world?" In the same journal article and --
3 yeah, I'm sorry, I noticed the first one was a
4 reply to somebody else, some other article. And
5 then the first one, "Most people are not WEIRD,"
6 meaning western educated, industrialized, rich and
7 democratic, and that was in Nature?
8 A Right.
9 Q Magazine. And the -- if I can characterize your
10 writing on WEIRD, it is to examine the ways in
11 which data can and can't be applied
12 cross-culturally and through different societies;
13 is that fair?
14 A Right. So in the paper we lay out a bunch of data
15 that shows that westerners are unusual and then we
16 also make a list of all the areas in which there
17 doesn't seem to be much difference, so the human
18 universals.
19 Q I see. And we're talking largely with respect to
20 polygamy about mating behaviour. Is that on the
21 universal end of the spectrum, or on the
22 culturally dependent end of the spectrum?
23 A Right. So many of the aspects of human mating
24 psychology are in the universal categories in our
25 paper.
26 Q I see. And I'll just -- I don't know if --
27 perhaps flag a couple of other titles here. The
28 evolution of -- this is number 11, "The evolution
29 of costly displays, cooperation and religion."
30 A Right. Right.
31 Q What's that?
32 A That is an article about trying to understand
33 these aspects of religion like walking on hot
34 coals or cutting off the foreskin on the penis.
35 These costly acts that seem to be built into
36 religious practices, and the question is, to an
37 evolutionist like me, well, why would anybody ever
38 do that. And so it's a simple mathematical model
39 that shows how those practices spread and become
40 common and become stable.
41 Q I see.
42 A Part of the idea is that by making a costly
43 display like dying for your beliefs, you provide a
44 demonstrative act that makes other people more
45 likely to acquire the idea. So you actually make
46 your ideas more transmittable by engaging in these
47 costly acts.
8
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 Q And this idea of the transmission of ideas through


2 culture in an evolutionary sense, is that one of
3 the aspects of study?
4 A That's the core of what I do.
5 Q That's the core of what you do. So similarly, if
6 we look down at 15, for instance, "Strong
7 reciprocity and the roots of human morality."
8 Same sort of examination near that core?
9 A Yeah. So there we're interested in how cultural
10 evolution has changed human sociology to make
11 humans more cooperative, more fair-minded towards
12 strangers.
13 There's also the idea that over the long
14 brush of human history, that cultural evolution
15 has actually shaped genetic evolution, so our
16 species took off on new evolutionary vistas that
17 aren't available to non-cultural species.
18 Q So, sir, if I were to reiterate what you've told
19 us about your three areas of discipline and the
20 interdisciplinary research, what are the most
21 authoritative journals in each of the fields of
22 economics, psychology and -- at least your area of
23 psychology, and sorry -- anthropology?
24 A Right. So the leading general anthropology
25 journal is called Current Anthropology. I'm not
26 sure there's another one that competes with that.
27 Within economics there's the American Economic
28 Review, the Journal of Political Economy and the
29 Quarterly Journal of Economics.
30 Q Now, maybe I can stop you there. With respect to
31 the anthropology journal, have you published in
32 that journal, and with respect to these three
33 economic journals?
34 A AER, the American Economic Review.
35 Q You've published in the American Economic Review?
36 A That's right.
37 Q And, sorry, I stopped before you got to --
38 A Within sort of the general biological science, the
39 top journals in the world are Science, Nature and
40 Proceedings of the National Academy.
41 Q And have you published in those?
42 A Yes.
43 Q All three?
44 A Yeah. And then in psychology, Psychological
45 Review, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, and
46 Cognition would be the three of the top. There
47 could be some debate.
9
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 Q And have you published in those?


2 A Not Psychological Review, but yes on Behavioural
3 and Brain Sciences and Cognition.
4 Q Now, I want to turn to the book chapter section,
5 which is now at page 9 of your CV. I'm going to
6 read a few titles and perhaps you can explain how
7 your work relates to the core of what you do.
8 Number 1 is a chapter you wrote called "The Birth
9 of High Gods: How the cultural evolution of
10 supernatural policing agents influenced the
11 emergence of complex cooperative human societies
12 paving the way for civilization." That's a long
13 title.
14 A Yeah.
15 Q And that was in a book called Evolution, Culture
16 and the Human Mind; is that right?
17 A Yeah.
18 Q And is there anything you can add to such a
19 descriptive title?
20 A Yeah. So the puzzle is that if you look across
21 the diverse human societies, the smallest scale
22 human societies don't have high moralizing Gods.
23 They don't have big omniscient moral agents who
24 are worried about proper behaviour of one group of
25 some flock. They tend to have whimsical gods,
26 weak gods, they believe in a lot of spirits, the
27 spirits aren't morally committed, they don't
28 engage. So then the question is, why is it when
29 we get the big complex societies do we have gods
30 that are concerned with reward and punishment,
31 monitor people, they seem to get omniscient. And
32 so we had this idea that this evolved to increase
33 societal cooperation and maintain internal harmony
34 as societies expanded beyond the kind of hunter
35 gatherer groups their minds are adapted to.
36 Q So one of the things you look at is not just
37 behaviour across cultures but also historically,
38 how it evolves within societies historically?
39 A Right. That's really -- I mean, I'm interested in
40 cultural evolution, but within that I'm interested
41 in the evolution of complex human society. So
42 12,000 years ago humans lived in mostly
43 small-scale hunter-gatherer bands, and some
44 process, probably mostly a cultural evolutionary
45 process, allowed us to grow and maintain large
46 societies where lots of anonymous people meet each
47 and can interact in mutually beneficial
10
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 transactions.
2 Q And the second one down, "The Evolution of
3 Innovation-Enhancing Institutions," same sort of
4 approach?
5 A Yes, yeah. So that -- the idea there is that
6 certain kinds of institutions favour the free flow
7 of information among people and that that's really
8 important for generating institutions. I mean --
9 sorry, for generating innovations. So we've
10 reviewed the literature, and if you look at where
11 new good ideas are born, they tend to be born from
12 the recombination of different ideas. And so to
13 do that, you have to have lots of interacting
14 bodies. And the more you get minds to interact
15 and share information, the faster your
16 interrelationships will grow.
17 Q And it looks like the next one is a little more
18 general, "A Cultural Species," and that was in a
19 book called Explaining Culture Scientifically?
20 A Right. That was just a general review for people
21 who weren't familiar with this line of work,
22 arguing that humans are unique in our reliance on
23 cultural learning, and that this means that you
24 have to use -- this changes how we think about how
25 evolution applies to humans.
26 Q And the next one is from an Oxford handbook of
27 evolutionary psychology -- from The Oxford
28 Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and it's "The
29 Evolution of human cultural capacities and
30 cultural evolution." And is that an overview as
31 well?
32 A Which number?
33 Q Sorry, that's number 4. "Dual inheritance
34 theory." I'm sorry, I forgot the first part of
35 the title.
36 A Right. That's also an overview of how we can
37 integrate genetic evolution and cultural
38 evolution, and think about how they influence each
39 other.
40 Q I see, and that's an approach underlying exactly
41 what you're testifying to today; is that right?
42 A Exactly.
43 Q And another Oxford handbook -- sorry, the same
44 Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology you had
45 another chapter called "Modelling cultural
46 evolution."
47 A Right. That is an introduction to how to use
11
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 formal mathematical tools to think about cultural


2 evolution, to make predictions about the kind of
3 social patterns that should arise given what we
4 know about how human psychology does learning.
5 Q I see. And is it safe to say the Oxford
6 University press and the MIT press are some of the
7 more prestigious academic presses in the world?
8 A Yes, that's true.
9 Q Now, we'll pass over the balance of that,
10 Dr. Henrich, and the students' presentations and
11 the series of books that you edit for the UC
12 press. And we'll pass over as well the drafts
13 that you have listed at page 11. Going to
14 "Invited Lectures," I won't take you through
15 these, but you've been invited and you have
16 lectured across Canada, across the United States,
17 in Stockholm, at Oxford, the University of
18 Sheffield, the Lorenz Institute in Altenberg,
19 Austria, University of Michigan, University
20 College, London; those are all true?
21 A Yes.
22 Q And that takes us a couple of pages further along
23 through your other fellowships, grants, awards and
24 honours. Perhaps we'll just go down to the bottom
25 of page 16 with respect to classes taught.
26 Perhaps before we do that we can go over to
27 page 17, which describes among other things, field
28 work experience. And I just note here you've
29 spent what looks like -- you've taken six visits
30 to Fiji between one month and three months each.
31 Sorry, six. Yes. Between 2003 and 2009. And
32 what was that to study, sir?
33 A We study a number of different things in Yasawa
34 Island, Fiji. The main focus is cultural
35 transmission, so how was it that little kids
36 acquire what they need to know to survive as
37 adults, to do fishing and plant yams and plant
38 casabas, build houses and whatnot. So we studied
39 who children learn from, what they learn, what
40 they learn first and what they learn second. We
41 do experiments to see -- we give them information
42 and see what they retain of it to see if the mind
43 captures and hones in on certain facts.
44 Q And when you did that, did you live within the
45 community or do you just visit day to day?
46 A Yeah, we have our lab. It's a little house in the
47 middle of the village that the village allowed us
12
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 to build there.
2 Q I see. And Chile, then, in 1997 and 2000. You
3 were in Mapuche, if I'm pronouncing that right, in
4 southern Chile?
5 A That's right. So they're I think the largest
6 southern American indigenous group. They live in
7 small subsistence farmhouse households scattered
8 through rural southern Chile.
9 Q And you were there for nine months on the first
10 trip and one month on the second?
11 A That's right.
12 Q And what question were you trying to answer there,
13 sir?
14 A Well, there I was trying to test -- I was kind of
15 going after economics in the sense, and so within
16 economics there's this idea that people are
17 rational actors and they weigh costs and benefits
18 between alternative decisions. And so what I was
19 able to show, that people don't actually have all
20 the information they would need to make this
21 calculation, they're missing -- so if you're
22 comparing two crops, do you plant wheat or barley,
23 the people -- the farmers don't know any facts
24 about barley, so they can't be making a cost
25 benefit decision because you need some facts.
26 They know a lot about wheat, which is what they
27 grow. And I was able to show they learn that by
28 cultural transmission, so it's not a rational
29 choice, it's cultural.
30 Q I see. So a topic would be the limits of economic
31 analysis?
32 A Yeah, or the origins of behavioural patterns,
33 things like -- I was focussing on economic
34 practices because I don't want to argue with
35 economists, but what crop you plant, what
36 fertilizer you use.
37 Q And then prior to that you did four trips to the
38 Peruvian Amazon, studying agricultural change and
39 decision-making, and those trips were two and a
40 half months, one month, two months and one month;
41 is that right?
42 A Right.
43 Q And what was -- that agricultural change and
44 decision-making was similar to what you've
45 mentioned to us?
46 A Economic decisions for sure. In the first three
47 months I was focussed on living and working in
13
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 three different villages and looking at how


2 distance from the market affects deforestation and
3 planting. So I had this idea that the market
4 had -- that they increase people's desire for
5 consumption, which would cause them to plant more
6 crops. And so I was trying to test this by taking
7 advantage of the fact that some villages are very
8 remote and have little contact with the market.
9 Q I see.
10 A And the later stuff was on cooperation.
11 Q So your own field research in your
12 interdisciplinary field, sir, is between one and
13 nine months per trip. Why do you need to spend so
14 long in the communities?
15 A Well, I think that in order to really understand
16 what is going on in a community, you've really got
17 to live in the community, interact with the people
18 on a daily basis. I mean, I think having meals
19 with people, you have to give them enough time to
20 relax so you can find out -- so you can get past
21 that initial outsider, I don't really know them.
22 Q I see. Thank you. Just underneath that section
23 on field work experience, it says you were a
24 reviewer for these journals and presses. So let
25 me just go down this list. But when we say a
26 reviewer, this means, as I understand it, sir,
27 that you're engaged in the peer review process for
28 articles that are submitted by others in fields
29 that you know something about?
30 A Right. Articles, and in the case of the National
31 Science Foundation, it funds proposals for
32 research.
33 Q So you would be invited to be a reviewer if you
34 were a recognized expert in the field?
35 A Right.
36 Q So at the National Science Foundation first you
37 were a reviewer for Cultural Anthropology, for
38 Archeology and for Social Dynamics journals?
39 A Those are panels.
40 Q Those are panels?
41 A Submit proposals to the cultural anthropology
42 group or panel, social dynamics group or panel.
43 Q I see. Thank you. And then it says "general
44 science journals," you were a reviewer for Nature
45 magazine?
46 A Right.
47 Q And for Science magazine?
14
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 A Right.
2 Q And for The Proceedings of the National Academy of
3 Science?
4 A Right.
5 Q And The Proceedings of Royal Academy with respect
6 to biology?
7 A Yes.
8 Q Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society?
9 A Right.
10 Q Behavioural and Brain Sciences and Current
11 Zoology; is all that right?
12 A Yeah.
13 Q And that's in the field of general science, and
14 then with respect to anthropology in particular,
15 I'll just read down the list. You were a reviewer
16 for Current Anthropology, American Antiquity,
17 Human Nature, Evolutionary Anthropology,
18 Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, Journal of
19 Theoretical Biology, Evolution and Human Behaviour
20 and Human Biology?
21 A That's right.
22 Q Then under economics you are a reviewer for the
23 American Economic Review, Econometrica, Economic
24 Journal, Journal of Economic and Organizational
25 Behaviour, Experimental Economics, Academy of
26 Management Journal, American Economics Journal,
27 Applied Economics.
28 A That's right.
29 Q And then with respect to psychology, the journals
30 are Cognition, Developmental Science,
31 Psychological Science, Trends in Cognitive
32 Science, Evolution of Communication. Did I get
33 those right?
34 A That's right.
35 Q Sociology and philosophy, you were a reviewer for
36 Rationality and Society and also for the European
37 Review of Philosophy?
38 A That's right.
39 Q And then there's a number of presses, three,
40 University of California Press, University of
41 Chicago Press, University of Michigan Press?
42 A Those are book reviews.
43 Q Book reviews. I see. And so you would be called
44 upon then to assess on a fairly deep level the
45 submissions to these journal -- these journals in
46 all of these disciplines?
47 A Yeah. Yeah. Of course I'm not -- you get these
15
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 things when something that is within your general


2 domain of expertise gets submitted, so there's
3 lots of papers in the American Economic Review
4 which I wouldn't be qualified to review.
5 Q I understand.
6 A But there are some that I am qualified to review.
7 Q And there no one going to send you a particle
8 physics article from Nature?
9 A That's right.
10 Q Okay. And then perhaps finally with respect to
11 your resume, we can turn to your classes taught,
12 which is at page 16 of your resume. And this
13 lists the classes that you taught both at Emory
14 University and UBC?
15 A Correct.
16 Q And let me just go down the list. These are the
17 undergraduate courses you -- this is at Emory.
18 You taught introduction to anthropology?
19 A Right.
20 Q Psychological anthropology, cultural change, an
21 interdisciplinary approach?
22 A Right.
23 Q And then at UBC it's been culture, cognition and
24 evolution?
25 A Yeah.
26 Q Yeah, we'll find that out. I'm not sure myself.
27 So the Emory ones were ones that you taught prior
28 to 2006; is that right?
29 A Right, right.
30 Q And then the UBC ones -- are you teaching all four
31 of the ones that are listed for UBC in the
32 undergrad?
33 A Let's see. So if they're listed, I've taught them
34 at some point.
35 Q Right.
36 A So culture, cognition, evolution I taught in 2006.
37 Evolutionary psychology is kind of my bread and
38 butter course. I've taught that three times.
39 Economic wealth of nations is my bread and butter
40 economics course I'm just teaching for the second
41 time, just finishing now. And understanding
42 humans was a one-off advanced seminar.
43 Q I see. So the core of your teaching with respect
44 to undergrad at present or in the last year or so
45 has been evolutionary psychology in the psychology
46 department, and wealth and poverty of nations in
47 the economics?
16
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 A That's true, although this fall, which is not


2 listed on this because it's older, I taught
3 cognition and culture, which is a higher level
4 psychology undergrad class.
5 Q I see. So there's a third course as well for
6 undergrads. And then turning to the graduate
7 stuff, previously at Emory and Michigan you taught
8 field and analytical methods in anthropology?
9 A That's right.
10 Q And what does that cover, sir, field and
11 analytical methods?
12 A So that covers -- it's to train graduate students
13 in what qualitative and quantitative methods that
14 they can use for data work, data collection. And
15 also some data analysis.
16 Q I see. And biocultural seminar?
17 A Right. That's an introduction of how to integrate
18 genetic evolutionary approaches and human biology
19 with the understanding of culture.
20 Q I see. Culture and mind, similar?
21 A Yeah. It's kind of an advanced psychological
22 anthropology. How anthropologists think about the
23 mind and cultural variation in the mind.
24 Q And culture and cognition, this was at Michigan.
25 A Right. That's actually an interdisciplinary
26 course between anthropology and psychology.
27 Q And at UBC we have three courses listed, and I'll
28 just list them and you can tell me how current
29 they are. First is decision-making rationality
30 and the nature of human morality and social
31 behaviour?
32 A Right.
33 Q And I guess that's available to graduates of both
34 economic --
35 A That's right. So I tried to teach graduate
36 seminars that both psychology graduate students
37 can take and economic graduate students can take.
38 I think it's really valuable for those two groups
39 to talk to each other.
40 Q Okay. And is that current?
41 A These are -- I've only taught each one of these
42 courses once, but they're -- it's quite plausible
43 I will teach them again and I teach one of them
44 next year.
45 Q I see. And modelling the evolution of social
46 behaviour, again that's for both economics and
47 psych graduate students?
17
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief on qualifications by Mr. Jones

1 A That's an evolutionary game theory class.


2 Q And is that current -- well, I think you said that
3 what you said with respect to the last one applies
4 to this one as well?
5 A That's right. That's actually one I'm thinking
6 of.
7 Q Okay. So you've taught it once and you may teach
8 it again?
9 A That's right.
10 Q And the final one, understanding humans,
11 integrating the sciences and humanities?
12 A Right. So that's -- that course was taught in the
13 arts, so it was a -- I co-taught it with a fellow
14 from Asian studies and it was probably a one-off
15 course.
16 Q I see. Thank you very much, sir.
17 A That is actually it. I just found a typographical
18 error, so the understanding humans, that is --
19 should be deleted because it's already listed
20 under undergraduate.
21 Q I see.
22 A So a lot of graduate students took that class,
23 which is maybe why I thought of putting it there,
24 but that's an undergraduate number.
25 MR. JONES: I see. Thank you.
26 My Lord, I'm going to ask that Dr. Henrich be
27 qualified as an expert. I'm a little unfamiliar
28 with how to do it in such an avowedly
29 interdisciplinary field, but I would propose
30 simply that he be qualified as an expert in
31 psychology, particularly evolutionary psychology,
32 in economics and in anthropology, as well as in
33 the interdisciplinary field of culture, cognition
34 and evolution.
35 THE COURT: Any submissions?
36 MR. MACINTOSH: I think it sounds good to me, My Lord,
37 but I wonder if my friend could try it again.
38 It's a bit of a long title and I didn't get it
39 all.
40 MR. JONES: Qualified as an expert in psychology,
41 particularly evolutionary psychology, in economics
42 and in anthropology, as well as in the
43 interdisciplinary field of culture, cognition
44 and -- is it evolution or co-evolution?
45 THE WITNESS: I'm happy with either. I would go with
46 co-evolution.
47 MR. JONES: Okay. Culture, cognition and co-evolution.
18
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 MR. MACINTOSH: Now, as long as it's co-evolution. I


2 have no submissions on that and I would accept
3 Dr. Henrich as an expert in that description.
4 THE COURT: Any other submissions? I am pleased to
5 qualify Dr. Henrich as tendered. Thank you.
6 MR. JONES: Thank you, My Lord.
7
8 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF BY MR. JONES:
9 Q Perhaps I can just take you back to your
10 affidavit, Dr. Henrich, at tab 1. Paragraph 5
11 sets out your involvement with this particular
12 matter with the polygamy reference, and that began
13 in March 2010?
14 A Correct.
15 Q We have down there that you understand that your
16 duty in preparing the report and if called upon in
17 testifying is to assist the court and not to be an
18 advocate for any party?
19 A That's right.
20 Q And that in our contact I emphasized that you
21 should follow the evidence where it leads, draw
22 those conclusions that you consider merited, and
23 that if there are any issues upon which scientific
24 opinion diverged, you should note the dissenting
25 views?
26 A M'mm-hmm.
27 Q And you've done that, sir, in the course of
28 your --
29 A To the best of my ability.
30 Q You then say that you've prepared the report which
31 is at Exhibit B. It's based on an extensive
32 review of the available literature in science and
33 the social sciences conducted over a period of
34 four months by myself and my research assistant.
35 Let me -- then it says you're solely responsible
36 for its content. Who is your research assistant,
37 sir?
38 A It's my wife, Natalie Henrich.
39 Q Natalie Henrich. And if I can ask you to turn to
40 tab 3, we have a CV of Dr. Henrich. And I'll just
41 ask you to identify it and perhaps we can have it
42 marked as an exhibit.
43 A This is her CV.
44 MR. JONES: This is her CV. Any objections to marking
45 that as an exhibit? May I ask that that be marked
46 as the next exhibit, My Lord?
47 THE COURT: Yes. Thank you.
19
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 THE CLERK: Exhibit 113, My Lord.


2
3 EXHIBIT 113: 1 black binder titled "Polygamy
4 Reference (s. 293 of Criminal Code)" dated
5 December 9 - 10, 2010; 1 page before tabs t, A, B,
6 2 to 6; p/c
7
8 MR. JONES:
9 Q And so we won't go through Dr. Henrich's -- the
10 other Dr. Henrich's qualifications, but she's a
11 PhD in anthropology?
12 A That's right.
13 Q And she has a masters degree in public health from
14 Harvard?
15 A That's right.
16 Q And she works presently as a research scientist at
17 the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome
18 Sciences at UBC?
19 A That's correct. She also teaches a masters
20 program.
21 Q She teaches in what, sorry?
22 A In the School of Population and Public Health at
23 UBC, she teaches in the masters program.
24 Q I see. Safe to say she is woefully overqualified
25 to be your research assistant?
26 A It was great that I could have her as a research
27 assistant.
28 Q Understood. Okay. Thank you.
29 And you've been -- you've worked on this
30 report for over a period of four months you said?
31 Did you track how many hours that you put into it
32 in that period?
33 A Yes. In creating the first affidavit it was 145
34 and three-quarters for myself and 80.4 for Nat,
35 for Natalie.
36 Q 145 and 84 did you say?
37 A 80 .4.
38 Q 80.4. Thank you. And let me just ask, you felt
39 that that was enough time to be confident about
40 the results?
41 A Yes. I always have the sense, you know, there is
42 always several more books to read and more papers
43 to read, but I feel confident about what we
44 produced.
45 Q And so since the report have you kept yourself up
46 to speed?
47 A Yeah, yeah. So there's -- we're always -- I'm
20
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 always reading new stuff, actually, and so I


2 learned a lot.
3 Q Thank you. Now, in -- with respect to this case,
4 you have read both the affidavits of Dr. Wu from
5 UVic?
6 A Yes.
7 Q And you have read the amicus's witness
8 Dr. Shackelford, his expert report?
9 A I have read his report.
10 Q And you have read both the reports, the affidavits
11 of Professor Campbell?
12 A That's right.
13 Q And you have read the expert report of
14 Dr. Scheidel from Stanford?
15 A Yes.
16 Q And you were in the gallery, sir, for the
17 cross-examination of Professor Campbell last week?
18 A That's correct.
19 Q But not for the examination or cross the day
20 before?
21 A Right. I missed the prior day.
22 Q Just the Wednesday you were here for.
23 And you've read the transcript, I understand,
24 of the testimony of Dr. Grossbard and Dr. Wu?
25 A I have.
26 Q On Tuesday? And I'm going to ask you to flip to
27 tab 4 of the binder, and we'll be discussing this
28 a little bit later, but these are the -- this
29 is -- in this court it's Exhibit 110. These are
30 the tables prepared by Dr. Wu. You have received
31 this in the last day or two from me; is that
32 correct?
33 A That's correct.
34 THE COURT: I'm just wondering, perhaps we should
35 mark -- I know that this repeats a number of
36 exhibits as well as adding new ones, but why
37 don't -- we've already marked, what, tab 3,
38 Exhibit 113?
39 MR. JONES: Yes. Should we mark the whole thing as
40 113, My Lord?
41 THE COURT: Why don't we do that.
42 MR. JONES: Thank you, My Lord.
43 THE COURT: So the entire binder is 113.
44 MR. JONES: The entire binder will be 113. Thank you.
45 The only thing that we haven't discussed yet
46 that's new in here, My Lord, and perhaps I should
47 just call your attention to it now, is
21
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 Dr. Henrich's PowerPoint that he'll be taking us


2 through today is at tab 5 of that binder.
3 Q Could you just look through that, sir, and
4 identify it before we move on.
5 A That's it.
6 Q Okay. Now, although you and Dr. Henrich
7 collaborated on this report, Dr. Henrich, you are
8 solely responsible for its content --
9 A That's correct.
10 Q -- it says in your affidavit. Now, you're going
11 to take us through your report with the assistance
12 of the PowerPoint that indicated it is in print
13 form at tab 5, and I circulated this by e-mail to
14 my friends for all participants yesterday. Is it
15 true, sir, that the materials in this either are
16 drawn from your teaching at UBC or vice versa?
17 A The early slides, the stuff on evolutionary
18 psychology I pulled and modified from my lectures
19 in evolutionary psychology on human mate choice.
20 The other later slides are modified versions of a
21 lecture I now give in my poverty and wealth of
22 nations, on the effect of marriage on poverty and
23 wealth of nations.
24 Q I see. And those courses are -- one is psychology
25 and one is economics; is that right?
26 A Right. It's Psychology 350A and Economics 234.
27 Q Now, I'm going to ask, sir, and you may have this
28 covered off in your PowerPoint, but when you get
29 to the section of your report that talks about the
30 evidence with respect to various harms associated
31 with polygamy, that you might say something about
32 the weight of the evidence in the literature,
33 where it's weaker and where it's stronger so that
34 we have a fair picture of that.
35 A Okay.
36 MR. JONES: And with that, My Lord, I would propose to
37 turn over the floor to Dr. Henrich.
38 Q And I may interrupt you from time to time if
39 something needs clarification, but I'll try to
40 refrain until it's over.
41 A Okay.
42 THE COURT: So I take it the PowerPoint illustrates the
43 actual Exhibit B?
44 MR. JONES: Yes, My Lord, and what you will see
45 Dr. Henrich has done is he's made references at
46 the bottom of each PowerPoint page to where it is
47 in his affidavit. There are some points on my
22
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 review of this where those references don't occur,


2 like where he presents illustrations of -- graphic
3 illustrations that are in there, and I think
4 that's fair that he do so.
5 Q But I believe, Dr. Henrich, you can correct me if
6 I'm wrong, but you have endeavoured to keep this
7 PowerPoint within the four corners of your
8 opinion; is that right?
9 A Yes.
10 Q Opinions I should say?
11 A Right. So the one place -- there are places where
12 I've pulled ideas from both my second affidavit
13 and my first.
14 MR. MACINTOSH: My Lord, I have no objection to any of
15 this.
16 THE COURT: Good. That's what I was going to ask next,
17 did any counsel have any concerns. Thank you.
18 MR. JONES: All right. Thank you very much.
19 THE WITNESS: All right. So these first few slides are
20 an outline of what I'll be going through to give
21 you a sense of what is coming. So in -- early in
22 the first affidavit I lay out basically -- the
23 application of ideas from evolution biology to
24 understand human mating psychology.
25 So this stuff, this just would just as easily
26 apply to non-human primates as well as humans, and
27 the outcome of this little discussion I'll go
28 through is that humans lean or we tilt towards a
29 polygynous mating system. Under a wide range of
30 ecologic conditions, economic conditions, you will
31 get polygyny if all we have going is this human
32 mating psychology. One of the things that comes
33 out of it is that greater absolute wealth
34 differences among males ought to lead to greater
35 polygyny.
36 And so this kind of generates a puzzle, which
37 is that given in our society we have large
38 differences in wealth amongst males, we ought to
39 be polygynous, and that leads us into this
40 cultural evolution of social mores.
41 So then I'm going to lay out some ideas from
42 cultural evolution, and the theory that I've
43 pursued in going after this material was that
44 cultural evolution favoured monogamous marriage
45 through competition amongst groups. So the
46 driving process here is that groups end up with
47 different social norms, different beliefs,
23
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 different values, and the groups that have


2 marriage norms that lead to success in competition
3 with other groups spread. So monogamous marriage
4 spread is a consequence of this cultural
5 evolutionary process, but it sort of exploits
6 aspects of our evolved mating psychology and
7 suppresses other aspects of it.
8 And in the affidavit I made a big deal about
9 the difference between mating and marriage
10 systems. And so you can kind of see that in the
11 way I lay this out here. So mating systems are
12 what we get from our primate heritage and marriage
13 systems are what evolves culturally, and these
14 things have to come together at some point.
15 Then I'm going to go through a review of the
16 anthropological database asking, well, given these
17 ideas from evolutionary psychology, they've been
18 done -- tons of experiments in different
19 societies, does it fit with the anthropological
20 record of marriage. And we'll look specifically
21 at the various ways in which different societies
22 have norms or rules or have different numbers of
23 spouses.
24 One of the things that's interesting about
25 this I think is that we can look at the frequency
26 of polyandrous marriages, so one woman with
27 multiple husbands or group marriages, and do we
28 have any reason to think they'd spread.
29 And then finally we'll say, well, if this
30 idea is true, then we should be able to see that
31 the historical record can either be consistent or
32 inconsistent with it. So I will draw on materials
33 on the historical origins of modern monogamy. And
34 the idea here is that it actually turns out to be
35 pretty unusual, especially the kind of imposed
36 monogamy that we have in our society. And these
37 practices evolved gradually, so it took quite a
38 long time.
39 And then this is really the core of it, so
40 most of our time will be taken up on this part,
41 which is we're doing a comparison of societies
42 with polygynous marriage and sometimes, well,
43 societies with polygynous marriage versus
44 societies with monogamous marriage. And here I'm
45 pursuing a sub-hypothesis, so what I do is I lay
46 out this basic idea that cultural evolution
47 through competition amongst groups favoured
24
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 certain kind of marriage norms, and then here I


2 break it down into a bunch of sub-hypotheses and I
3 try to test them with the available empirical
4 data.
5 So one potential outcome of this is that
6 polygynous marriage has societal-level impacts,
7 and the idea that I will go through here is that
8 it increases the size of the pool of low status
9 unmarried men, that results in an increase in
10 crime and substance abuse. And then I will think
11 about how using the theory we can make predictions
12 about how it should affect young children, leading
13 to poor health and greater mortality in polygynous
14 households, how it will affect paternal investment
15 and internal conflict, so the co-wife conflict is
16 the idea here. And then we'll talk a bit about
17 how it affects women and girls, driving down the
18 age of first marriage, increasing the age gap
19 between husbands and wives and decreasing gender
20 equality.
21 And now I'll close by talking about some of
22 the psycho-social stress that women in polygynous
23 households experience.
24 Okay. So this is now going into the mating
25 psychology here, so very basically the question is
26 here, why do males and females have a different
27 mating psychology? This goes right into mammalian
28 reproduction, so within some definitions in
29 biology females are defined as the sex that gives
30 the large gamete, so the eggs. So women have only
31 a few eggs, they're expensive to make, with a
32 lifetime max about 400. Males are defined as the
33 one who gives the small gamete, so sperm are cheap
34 and disposable. Human males can make about 1200
35 an hour. So this creates an initial asymmetry
36 which then has a bunch of downstream implications.
37 Because females initially invest so much more,
38 they then end up investing more in gestation, so
39 the growth of the embryo and then later lactation.
40 So mammals need lactation. Humans in small-scale
41 societies and the kinds of societies where our
42 minds evolved required lactation, so about six
43 months of just lactation and then a few years of
44 introducing foods and gradually declining; right?
45 So this is a lot of commitments that females have
46 to make in order to produce any viable offspring.
47 So what this means is that this natural
25
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 selection acting on our minds is going to lead to


2 women have a strategy that they're going to have a
3 limited number of children, so in ancestral
4 environment they can have at most 10. They have
5 to invest in all of them so that the children
6 aren't going to make it unless your mom invests in
7 you. So key to their fitness is going to be
8 focussing on these offspring and selecting wisely
9 amongst the potential fathers for their offspring.
10 So if you only get a limited number in your
11 lifetime, that means each time you get pregnant,
12 you have an offspring, you want it to have the
13 highest quality genes and the highest quality
14 parental investment they can possibly get, so
15 you're selective amongst fathers.
16 Now, this doesn't mean that women or females
17 don't also have short-term mating strategies,
18 because if you pair-bonded with a mate, as I'll
19 talk about in a second, you can still get high
20 quality genetic material with extra-pair
21 copulation. So there's -- so affairs, sex outside
22 of the marriage would be the human version of
23 that. And that's because there's lots of males
24 who are higher quality, but you can't get them to
25 pair-bond with you. And there's lots of
26 interesting research on the female ovulatory cycle
27 that shows how women's preferences change over the
28 course of her cycle.
29 Okay. So males face quite a different
30 situation. Males can have literally thousands of
31 offspring, so Genghis Khan, his Y chromosome
32 appears to be scattered all throughout Eurasia.
33 It's incredibly successful. And -- but they also
34 can often get shut out of the mating game
35 entirely. So they have a much higher variance, so
36 from zero offspring to thousands. Polygyny is
37 going to increase the size of this variance.
38 The most successful reproductive strategy
39 that a male can follow, but only a few males can
40 follow this, is to have sex with as many females
41 as possible and not invest in the offspring. So
42 just channel all effort into mating and no rearing
43 of offspring. But of course most males can't
44 accomplish that because they can't get access to
45 a -- sufficient women to make this strategy work,
46 so basically they go with this alternative
47 strategy, which is to invest and form a long-term
26
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 pair-bond where they commit assistance and


2 resources and the female commits to some degree of
3 paternity certainty. So lots of experimental work
4 assuring that males are very sensitive to
5 paternity certainty. If they become unsure that
6 it's their child, they invest less. This is true
7 in non-human primates and humans.
8 So in this case males can continue to increase
9 their fitness and they showed a psychology that
10 favours this, adding additional pair-bonds
11 increasing a male's fitness. And at the same
12 time, males should also have a psychology to seek
13 extra-pair copulations. So those -- so I will
14 talk about that in a minute.
15 So the resulting pattern that should arise
16 from this idea is that males will be inclined to
17 make additional pair-bonds and seek extra-pair
18 copulations, but females don't benefit from making
19 extra-pair bonds, because females can only get
20 pregnant sequentially, and if they have
21 pair-bonded with a male and they pair-bond with
22 another male, then they're generating paternity
23 uncertainty, so the fathers are less certain
24 whether it's their child and so you get less male
25 investment. You also get conflict amongst the
26 males. Males are very sensitive to sexually
27 sharing females, especially when they're in a
28 pair-bond where they want to invest in offspring,
29 and that can lead to male-male conflict. So you
30 should have lower rates of extra-pair copulations
31 of females in pair-bonds because they want to
32 maintain paternity certainty in their mates.
33 Okay. So that's the brief on evolutionary
34 psychology, but the interesting thing about humans
35 and the unique things about humans is that we're
36 heavily reliant on culturally learning from other
37 members of our group. So from a very young age,
38 if you compare human children and chimpanzees,
39 humans are spontaneous imitators. They
40 immediately start drinking in and learning from
41 other members of the groups, and their learning is
42 keenly honed to learn from more successful older
43 members of their social group. So they adaptively
44 learn in all kinds of interesting ways.
45 Now, one thing this gives rise to, once you
46 start doing social learning, you can get social
47 norms. And what we mean by social norms is that
27
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 people not only acquire their social behaviour and


2 how they're to behave in certain situations, but
3 they also acquire rules for judging others and
4 rules for punishing others, and what they think
5 constitutes good behaviour and what people should
6 or should not do. And that leads to stable norms,
7 norms where once you're there, it's hard to move
8 away from them.
9 There's also good evidence now from
10 neuroscience, showing that people internalize
11 these motivations. So when you learn a norm, it
12 becomes part of what you want to do. And this
13 doesn't mean it's the only thing you want to do,
14 it can be in conflict with other motivations, but
15 it's part of what you want to do.
16 So that's the social norms that I just
17 described. So I use this kind of game theoretic
18 idea of a self-reinforcing social rule. So when
19 we -- now, pair-bonds, the way to think about
20 this, pair-bonds are what we get from our primate
21 psychologies. Gorillas make pair-bonds, gibbons
22 make pair-bounds. But a marriage is not a
23 pair-bond; it's more than that, because a
24 pair-bond is -- a marriage is a pair-bond
25 regulated by rules, people's beliefs about what
26 proper behaviour is.
27 Okay. So looking across different human
28 societies, we happen to see quite a variety of
29 marriage systems and there's all -- so marriage,
30 sets of marriage systems, sets of norms that
31 govern pair-bonding include all kinds of rules.
32 So I just threw up some examples. So transfer of
33 marriage, some societies pay bride price, some pay
34 dowry. Division of labour, what are the wife's
35 responsibilities, what are the husband's
36 responsibilities. Rules about sex. So for
37 example, 90 percent of societies have norms
38 regulating female sexuality; only 24 percent
39 regulate male sexuality. Residence, rules about
40 where you live. So you should live in your
41 father's village or your mother's village or go to
42 a new place. Inheritance. This is examples.
43 So marriage is an institution because it's a
44 set of different rules that regulate the
45 pair-bonds that arise from our mating psychology.
46 Of interest today and particularly is the
47 combinations of husbands and wives that we find
28
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 across human societies. So in polygynous


2 societies, these are marriage systems, right;
3 they're norms that permit one husband to have one
4 or more wives. Permit or favour. That varies
5 from society to society.
6 Polyandry, there's some of those societies in
7 the historical ethnographic database and these are
8 societies that permit or favour one wife with
9 multiple husbands.
10 A key point I make in developing this, and
11 this reflects how it is -- reacting to the current
12 literature, is that marriage systems, all marriage
13 systems including polygynous ones, actually
14 reinforce the pair-bonding. Our pair-bonding
15 psychology is okay, but it's not that great, so
16 you can kind of think of the marriage system as
17 reinforcing it.
18 And it's also the case that not all human
19 societies have marriage systems, so this really is
20 a product of cultural -- cultural evolution can
21 really mess with this system. So near the Tibetan
22 plateau in western China there's a number of
23 groups. One of them is called the Naf, which has
24 a very good ethnography written about it. And
25 among the Naf, women live in -- with their sisters
26 and brothers, and there are no pair-bonds, there
27 are no husbands, there are no fathers. The
28 brother takes the role of what we would think of
29 as what fathers do. He's the most closely related
30 male to the offspring. And men just circulate and
31 people have lots of pair-bonds.
32 Okay. So anthropological terminology, so
33 marriage is a long-term pair-bond between two
34 people that's recognized and sanctioned by the
35 community. So one of the key things in thinking
36 about marriage is that it's about the couple, but
37 it's also -- or it's about the people, but it's
38 also about the community and what the community
39 thinks of it.
40 So it regulates all kinds of things. Besides
41 sex, it regulates economic behaviour, social
42 behaviour, may or may not be sanctioned by formal
43 law. So in lots of places where I work, you know,
44 you can ask who is your spouse or who is your wife
45 and everybody answers, but nobody is legally
46 married in the islands in Fiji or in the Peruvian
47 Amazon. But marriage is a real human thing that
29
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 exists independent of all of this. It's typically


2 marked by some kind of public ritual, but not
3 always.
4 Okay. So some key summary points is that --
5 so once you have a marriage system that's going to
6 regulate pair bonding, then the outcome of our
7 male mating psychology is to form as many
8 pair-bonds as possible, to attract -- and this is
9 going to be done by resources and status. That's
10 what is going to attract additional females to
11 males.
12 And male psychology is going to be adverse to
13 the sexual sharing because of the paternity
14 uncertainty and the lack of investment. And part
15 of this is an interesting evolutionary point
16 because females have mostly concealed ovulation.
17 So if you look at other primate species, there's
18 some large signal that tells the male that only
19 now can she get pregnant. But in humans this is
20 hidden, so males can't tell that I don't have to
21 worry about her getting pregnant now because you
22 can't tell that she's ovulating. So this means
23 the males can hang around and they mate and they
24 do all this other behaviour to insure paternity
25 certainty.
26 And so final point that females are not
27 advantaged by pair-bonding with multiple males
28 because they can only be pregnant one at a time.
29 Okay. So now we're going to begin to look at
30 the anthropological database and say, does this
31 picture we painted here, is it consistent with the
32 anthropological database. So this is from the
33 largest source, the Ethnographic Atlas, created
34 initially by George Peter Murdock at Yale but
35 since added to. So it's a compilation of 1,231
36 different societies. 15 percent of those are
37 monogamous. 37 have occasional polygyny. 48 have
38 frequent polygyny, and .3 percent have polyandry.
39 In the paper I spend more time than I'm going
40 to here sort of trying to carve this up in
41 different ways, but you basically get the same
42 story. So one problem with this database is that
43 the societies in it are not historically
44 independent, so for statistical reasons you want
45 something that is more independent. So this
46 breaks the societies in it down into societies
47 that have no clear historical connection. Of
30
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 course, they're all connected if you go back far


2 enough, but no at least recent historical
3 connection. And then you get basically a similar
4 story. Very little polyandry, kind of a low
5 amount of monogamy, and then lots of polygyny.
6 You can do the same thing if you break it
7 down by cultural norms instead of actual
8 behaviour. This is basically the same story.
9 Now, if you actually dig into the monogamous,
10 it gets even more puzzling or more interesting.
11 So there's some -- there seems to be very complex
12 societies or very small scale societies, and when
13 you go back to the small scale societies, it looks
14 like they're monogamous for ecological reasons.
15 This is argued by Richard Alexander, who argues
16 that the men are too equal, so polygyny doesn't
17 pop up all men are pretty much -- one man is as
18 good as the next; there are not large differences
19 amongst males. And then there's a set of
20 societies that are complex and they all seem to
21 be, like they seem to be connected to this
22 historical spread that I'm going to talk about.
23 And then there are some societies that are coded
24 as monogamous, but you had to make a judgment
25 call, so Egypt, Babylon, China are coded as
26 monogamist, but actually the nobility has imposed
27 monogamy on everybody else, but they are
28 polygynous themselves.
29 Okay. So just a little bit of background,
30 familiarity on polygyny. Basically two types. It
31 divides down to there's a couple of sub-types, but
32 polygyny is the wives need not be related. In
33 general they're not sisters or classificatory
34 sisters. So within the anthropological literature
35 lots of societies have classificatory siblings.
36 So this is your first, second or third cousin.
37 You call them sister, you're supposed to treat
38 them like a sister. Typically in general
39 polygyny, the wives have independent hearths or
40 households or kitchens.
41 Soronal polygyny is where you're supposed to
42 marry sisters. This is neat because there's
43 soronal polygyny from an evolution point of view
44 because it solves a big problem, which is co-wife
45 conflict. And if they're sisters, it means
46 they're related to the children of the other wife,
47 but if they're not related, then they're step-moms
31
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 to the other kids. So that's absolutely basically


2 what that -- it makes more closely related
3 households, which is something we'll return to.
4 Okay. One recurrent union universal, so we
5 have polygyny. The men who are polygynous are
6 always higher in wealth and status. There is no
7 society where women have or date and become wives
8 to very poor men at the bottom of the social
9 spectrum. Sometimes it's hunting skills,
10 sometimes it's they're noble, sometimes it's
11 wealth, but there's always some kind of social
12 status. In general absolute differences in wealth
13 lead more variation in wife number.
14 So this is some research done by a
15 sociobiologist, I guess, Laura Betzig, and so she
16 analyzes the earliest information we have on
17 autocratic chieftains. So these are kingdoms
18 where there's power concentrated in a small group
19 and it's hereditary. She also looks at early
20 empires and early states, and what she finds is
21 that, you know, when men get this kind of power,
22 are not impeded by laws or social norms, they
23 start creating harems, large groups of women. The
24 larger the empire, the larger the harems. She
25 finds it from the high chiefs of China and Fiji to
26 China and the Andes, so it seems to be widespread.
27 Okay. Polyandry. So the database says
28 polyandry is rare. There's some interesting facts
29 about polyandry which help us understand it
30 better. The first is that most polyandry is
31 paternal polyandry, and what that means is one or
32 more -- two or more brothers will marry the same
33 woman. And it's typically found intermixed
34 amongst different marriage types. So polyandrous
35 societies often have polygynous marriage and some
36 monogamous marriage. Now, there's been a lot of
37 anthropological work; they're obviously an
38 interesting type of cultural arrangement. They
39 tend to be unstable especially when the younger
40 brothers start marrying in. So you get three or
41 four or five younger brothers and they don't tend
42 to stick around. Sometimes you can get what
43 begins to maybe, at least some might think, it's a
44 group marriage. It might actually be a group
45 marriage, I'm not sure, called the polygynandry.
46 And this happens when a younger brother marries
47 into a polyandrous and then he rises in social
32
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 status and he's able to get his own wife. So then


2 is married polygynously; he's got two wives.
3 Yeah. So this is typically confined to the
4 Himalayan region in India, the Indian parts of
5 Eurasia, although you can find it in lots of other
6 places. So it appears in the Americas as well.
7 Anthropologists have for a long time argued
8 that you find these things, when you do find them,
9 in situations where it's hard to manage the
10 situation without two males in the household. So
11 in the Himalayas, anthropologists argue that it's
12 required that you travel, so men have to be away
13 from the household for long stretches and there's
14 dangers around basically, so you need two males in
15 the household to take care of it. One has to stay
16 around to deal with danger and the other has to go
17 do economic exchange essentially.
18 Okay. Group marriage. Hard to find.
19 Scattered reports. Many of the reports are of
20 dubious quality. One -- so Murdock and other
21 people have argued that non-anthropological
22 observers, travellers, missionaries and people
23 like that have often confused practices of wife
24 sharing and wife loaning, especially in aboriginal
25 North America and Australia with group marriage.
26 So in these societies men control their wife such
27 as they can choose to loan their wife's
28 reproductive sexual services to other males, so
29 these might be close friends. This might be their
30 own brothers. It could be honoured guests.
31 And -- for a period of nights, so this begins to
32 look at -- like a group marriage even though it's
33 just a particular practice of wife sharing or wife
34 loaning.
35 Okay. That's what that says.
36 All right. And then I already talked about
37 polygynandry. And I wanted to mention a quick --
38 about polyandry is that, just relating back to the
39 evolutionary theory, which is that it makes sense
40 that we should find fraternal polyandry, because
41 if the men are brothers, then they're always
42 related to the offspring of their wife even if
43 it's the other guys. It's just a question of how
44 closely they're related. So it solves this basic
45 conflict that you're going to get between males.
46 Okay. So next we're going to look at the
47 history of modern monogamy and ask, is this
33
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 consistent with the theory? Does the emergence of


2 this fit the idea that monogamous marriage spreads
3 because it makes the group more successful? So
4 we're going to see that it started in ancient
5 Greece, transferred to Rome and then spread into
6 Europe. Now, it's important to look at the
7 history because it could have been that, for
8 example, maybe monogamous marriage moved into
9 Europe with the plow and it just happens to go
10 along with all other practices and it's not
11 particularly beneficial. Or it could be a
12 peculiarly Judeo-Christian idea, so it just moves
13 with Christianity. Neither of these seem to be
14 the case.
15 MR. JONES: Perhaps this would be an interlude -- a
16 good moment to take the morning break, My Lord.
17 THE COURT: Thank you.
18 THE CLERK: Order in court.
19
20 (WITNESS STOOD DOWN)
21 (MORNING RECESS)
22
23 THE CLERK: Order in court.
24
25 JOSEPH HENRICH, a witness
26 for the AGBC, recalled.
27
28 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF BY MR. JONES: (Continued)
29 Thank you. My Lord, with your leave I'll just ask
30 Mr. Henrich to continue.
31 THE COURT: Thank you very much.
32 THE WITNESS: All right. So we were getting into the
33 history of western monogamy, so we're trying to
34 trace the origin of the modern system that we have
35 today.
36 Now, of course, I'm not an expert by any
37 means on this stuff, so I just read a bunch of
38 historians who had traced the origins. They
39 traced it back through Rome to the Greek city
40 states. So the first history records come in the
41 6th century Greece, and then it really isn't
42 adopted in much of the world. It spreads with the
43 spread of the west basically, the spread of
44 industrialization. So 1880 in Japan, 1926 in
45 Turkey, 1956 in Tunisia. 1953 in China. 1955 in
46 India, except Muslims who can still marry
47 polygynously, and in 1963 in Nepal.
34
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 So as I mentioned, the Greek city states


2 first legally instituted monogamy as part of a
3 series of reforms including elements of democratic
4 governance, all of which were aimed at building a
5 more egalitarian solidarity among the citizens.
6 So this is pretty much the states you've heard of,
7 so this is Athens and Sparta who are doing that in
8 different ways.
9 Prior to this it looks like that this region
10 is polygynous. Europe is polygynous, and that
11 this idea of monogamy was a strange Greek idea.
12 As I mentioned legally instituted in early 6th
13 century. So this is right before what we think of
14 classical Greece, so this precedes the sort of
15 Greece that we all know about.
16 So now, of course they didn't quite get modern
17 idea at this point, so each Greek citizen can only
18 have one wife, but it was considered acceptable to
19 import sex slaves, which wealthy men did. And I
20 point to this because I think it's interesting
21 because it solves this problem I'm going to point
22 to later of -- it doesn't create a pool of low
23 status men because the Athenian women or the
24 Spartan women remain available and the rich get to
25 still be polygynous because they can import slave
26 women.
27 So this reduces opposition from the wealthy
28 and the nobles. So the big problem with the
29 spread of monogamy is the people who make the
30 rules, the wealthy and the nobility, are also the
31 same people who benefit from polygyny. So you're
32 always going to have an uphill battle so you
33 can -- this is the sort of the first step.
34 Then it spreads to Rome. The historians
35 report that this probably became from Greek
36 monogamy. The Romans acquired all kinds of things
37 from the Greeks, although Rome was also influenced
38 by Etruscan marriage norms, which had relative
39 sexual equality to them. So two influences going
40 into Rome.
41 And if you trace the outlawed polygamy, and
42 it kept getting more severe, the way they
43 regulated with inheritance laws, rules about
44 sexual behaviour, birth legitimacy, all efforts to
45 reign in polygyny. Caesar Augustus was
46 particularly concerned about this in the early
47 days of the empire because he felt that Rome was
35
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 declining and weakening, so he instituted a series


2 of reforms and his goal was really to get every
3 man from age 25 to 60 to be married. He thought
4 this would strengthen his empire. I kind of
5 imagine the Romans and probably the Greeks had a
6 similar discussion to what we're having here.
7 So a series of Roman emperors after Augustus
8 continued to reinforce these legal principles and
9 adapt the law. And the way historians tell it, so
10 I put McDonald's and Scheidel's and Perlilly, they
11 see the evidence of monogamy intertwined with a
12 whole bunch of laws related to increased female
13 sexuality, or to give more equality to women.
14 Okay. And then it spreads into Europe after
15 it infuses in early Christian ideas. So
16 Christianity gets its monogamy really from Rome
17 and from Roman ideals that were common at the time
18 that early Christianity was forming. And then it
19 also combines with this sexual purity idea that's
20 really derived from Greek stoicism. And then
21 Christianity was the force that spread this
22 through Europe. So the nobles especially, but
23 Europe in general was polygynous, and it takes a
24 long period of battling that the Catholic church
25 eventually imposes monogamy. And basically the
26 church is battling with the nobles, and the nobles
27 have advantages of converting to Christianity,
28 possibly for religious belief reasons but also
29 possibly for political advantages. But then once
30 they convert to Catholicism, they -- then the
31 church controls their heirs. So the church deem
32 who is a legitimate heir and not a legitimate
33 heir. So that is the sort of political strength
34 that the Catholic church uses to eventually get
35 the European nobles to adopt monogamy. And that's
36 what this says.
37 So again the main line of resistance is
38 coming from the upper class and the nobility; they
39 are the ones that are resisting this idea of
40 monogamy.
41 Now, the historians, at least the guys that I
42 cited there, they make a big deal about this.
43 This was important because they think it was a
44 step towards a democracy and that for the first
45 time the nobles and the kings were subject to the
46 same rules in terms of wife number as the small
47 scale farmers, the peasants.
36
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 Again religion is not my expertise; I don't


2 claim to be. But what these guys report is that
3 the ideas don't come from Judaism and
4 Christianity, that they're infused from Rome. The
5 old testament prophets are polygynous; not
6 mentioned in the gospels. There's still polygyny
7 in Judaism until the 11th century. The only
8 mention of monogamy is a recommendation to church
9 leaders in the pastoral letters.
10 So a few summary points now that we're
11 through with the history. So polygynous marriage
12 has been widespread and emerges in an immense
13 variety of social contexts. The wealthy high
14 status men are the ones who tend to marry
15 polygynously if it's permitted. Polyandry is rare
16 in a manner consistent with evolutionary theory in
17 the sense of the paternal polyandry. And this
18 idea of imposed universal monogamous marriage is
19 pretty uncommon. It spreads into Europe and then
20 spreads to the rest of the world with the
21 expansion of the European powers after 1500. And
22 I mention there that stuff about solidarity and
23 fostering egalitarian spirit, that's really
24 because that's what Caesar Augustus when he was
25 imposing these rules and what the debates were in
26 the Greek city states when they were deciding to
27 do this.
28 Okay. So that's it for the history and the
29 anthropological background. Now we're really
30 moving into the meat of the discussion. And here
31 I want to compare polygynous marriage and
32 monogamous marriage. And what I'm going to do is
33 lay out what's really the theory, the downstream
34 implications of having polygynous marriage or
35 monogamous marriage.
36 So the first thing, the argument goes, is
37 that polygynous marriage is going to expand the
38 pool of low status unmarried men. And not only is
39 it going to increase these -- these low status
40 unmarried men are going to take extra risks that
41 they wouldn't take otherwise, because in order to
42 mate and pair-bond, they're going to have to move
43 higher up the social ladder than they would
44 otherwise. So they're going to be inclined to
45 take risks. So the prediction is that if this is,
46 in fact, the case, that when we look at the
47 empirical data, we should find higher rates of
37
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 murder, robbery, rape and drug abuse, just to give


2 three examples. By comparison, if we look at
3 monogamous marriage, this is going to minimize the
4 pool of low status males. It's going to give low
5 status males the best possibility of pair-bonding
6 and eventually reproducing. And this is going to
7 reduce rates of murder, robbery, rape and drug
8 abuse, and it is going to also alter male
9 psychology in that when low status males get
10 married, they'll be inclined to invest in their
11 offspring rather than taking risks, which if they
12 can't find a mate, in order to climb the social
13 ladder, to have a chance at getting a pair-bond.
14 So on the polygynous side, and I wrote there
15 "increased competition." This competition amongst
16 males, males are going to be seeking whatever
17 women are available, and this is going to drive
18 down the age of first marriage and expand the age
19 gap between men and women, because if there is
20 insufficient women to find a mate, then the only
21 place there are more women is move younger, in
22 other words, to adolescents. Because there's
23 going to be this premium, this competition for
24 women, that's going to cause males to tighten
25 their control of their wives, daughters and
26 spouses.
27 Meanwhile, on the monogamy side, imposing
28 monogamy is going to decrease competition, reduce
29 male efforts at controlling females and can create
30 fertile conditions for gender and equality.
31 Okay. Following -- continuing the same line
32 of comparison. So I mentioned in polygynous
33 marriage married men are still on the mating
34 market, so, you know, they can date. So married
35 men will continue to seek additional wives, which
36 means they're going to have energy and resources
37 that are going into obtaining additional wives
38 instead of investing in the care of offspring.
39 On the monogamous marriage side, the low
40 status males are going to have a chance now, so
41 they can get a mate and they can invest in the
42 long term. So they're going to be heavily
43 invested in mating. They're a low status male, so
44 they're not going to be able to really seek
45 additional mates, so they will be investing.
46 And high status males are impeded, and I
47 emphasize impeded because clearly high status
38
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 males find ways around this in various ways, from


2 investing in the long term. So they're impeded
3 from investment to seek additional long-term
4 mates, so they're now more motivated to focus on
5 the current wife and invest in her offspring. And
6 this maximizes offspring quality because you are
7 putting more parental investment in these
8 offspring rather than channelling it off to seek
9 additional mates.
10 Okay. Back on the polygynous family side.
11 When you create a polygynous family, we apply our
12 evolutionary principles and we see that polygynous
13 families are loaded with non-relatives. So
14 they're loaded with stepmoms, which is going to --
15 so later I'll talk about evidence that having
16 unrelated adult child pairs and adult pairs is
17 going to increase the likelihood for violence,
18 abuse and homicide, and we will talk about some
19 data related to that. On the polygynous side,
20 it's also going to decrease paternal certainty,
21 which is going to further drive male investment.
22 Now, just flipping over to the comparison on
23 the monogamous family side, you're going to have
24 families who are on average more genetically
25 related, where the only non-relative pairing is
26 the spousal pairing, as opposed to the polygynous
27 family which has lots of non-relative pairs. And
28 this is going to increase paternity certainty, or
29 it may increase paternity certainty, which should
30 domestic violence. These are predictions.
31 All right. Now, moving into the creation of
32 this low status pool of men. This is a central
33 piece of the argument so I have created this image
34 in order to illustrate it. So your blue dots are
35 your males; your red dots are your females.
36 There's 20, 20 of each, so even sex ratio. I have
37 ranked my males according to their social status
38 just to keep it simple. If everybody marries, you
39 have zero percent in your unmarried pool.
40 Now, in the second I'll show you the
41 polygynous version and then we can look at the
42 unmarried pool, but I just want to emphasize at
43 this point that this is an illustrative example,
44 so the only reason you end up with zero percent is
45 your unmarried pool is because I have constructed
46 an example to most clearly illustrate the point.
47 You're always going to have a pool of unmarried
39
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 individuals because we're age graded, and so not


2 everybody gets married immediately at 15. And
3 you're going to have widowers and people who
4 choose not to marry. None of that affects the
5 logic.
6 So now we make it polygynous, so this society
7 that I have created, now some of the women have
8 left the low status men and they've decided to
9 become second, third and fourth wives for some of
10 our higher status men. 33 percent of the married
11 people in this sample are polygynous; 67 are
12 monogamous. So most people are married
13 monogamously. This is not a high level of
14 polygyny because no one has more than four wives.
15 But that's going to create this 40 percent pool of
16 low status unmarried males and that's our pool
17 that, if this idea is true, should be then
18 creating more crime, more social discord and
19 whatnot. Let's see. This number is the same
20 polygyny ratio as Bountiful, so I tried to
21 construct this example to roughly match the degree
22 of polygyny in Bountiful just as a point of
23 reference.
24 Okay. And I just want to make clear then why
25 these low status guys are going to take risks,
26 because if they want to get into the mating
27 market, they have to become at least as successful
28 as that arrow that says now he's got to be in the
29 top 60 percent. So in order to get access to a
30 wife for a long-term mate, he's got to move from
31 being there at the bottom 10 percent, where you
32 can say he's in the bottom 10 percent, he's got to
33 out-compete all those other guys for that slot
34 there. So the only way he's going to do that, he
35 can't sort of play the game in a kind of
36 conservative way, he's got to take big risks,
37 things like committing crimes and robberies, in
38 order to climb up that ladder. This is just
39 making that he's -- not only is he doing that, but
40 all the other guys in that pool are playing the
41 same game.
42 Okay. So the prediction here -- this is just
43 restating, sorry for the redundancy, but polygyny
44 is going to create an increase in the pool of low
45 status men, they are going to be motivated to
46 engage in risky behaviour, so we're going looking
47 for -- we're going to show evidence that, in fact,
40
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 these unmarried low status men do engage in more


2 crime, social disruption and personal abuses at
3 higher rates. And this is -- I have split it out
4 here just because it's also going to -- it should
5 create more kidnapping of women, sex slaves, rape
6 and prostitution. In our search we could only
7 find quality evidence for the increase in rape.
8 It wasn't that we found negative evidence for the
9 other; we just couldn't find good analyses.
10 Okay, so now I'm going to begin to walk
11 through a series of evidence along these lines for
12 this argument. So the first we went into the
13 sociological literature, and there's a large
14 literature in sociology on how marriage -- getting
15 married affects a man's likelihood of committing a
16 crime. And so the clear message from this
17 literature is that married men are much less
18 likely to commit crimes and abuse substances
19 compared to unmarried men.
20 Now, for a long time we didn't know what the
21 causality was. It could be that when you're such
22 a person, that you're not going to abuse
23 substances or commit crimes, maybe you're not
24 likely to get married. But now there's evidence
25 that suggests that it's in fact causal, that
26 getting married actually changes men.
27 So I reviewed some longitudinal studies. So
28 in these studies the first one I will tell about
29 Sampson et al, 2006. They tracked men from age 17
30 to 70, and they showed that the same men who were
31 married and divorced at various points in their
32 lifetime were less likely to commit crimes during
33 the married periods of their lives. So these --
34 each man is his own control, so we can tell
35 whether it's the man or whether it's the marriage,
36 and it turns out it's the marriage that matters.
37 And these are the kind of guys who you would
38 expect to be a problem in a polygynous society, so
39 these are a sample drawn initially at age 17 from
40 a Massachusetts reform school with an average IQ
41 of 95. Overall the Sampson study shows that for
42 all crimes it reduces a man's chance of committing
43 a crime by 35 percent. For property and violent
44 crimes, marriage cuts crime in half, and this is
45 controlling for a number of other factors which
46 could weaken these effects. I'll mention those in
47 a minute.
41
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 So when men are divorced or widowed, crime


2 rates go up. I thought the widowed part was
3 particularly important because factors leading to
4 a divorce you might say would then lead to further
5 crimes, but even when a man is widowed, he is then
6 more likely to go on to commit crimes. So this
7 suggests that it's marriage that is causal here,
8 not the men.
9 This is another study, this is work done with
10 Nebraska inmates. Recall data. So moving in with
11 a wife reduces the probability for a man
12 committing a crime by roughly half, controlling
13 for several other factors including employment and
14 drug abuse. The effect is strongest for assault
15 and weakest for property crimes. The effect of
16 marriage on reducing crime is similar to going
17 into higher education. To going to school.
18 Interestingly, co-habiting with a girlfriend as
19 opposed to a wife either increased crime rate or
20 didn't impact the individual, so there's something
21 about wives as opposed to girlfriends.
22 The positive effect on crime of living with a
23 wife is larger than the negative effect created by
24 heavy drinking. So I just put this in to give a
25 sense of effect values. So if you drink heavily,
26 you're more likely to commit crimes, but having a
27 wife is I guess sobering, so you're less likely to
28 commit crimes. And taking drugs had the biggest
29 effect on increasing crime rates.
30 Now, I mention the drug effect having a big
31 effect on crime rates, taking drugs, because
32 marriage also reduces your tendency to take drugs.
33 And they're controlling for drugs here, so they're
34 removing part of the marriage effect by doing
35 this. So these are sort of conservative
36 estimates. So marriage reduces binge drinking and
37 drug use. And there's other studies, there's
38 another study which I won't go through by London,
39 Farrington and West done in England. Same
40 pattern.
41 The only sort of additional piece of
42 information from the Farrington study is that you
43 had to be living with your wife. You lost all the
44 effect if your wife lived in a different place.
45 Okay. Now, polygyny and crime. So this
46 shows that at least within monogamous societies
47 that if men get married, it has a good effect. So
42
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 this suggests that if we create a pool of


2 unmarried men, it's going to have some down -- it
3 will cause these men to commit more crimes. But
4 then the question is, do these aggregate up to the
5 societal level?
6 Now, this is an analytical challenge, so I'm
7 going to use three different lines of evidence to
8 get at this, and the reason why it's an analytical
9 challenge is because since the expansion of
10 European societies and the proliferation of
11 imposed monogamy on places like Japan and China
12 and India, polygynous marriage systems are not
13 randomly distributed. They tend to co-occur with
14 low GDP, low female equality and low democracy.
15 So we don't have what we would want, which is just
16 sort of randomly assigned to these different
17 societies.
18 Okay. So the first thing we're going to do
19 is just to -- sort of straight cross-national
20 regression. And here I'm drawing on Penazawa and
21 Stills. They created a polygamy variable which
22 they then used in regression analysis, so it's a
23 statistical analyses to see whether polygyny is
24 highly correlated or correlated at all with crime.
25 So these are called regressions and in the
26 terminology of regressions, you use the word
27 "predict." So I'm going to say polygyny predicts,
28 so what I mean is there a strong statistical or --
29 forget strong. There is a statistical
30 relationship between polygyny -- polygynous
31 marriage and -- degree of polygynous marriage and
32 these various kinds of crime. And we're going to
33 control for economic development, so that's GDP
34 per capita. Economic inequality using the Gini
35 coefficient, population density and democracy.
36 Now, I'll say more about that analysis in a
37 second when I get to it. I want to lay out my
38 three-prong strategy here. Then we're going to
39 say, well, if our theory is correct, then we
40 should be able to replace polygyny, our variable,
41 with the percent of unmarried males and this
42 should predict as well or better than our polygyny
43 variable, because in theory it's really the
44 percent of unmarried males that's doing the work.
45 The polygyny is just creating those guys.
46 And then finally we're going to look within
47 countries. So cross-national regression analyses
43
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 like this always have worries, and one worry is


2 that there's some variable you haven't thought of
3 to put in the regression. So by doing analyses
4 within countries, we can get away from that
5 problem.
6 Okay. So I start with this one because this
7 is a very conservative analysis, and the reason
8 why I went to that length is because in the ideas
9 I'll present later I think it's a plausible
10 account that marriage norms, marriage, imposing
11 monogamy actually causes economic development and
12 it causes changes in equality and it may even
13 cause democracy as some have speculated. Causal
14 in the many factors, causal sense, not uniquely
15 causal. So we're controlling for all those, so
16 we're getting kind of the smallest possible effect
17 one could get because we are controlling for some
18 of the other things that might generate.
19 Okay. So -- and the other reason we might --
20 these analyses are conservative is the way that
21 these two authors constructed their polygyny
22 variable, it's likely to be noisy, which just
23 means it's not a very accurate estimate of the
24 degree of polygyny in these societies; it's crude.
25 So what they did is they took the encyclopedia of
26 world cultures for the whole world, they figured
27 out which societies were polygynous and how
28 polygynous they were. They assigned a score of
29 zero to 3, zero for monogamy and 3 for wide-spread
30 polygyny. And then for countries they aggregated
31 where those cultures lived by the proportion to
32 which that culture was part of the overall country
33 population. And so then each country gets a score
34 on polygyny based on its composition of world
35 cultures and their representation of the country.
36 So that's our key variable.
37 So here is the first, the main line of
38 analyses. So we use polygyny to predict crime and
39 we find a positive relationship between polygyny
40 and murder, rape, assault and robbery. Now,
41 murder and rape are significant at conventional
42 levels of analysis, so we're more than 95 percent
43 certain that those are different from zero.
44 Robbery is marginally significant, which means
45 we're about 90 percent sure that that's different
46 from zero. The coefficient on assault,
47 coefficient is what comes out of the statistical
44
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 estimation -- the size of the coefficient is how


2 strong the effect is -- is still large, but it's
3 not well estimated, which means we can't be really
4 confident that it's different from zero.
5 So to give you a sense of the size of these
6 number, if you go from a monogamous society to a
7 fully polygynous society and you hold GDP per
8 capita constant, the Gini coefficient constant,
9 democracy constant, you get about 12 more rapes
10 and murders per 100,000 by making that switch.
11 Going from a monogamous society to a fully
12 polygynous society increases robberies by 64 per
13 100,000. All right?
14 MR. JONES:
15 Q Can I just ask you to clarify what you mean,
16 Dr. Henrich, by a fully polygynous society?
17 A Good question. So what that means is if we go
18 back here to our scale, that Penezawa and Still
19 made, so our scale goes from zero, monogamy to 3,
20 polygyny, so when I say "full," I mean going from
21 zero to 3.
22 Q Could you give -- I don't want His Lordship to get
23 the impression that a fully polygynous is one
24 where all the men are polygynous. What sort of
25 percentages of polygyny would be at the very
26 highest?
27 A When I do the numbers for Bountiful, Bountiful is
28 at the 83rd percentile in terms of degree of
29 polygyny, and that has about one-third of
30 marriages are polygynous. So the majority of
31 men are still -- you can be a highly polygynous
32 society and still have the majority of your men in
33 monogamous marriages.
34 Okay. So second prong. We're doing the exact
35 same analysis and now we're going to use -- we're
36 going to replace polygyny with the percent of
37 unmarried men over age 15. And we find that the
38 percent of unmarried men is positively related to
39 murder, rape, robbery and assault. Now, murder,
40 rape and robbery all significant at conventional
41 levels, so we're 95 percent sure or more that they
42 are different from zero. To give you a sense of
43 the size of numbers, if we increase by 40 percent
44 our number of unmarried men, which is -- in my
45 stylized example that was the size of that, we get
46 11 more murders per 100,000, 22 more rapes per
47 100,000 and 180 more robberies per 100,000.
45
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 Assault is marginally significant, so we're only


2 about 90 percent sure that's different from zero,
3 and that gives you 108 per 100,000 in assaults.
4 This is just emphasizing my point which these
5 are minimum effect sizes because we controlled for
6 GDP, equality and democracy.
7 So now we're going into the cross-country
8 analyses. Now, here we're going to use another
9 variable to allow us to look at things, and we're
10 going to use sex ratio. Now, the reason we're
11 going to use sex ratio is because we want to be
12 able to analyze this in a more detailed fashion
13 and polygyny doesn't give us enough variation. So
14 there's lots of places that vary in their sex
15 ratios for reasons besides polygyny, but if the
16 theory is true, polygyny should create the same
17 kind of effect as a distorted sex ratio. So we
18 are going to use sex ratio as a proxy and see if
19 it creates the same kind of effects on crime.
20 Okay. We're going to take advantage of data
21 from India, data from China, and then we'll talk
22 about some stuff in the US. So both India and
23 China have distorted sex ratios because of a son
24 preference. Families prefer to have sons over
25 daughters. This leads to more males in the
26 population. And interestingly usefully
27 statistically is that different districts in India
28 have different sex ratios, so we're going to take
29 advantage of that. Oh, and so this is good
30 because by just doing an analysis within India, we
31 get rid of this cross-national problem. Now, we
32 hold a bunch of things constant because it's just
33 India we're talking about.
34 And then we're going to look at China. China
35 has a son preference, plus they initiated the one
36 child policy thing. It's actually more
37 complicated than that, but let's call it the one
38 child policy. It's restricted family planning
39 where many urban families were limited to one
40 child. And so we'll analyze China and then we'll
41 talk about the history of the US.
42 So these are the folks I'm drawing on here,
43 Drees and Kara. So there's 319 districts in
44 India, 90 percent of the population. These
45 authors emphasize that they like to use murder
46 statistics because other kinds of crimes can go
47 unreported, but it's harder to avoid reporting
46
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 murders. And so controlling for economic and


2 demographic differences, they find that when you
3 have more males relative to females, so that's a
4 high sex ratio, you get higher murder rates. And
5 the important thing that I found in this study was
6 it's not just from having more males. Your murder
7 rate should go up if you have more males because
8 males commit a disproportionate amount of murder.
9 The question is, are these males somehow different
10 than your average male? In other words, are these
11 the low status males who are more incentivized to
12 commit crimes, and, in fact, they show that the
13 males in high sex ratio places are more likely to
14 commit murders than your average male. So this
15 fits with the idea that there is actually a change
16 in the psychology of men when there's too many
17 unmarried -- too many.
18 Okay. So it's a large effect, to give you a
19 sense of its size. So if you go from one of the
20 provinces in India that has a sex ratio of 1.2, so
21 that's a lot of men compared to the number of
22 women, to .97, you cut the murder rate in half.
23 Now, they had a lot of controls in there and one
24 of the other controls that mattered a lot was
25 literacy. So more literate, less murder.
26 Interestingly, poverty and urbanization were not
27 important predictors.
28 Okay. So that's India. Now China. This is
29 my, I guess, my single most interesting piece of
30 data because this is a natural experiment that
31 allows us to begin to get to causality. It's as
32 close as you get in economics to causality because
33 of the way this national experiment works. So in
34 China the adult sex ratio rose markedly, from 1.05
35 to almost 2, between 1998 and 2004, and that
36 nearly doubles the unmarried group of men, the
37 surplus men. And the authors are explicit about
38 that this is the pool that these men are going
39 into, these extra unmarried men. Now, at the time
40 during the same period the crime rate doubles and
41 90 percent of these crimes we're talking about are
42 committed by men.
43 MR. JONES:
44 Q Professor, sorry, perhaps I can interrupt you and
45 just at the second bullet we can explain what the
46 ratio actually means, because it's expressed
47 differently from a percentage. So when it says
47
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 1.053 is the ratio, does that mean that for every


2 female there are 1.053 men?
3 A It's a ratio, so you take the total number of
4 males in your society and you divide by the total
5 number of females.
6 Q I see. But you said between 1.053 and 1.095 was
7 actually -- doubling the difference, not doubling
8 the number; is that right?
9 A Right. So you can imagine you match up. Yeah.
10 Q I see. Thank you.
11 A All right. Let's see. Okay. Now, the neat thing
12 about this is that China gradually implemented its
13 one child policy and so kicked it in at different
14 times in different provinces. And the times are
15 idiosyncratic and is determined by the details of
16 the bureaucrats that were in charge at the time.
17 It's not related to crime rates or sex ratios.
18 And so this means this is an agogynous factor, a
19 factor that we know is not -- so any time you have
20 a correlation, you worry about causality. So it
21 could be that sex ratios cause crime or it could
22 be that crimes cause changes in sex ratio, but now
23 we can trace the sex ratio to the implementation
24 of the one child policy 18 years earlier. So
25 unless you leave in backwards temporal causality
26 that somehow the sex ratio in the future caused
27 something in the past, you have a causal link.
28 You have a causal connection.
29 Okay. Now, so that's -- I'll explain that
30 more in a second when I get to the results.
31 So other things the authors point to as to
32 why this is a good natural experiment is that
33 these extra males are created during a family
34 planning program and so the reason why families
35 are favouring sons is they're going to have one
36 child and it's going to be a prize child, so they
37 invest in these boys. So these aren't children
38 who suffer from a lack of parental attention or
39 parental investment; these are the apple of the
40 family's eye, so to speak, the one child they get
41 to send into the future.
42 And the other thing that this family planning
43 program causes is a constriction in population.
44 So the population is going to get smaller and
45 normally demographers say, well, this is going to
46 open up a bunch of job opportunities because the
47 new generation is smaller than the older
48
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 generation, which means there's lots of jobs for


2 those people to flow into that already exist. But
3 despite these downward forces, the crime rate
4 still went up.
5 Okay. So what they find, the basic result,
6 is that increasing the sex ratio by .01 is
7 associated with a 3 percent increase in property
8 crimes and violent crimes. So very small increase
9 in sex ratio in this pool of unmarried surplus men
10 increases these two kinds of crimes. Now, this is
11 called for inequality, unemployment and
12 urbanization. They also show positive effects on
13 crime. And so you get -- this effect that I just
14 described is independent of those also positive
15 effects. And the authors go on to show that it's
16 this increase in the pool of these low status men
17 that is driving the effect.
18 Okay. Okay. So the causality issue. So
19 what the authors do is they've connected sex ratio
20 to crime. Now, the question is this causality
21 question, so to get at the causality question,
22 they take the year of implementation of one child
23 policy in different provinces and then they use
24 that to predict the sex ratio and then they use
25 that to predict the crime, and they get basically
26 the same effect as you when you just use sex ratio
27 to predict a crime except that we know now we
28 removed the causality program because we have an
29 independent variable just when the policy went in
30 that gives our sex ratio that then gives us -- so
31 we have made our causal linkage there. It's
32 called an instrumental variable in kind matrix.
33 Okay. So when the sex ratio increases, we
34 get this big jump despite economic growth and a
35 shrinking population. Okay. So that's the story
36 from the China data.
37 Now, we go to the historical sources, and here
38 I turn to this book by a fellow named Courtwright.
39 He wrote a book called Violent Land, and in his
40 book he argued that getting this extra pool of
41 unmarried men has been a big problem in lots of
42 places, leading to high crime, drug abuse and
43 other social ills. And in particular in this book
44 he focusses on the American west. And it happened
45 during the westward migration in the United States
46 that the west got populated by lots of men before
47 the women sort of caught up, and this led to the
49
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 culture of the American west, this kind of


2 gun-slinging culture that we're all familiar with.
3 And he shows that if you look at crime rates in --
4 spatially across 19th century America, you find
5 that the sex ratios correspond to the crime rates,
6 that the places where more men relative to women
7 have higher crime rates. And then he shows that
8 as those sex ratios move towards one as time goes
9 by, the crime rates even out and they drop down.
10 He makes a similar case for New South Wales
11 in Australia in the late 1700s, and the
12 Argentinian pampas in the gaucho area. Just these
13 places that, for other reasons besides polygyny,
14 you end up with extra males.
15 Now, this is just an historical source. It's
16 consistent with the other data I have shown, but
17 we can't do an econometrics on this, so it's just
18 a consistency idea.
19 Okay. So now moving back into the comparison,
20 I have gone through the stuff in grey. Now I will
21 continue to move through the stuff in black.
22 We're going to talk about this idea that -- I'm
23 going to talk about this idea, that increasing
24 the -- that increasing the size of the pool of low
25 status unmarried men is going to lead to increased
26 competition for women. This is going to drive
27 down the age of first marriage and expand the age
28 gap between males and females. It's also going
29 to, if the theory is correct, tighten the control
30 that men will place on their wives, daughters and
31 spouses. And we'll see if that's the case in the
32 data.
33 Okay. So just to lay this out a little bit
34 more is that polygynous marriage ignites this
35 increased competition for any available women.
36 It's going to drive down the age gap -- age of
37 first marriage for females. It's also going to
38 expand the age gap between spouses, and it may
39 even -- men who want to marry polygynously may
40 seek out younger women because it's easier to
41 control them. There's a little bit -- there's
42 some data suggesting that.
43 Now, I wanted to point out here that in this
44 case, even if there's men in the society who just
45 are only interested in monogamy and not interested
46 in polygyny, they are stuck in the same scenario
47 because there are still fewer women around, so
50
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 you're still going to be under pressure to choose


2 from this expanded pool that you expand by moving
3 the age down for women -- for women.
4 So this is going to cause men to use all
5 kinds of techniques to get access to women and to
6 wives, so advantages, alliances, things like bride
7 price in many polygynous societies pop up. And as
8 I said, it's going to cause older husbands to try
9 to, quote, protect their wives, in other words,
10 dampen their freedoms in order to control them.
11 All right. So three kinds of data. I'm going
12 to start with the macro level data. This is
13 country level data, and we'll compare highly
14 polygynous countries with less polygynous and then
15 with monogamously marrying countries between 20
16 degrees north and 30 degrees south latitude. So
17 here I'm going on work by the economist Michelle
18 Tertilt, and this is the data that she creates and
19 I'll talk more about that in a minute. Then I'm
20 going to move on to some micro level data.
21 Now, these are a series of studies of
22 polygynous and monogamous marriages within the
23 same society. So we're going to look at the age
24 gaps for the polygynously marrying men and the
25 monogamously marrying men and women and compare
26 them. Now, the theory is actually specific about
27 the macro level consequences. On the micro level
28 consequences, it's interesting that it still comes
29 out in the micro level data and it suggests that
30 polygynously marrying men are actually as a kind
31 of strategy perhaps going for younger women,
32 because we can still see some of the basic
33 patterns even when we look at it within the same
34 society.
35 And then we'll look at sex ratio again using
36 it for a proxy again of the effects of polygyny on
37 women and gender equality, and that will be cross
38 national analyses.
39 Okay. So here is our basic plotting of my
40 arrow here. Highly polygynous societies, so 28
41 countries. The age of first marriage for women in
42 highly polygynous countries is a bit less than 20,
43 whereas in less polygynous societies it's closer
44 to 23. And then in comparable monogamous
45 countries it's about 25, and then in North America
46 and western Europe it's close to 30. So this is
47 consistent with the idea that polygyny draws down
51
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 the age of first marriage.


2 Age gap. So 6.4 year -- now, this is age gap
3 with only the first wife, so this would get larger
4 if you included second and third wives who were
5 almost always younger than the first wife. So
6 this is just first wife. 6.4 years; almost four
7 years in the less polygynous societies. These
8 little stars mean that this is significantly
9 different. We can be quite sure that these
10 numbers are, in fact, higher than these numbers.
11 Monogamous countries who are comparative in terms
12 of at least geography, and then North America and
13 western Europe.
14 And then total fertility, higher fertility in
15 the highly polygynous, then less fertility and
16 less fertility. When women get control of
17 fertility, it goes down.
18 Child mortality. This is going to be
19 important later when we compare polygynous and
20 monogamous, but you can see here that highly
21 polygynous societies have the highest child
22 mortality, then the less polygynous, big drop for
23 the monogamous, and then North America and western
24 Europe.
25 Infant mortality, same pattern. But it's
26 important to keep in mind one of the challenges
27 here is there's different GDPs per capita in these
28 different places, and so the economist from which
29 I'm drawing this information argues that in fact
30 marriage imposing monogamy causes higher GDPs. I
31 will talk about that in a little while.
32 Okay. So this is that micro level data and
33 it's basically showing a similar kind of pattern.
34 So age -- so age difference here, I mean, this is
35 a very small difference, not significant at
36 conventional levels. But this age gap is quite
37 large. So this makes it look like polygynously
38 marrying men are seeking out younger women. And
39 see similar patterns here with the polygynously
40 marrying men marrying younger women, 15 versus 17,
41 and percentage of women under age 15 higher for
42 the polygynous men.
43 Okay. And this is from Australia. An
44 Aboriginal group in Australia, and the age
45 differences between husbands and wife, 7 to 17.
46 So you see the same patterns at the micro level as
47 you see at the macro level. It makes it look like
52
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 if polygynous -- men who want to marry


2 polygynously are seeking out particularly young
3 women.
4 All right. So a little bit on gender equity.
5 So we're looking at the UNDP's gender empowerment
6 index, which is composed of a number of different
7 things that the UNDP sees fit to measure about
8 gender differences across society. It includes
9 the male/female income ratio and female
10 representation in high status jobs, all put into
11 an index.
12 Q I'm not sure, what is UNDP?
13 A United Nations Development Program.
14 Okay. So at the highly polygynous societies,
15 you have .22 here on gender empowerment. Not very
16 empowered. Canada is .83 and comparable
17 monogamous societies are .5, so higher than the
18 highly polygynous. And the ratio of adult female
19 to male literacy rates in 2005, .66, so that means
20 that many more males could read than females. In
21 the comparable monogamous, so these are poor
22 countries, it's almost equal.
23 Okay. All right. So now we're going to -- so
24 that tells the same story about polygyny and
25 gender equality. Now we're going to look at some
26 cross-national analyses and try and control for
27 things that we didn't in the previous tables, but
28 because of the way polygyny is non-randomly across
29 the world, only in the very poor places, we're
30 going to use sex ratio, which should have the same
31 causal effect as our polygyny, but it varies for
32 lots of other reasons across societies. And so if
33 this is the case, then it should allow us to see
34 if high sex ratio then leads to gender inequality.
35 And the two things we're going to be looking
36 at here are whether the age of first marriage goes
37 down and the age gaps expand, and whether men
38 tighten their control. Okay. So here I'm drawing
39 on South and Trent, so they gather data from 117
40 countries, and they show that there's a high --
41 more males than females. They find that females
42 married younger. So that fits the basic pattern.
43 The rising sex ratio in China that has caused rich
44 families to try to acquire infant girls to
45 guarantee that their sons have wives. I found a
46 typo in my affidavit, which is noted there.
47 So China actually has a tradition of
53
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 something called "minor marriage," but with the


2 rising sex ratio in recent years, the practice of
3 minor marriage, which is old, has been spreading
4 rapidly. So you promise an infant to a wealthy --
5 an infant girl to a wealthy family.
6 Similarly, in some regions of India more than
7 half of the females in some regions are married by
8 15, and on the American frontier, which we talked
9 about before, as a male bias sex ratio. Brides
10 were reported as young as 12 and 13.
11 So this basically converges with the findings
12 above about the age of first marriage. All the
13 evidence we could find suggests that polygyny or
14 its proxy seem to draw the age of first marriage
15 down and expand the age gap between males and
16 females. So now we go to the actual
17 cross-national analyses. These guys used sex
18 ratios for males and females between the ages of
19 15 and 49 between 1973 and 1982. They had a
20 measure of the reliability of the sex ratio data
21 which they controlled for, and they used the
22 socioeconomic development for measure for each
23 country and index and it's composed of GDP, infant
24 mortality, the percentage of the population living
25 in urban areas and the life expectancy. So when
26 you put all of that into the analysis, the
27 regressions show that higher sex ratios predict
28 lower participation of women in the labour force,
29 lower illegitimacy rates and lower divorce rates.
30 People who study gender empowerment say when women
31 get power, they divorce more and they have babies
32 when they're not married.
33 Okay. Now, one concern with these results is
34 we might worry that they're driven by the
35 underdeveloped countries in the sample. So we had
36 a sample of 117 countries, so what Trent and South
37 did is they pulled out just the developing
38 countries and they showed that sex ratio had a
39 greater effect on indicators of women's roles than
40 in less developed countries. So the story in some
41 sense is the opposite, that the sex ratio is more
42 important in developed countries than it is in
43 other countries. So higher sex ratios predict
44 lower age of first marriage in developed
45 countries, higher fertility rates and lower
46 literacy for women in developed countries.
47 Here I'm going to jump briefly to my second
54
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 affidavit, and I got to read some work by Todd


2 Shackelford and his collaborators. And one -- a
3 big area of research within evolutionary
4 psychology is focussing on violence within the
5 family and particularly within -- in this case
6 within marriages, and so Shackelford has done some
7 important work showing that as the age gap between
8 husbands and wives expands, the probability of
9 homicide, of one of them killing the other one,
10 increases, and it's actually a big risk factor.
11 So if that's the case, then you ought to
12 worry about if polygyny increases age gaps, then
13 you're going to get more spousal homicides
14 following this theory that Shackelford develops.
15 The effect is non-linear, so it's not too bad as
16 long as the age gap doesn't get too big, but when
17 the age gap gets 13 to 15 years, you get a much
18 higher rate of homicide, so that it spikes to five
19 times the rate at the same ages. A much higher
20 homicide rate.
21 So that leads to a prediction which I don't
22 have direct data on, so this is an inference from
23 the data on monogamous societies that domestic
24 violence would be worse in polygynous societies
25 because of this large age gap is really a
26 predictor, then it should follow. And certainly
27 in North American polygynous communities, age gaps
28 of 16 years are not uncommon.
29 So now I want to go a little bit further into
30 the material from my second affidavit, and, you
31 know, one of the things as I'm developing this
32 that I really worried about, because there is this
33 question that we're drawing a lot of data from
34 different polygynous societies and different
35 places, societies vary a lot for all kinds of
36 important reasons, could the same logic, this
37 logic that drives down female equality, actually
38 apply to North Americans. You know, it could be
39 that we have sort of cultural norms that will act
40 as a kind of buffer against this kind of thing.
41 So I went to the work of this anthropologist
42 who I know named William Jankowiak, and he's been
43 studying FLDS communities in Colorado City and
44 Centennial Park for 15 years doing really in-depth
45 systematic work. And this is a quote from one of
46 his papers in the Journal of Ethnology, I think.
47 So he says:
55
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1
2 There is a shortage of eligible women to
3 marry in every polygynous society and this is
4 a primary factor responsible for the
5 intergenerational conflict in
6 Colorado City/Centennial Park. Senior males
7 are always on the marriage market and thus
8 compete with younger men for mates in a
9 limited pool of eligible women. In the 1960s
10 a policeman, without the approval of the
11 religious leadership, would threaten to
12 arrest unmarried males who did not leave the
13 community. The competition for mates is
14 acute. Young men know that if they do not
15 find a girlfriend before they have graduated
16 from high school, they probably never will
17 have one. Without a girlfriend, they will
18 leave the community to find a wife.
19
20 So, you know, I read this, I was amazed
21 actually that you could read this same kind of
22 thing in polygynous societies in African
23 ethnographies, for example, the same kind of
24 dynamics is taking place. So it suggests to me
25 that there's powerful social dynamics here. Okay.
26 Let's see here.
27 So, you know, one of the sort of objections
28 that you sometimes get is this -- the language
29 that we use here refers to women as resources and
30 whatnot and that's sort of, of course,
31 distasteful. But when you actually look at what
32 happens, it looks like it fits. So in -- so this
33 is again Jankowiak, so in this setting fathers
34 often exchange their daughters in order to marry
35 them. Men wanted to marry off their daughters
36 before they could decide to select from within
37 their age cohort. By the 1990s second ward
38 fathers began to negotiate marital exchanges, not
39 for themselves but for a favoured son or in some
40 case a grandson.
41 And then finally he writes about the first
42 ward. The prophet's age does not restrict
43 families from offering their daughters to him.
44 The reason why fathers give their daughters to the
45 prophet, often with the wife's encouragement, are
46 to gain prestige and to obtain material and
47 spiritual benefits.
56
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 So I just put those quotes in from the


2 Jankowiak ethnographies because it gives you a
3 sense that the same social dynamics that seem to
4 be playing out in other societies also seem to
5 work, according to Jankowiak's account, in North
6 America.
7 Okay. So I wasn't sure where to put this.
8 It pulls together a few different ideas, so I put
9 it here. So now I'm going back to the work of
10 this economist from Stanford, Michelle Tertilt,
11 and she is interested in explaining African
12 under-development, so she is a development
13 economist. And so she did what economists do, is
14 they constructed a simple utility maximization
15 model and in her model men and women care about
16 two things. They care about having children and
17 they care about consuming. And the only
18 difference in her model between men and women,
19 it's a basic biological one, is that men can do
20 this over both periods of their life and women can
21 only have children in the first period of their
22 life. And this creates a difference that then has
23 a bunch of downstream effects. So I think I
24 mentioned earlier when Mr. Jones was asking me,
25 that I'm often critical of these utility
26 maximization models, but in this case she is
27 capturing core elements of -- that you could also
28 see as being part of our psychology; right? So
29 there is this basic difference.
30 She also assumes that men tend to prefer
31 younger women, which according to a large amount
32 of cross-cultural evidence is a good assumption.
33 Okay. So what she gets is she's able to get
34 polygynous marriage spontaneously pops out. There
35 is a marriage market in her model. Men match up.
36 Some men get to get more than one wife. And she
37 then calibrates her model, so it's a mathematical
38 model; it has certain parameters. She calibrates
39 it to fit the patterns in the highly polygynous
40 societies in Africa. It seems to predict a bunch
41 of the qualitative features of those societies.
42 So that's one of her papers. And then she takes
43 her model with the parameters that she calibrates,
44 and she says, okay, now what happens in this model
45 if monogamy just gets imposed?
46 So people have social norms that they
47 acquire, whether the law imposes it or something,
57
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
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1 so that men can only have one wife. This changes


2 the rules of the game, but her -- the agents in
3 her model have the same preference. So what
4 happens? The fertility rate goes down. The age
5 gap goes down. The savings rate going up. Bride
6 prices disappear, which they spontaneously appear
7 in the previous model. And the GDP per capita
8 goes way up. And the reason is, is men stop
9 investing in trying to find additional wives and
10 they invest in consumption basically. And
11 savings. They invest in savings.
12 That's basically what that says. Okay. Then
13 she does -- this very interesting move she makes
14 in her next paper. So she says what if, instead
15 of imposing man monogamy, we empower women? So in
16 her original model, it was meant to mimic the
17 African case. So males made all the reproductive
18 decisions. So they determined the number of
19 children that the family would have. She says,
20 what if instead of imposing monogamy, we give
21 women all the power and we let them make all the
22 reproductive decisions. So that's what female
23 choice means; it's choice about reproduction. The
24 number of wives declines a little bit, but
25 polygyny stays around. Fertility declines a bit
26 but not hugely, and GDP per capita goes up some.
27 Savings rates do go up substantially. Because the
28 reason why savings rate goes up substantially is
29 in the previous model with polygyny and no imposed
30 monogamy, men save for the future by having a lot
31 of kids. In this new model women control
32 fertility so men can't do that, so they end up
33 saving more.
34 So this is interesting because at least with
35 this model it does seem to fit some of the African
36 data. Imposing monogamy has a much bigger effect
37 on lowering fertility and economic growth than
38 does increasing female choice.
39 So now I'm going to continue moving through
40 this and look at some of the family impacts. So
41 to remind you, previously we talked about the
42 effects of polygynous marriage. So married men
43 reduce investment in care of wife and offspring.
44 That's because the married men are remaining on
45 marriage market, whereas monogamous men by
46 necessity have to invest in their offspring. So
47 we're going to look at, and that means that these
58
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1 polygynously-married families are going to have


2 less parental investment. Less males investment,
3 not less parental investment; less maternal
4 investment. And they're also going to be loaded
5 with non-relatives and that's going to include
6 co-wives who may have conflicts.
7 So family predictions. I mean predictions
8 about male parental investment. So by eliminating
9 opportunities for low status males to establish
10 pair-bonds and invest in offspring -- so now you
11 have the group of low status unmarried men who
12 can't get married now, can't do any parental
13 investment in anybody because they can't get
14 married. For the wealthy guys who can get
15 married, it's going to dilute the per-child
16 investment, so they're going to have larger broods
17 having children with multiple wives. Resources
18 are going to be divided amongst more kids, and
19 males are going to shift investment from offspring
20 to obtaining more mates.
21 And finally -- so here I'm drawing from both
22 my affidavits. And in polygynous families you
23 will also create the co-wife conflict, half
24 sibling conflict and problems relating to
25 jealousy. There's going to be lots of
26 step-parenting, unrelated pairs in those
27 households.
28 So let's just look at the data. Do those
29 things hold up? We're going to look at data on
30 child mortality and child health, and we're going
31 to show that in lots of cases your polygynous
32 households have higher child mortality and poorer
33 child health. That's consistent with the idea of
34 less parental investment or some kind of internal
35 strife within polygynous families. And then we'll
36 look at some data on psycho-social stress among
37 co-wives in polygynous households.
38 All right. So I'm going to start with the
39 data from North America, and this is amongst 19th
40 century Mormon communities in Utah, done by two
41 anthropologists, published in the lead journal on
42 anthropology, Current Anthropology. And what they
43 did is they had a sample of 90 households. They
44 had 40 of the wealthiest members of the
45 community -- I'm sorry, 45 of the wealthiest
46 members of the community, and 45 of the poorest
47 but married men in the community. So it's not
59
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
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1 really the bottom; it's the bottom of the married


2 men.
3 Okay. So the first thing the data shows is
4 the basic pattern you find everywhere, is that
5 wealthy men had more wives. All but five of the
6 wealthy men had more than one wife and one rich
7 man had 11 wives. So not very monogamous among
8 the wealthy ones.
9 And overall the men controlled 120 women,
10 while the poor men controlled 63. This means that
11 90 husbands had 183 wives, which implies about 93
12 missing men or men who had no wives. So that's
13 the pool of unmarried low status males. The
14 wealthy men had more offspring, so they're good
15 Darwinians. And they also had a longer
16 reproductive career, so they kept having children
17 for 33 years instead of 22 years like the poor
18 men.
19 And the poor men had -- now, the key fact,
20 and we're sort of at the meat now, is that the
21 better men's children had better survival rates to
22 age 15. So despite being poor, the poor men had
23 6.9 offspring survive per wife, compared to the
24 wealthy men, who only had 5.5 of their offspring
25 survive. And that's just -- I found this amazing
26 because there's such a wealth of difference
27 between these guys and you can still detect these
28 differences in child mortality.
29 Now, you can ask whether this is a dilution
30 effect. So one idea is it could be that just
31 polygyny results in this dilution of wealth and so
32 that's the reason why there's the difference, but
33 if you could find evidence over and above that, it
34 would mean the men are investing less in their
35 children because they're looking for their next
36 wife.
37 So what these authors did is they compared
38 men, both rich and poor, that had either one or
39 two wives. And so for the poor men, 6.9 children
40 survived per wife, whereas for the rich men, only
41 5.7 of children survived per wife. And so this is
42 the same number of wives, so you don't have to
43 worry about a wealth dilution because you're
44 diluting among the same number of individuals, and
45 still the mortality effect emerges. So that
46 supports the idea of parental investment.
47 Now, if we look cross-culturally -- that's
60
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
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1 the North American pattern. Now let's look at


2 different societies. Children from polygynous
3 societies have increased risk of diminished
4 nutritional status, poor health outcomes and
5 higher mortality in many studies. There are some
6 exceptions.
7 Okay. So these -- I picked out some -- two
8 of the best here, from Tanzania and Chad. They
9 show the poorer nutritional status and the height
10 and weight stuff, so let me go through those. So
11 this is from Craig Hadley at Emory University, and
12 he found that the children of polygynously married
13 mothers were more likely to be underweight and
14 were relatively shorter and gained less weight
15 during the time of the study than the children of
16 monogamously married mothers. So he arrived and
17 stayed long enough, a year I think, to actually
18 measure the differences that occurred over that
19 period from beginning to end. Sellen, working
20 similarly, long-term fieldwork in Tanzania, showed
21 that the children of polygamous mothers had lower
22 weight for age scores, this is an official scoring
23 system that people who study public health use,
24 and height for age scores than children of
25 monogamous mothers. And in these analyses they
26 controlled for wealth and as well as some child
27 and maternity characteristics, and still you have
28 the effects coming through.
29 All right. There's also elevated risk for
30 mortality in polygynous families in these studies
31 versus monogamous families. So one overview study
32 has 22 sub-Saharan African countries. They found
33 that polygyny is a risk factor for child
34 mortality. So the children of polygynous
35 families, and this controls the big kind of
36 aggression-type study, lots of statistical
37 controls, 24.4 percent more likely to die compared
38 to children of monogamous families. Six -- in a
39 study of six western African countries, it was
40 found that infants of polygynous families had a 60
41 to 70 percent greater risk of dying compared to
42 children of monogamous families. And then
43 finally, in a long term, very important study by
44 Beverley Strassman from the University of
45 Michigan, she studies a group in Mali called the
46 Dogon. She found that children under 10 were 7 to
47 10 times more likely than their counterparts in
61
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 monogamous families. And she does an additional


2 analyses that shows it's not the wealth dilution
3 effect. She thinks it's either the conflict among
4 the wives, the wives are fearful that their other
5 co-wives are poisoning their children, or the
6 parental investment.
7 Now, I put this study in -- we mention this
8 study as a -- it's a study that's often cited,
9 I've seen it in different places, and it's studied
10 for the case of the benefits of polygyny. And she
11 does a bunch of interviews, Anderson; she worked
12 in South Africa. She studied 22 monogamous
13 couples and 22 polygynous couples. And she does a
14 bunch of interviews and the women talk about the
15 importance of cooperation and how they wanted to
16 be a part of a polygynous family, but it's worth
17 noting that the only empirical data or the only
18 numerical data in this study is this data, which
19 suggested -- it goes in the direction of
20 monogamous children surviving more than polygynous
21 children. Although what does -- what does seem to
22 work really is soronal polygyny, so this is when
23 you have married -- if you're a male -- you've
24 married two sisters. Then survival rates go up to
25 4.7 children per wife, but in the polygynous
26 families involving non-relative wives, it's only
27 3.8, so 38 children survive instead of 40 in
28 monogamous families.
29 So that study on its own is actually a mixed
30 result. So the claim that this study shows
31 ambiguous differences is based on the assumption
32 that 4 does not equal 3.8.
33 I haven't been able to locate any studies
34 showing better survival rates for polygyny
35 relative to monogamy, for child mortality.
36 MR. JONES: Perhaps, Dr. Henrich, it's 12:30, which is
37 the lunch time. If that's a convenient pause.
38 THE WITNESS: Okay. I've got about two slides left
39 here. We're really closing in.
40 MR. JONES: Very well, thank you.
41 THE WITNESS: All right. So this is the last empirical
42 section and then I have one slide to close.
43 So this is the psycho-social impacts. The
44 key theoretical question is, there's two factors,
45 one positive, one negative. The negative one is
46 internal conflict between the wives, so jealousy,
47 competition over resources, versus co-wife
62
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 cooperation. There's somebody in the household to


2 help you out. So I tried to put together the
3 studies that show negative impact on women's
4 psycho-social outcomes. So studies among Arabs in
5 Israel and in Turkey found higher rates of
6 psychological distress and disorders among
7 polygynously married women compared to their
8 monogamously married counterparts.
9 Also, there's evidence that there's
10 psychiatric distress and disorder at elevated
11 rates in polygynously married women in the Arab
12 example, so areas that this was shown was
13 depression, obsession compulsion, hostility,
14 anxiety, phobias, paranoid ideation. So
15 polygynous women reported significantly more
16 problems in family functioning and marital
17 relationships, and less satisfaction in life than
18 monogamously married women. There was an
19 increased likelihood in Turkey of having a
20 psychological disorder among senior wives compared
21 to monogamous wives. The rate is 1.6 times higher
22 for a polygynous wife compared to monogamous wives
23 for conversion disorder, and 2.4 times higher for
24 polygynous wives than monogamous for somatization
25 disorder. So conversion disorder is when your
26 stress appears as things like blindness and
27 paralysis and fits, and somatization disorder is
28 when it emerges as headaches and pains and other
29 kinds of things. And other disorders were not
30 significantly different between these two. But
31 here it's important that wife order mattered. So
32 in some places you were more likely to have these
33 things if you were the senior wife; in other
34 places, it's junior wife. So there seems to be
35 cultural or some kind of variation between
36 societies and who this impacts.
37 I couldn't find any studies showing -- or no,
38 here is this Hadley study showing no impact of
39 polygynous versus monogamous, so they did the same
40 kind of studies that had been done in the Middle
41 East, in Turkey and Israel, but they didn't come
42 up with anything. So their monogamous and
43 polygynous bound marriages were the same. They
44 speculate that it could be a wealth effect, that
45 having more wives in Africa means you're
46 wealthier, so that offsets the other effect. I
47 couldn't find any study showing that polygynously
63
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1 married women had less psychosocial stress than


2 monogamous.
3 And this is the last slide I think. Yes.
4 Okay. So just to give you the big picture again.
5 So the idea I was pursuing here was that
6 competition amongst social groups favoured a
7 cultural evolution of monogamous marriage, or what
8 some scholars have called "imposed monogamous
9 marriage." And the idea here is that imposed
10 monogamous marriage harnesses certain aspects of
11 our psychology. So we're naturally pair-bonders
12 and so it highlights and puts emphasis on that,
13 but it tries to suppress this tendency to make
14 addition pair-bonds beyond the first. And it
15 spreads because it gives societal level benefits.
16 So it maintains internal harmony, reduces crime,
17 increases solidarity. There's a lot of research
18 that's getting a lot of discussion in the
19 economics literature increasingly showing that
20 amongst modern westernized democracies, that
21 societies that are more equal, have lower Gini
22 coefficients, have a whole bunch of better social
23 outcomes. And so in many ways monogamy is a kind
24 of first effort to create equality among
25 individuals.
26 Let's see. And it favours gender equality
27 because it reduces mate competition. So it
28 disincentivizes males to try to impress females.
29 And it also manipulates male psychology in causing
30 them to -- to giving them not an option to get an
31 additional long-term pair-bond but incentive -- or
32 compelling them or incentivizing them to invest in
33 the offspring of their current pair-bond. Also
34 long-term savings is favoured here as well. So
35 that will lead to economic growth. That's the
36 direction of Michelle Tertilt.
37 So that's the end of my points.
38 MR. JONES: Thank you, Dr. Henrich. We'll resume after
39 lunch.
40 THE CLERK: Order in court. Court is adjourned until
41 2:00 p.m.
42
43 (WITNESS STOOD DOWN)
44 (NOON RECESS)
45
46 THE CLERK: Order in court.
47 JOSEPH HENRICH, a witness
64
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In chief by Mr. Jones

1 for the AGBC, recalled.


2
3 THE COURT: Mr. Jones.
4 MR. JONES: Thank you, My Lord. Continuing with my
5 direct, and I should let you know that my friend
6 Mr. Macintosh very kindly took me aside at the
7 break and said that he had no objection to me
8 expediting through asking leading questions of
9 Dr. Henrich.
10
11 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF HENRICH BY MR. JONES (Continued)
12 Q Dr. Henrich, just by way of summary of the points
13 in your PowerPoint, and I appreciate that it's in
14 summary form what's in your reports, perhaps I can
15 list for you a number of the harms that you've
16 identified that are associated in the literature
17 with respect to polygamy and ask you to summarize
18 in a sentence, if possible, the strength of the
19 evidence with respect to the causation. In other
20 words, this is -- there is evidence this is caused
21 by polygamy or there isn't.
22 And I will first start with what you have
23 identified as harms to the participants in
24 polygamous families themselves.
25 So we'll start with infant mortality. What
26 can you tell us about the strength of that
27 evidence?
28 A Well, so when I laid out the theory, the theory is
29 that there's either parental investment or
30 jealousy among co-wives, co-wife competition, but
31 all the data says is that there's this difference
32 between polygamist households and monogamous
33 households, and that seems to be robust, certainly
34 in Africa. My worry about the overall strength of
35 that evidence is that if we were to move this to
36 North America or something and say would you
37 get the same -- I certainly don't think you'd get
38 the same effect size in North America, so you'd
39 need a much larger sample to detect anything, and
40 there may be other reasons why that difference
41 might vanish in North American context. So we're
42 limited by our predominantly African data.
43 Q Thank you. And does that hold true then also for
44 health indications for children of
45 polygamous households?
46 A Yes, same story there.
47 Q Now, with respect to psycho-social effects on the
65
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1 wives in polygamous marriages?


2 A Well, there we have a little bit wider database.
3 So we have Middle Eastern societies and Africa,
4 but it's still selective. And I think certainly
5 in those contexts there's something going on, but
6 one of the complicated things about those papers
7 is it really quite varies. So in some studies
8 some things are -- some psychosocial factors are
9 important; in other studies, it's other
10 psychosocial factors. And again we're comparing,
11 which is all we have is the polygamous/monogamous
12 difference that we're comparing. So I'm also
13 concerned about how those would generalize,
14 because there does seem to be all this
15 cross-cultural variability. So whether it's first
16 wife, senior wife or some other wife, seems to
17 vary that which ones have the problems from
18 society to society. So you could imagine there
19 could be different cultural institutions that
20 could mitigate those problems or alter who gets
21 the worst of that. So those -- the two you just
22 pointed out are the ones I'm most concerned about
23 extending to North America.
24 Q I see. The risk of intrafamily crime and the risk
25 of violence within the households, what -- we'll
26 be discussing in a moment Professor Shackelford's
27 report and your response to that.
28 A Right.
29 Q But in a general sense can you give an idea of the
30 strength of the evidence in that regard?
31 A Well, the evidence there is inferential extension;
32 right? So what do we know? We know from
33 Dr. Shackelford's study and many other studies
34 that within North America when families have lower
35 degrees of relatedness, when children have
36 step-parents, when spouses have a large age gap,
37 those are all risk factors for more homicide,
38 child abuse, child neglect. Now, we don't have
39 good data on what happens in polygynous
40 households, so given that theory, they should be
41 worse in polygynous households, but we don't have
42 direct footprints in the sand kind of evidence.
43 Q Thanks. So now I want to turn from the harms to
44 the participants to what I would call social harm,
45 but harms outside or elsewhere than simply within
46 the polygynous households. And the first one and
47 the one that you've probably spent the most time
66
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In chief by Mr. Jones

1 on is the problem of excess males or the lost boys


2 problem. What can you say about the strength of
3 the causation relationship there?
4 A I mean, that's what I think is the strongest piece
5 of evidence because we have several different
6 lines of evidence. So we've got the
7 cross-national regressions, we can replace the
8 variable with the percentage of unmarried males,
9 we can then create the same effect with using sex
10 ratio within different societies. So everything
11 converges on that one. And the data is, you know,
12 cross-national, so we have full sampling controls
13 for GDP differences, all that stuff.
14 Q And with respect to I think what I sometimes refer
15 to as the sexualization of girls, but you referred
16 to as child brides or age of first marriage, what
17 was the causal relationship there?
18 A Well, that's also strong because we have cross
19 national data and we can run the regressions -- we
20 can use our sex ratio proxy and then run the
21 regressions within the developed countries and we
22 get even stronger effects. So that would be -- I
23 rank that second in terms of my confidence. On
24 that though I do have to lean heavily on that
25 paper by Trenton and South. I wish I had a few
26 more papers showing the same thing.
27 Q Right. And you mentioned that -- well, it's your
28 theory, I suppose, if I use that term in the
29 scientific sense, that this flows directly from
30 the mathematics of polygamy; is that right?
31 A Right.
32 Q And the effect as I understood you to say on child
33 brides, for instance, is that throughout society
34 in both monogamous and polygamous relationships,
35 you will have this age depression effect, but
36 there is also a smaller increase specific to the
37 polygamist households; is that right?
38 A Right. So that's why I broke apart the macro
39 level data and the micro level data. The macro
40 shows that if men in the society, some of them are
41 marrying polygynously, you are going to deplete
42 the pool of available women, which is going to put
43 pressure downward on age of first marriage, and
44 that's going to be a kind of societal level
45 effect. But when you look at the micro level, it
46 looks like maybe polygynous or aspiring polygynous
47 are actually shooting for younger wives than
67
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In chief by Mr. Jones

1 monogamous men.
2 Q And these two effects that we discussed, the
3 social harms, child brides and excess males are
4 expected to occur regardless of whether there's
5 any of the harms to the participants themselves in
6 the polygyny?
7 A That's right.
8 Q And finally, Dr. Henrich, on this point, the idea
9 that polygamy will lead to institutions of
10 increased male control over women in society.
11 What's the strength of the evidence there in
12 summary?
13 A Well, we have the data showing that polygamy and
14 sex ratio relate to more male control, lower
15 things like literacy and we talked about the UNDP
16 gender equality index, and so by incentivizing
17 males to control women, will it create a kind of
18 cultural evolutionary pressure for institutions
19 that allow males to control women. So in lots of
20 polygynous societies, in New Guinea, for example,
21 you have sister exchange. This is basically where
22 groups of males have bargained that you get my
23 sister when we grow up and I get your sister. So
24 just a kind of example -- we saw the sort of
25 swapping that FLDS or Colorado City residents were
26 engaging in. You see institutions of this form in
27 New Guinea, for example.
28 Q Thank you, Dr. Henrich. Moving on in your second
29 expert report, it's principally addressed to two
30 things. One is a reply to Dr. Shackelford, but I
31 want to turn to the second aspect of it first,
32 which is the demographic analysis of the Bountiful
33 community and that's tab 2, My Lord, beginning at
34 page 10. But what we have at page 11 is the
35 demographic data of the FLDS side of the Bountiful
36 community that was provided by my friend
37 Mr. Wickett. And you have put this in a table and
38 provided something of an analysis of it. So this
39 is -- it's correct to say, isn't it, that this is
40 the only hard demographic numbers we have for any
41 polygamous society, polygamous community in North
42 America?
43 A Yeah, I think that's true. At least the only ones
44 we could find. I had a feeling there is more out
45 there, but I couldn't find them.
46 Q And that breakdown appears on this table and
47 perhaps I can just take you through it.
68
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 So we've got 30 men and 30 women in


2 monogamous marriages. We then have 15 men and 40
3 women in polygynous marriages and that breaks down
4 as nine men having two wives, four men having
5 three wives and five men having -- or sorry, and
6 two men having five wives. Then we have the
7 unmarried population over 18 -- or 18 and over,
8 33 male and 22 female. We have single parents,
9 one male and 8 female. We have four female widows
10 and no widowers. So it looks as though the
11 unmarried population of adults, if I can put it
12 that way, is equal. 34 in each case. And then we
13 have a total adult population then of 79 males and
14 104 females. And then going down we have also
15 been provided data, the only data of under 18s we
16 have available is one 17-year-old male, seven
17 17-year-old females, five 16-year-old males and 9
18 females. And then we just have a global figure
19 for school age under 16.
20 So you took a look at this and made some
21 comments on it. Can you just tell us what this
22 table indicates to you.
23 A Well, in some sense it looked like what I
24 expected, which is there's some missing males. It
25 looks like maybe it's happened in late
26 adolescence. And I did the statistics on the
27 percentage of men married polygynously and it was
28 sort of -- I think I said 83rd percentile, and if
29 you look at that cross-cultural index I put up
30 before from the ethnographic atlas, so it's quite
31 polygynous and it has the expected missing males.
32 Q And earlier, sir, you referred to some research
33 that rated societies for degree of polygyny on a
34 zero to 3 scale?
35 A Right.
36 Q And where would this be on that scale?
37 A This would be in the 3.
38 Q This would be the highest level in that. And this
39 is to your knowledge the only discrete community
40 in North America -- or sorry, in Canada, an
41 industrialized progressive western society, in
42 which we have this sort of -- these sort of
43 figures available; is that right?
44 A Right. Right. Yeah.
45 Q And does that tell you anything?
46 A Well, just means that if -- one possibility is
47 that there's something about our values or
69
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 something about being North American or about


2 having health care that is going to suppress
3 polygamy from spreading. It doesn't seem to have
4 had its effect in this community.
5 Q I see. Thank you. Turning to the balance of the
6 second affidavit, sir, this was in reply to the
7 expert report of Dr. Shackelford. Can you just
8 summarize briefly what Dr. Shackelford's thesis
9 was or what his affidavit was about.
10 A Well, Dr. Shackelford highlighted two areas of
11 evolutionary theory that have been implied,
12 understanding, family violence, domestic violence,
13 homicide within households and the ones that has
14 to do with the relatedness among the household
15 members. So going back to work by Martindale and
16 Margo Wilson from McMaster University, they
17 demonstrated really strong effects of if you're in
18 a household with a step-parent, that you're much
19 more likely to get killed by the step-parent.
20 Really large effects. So this means that if
21 you're in households with step-parents, that the
22 kids are at risk for subsequently suffering abuse
23 and some other statistics beside homicide.
24 Homicide is the best because it's the one that is
25 reported for sure. Not too sure, but more
26 probability.
27 So that is one idea, and then the second idea
28 in this thing had to do with this interspousal
29 violence, that monogamous households have a lot of
30 interspousal violence. And his own work on that
31 has been on this stuff on the age gap I talked
32 about.
33 Q And so what, if any, comparison did
34 Dr. Shackelford make between monogamous -- the
35 levels of violence and risk in monogamous versus
36 polygynous households?
37 A Well, his work is limited to monogamous males.
38 Q So there is no comparison?
39 A Right.
40 Q And so the project, if I can summarize your
41 response, was to use his theories and data to -- I
42 suppose I should use the word "speculate" what
43 would happen applying those theories and data in
44 polygynous households?
45 A Right. So I considered, well, if having
46 step-parents, unrelated adults in the household is
47 a danger to kids in monogamous households, what is
70
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 the relatedness or the number of unrelated adult


2 child pairs? How does that compare to polygynous
3 households? And I actually didn't believe the
4 effect would be this large, but when you start
5 adding wives who have children who are unrelated
6 to the previous mother, you create a whole bunch
7 of new unrelated pairs. It goes up rapidly. And
8 so the more wives you add, the more -- the more
9 you're increasing the number of unrelated child
10 adult pairs.
11 Q And you make -- you reduce this at some point to
12 mathematical formulas and the footnotes on page 3
13 is talking about the increase in the numbers of
14 unrelated pairs.
15 A Right. So as you increase the number of wives,
16 how rapidly your number of unrelated pairs goes up
17 and it's square. It goes up with the square of
18 the number of wives, which means fast.
19 Q And so if you can summarize your conclusion with
20 respect to whether the risk factors identified by
21 Dr. Shackelford in monogamous relationships would
22 be the extent to which that would be applicable?
23 A Right. So it seems to me, at least in the cases
24 of the stuff that Shackelford talked about, it
25 should be worse, according to his theory, in
26 polygynous households as compared to monogamous.
27 Q I see.
28 A If you just follow the logic of the theory
29 through.
30 Q Now, I would like to take you just to more things,
31 in fairness, that have been discussed by other
32 experts and the first is the tables produced by
33 Dr. Wu, and that's at tab 4 of the binder. And
34 these are the ones that Dr. Wu produced the day
35 before he testified and referred to in his
36 testimony. And you've seen these in the last
37 couple of days; is that right?
38 A Yes.
39 Q And what they appear to show, and perhaps we'll go
40 to the first table, although I think they both
41 show similar things, is that in the 2006 census
42 with respect to each age category there is
43 actually already an existing pool, comparatively
44 speaking, of single men versus single women, if I
45 can put it crudely; is that right?
46 A That's right.
47 Q And I guess first of all I should ask you, do you
71
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 have any concerns about the actual numbers?


2 A Well, my thoughts that I had when I looked at this
3 was that, I mean, there could be all kinds of
4 informal marriage-like arrangements, civil unions
5 and whatnot that would seem to me they'd still
6 fall into this, so these numbers may be larger
7 than the sort of on-the-ground reality.
8 The other thing that -- the key to the logic
9 that I laid out is the presence of low status men.
10 A lot of these are probably, at least in the 20s
11 and whatnot, men who are going to get married.
12 It's simply a matter of the future. If I
13 understand Dr. Wu's analysis, 90 percent of
14 Canadians or almost 90 percent will get married at
15 some point in their lifetime, so the higher status
16 men or the upwardly mobile men, they are passing
17 through time until they eventually get married.
18 Q I understand. Okay. Well, let's say, though,
19 let's take these figures at their face value and
20 say that there is actually an excess pool of
21 unmarried men. What are the consequences with
22 respect to -- you've talked about the creation of
23 the pool of unmarried men or the exacerbation of
24 the pool of unmarried men through polygyny.
25 A Right.
26 Q So what are the implications of this positive
27 balance of men and women?
28 A Well, the first thing to notice, and according to
29 demographers, the sex ratio at birth favours
30 males, so you're going to have more males, and
31 this is consistent with that view you have more
32 males. But what it does say is that as soon as
33 polygyny begins to -- exists, you're going to
34 begin adding to this, making the problem worse.
35 You could imagine that these numbers went the
36 other way and there was extra women. Then you
37 would be at a deficit and you could produce more
38 extra low status males and maybe they'd be
39 absorbed by the existing pool, but they're already
40 in this, they're already invested, so to speak,
41 these extra men. So then any men that are added
42 to that is just going to exacerbate the problem of
43 the sex ratio.
44 Q So if we're talking about the increase in
45 criminality, to use a crude measurement, that an
46 extra pool of 50,000 unmarried, unmarriageable men
47 would create, does it matter whether your starting
72
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 point is 100,000 or zero?


2 A No, because that's going to be the same effect
3 size. So if you recall the regressions I looked
4 at, when you looked at, say, the percent of
5 unmarried men, that's just going to create a
6 linear increase in crime.
7 Q So the only way that that effect wouldn't occur as
8 you said would be if the ratios went the other
9 way, in that there was a --
10 A Then there would be an argument for mitigation.
11 Q I see. Now, the last thing I was going to discuss
12 with you, Dr. Henrich, I want to take you to
13 tab 6, which is a reproduction of part of the
14 opening statement of my friends. I want to put to
15 you in fairness what we expect to be an assertion
16 and allow you a chance to respond to it.
17 At paragraph 45, first page of tab 6, I'll
18 just begin in the fourth line down.
19
20 Again, those who are inclined towards
21 polygamy are likely to practise it regardless
22 of its legality, and lifting the ban is
23 unlikely to lead to any significant increase
24 in its incidence. The pool of unmarried men
25 that the AGBC warns polygamy would create has
26 no basis in reality. Within the Canadian
27 population, polygamy is statistically almost
28 non-existent. The pool of unmarried men that
29 already exists in Canada is many times
30 greater than the populations of all the
31 polygamous communities in Canada combined.
32 Any pool of unmarried men that might
33 realistically be created through polygamy is
34 statistically meaningless.
35
36 And I take this to speak for two propositions
37 and I would just like to put them to you. The
38 first is, it couldn't happen here; and the second
39 is that if it did happen here, the sheer numbers,
40 it would be swamped in the sheer numbers and so
41 the effects that we worry about wouldn't occur.
42 So perhaps I could ask you to address those two
43 points.
44 A Yeah. Well, so the swamping issue, that seems to
45 misunderstand my argument, because any extra low
46 status males you have are going to be a direct
47 contribution to, you know, they have an increased
73
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 likelihood of committing crimes, so there is going


2 to be more crime as a consequence. It doesn't --
3 I mean, no society starts with no unmarried males.
4 There is always going to be some pre-existing pool
5 of people who haven't gotten married yet or single
6 people. So that I don't understand actually.
7 Q And that's true with respect to not just the crime
8 from unmarried males but also with respect to the
9 other what I call the mathematical effects, the
10 child brides, for instance?
11 A Right. Right.
12 Q Okay. And then on the other point that it's, you
13 know, that Canada is different and we spoke
14 earlier about your WEIRD research and that you're
15 sensitive to --
16 A Yeah, yeah.
17 Q -- the ways in which things can be applied
18 cross-culturally, so what do you say to that, that
19 it couldn't happen here?
20 A Well, I mean, that's really a tough question;
21 right? Do we have say -- have gender norms, for
22 example, gone far enough that it's just going to
23 form a kind of shield or wall against the
24 spreading of polygamy. And, I mean, so one
25 general caution there is that, you know, society
26 changes quickly, so, you know, if you had told
27 someone in the 1950s that the United States would
28 have a black president and that most new doctors
29 would be women, they probably would be surprised.
30 So social changes can occur quickly.
31 In this context we have good reason to
32 believe that polygyny is a kind of ready response
33 of our evolved psychology, that it's easy for this
34 to happen for both males and females. So even
35 though women may have acquired gender norms,
36 they're still going to be inclined to marry up, so
37 to speak.
38 The other thing here -- I'm just checking my
39 notes -- is that even if we put aside whether
40 Canadians who have acquired sort of the general
41 cultural values that maybe they are immune, but
42 there's still going to be migration issues in the
43 sense that I would expect that if polygamy did
44 become legal in Canada, that there would be --
45 you see different numbers for this, between 50 and
46 100,000 polygamous living families in the United
47 States, certainly they'd want -- many of them
74
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 would be inclined to move north because they could


2 live without the threat of the law in the United
3 States. So that would be one thing. There would
4 also be -- I would think that Canada would be a
5 destination for polygynous families from Africa
6 and the Middle East. Canada would be the western
7 destination for any immigrants who were polygynous
8 because no other western democracy has legalized
9 it. And then there is also underground polygyny
10 both in the US and France. Presumably they would
11 want to move here as well.
12 The other thing to keep in mind is that if
13 immigrant communities become stable and become
14 like polygynous communities in other countries
15 that have legalized polygyny, the fertility is
16 always higher in polygynous communities. It's
17 just robust. So these communities are going to
18 grow faster and merely by population demographics
19 there will be more polygynous -- communities will
20 expand faster than monogamous communities.
21 And also I still think it's possible that
22 because of our evolved psychology, that the idea
23 of polygynous marriage will just spread -- it's
24 possible that it will spread amongst the
25 majoritarian population. Of course I'm only
26 speculating here. But in some of my research in
27 the past six months, I have learned that India has
28 had to legislate against Hindus because Hindu men
29 have tried to convert to Islam so that they can be
30 able to marry. In fact, there's a famous Hindu
31 actor who converted to Islam so that he could
32 marry additional women.
33 That's actually -- so one of the things I
34 study is how when high status people do things
35 it's likely to transmit and spread through the
36 social fabric. So I can see this and I can
37 imagine this starting by actors and people of very
38 high social status adopting -- taking a second
39 wife or whatever, and then it would become
40 legitimized and could potentially spread.
41 And I learned recently that -- on actually a
42 story on NPR, so my source is a news site, that
43 there is -- that among African American Muslims in
44 Philadelphia, polygyny is spreading in south
45 Philly as well. I'm from Philly, not south
46 Philly. So it seems to me plausible that this
47 stuff could spread.
75
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
In chief by Mr. Jones

1 One final point is that the idea of serial


2 monogamy has come up a lot and I see serial
3 monogamy amongst high status males as showing us
4 that the psychology of polygyny is really there;
5 right? So these are high status men who divorce
6 the older wife in order to marry a younger wife,
7 and in a polygynous society they would just add a
8 younger wife. It's a lot more convenient; you can
9 still live with your children. So you could see
10 where this thing might begin to ebb into
11 mainstream culture.
12 Finally, I will mention -- so I teach
13 evolutionary psychology and as a consequence,
14 I teach -- sort of a longer version of what you
15 guys saw today, and there's always this question
16 at the end of it. Well, given everything you just
17 said, we should be a polygynous society; why
18 aren't we? And one of the ways I introduce that
19 issue is I use clickers, so students can respond
20 in real time to questions. And I put women only,
21 right, so that only the women are going to click
22 on this one. And I give them a choice: You're in
23 love with two men. One is a billionaire, he
24 already has one wife and he wants you to be his
25 second wife. You'll be a billionairess; you will
26 have your own island. Make it look pretty good.
27 And then compare him -- just a regular guy,
28 identical in every way, but you will just be his
29 first wife. And then the question to the women is
30 what is the probability -- I give them five
31 choices -- that you would be willing to go with
32 the billionaire, and I was surprised that 70
33 percent of my female UBC undergraduates said they
34 either would go with the billionaire, with a 75
35 percent or a hundred percent chance they'd marry
36 the billionaire. And I said you're in love with
37 both guys and they look the same and all that kind
38 of stuff. So that makes me think that it's not as
39 crazy as some people think. I used to think.
40 MR. JONES: Those are my questions in direct, My Lord.
41 THE COURT: Thank you. Now, can I just get a list of
42 who is cross-examining as well, Mr. Macintosh.
43 MR. WICKETT: I'll be bringing up the tail and I may
44 have a few questions, My Lord.
45 THE COURT: Thank you. Mr. Macintosh.
46 MR. MACINTOSH: Thank you.
47
76
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 CROSS-EXAMINATION FOR BY MR. MACINTOSH:


2 Q Dr. Henrich, for your work in this court reference
3 you were first contacted by Mr. Jones?
4 A That's right.
5 Q And when he contacted you, he asked you to focus
6 on the purported harms in polygamy?
7 A Um, well, we talked about this argument that
8 Robert Wright makes in the book The Moral Animal.
9 And Robert Wright argues that the functions of
10 monogamy are to -- that monogamy gives an
11 advantage because it solves some of the problems
12 that I mentioned.
13 Q Now, on the question I just asked, which was that
14 Mr. Jones asked you to focus on the purported
15 harms, could you please put your affidavit in
16 front of you. Your first affidavit. Do you have
17 that?
18 A Yeah.
19 Q Would you turn to page 2.
20 A Okay.
21 Q And at page 2 of your first affidavit at
22 paragraph 5 --
23 A Right.
24 Q -- did you testify as follows:
25
26 I was contacted in March of 2010 by Craig
27 Jones --
28
29 Et cetera.
30
31 Mr. Jones described the reference case to me
32 and asked if I would be interested in
33 studying the question of polygamy and its
34 purported harms.
35
36 Was that a true statement that you gave?
37 A Yes.
38 Q All right. And you were talking earlier about a
39 chat you had or a conversation with Mr. Jones, and
40 are two of the purported harms he asked you to
41 look at, to consider, there may have been others,
42 the issue of too many unmarried men and women
43 marrying too young?
44 A Well, the core idea that came out of our initial
45 discussions was for sure the idea of this pool of
46 unmarried men.
47 Q All right. And so -- and I'm sorry to interrupt,
77
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 because I'm interrupting and I'm sorry for that.


2 But in your first conversation with Mr. Jones, a
3 topic that came up was the pool of unmarried men;
4 right?
5 A Well, to be honest, I can't remember if it was the
6 first or the second conversation.
7 Q All right.
8 A I remember clearly a second conversation in which
9 we started discussing this.
10 Q Very well.
11 A I think the first conversation might have been
12 more of setting up a meeting. Much more general
13 than any of the details.
14 Q Sure. And so one of the things Mr. Jones advised
15 you of when he was asking you to study the
16 purported harms of polygamy was the issue of too
17 many unmarried men, and I suggest another issue he
18 was asking you to have a look at was women
19 marrying too young; is that fair?
20 A To be honest, I don't recall.
21 Q All right.
22 A If you jump into the literature, these things jump
23 right out at you, so I can't recall where exactly
24 that idea came from.
25 Q I see. So you looked at books right away and you
26 found those ideas right away anyway?
27 A I'm sorry, if you go back to the 1970s, a
28 biologist named Richard Alexander started to let
29 out this idea. None of these ideas are actually
30 mine. I'm just integrating other people's ideas.
31 Q All right. So none of these ideas are actually
32 yours; right?
33 A That's right.
34 Q And did Mr. Jones happen to show you the Attorney
35 General of British Columbia's filed statement in
36 this court, the one that is dated February 24th?
37 A Yes, I think so.
38 Q All right. And did you happen to notice in that
39 document -- here is a copy for you and I have
40 copies for others if others need it or wish to
41 have a fresh copy, but I will give you a fresh
42 copy.
43 A Thank you.
44 Q And I will hand one to His Lordship. And when
45 Mr. Jones gave you this document, it's filed in
46 the court February 24th, and if you turn to
47 page 10, we read about the harms of polygamy. And
78
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 at paragraph -- do you have that, sir?


2 A I got it.
3 Q Paragraph number 25 on page 10, the first one is
4 women marrying too young essentially; right?
5 A Okay.
6 Q And then at page 11, paragraph 26, the other --
7 the second one is essentially too many
8 unmarried -- too many unmarried men; right?
9 A Okay.
10 Q And you were retained in this matter -- that's
11 dated February 24th, and you were retained in this
12 matter in March of 2010?
13 A Okay.
14 Q No, I'm asking you; is that right?
15 A I believe so.
16 Q And that's what you say in the affidavit and you
17 accept that as true; right?
18 A Yes.
19 Q And do you know when in March?
20 A No.
21 Q All right. But it is the case that when you're
22 retained sometime in March, you've never -- you've
23 never published on polygamy in your life?
24 A That's correct. I have lectured on it, however.
25 Q I see. And when you're retained in March of this
26 year, you've never written on polygamy; is that
27 right?
28 A Yes, that's correct.
29 Q Yes, that's right?
30 A Yes, I haven't written on polygamy at all. At
31 least not published.
32 Q All right. Prior to swearing an affidavit as an
33 expert witness here; right?
34 A That's correct.
35 Q And when you agreed to become an expert witness
36 for this case, you had never done any ground
37 research in polygamy?
38 A Well, I've lived in polygamous societies.
39 Q But you weren't studying polygamy, were you?
40 A That's true.
41 Q All right. Now, so whatever the expertise, and
42 Mr. Jones stated it for us, it was quite a long --
43 A Well, can I add, though?
44 Q Yes.
45 A In the course of teaching evolutionary psychology,
46 I lecture on the evolutionary psychology, I go
47 over much of the evidence I presented in that
79
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 affidavit.
2 Q All right. And you will readily agree with me
3 that a great deal of your evidence isn't evidence
4 dealing with polygamy; it's evidence you take and
5 then weave into your evidence here. Correct?
6 A Say that again.
7 Q Yes. A great deal of the material that is in your
8 expert report has nothing to do with polygamy in
9 itself; it's data which you have taken and woven
10 into your conclusions. Correct?
11 A Correct.
12 Q All right. Now, so your handle, if I can call it
13 that, as an expert, which was quite long today and
14 I'm not going to repeat it, but whatever it is,
15 it's not an expert in polygamy; right?
16 A Right. So my knowledge of polygamy has increased
17 dramatically since I took this job.
18 Q I am sure, because before you weren't an expert in
19 polygamy and now you're giving evidence in a
20 polygamy reference?
21 A Right.
22 Q And you worked hard in the four months to read up
23 on polygamy; right?
24 A Well, I knew a bit from my teaching, but yeah, I
25 did work hard.
26 Q And your two main harms are the same ones as the
27 AG's two main harms, aren't they? Right?
28 A Yes.
29 Q And the two main harms are too many unmarried men,
30 which we'll talk about, and women marrying too
31 young, which we'll also talk about; is that right?
32 A That's right.
33 Q And when you focussed on these as the two main
34 harms of polygamy, as I understand it, those are
35 the purported harms of polygamy. That was your
36 instruction I think in your affidavit. When you
37 looked at the purported harms of polygamy, and
38 these were your two main ones, as I understand it,
39 it's a focus on polygamy per se, polygamy in
40 itself, as opposed to bad conduct which can occur
41 in monogamy or polygamy. And let me help you out.
42 Because the phenomenon of too many unmarried men
43 and the phenomenon of women marrying too young,
44 that's -- those are harms of polygamy per se as
45 opposed to bad things that can occur in monogamy
46 as well, like sexual assault or sexual
47 exploitation; fair enough?
80
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 A I want to agree with you, but I want to make sure


2 I understand what you're saying.
3 Q Yes.
4 A So I was following -- I was actually approaching
5 this just the way as I approach any research
6 project. I had a theory and I was following a
7 theory.
8 Q I was going to come to that, but before we get to
9 that, let me put the question again. You've
10 been -- you've developed these two harms, and all
11 I'm saying is you would say these are harms of
12 polygamy per se as opposed -- as opposed to bad
13 things, bad harms that can happen in monogamy or
14 polygamy, sexual exploitation, incest, sexual
15 assault.
16 A Sure. So that -- I feel this is obvious, but
17 these harms can happen in all kinds of situations.
18 The question is the relative rates.
19 Q Yes. Well, that's one of the questions. And so
20 the answer I would think is yes, that your harms
21 are peculiar to polygamy. That is, too many
22 unmarried men and women marrying too young?
23 A Well, what the empirical results show is that
24 unmarried men are a problem and one of the things
25 that polygamy creates is extra low status
26 unmarried men.
27 Q I have it. I have it. And we're going to come to
28 the thesis itself later on. Before we go there,
29 though, I just want to nail it down that what you
30 were doing was focussing on polygamy per se and
31 what you say are harms from it as opposed to bad
32 things that happen in many places, like monogamy
33 and polygamy; right?
34 A Well, I'm trying to view your question from the
35 kind of data that we have, and the data is always
36 comparative in nature; right?
37 Q Right. Now, in the course of learning about
38 polygamy this year that you did, you of course
39 learned that -- or you may have known this
40 already, that there are different kinds of
41 relationships which can form different kinds of
42 polygamy; right?
43 A I already knew that actually, but yeah.
44 Q Okay. And I mean, for example, as the whole court
45 well knows at this stage, polygamy can embrace
46 polygyny; right? You have to say yes or no.
47 A Yes.
81
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 Q And that's one man and more than one woman; right?
2 A Right.
3 Q And polygamy can include, for example, a group of
4 three women; right?
5 A Good question. Anthropological definitions don't
6 consider that possibility. I was working from my
7 PhD in anthropology point of view.
8 Q All right. Well, I'm trying to work from the
9 criminal law, but can you tell me whether you
10 think that polygamy may include three men?
11 A Anthropological literature does not deal with
12 that.
13 Q All right. So let me ask about the evolution, so
14 to speak, about what you were looking at in this
15 sense. In your affidavit, if we can go back to it
16 again, your first affidavit, and I think
17 paragraph 5, page 2, works as well as any -- I
18 think it's the right paragraph to go to, and
19 paragraph 7 would give rise to the same question.
20 And that is that when you swore the affidavit, you
21 were talking about polygamy as a whole because
22 you're using the word polygamy. And then when you
23 get to your report which is in the affidavit,
24 which is Exhibit B to the affidavit; right? Do
25 you have your report?
26 A My report.
27 Q It's Exhibit B to your first affidavit.
28 A Okay.
29 Q And the title changes. And I'm not saying there's
30 anything wrong with that. I just want to ask a
31 little about it. In the affidavit in the body of
32 it, you talk about polygamy in your paragraph 5
33 and your paragraph 7, and then when we get to your
34 report -- this is your main report, which is
35 Exhibit B to your first affidavit; correct?
36 A Yeah. Okay.
37 Q And now it's become polygyny, and I'm not saying
38 there's anything wrong with that.
39 A Yeah, sure.
40 Q But you obviously restricted your work to the
41 polygyny aspect of polygamy; right?
42 A That's right.
43 Q And was it you or the attorney who caused you to
44 focus on this form of polygamy?
45 A Well, in reading and applying evolutionary theory
46 and going through the literature, it became clear
47 that the issues of downstream societal problems
82
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 are only associated, or could be associated in my


2 theoretical idea, which is also lots of other
3 people's, with polygyny.
4 Q Right.
5 A So I wrote about polygyny.
6 Q Right. Because, as I just heard your answer, the
7 only place you found the harms which you theorize
8 on are in polygyny as opposed to other aspects of
9 polygamy; right?
10 A And you notice I'm very careful throughout this
11 document to use the word "polygyny."
12 Q Well, I'm trying to be careful in my questions
13 too, and I'm just asking if you can confirm for me
14 that, as I heard your answer, you focussed on
15 polygyny because that was the only place you found
16 harm; is that right?
17 A That's correct.
18 Q Very well. Now, this may just be a legalistic
19 point, but I still want to touch on it. In your
20 affidavit you don't do what witnesses sometimes
21 do; that is, you don't swear to the truth of what
22 you say in your Exhibit B, and I'm not saying
23 that's the end of the world. I just want to
24 explore it a little bit. I'm correct, am I not,
25 you don't swear to the truth of what is in
26 Exhibit B?
27 A Exhibit B.
28 Q That's your main report. That's the report called
29 "Polygyny and Cross-Cultural Perspective: Theory
30 and Implications"?
31 A Okay. Swear to the truth.
32 Q And don't worry, I'm not playing lawyer games.
33 A Okay. That's what it seems like.
34 Q But I do want to go somewhere with it. I take it,
35 I take it -- you see, sometimes witnesses will
36 attach a document they have written and they will
37 say I swear that what's in there is true. Do you
38 see what I mean?
39 A Okay.
40 Q Now, I want to get a bit of a handle for
41 His Lordship on just what the report is about.
42 Are you representing to the court that what is in
43 Exhibit B is true?
44 A Well, if -- so if you can attach that phrase "this
45 is true" to any of my research papers, then I
46 would be willing to attach it to this document.
47 Q So --
83
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 A So if you're saying the custom in this operation


2 is to say your research paper is true, then I'm
3 fine with considering this as a research paper.
4 Q So it's as true as all your papers?
5 A Exactly.
6 Q All right. But are you representing -- I mean, I
7 notice you were very careful with Mr. Jones, and I
8 respect the care, in saying if this is correct or
9 if this theory is correct in things like that,
10 because you're being cautious and careful;
11 correct? As a responsible professional?
12 A Trying to, yeah.
13 Q But I take it it is your theory. Are you putting
14 your professional reputation in front of the court
15 on your basic conclusions?
16 A Yes. I am intending to publish a version of this
17 document. I'll probably start working on that
18 sometime in January.
19 Q All right.
20 A Which is to say yes to that question.
21 Q Very well. So you're here to defend the two
22 propositions that -- the two primary harms you
23 found that you would back up are that men -- too
24 many unmarried men and the women marrying too
25 young; right?
26 A That's right.
27 Q So let's turn to the report and -- Exhibit B to
28 your affidavit and turn to page 21 in the upper
29 right corner. Do you have that, sir?
30 A I think so. Introduction and summary?
31 Q That's right. And your first bullet under 11A
32 "Introduction and Summary: Content and
33 Structure," in your first bullet is this theory or
34 proposition: "A non-trivial increase in the
35 incidence of polygyny which is quite plausible if
36 polygyny were legalized," et cetera, "would result
37 in increased crime" and so on. And I will come to
38 the increased crime in a moment, but do I read
39 that as you saying that a non-trivial increase in
40 the incidence of polygyny is quite plausible if
41 polygyny were legalized?
42 A Yes.
43 Q All right. Now, you're not a criminologist, are
44 you?
45 A No.
46 Q And we know you're not a lawyer; correct?
47 A Definitely not.
84
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 Q And we know that until March of this year you


2 hadn't really seriously looked at polygamy as a
3 topic; correct?
4 A That's right. I hadn't focussed on it.
5 Q So yes?
6 A Yes.
7 Q Nonetheless, we have your opinion for this court
8 for this constitutional reference that polygyny
9 will quite plausibly increase in Canada if
10 polygamy is legalized; right?
11 A Right.
12 Q And we can either turn to it if we have to or we
13 can just agree to the fact that you say the same
14 thing at page 59 of the same paper; right?
15 A I trust you.
16 Q All right. Now, I mean, and just to speed up the
17 film for a moment, being one of your propositions,
18 for example, is that if polygyny is legalized --
19 my phrase is rich alpha males but, you know, you
20 used other words, but you talk about actors, movie
21 actors a few minutes ago -- but one of your
22 propositions is that if polygyny is legalized,
23 rich alpha males will marry many women; right?
24 A Well, so the argument is that that's not
25 implausible or that's plausible.
26 Q Well, let's go a little farther than the argument
27 is and that's plausible. Is that your opinion for
28 the court or isn't it?
29 A Yes. Based on this research, yes.
30 Q And "based on this research," that's not a
31 qualifying phrase, is it, because you're defending
32 the research?
33 A Right. But if I got new information, I would
34 change my opinion.
35 Q Now --
36 A I mean, wouldn't you?
37 Q I take it that this theory, you know, and I think
38 we're on common ground, you're saying the rich
39 alpha male is going to marry many women, it's on
40 the basis that the state legalizes the polygynous
41 marriage; that right?
42 A Yes. I think.
43 Q And you realize that legalization of polygynous
44 marriages is not the issue before this court?
45 A Right.
46 Q I beg your pardon?
47 A I do understand that, although I must say I don't
85
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 understand all the legal nuances.


2 Q Well, just a moment, sir. You may not understand
3 the legal nuances, but the first opinion in your
4 report is that a non-trivial increase in the
5 incidence of polygyny is quite plausible if
6 polygyny is legalized; right?
7 A Okay.
8 Q So do you understand that what we're doing in this
9 court is wrestling with whether polygyny and
10 polygamy are criminalized or decriminalized on the
11 one hand as opposed to legalized on the other?
12 A Yes.
13 Q I beg your pardon?
14 A Was that a question? I'm losing you.
15 Q The question is this: Did you turn your mind to
16 the difference between legalizing polygyny and
17 decriminalizing it? Did you turn your mind to
18 that?
19 A Well, my -- the project that I took on in
20 preparing this document was to think about the
21 downstream societal effects of a society where
22 polygyny is okay and a society where monogamy is
23 imposed and enforced.
24 Q Yes, and so was your paper on the downstream
25 effects if polygyny is legalized?
26 A I'm not -- I feel like we're getting into a
27 terminological mess. I assumed that this is a
28 society that -- in which men could engage in
29 polygyny. If they want, they can take additional
30 wives.
31 Q Very well. The terminological mess, sir, if I may
32 say with great respect, is driven by the words you
33 used in your report?
34 A Okay. Well, it's cleared up.
35 MR. JONES: In fairness, My Lord, I hate to interrupt
36 here, but it's clearly apparent that what
37 Mr. Macintosh means by "legalized" is legally
38 recognized as a form of civil marriage, which has
39 nothing to do with this report. We're talking
40 about decriminalization. And pressing my friend
41 on this -- on this legalese -- I'm sorry, in
42 pressing the witness on that legalese, I think it
43 has the potential of misleading the court.
44 MR. MACINTOSH: My Lord, the objection was, with great
45 respect, improper, and this witness is advanced as
46 a key witness for the Crown and I'm entitled to
47 explore this and clear it up.
86
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 THE COURT: Go ahead.


2 MR. MACINTOSH:
3 Q Now, Dr. Henrich, we're not going to spend a lot
4 of time on this, but we're going to spend another
5 minute on it, and so let's have another try here.
6 I understand you may not know the answer to this
7 because it's not your field, but answer me this,
8 do you know the difference in decriminalization on
9 the one hand and legalization on the other?
10 A No.
11 Q All right. So let's leave aside what the law
12 words mean because you don't know them, but isn't
13 it fair to say, and I can show you the places in
14 your report, that all your theory and talk
15 about -- well, like what rich men will do is based
16 on the fact that society then sanctions, makes it
17 all right to be polygamous; right? Forget about
18 the legal words.
19 A The only assumption that I took is that if -- in a
20 society where it's not criminal to be -- to engage
21 in adding extra wives.
22 Q I see. So it will happen in that theory. That's
23 useful to know.
24 Now --
25 A Well, I guess I would focus on the data in the
26 paper. I don't understand -- most of the paper is
27 data.
28 Q Now --
29 A Or views of data.
30 Q All right. I'm going to move to something else.
31 Now, you -- when you gave your opinion here at the
32 start of your report, it's what courts would
33 sometimes call partly legal and partly other.
34 That is, this opinion that a non-trivial increase
35 in the incidence of polygyny is quite plausible if
36 polygyny were legalized. When you gave that
37 opinion to the court here, I take it you
38 recognized that there are highly reputable
39 opinions stating the very opposite?
40 A Which -- who are you thinking of?
41 Q The one I was thinking of was the Law Reform
42 Commission of Canada in 1985, which is an exhibit
43 in this case and I will show it to you, and that's
44 when Justice Lyndon was the president of the
45 commission. And although it's already an exhibit
46 in the case, I will just hand out this fresh copy
47 for ease of reference, and that's Exhibit 76.
87
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 It's part of Exhibit 76, My Lord, in the case.


2 And this is written as far back, sir, as 1985 and
3 the Law Reform Commission of Canada was addressing
4 the very same issue that you've addressed. And I
5 want to refer to three parts of this and get your
6 view on it.
7 On the first page the commission writes:
8
9 The same is true of polygamy, which is a
10 practice so foreign to our way of life that
11 it does not directly threaten the institution
12 of marriage. Devoid of any character,
13 polygamy may be regarded as a marginal
14 practice in the same way as adultery and so
15 does not call for criminal penalties.
16
17 And then on the next page 884 is the stamp in the
18 middle of the page:
19
20 Polygamy is a marginal practice which
21 corresponds to no meaningful, legal or
22 sociological reality in Canada. Polygamy
23 may, in fact, be practised by a number of
24 Canadians. The hippy communes in the 60s
25 sometimes favoured free union with several
26 partners. All this still remains marginal
27 and does not affect either the Canadian
28 social fabric or the institution of marriage.
29
30 And finally at the last page, page 890:
31
32 Monogamy --
33
34 Toward the bottom of the page:
35
36 Monogamy is a value generally shared by all
37 Canadians. It has deep roots and colours.
38 Our entire legal system. There would thus
39 appear to be very few things that could
40 generally jeopardize it. In view of this,
41 polygamy appears so foreign to our values and
42 our legal system that it is both unnecessary
43 and excessive.
44
45 So I mean, you agreed prior to me putting this
46 paper to you that you knew that there were highly
47 reputable opinions stating the very opposite of
88
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 your opinion; correct?


2 A Okay.
3 Q And although this is in the evidence, there is a
4 ton of evidence obviously in this case, that was
5 not an opinion you had seen before?
6 A That's right. I'm curious about what their
7 evidence was.
8 Q All right. And I'm not going to tell you. I'm
9 going to move on.
10 Now, before telling the Court that
11 legalization would quite plausibly lead to more
12 polygyny, that was your proposition; right?
13 That's your leadoff proposition?
14 A That -- say it one more time.
15 Q Yes?
16 A Please.
17 Q That legalization -- your proposition is
18 legalization would quite plausibly lead to more
19 polygyny; right?
20 A Right. So given some of the points I made earlier
21 with what we know about human nature, the
22 cross-cultural record, the fact that polygyny
23 seems to be spreading in south Philly, all these
24 things suggest there's no kind of bulwark against
25 this to spread.
26 Q Right. So I'm asking this: Before you advise the
27 Court that legalization would quite plausibly
28 result in more polygyny, I presume what I'm
29 asking, that you studied how often section 293 has
30 actually been used and what it's been used for?
31 A I did not.
32 Q All right. Now, when you told His Lordship in
33 your opinion that polygyny would quite plausibly
34 increase in material ways or something -- I don't
35 remember the exact words -- if it was legalized,
36 you know that what makes it criminal is
37 section 293, do you?
38 A M'mm-hmm.
39 Q But you have no idea whether section 293 has ever
40 been used or in what way?
41 A I'm under the impression it has rarely been used.
42 Q All right. Are you under the impression that it
43 became law in 1890?
44 A I am. I do know that.
45 Q And that it's been used once with regard to what
46 we speak of here as polygyny, that was 111 years
47 ago, against an Aboriginal man?
89
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 A I seem to recall reading that, but I couldn't have


2 told it to you if you'd asked me.
3 Q No? And by my record from the AG Canada, it was
4 used another time 104 years ago in a non-polygamy
5 setting and 73 years ago for the last time in a
6 non-polygamy setting. And so when you've told the
7 Court as your first point in your evidence that
8 the law is necessary to control polygyny, we're on
9 common ground that it's a law that has been used
10 once in 111 years against an Aboriginal man on
11 polygyny?
12 A Right.
13 Q Now, in your discipline, in the work you do --
14 your disciplines, in some disciplines I know, and
15 I'm not being facetious, in some disciplines I
16 know you are not supposed to bring a commonsense
17 check in, and you have a scientific background as
18 well; correct? Correct?
19 A That's right.
20 Q And you're not supposed to bring commonsense in
21 because you're supposed to let the science lead
22 the way, so to speak; correct?
23 A Correct.
24 Q And you make too many assumptions and you're
25 defeating the purpose of the scientific
26 experiment; right?
27 A Okay. Yes.
28 Q And but in the social disciplines that you work in
29 now, I assume you're allowed to look to your own
30 life experience to test whether some theory is
31 good or not. You're allowed to ask yourself some
32 practical questions, or maybe I'm wrong.
33 A But that never counts as evidence; right?
34 Q No, but --
35 A I do this in class sometimes, but you won't find
36 it in my papers.
37 Q No, fair enough, but when you're writing something
38 on a piece of paper, you're allowed in the social
39 sciences to say, well, you know, does that accord
40 with my life experience? Are you allowed to ask
41 that?
42 A Right. I actually do the opposite in my line of
43 work. That's why I study diverse societies and
44 lived in the Amazon and I worked in Chile, because
45 I try to get a sense of how life works there. It
46 really opens your eyes to different ways of
47 thinking.
90
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 Q Right. Because I bet, and I'm asking you this,


2 but in your entire life up until March no one ever
3 came up to you and said, you know, I really wish I
4 could marry two women?
5 A Well, I certainly talked about -- with men in the
6 Machiguenga about marrying two wives.
7 Q Where?
8 A I worked with a group, an indigenous group in
9 southeastern Peruvian Amazon.
10 Q In Machiguenga?
11 A Yeah, they're called the Machiguenga.
12 Q Okay. Well, I'm talking about your entire
13 upbringing in North America. I mean, you're --
14 A I spent a couple of years of my life living in
15 small scale society, so that's a good part of my
16 life experience actually.
17 Q Fair enough. All right. But back to North
18 America, you know, in all of the time in
19 undergraduate and graduate school and so on, I
20 mean, no one has ever said, I hope this polygamy
21 law gets scratched because I've got social plans.
22 A Well, I went to Notre Dame, so definitely wasn't
23 brought up there.
24 Q It definitely wasn't brought up at Notre Dame.
25 Okay. We'll call that the high watermark of my
26 theory of growing up.
27 Now, so is the answer that you're supposed to
28 test your theories with commonsense or you're not
29 supposed to? With life experience or not supposed
30 to?
31 A Life experience is useful for inspiration, but I
32 would never want to test them.
33 Q You would never want to test your theories against
34 life experience?
35 A That's right.
36 Q I see. Now, the first of your -- or we know your
37 two main points, and I forget which is first and
38 which is second, but one of your first main points
39 is that polygyny will have a marked increase in
40 men without mates and that will lead, and I'm not
41 overstating this, that will lead to more murder?
42 A Right.
43 Q And I just want to anchor that in your expert
44 report. And in your first bullet at page 21 is
45 where we see that for the first time, and we've
46 already looked at that where you just -- you say a
47 non-trivial increase in polygyny is quite
91
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 plausible if it were legalized.


2 A Can I speak to the source of that -- that claim?
3 Q The source of what?
4 A Why I thought it was plausible.
5 Q Yes, you can.
6 A Well, I mean, given our study of human nature and
7 what we know about male mating psychology, I mean,
8 so monogamy was able to spread because it became
9 embedded in the Judeo-Christianity that persuaded
10 the nobles of Europe to reject it, so it was part
11 of Christianity. So I think --
12 Q I am interrupting. Which was part of
13 Christianity?
14 A Well, as I explained in the historical thing,
15 monogamy infuses into Christianity in the 4th
16 century. And then the Catholic church begins to
17 spread it into Europe by having this interchange
18 within the nobility of Europe.
19 Q I'm going to let you come back to your request to
20 talk about this, but I want to explore that for a
21 minute. So monogamy and Christianity were getting
22 fused around the 4th century AD?
23 A Yeah. That's what I write in here.
24 Q All right. And I interrupted you. And you were
25 asking if you could explain why you said it's
26 quite plausible?
27 A Right. So I laid out some other things earlier
28 about why I thought it was plausible to spread,
29 but I wanted to get to this issue of why there
30 hasn't been a lot of polygyny spreading in Canada,
31 and it's because it seems to be an important part
32 of Christianity as it spread into the New World,
33 so there's all kinds of social norms to regulate
34 it. But with a more heterogeneous cultural
35 population, there is no more -- social norms are
36 weaker. So, for example, the African Americans
37 who are engaging in Muslim religion in south
38 Philly.
39 Q All right. Now, if you can go to just on this
40 point of sort of anchoring your thesis on
41 unmarried men and murder, if you go to page 25 of
42 your report. Do you have that?
43 A I do.
44 Q And at the top of the page, and I confess I'm
45 taking sentences or parts of sentences, but of
46 course feel free to tell me if I'm taking them out
47 of context. At the top of page 25 you reference,
92
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 second line, a pool of unmarried men will increase


2 the rate of murder, rape and property crime;
3 right?
4 A M'mm-hmm.
5 Q And at page 28 of the report in the middle of the
6 page, a male who finds -- a male who finds himself
7 without access to females should be dramatically
8 more likely to take substantial risks aimed at
9 increasing his opportunities for sex, e.g. theft,
10 murder, et cetera.
11 I was curious what the et cetera is after
12 theft and murder, but in any event it's theft and
13 murder as a result?
14 A Or robbery.
15 Q Robbery? All right. Now, and you -- in your
16 report you -- we heard about this today, you talk
17 about male biassed sex ratios, i.e. more men than
18 women, and you say, well, that equals more crime;
19 right? Correct?
20 A Yes.
21 Q And that may be right, it may be wrong, but you do
22 want to challenge some of your reasoning just to
23 see whether it is sound in the assessment of your
24 report. Because in your report at page 44 you
25 take us to China, as it were, on this -- on this
26 theory; right?
27 A Right.
28 Q So you say in essence and I -- if I sound
29 facetious, I apologize, but in essence you take us
30 to China and you say, look, there's more men --
31 more boys than girls growing up and there's more
32 crime and therefore more boys equals more crime.
33 That's like the gist of it?
34 A Well, the authors of that paper went to great
35 lengths to demonstrate it was actually the excess
36 pool that caused the crime.
37 Q Yes.
38 A In fact, they also tested other kinds of crime,
39 so, for example, they looked at white collar
40 crime, corruption, the kinds of stuff that your
41 alpha males would be doing and that wasn't
42 affected.
43 Q Right. And I mean, we're in a dilemma here
44 because I don't get to cross-examine them, right,
45 those people that wrote this report, but let's
46 isolate that. You didn't do any original research
47 on this point?
93
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 A I've read other people's papers.


2 Q Right. And the paper you relied on mostly for
3 your China work, which is I think largely at
4 page 44, that was the Edlund paper, E-d-l-u-n-d?
5 A That's right.
6 Q And this China paragraph, I mean, certainly the
7 main part of it, the first part of it also, it's
8 in this long paragraph on page 44?
9 A Okay. I'm there.
10 Q And what we have got there is a doubling of the
11 excess of men to women, and then you say in the
12 next line -- at the second line, at the same time
13 crime rates nearly doubled, 90 percent?
14 A M'mm-hmm.
15 Q And what your desired takeaway is, is, gosh,
16 double the men, double the crime rate. That's the
17 desired takeaway, isn't it?
18 A Well, there's all kinds of other things that
19 affect crime rate.
20 Q Yes, there are.
21 A That's an opening sentence and I then go on to
22 discuss the specific analyses that control for the
23 other things. So you would never want to say what
24 you just said, which is just double the crime,
25 double sex ratio, because there are other kinds of
26 other variables you have to control for.
27 Q Exactly. Exactly. And so it would be wrong to
28 take away from this page the notion that when
29 you've got twice as many extra men or whatever it
30 is compared to women, it would be ludicrous to
31 say, oh, and you've got the crime and it must be
32 because of these extra men; right?
33 A Right. That's why I emphasized it's a .01
34 increase in the ratio leads to a 3 percent
35 increase in crime even after you control for all
36 the other variables that the economist seems to
37 find.
38 Q Right. And you -- you didn't -- we've covered
39 this I think, but I'm going to cover it once more.
40 But you didn't do any of this collecting of any
41 data; right?
42 A That's right. I just read other people's papers.
43 Q You read a paper by one or two other people who
44 wrote it and did some research; right?
45 A That's correct.
46 Q And interestingly, in my submission, because
47 you're putting this in front of us for the
94
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 proposition that more extra men equals more


2 murder, more crime; right?
3 A Yes, yes.
4 Q That's your thesis?
5 A I just wanted to emphasize that this is just one
6 line of analysis. I wouldn't want to just lean on
7 any one.
8 Q Okay. But we can only discuss one at a time and
9 this is the one we're discussing now. And it is
10 your takeaway, it is your thesis, it is your
11 desired point for the court to take away that
12 these extra men in China resulted in a doubling of
13 the crime rate, or a substantial increase in the
14 crime rate; is that right?
15 A Yes.
16 Q Now, you recognize in the same paragraph that the
17 people who did the study had two reasons for why
18 that didn't make sense?
19 A Right.
20 Q Right? And one reason it didn't make sense was
21 what?
22 A Well, the two things that they were concerned
23 about was the shrinkage, the fact that the
24 population was declining. And the economy was
25 also growing at the time, so that was another
26 concern.
27 Q Well, I think one of the concerns was -- linked
28 those two points. There is fewer people in the
29 workforce and the economy is growing; therefore
30 there should be more prosperity, more employment.
31 Correct?
32 A So it sets a puzzle because it looks like crime
33 should be going down, but it's going up.
34 Q Exactly. So -- so we've got this posit that these
35 extra men in China led to more crime, and yet the
36 first notion of these researchers who did it was,
37 well, that doesn't make sense, because you've got
38 fewer children because of the one child policy,
39 you've got fewer people for more work, there
40 should be more money to go around, et cetera,
41 et cetera; right?
42 A So we know that from other work on crime.
43 Q Other work on crime.
44 A So that's why he had the puzzle, that was why
45 because it's been previously empirically
46 established that controlling for other factors,
47 these things tend to lead to less crime.
95
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 Q Okay. Well, let's stick with China for now. And


2 then another reason they scratch their heads
3 you've advised us of here, and I'm looking at
4 page 44, and that is that limiting child numbers
5 through potent family planning led to a preference
6 for males. It would follow that where male
7 children are exceptionally valued, they would
8 benefit from heavy parental investment and one
9 should expect, if anything, that such children
10 would be less likely to commit crimes; right?
11 A Right.
12 Q And so the first two observations are the people
13 that aren't here to testify, and I understand how
14 that works. That's fair enough. But in any
15 event, their first two observations went against
16 your theory?
17 A I don't understand.
18 Q Well, their first two observations went against
19 the theory that the extra boys were the result of
20 the increased crime rate?
21 A Well, they were -- they use those facts to set up
22 a puzzle. I mean, if you think about polygyny
23 applying to this situation, there's less child
24 investment, so it would have a magnifying effect.
25 Q Well, let's keep polygyny out of it because this
26 data has nothing to do with polygyny, does it?
27 A Well, it's always important to emphasize the
28 comparative element.
29 Q Well, let me repeat my point. This data has
30 nothing to do with polygyny, does it?
31 A No.
32 Q And time frame of this China data is 1988 to 2004;
33 right?
34 A Right.
35 Q And you've advised that this Wright or this Edlund
36 adjusted for urbanization. Remember that?
37 A M'mm-hmm.
38 Q And this was the -- I think it's the largest
39 migration from farm to city in China's history,
40 from 1988 to 2004; right?
41 A As far as I know.
42 Q And I'm advised that it's in the millions of
43 people that went to cities in search of economic
44 betterment; right?
45 A Okay.
46 Q And I'm not a statistician or an anthropologist or
47 a sociologist, but I just can't imagine a worse
96
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 cauldron for unrest to occur.


2 A They controlled for immigration differences among
3 the provinces.
4 Q Well, I know, and it's a little sentence in the
5 report, and I've read the underlying report and
6 you're saying, well, they controlled for that.
7 They controlled for that. But you mean Edlund
8 controlled for that?
9 A That's right.
10 Q So Edlund thought the extra boys wouldn't be the
11 reason, for the two reasons we've discussed, for
12 increased crime, and you're saying he's adjusted
13 for the largest migration from farms to the city?
14 A Well, he's doing the stats, right, and so he's got
15 different provinces and he has the amount of rural
16 urban migration and he puts it in as a control
17 variable. It's the standard practice in an
18 econometrics.
19 Q And then I thought, and again I have no expertise,
20 but 1980 is Tiananman Square; right? Correct?
21 A Yes.
22 Q And the Economist magazine for 30 years has been
23 telling us about the Chinese government's use of
24 crime as a weapon against students and young
25 people to prosecute them and persecute them;
26 right?
27 A Okay. I'm not sure how that would affect the --
28 Q Well, the way it would affect it, sir, is it may
29 be -- who knows what is happening to crime stats
30 in China. Who knows the purpose of them, who
31 knows if they're increased, who knows if they're
32 being used politically, we just don't know.
33 A But the way an econometrician answers that
34 question is he says, well, unless you have a
35 reason to believe that those stats have been
36 monkeyed with in a way that would favour the
37 hypothesis of the economists who then use the data
38 later, they would have to have monkeyed with those
39 statistics in such a way that happens to give this
40 result.
41 MR. MACINTOSH: All right. That's a good time if it
42 works for you, My Lord?
43 THE COURT: Okay. Can we take 15?
44 MR. MACINTOSH: Yes, let me be responsive. I should
45 certainly end today if we took 15.
46 THE CLERK: Order in court. Court is adjourned for the
47 afternoon recess.
97
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 THE COURT: Okay. And Professor Henrich, please don't


2 discuss your evidence with anyone.
3
4 (WITNESS STOOD DOWN)
5 (AFTERNOON RECESS)
6
7 THE CLERK: Order in court.
8
9 JOSEPH HENRICH, a witness
10 for the AGBC, recalled.
11
12 THE COURT: Mr. Macintosh. Thank you.
13
14 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. MACINTOSH: (Continued)
15 Q So, Dr. Henrich, I want to leave Asia, so to
16 speak, and come to Canada, and ask you to get your
17 second affidavit in front of you.
18 A Okay.
19 Q And in your second affidavit, I want to go, in the
20 reply report, that is in your Exhibit A, I would
21 like you to turn, please, to page number 11.
22 A Exhibit A.
23 Q And what you should have there is the FLDS
24 Bountiful chart.
25 A Right.
26 Q And as I heard you speaking with Mr. Jones when
27 you were giving testimony with him, my note is you
28 said the only hard data we have in North America
29 is this, and you said this is all that you could
30 find. And as I understand it, this actually came
31 from Mr. Wickett, the counsel, for the FLDS to
32 Mr. Jones to you. You wouldn't know that whole
33 chain, but did it come from Mr. Jones to you?
34 A That's right.
35 Q All right. And also in chief you said this is the
36 only -- my note is that this is the only discrete
37 community in Canada. Did I get that right? When
38 you were talking about polygyny?
39 A That I'm aware of was what I said.
40 Q All right. And when we look at that, the
41 information from here, I mean, I don't know of
42 anywhere either and I'm suggesting this is the
43 most polygynous place in Canada. I'm suggesting
44 whatever the square mileage is of Bountiful, say
45 it's five square miles, it's the most polygynous
46 five miles in Canada. I mean, you don't know
47 anything different from that?
98
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 A No.
2 Q And in this polygynous centre of Canada then, so
3 to speak, we have 60 people who are married who
4 are monogamous; right?
5 A Right.
6 Q And we have 55 people who are married who are
7 polygynous?
8 A Right.
9 Q 15 -- obviously in the monogamous it's 30 men and
10 30 women, and in the polygynous it's 15 men and 40
11 women; right?
12 A Right.
13 Q And then the unmarried adults, 33 men, 22 women.
14 And so that -- and I know you can do almost
15 anything with statistics, I don't want to go too
16 far here, but I added up the unmarried adults and
17 the polygamous adults and there's 48 men and 66
18 women; right?
19 A I would have to do the addition, but I believe
20 you.
21 Q Well, I added 15 and 33 for men and --
22 A 48.
23 Q And I added 40 and 22 for women, so I got 48 men
24 and 62 women who are either polygamous adults or
25 unmarried adults. Either polygamously married or
26 unmarried adults; right?
27 MR. JONES: Not including single parents or widows.
28 MR. MACINTOSH:
29 Q Not including single parents or widows as
30 Mr. Jones just assisted; right?
31 A Right.
32 Q And then in this place in Canada where there's
33 this polygynous centre, so to speak, there are 30
34 men who married monogamously; right?
35 A That's right.
36 Q And certainly any man who leaves Bountiful, at
37 least as far as you know, is entitled to either be
38 single or to marry monogamously; right?
39 A Right.
40 Q Or to enter into a gay marriage; right?
41 A Of course.
42 Q And I take these numbers from the most
43 polygamously focussed, concentrated place in the
44 country, and I want to again have us look a little
45 bit at Professor Wu's numbers. And Mr. Jones
46 talked to you about some of those numbers, and
47 Exhibit 110, My Lord, is two pages that came in
99
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 through Professor Wu I think just the other day in


2 the courtroom.
3 THE COURT: Tab 4, Exhibit 113 as well.
4 MR. MACINTOSH: That is right, thank you.
5 Q And when we look at Canada, Mr. Jones put these
6 numbers to you and you said, well, my first
7 thought is a lot of these people will get married
8 and some of these people are common law. Do you
9 remember that?
10 A Right.
11 Q Now, and then he said, well, you know, let's just
12 back up and take these numbers at face value. And
13 you said, well, polygamy will still make it worse.
14 And polygyny. And so if we just look at these
15 numbers at face value, there's approximately
16 550,000 more men than women in Canada. At least
17 in the 2006 census. About 550,000 more men than
18 women who have never married; right?
19 A Right.
20 Q And according to the census data on page 2 of this
21 exhibit, the numbers are virtually the same, but
22 about 7 or 8,000 lower. This 550,000, over half a
23 million more men than women never married and not
24 common law in Canada; right?
25 A Right.
26 Q And I mean obviously you wouldn't call these
27 550,000 men lost boys, would you?
28 A No.
29 Q And you're not attributing this 550,000 men to
30 polygyny, are you?
31 A No, as I mentioned, the sex ratio at birth for
32 humans is 1.05.
33 Q I beg your pardon?
34 A The sex ratio for most societies that we know of
35 is 1.05.
36 Q And from Professor Wu's information, and we can
37 look it up if you wish, there are about a million
38 divorced men in Canada; right?
39 A Okay.
40 Q And his data was 905,000 in 2006? Do you accept
41 that?
42 A I accept that.
43 Q And so at least from that data there's 905,000 men
44 who do not have mates who once did? Fair enough?
45 A Okay.
46 Q And in BC alone his data says there are
47 approximately 10,000 newly divorced men each year.
100
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 Do you accept that data?


2 A Yes.
3 Q Do you accept that none of those numbers, 10,000
4 new divorced men in BC each year, you wouldn't of
5 course have any lost-boy analysis anywhere near
6 that number, would you?
7 A What do you mean? Many --
8 Q Well, it has nothing to do with polygyny whatever
9 is what I mean.
10 A Right. So there are going to be all kinds of
11 factors like number of years until you get married
12 because the age of first marriage is so high in
13 Canada that you're going to have a whole bunch of
14 men who will marry. And it's still the case that
15 90 percent of Canadians will get married in their
16 lifetime.
17 Q Yeah, and once everyone marries on this page,
18 there's 550,000 extra men?
19 A Right.
20 Q Now, with regard to young women or girls marrying,
21 do you know the legal ages in British Columbia for
22 young persons who marry with and without parental
23 consent?
24 A I'm not 100 percent sure, but I thought it was 16.
25 Q All right. What I am instructed from the law is
26 that it's 19 or over without consent of the
27 parents; between 16 and 19 you need your parent's
28 consent; all right? And -- and I don't want to
29 get into law with you obviously, but capacity to
30 marry is regulated by the Federal Government. I
31 mean, there could be a law that made it illegal to
32 marry monogamously or polygynously under 19,
33 couldn't there?
34 A Yes.
35 Q Now, in your book that you put up today, which is
36 Exhibit 113.
37 A I'm not sure where we are. Sorry.
38 Q No, I haven't got anywhere yet, but in this
39 Exhibit 113, this binder you've got.
40 A Okay.
41 Q If I have a question, it will be at tab 6. And
42 Mr. Jones read to you from our opening statement
43 as amicus from page 12 and page 13 of the opening
44 statement?
45 A Okay.
46 Q And he read to you from our paragraph 45?
47 A Right.
101
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Mr. Macintosh

1 Q And we spoke of it being statistically


2 meaningless, this pool of unmarried men?
3 A Right.
4 Q And you say, well, they misunderstood your
5 argument; right?
6 A That's right, yes.
7 Q I will just leave that. And then Mr. Jones's
8 second characterization of that paragraph was that
9 we were saying something along the lines that it
10 couldn't happen here, or something like that I
11 think was his phrase. Do you remember that?
12 A I do remember that.
13 Q And you said, oh well, as I heard you, you said
14 well, next thing you know, if I can start putting
15 words a little bit in your mouth, if you
16 decriminalize polygamy or polygyny, it's going to
17 be a destination for polygynists?
18 A It seems plausible to me.
19 Q Right. It seems plausible. And you realize that
20 in immigration you can formulate whatever position
21 a government wants on such issues without it being
22 a crime of going to prison?
23 A Of course, yes.
24 Q You understand that?
25 A M'mm-hmm.
26 Q And did you study the decriminalization of
27 homosexuality in 1969? Have you seen any data --
28 not data, but a lot of contemporary writings that
29 it would become a destination for homosexuals and
30 this would be terrible?
31 A I believe that.
32 Q You believe that that --
33 A I believe that people said that.
34 Q Right. Those are my questions, My Lord.
35 THE COURT: Thank you. It's 3:45. Why don't we -- do
36 you want to break for the day or -- we're
37 obviously going to finish tomorrow.
38 MR. JONES: We might not, My Lord, apparently,
39 depending on the length of the subsequent cross.
40 We might be able to finish today.
41 THE COURT: Oh.
42 MR. WICKETT: Sorry, My Lord, to be whispering here
43 while you're --
44 THE COURT: That's okay. You're allowed to.
45 MR. WICKETT: We were just discussing how long we were
46 going to be. I'm advised --
47 MS. PONGRACIC-SPEIER: I believe, My Lord, I will be
102
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Ms. Pongracic-Speier

1 about 15 minutes. So that would take us to


2 basically the end of the day.
3 THE COURT: Okay. And, Mr. Wickett, how long do you
4 think you'll be?
5 MR. WICKETT: It depends entirely on the questions that
6 are asked at the end of the day. I may have none
7 or a very brief period of cross-examination.
8 THE COURT: Okay.
9 MS. PONGRACIC-SPEIER: Press on?
10 THE COURT: Yes, if that's your wish. I'm sure the
11 professor would like to get away today if
12 possible.
13 THE WITNESS: Yes, that would be great.
14
15 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MS. PONGRACIC-SPEIER:
16 Q So, Professor Henrich, my name is Monique
17 Pongracic-Speier, and I am counsel for the British
18 Columbia Civil Liberties Association in these
19 proceedings, and it's in that capacity that I have
20 some questions to ask you. And I must admit more
21 than a little tongue in cheek, I'm almost dying to
22 ask you whether you have any actors you can refer
23 me to, because if I understand your evidence,
24 younger women, perhaps women younger than me, if
25 section 293 is struck down, will be drawn by
26 evolutionary forces in their psychology to group
27 up with alpha males, as my friend Mr. Macintosh
28 has said. But isn't it the case, in fact,
29 Dr. Henrich, that when you look at Canada as a
30 whole, we would be on common ground to say that
31 this is essentially a monogamous society?
32 A Certainly.
33 Q So the incidence of polygyny, which is the sole
34 manifestation of polygamy that you addressed
35 yourself to, yes?
36 A Well, I did mention that serial monogamy is the
37 same psychology, where men divorce their
38 40-something-year-old wives and marry 25-year-old
39 wives.
40 Q Okay. But in terms of varieties of plural
41 relationships and polygamy, you're solely focussed
42 on polygyny?
43 A Exactly.
44 Q Right. Okay. So in Canada polygyny will be
45 absolutely exceptional; right? It will be nowhere
46 near the norm?
47 A Right.
103
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Ms. Pongracic-Speier

1 Q Right. Okay. And I think it's also a fair


2 characterization of your evidence, is it not, that
3 you're not attempting to predict by your report
4 what would happen were decriminalization to come
5 about?
6 A Well, the problem is, is that there's no good data
7 to really address that question, so all we can do
8 is take the available evolutionary theory and what
9 we know from studying other places where human
10 history and whatnot and make some speculations.
11 Q Right. And so that's exactly what you're doing.
12 You're speculating; right?
13 A That's right.
14 Q Right. So this is not a predictive theory that
15 you've laid out; it's simply your speculation
16 based on the model that you've posited and the
17 data that you've got?
18 A So we developed a model, we did a lot of tests of
19 it, it seemed to pass the tests, and then the
20 question is will it predict, and we may or may not
21 get to find out if I'm right.
22 Q Right. Okay. We may or may not find out, and in
23 fact your bottom line is it's speculation?
24 A That's right.
25 Q That's fair to say; right?
26 Okay. Now, would you agree that Canada is a
27 country and a society that has some very well
28 entrenched legal institutions that support and
29 promote human rights?
30 A Absolutely.
31 Q That's common ground. And in Canada the State
32 takes certain steps to promote the ethos of human
33 rights that we have here. And would you also
34 agree, and you'll need to say yes or no, that in
35 this province, for example, the provincial
36 government takes certain steps to promote its
37 ethos of human rights respect?
38 A That's my impression for sure.
39 Q And same thing with respect to the flourishing of
40 children?
41 A Yes.
42 Q We invest a lot in this country in trying to make
43 sure that Canadian children grow up healthy and
44 safe and can flourish; right?
45 A That's right.
46 Q All right. And would you also agree that the
47 impact of our laws, our social institutions, our
104
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Ms. Pongracic-Speier

1 political institution, that this is material to


2 try and predict what the impact would be of
3 decriminalization in Canada?
4 A Yes.
5 Q So you can't write this stuff out, can you?
6 A What do you mean?
7 Q It's going to matter that we have a strong legal
8 culture of respect for rights?
9 A What I would be very interested in is a specific
10 proposal that would say how that's going to upend
11 the dynamics that I predicted.
12 Q And so -- so I'm not sure I understand your
13 answer, Doctor. I mean, either this is relevant
14 or this is not?
15 A Well, the way I take your question is that I can
16 imagine someone proposing an idea that the reason
17 why what you're saying won't happen is because of
18 these five policies we have in line, which are
19 going to short circuit the social dynamics which I
20 tried to put my finger on, so I need a competing
21 hypothesis, which I haven't heard yet.
22 Q Okay. Well, Doctor, this is of course a
23 courtroom, not a classroom. I don't have a
24 competing hypothesis to offer you because this is
25 not a seminar, but you will agree that these
26 institutions are relevant? Surely you will
27 concede that?
28 A I can imagine someone proposing that they're
29 relevant.
30 Q Okay. You can imagine that. And as a good
31 interdisciplinarian, would you also accept that in
32 determining the social impact or the impacts of
33 decriminalization, it would probably be relevant
34 to have some sociological theory and data applied
35 to the prediction?
36 A I try to do that.
37 Q But you're not a sociologist.
38 A Well, in my answers to some of the questions
39 earlier, I mean, this is a body of theory which
40 makes predictions about sociology. It happens to
41 have its origins in evolutionary biology. So the
42 answer to your question is no, I'm not a
43 sociologist, but I've written, published many
44 papers on -- topics of interest to sociologists.
45 Q Right. But you're not a political sociologist.
46 You don't study the grand structures of society.
47 You're interested in evolutionary psychology?
105
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Ms. Pongracic-Speier

1 A No, that's false. I have published papers on the


2 evolution of social classes. I have published
3 papers on the evolution of social institutions.
4 I've written about the evolution of ethnic groups.
5 Q All right. Well, let's get back, though, to the
6 topic that's at hand, though. Your report does
7 not include as one of the variables these social
8 institutions and these legal institutions that you
9 have conceded are relevant in terms of the impact
10 of decriminalization?
11 A Well, I would need you to be more specific,
12 because in many of the analysis we included things
13 like equality and democracy. For example, in the
14 studies of gender power, they include a democracy
15 variable. Measures of development, things like
16 infant mortality, they are all in the regressions.
17 So you would need to tell me which of the kinds of
18 institutions that you are sort of vaguely
19 referring to we didn't account for.
20 Q Okay. So you would depend on a regression
21 analysis that you have controlled for these
22 factors?
23 A I mean, that's the way economists would test this
24 stuff. I'm certainly open to other kinds of
25 empirical data sources.
26 Q Right. And it's on that basis, Dr. Henrich, that
27 I assumed that you reach your operative
28 assumption, which is the notion that, all other
29 things being equal, if polygamist unions are
30 available, there will be men who will strive
31 towards them and there will be women and females,
32 possibly girls, who accede to them, and this is
33 going to lead to the plausibility, right, of
34 increased polygyny?
35 A That's correct.
36 Q But the fact of the matter is that all other
37 things are not equal in Canada, are they?
38 A Well, what I'm -- what I tried to convey before,
39 is that one of the reasons I leaned heavily on
40 some regressions and I was more sceptical of other
41 sources of data is because I'm worried about
42 exactly the issue that you're putting your finger
43 on, which is that there are all kinds of things
44 related to economic development, to how strong is
45 the democratic institutions, that other people
46 have attempted to include in their analysis. And
47 even when you put these in, you still get the same
106
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Ms. Pongracic-Speier

1 answer. Now, if you're saying that there are


2 things that they didn't think of and that I
3 haven't thought, then that may well be correct.
4 Q Okay. Well, let's just focus on Canada. Let's
5 focus on a highly democratic, highly
6 rights-respecting culture in Canada, right, that
7 would lead to all other things not being equal in
8 terms of what is likely to happen if polygamy is
9 decriminalized in this country; correct?
10 A I mean, I feel like I want to say yes to you, but
11 the analysis are trying to deal with that. So
12 yeah, there could be something we didn't think of.
13 There's always other things that may have not been
14 accounted for.
15 Q Right. And just as a matter of the way our
16 society is now and the fact it's highly monogamous
17 and we have multiple institutions, political,
18 legal, religious, social, that support monogamy.
19 We have no reason to believe there's going to be a
20 leap to polygyny, do we?
21 A Well, let me just refer you to that sex ratio
22 data. So among the developed countries, changes
23 in sex ratio affect women's empowerment
24 independent of all these different things of
25 institutions. So sex ratio -- and that includes
26 Norway and Sweden, which are all well above Canada
27 in terms of their development on the UN index.
28 Q Right. So is it your evidence, Dr. Henrich, that
29 if polygyny were decriminalized in Canada and that
30 our evolutionary impulses in terms of our
31 evolutionary psychology starts to take over, that
32 Canadian women are going to start to abandon the
33 rights that they now have and that we're going to
34 slide backward?
35 A Well, I think it's possible that some women may be
36 willing to be the second wife of someone. With
37 the first wife still there.
38 Q Right. So some women may make these choices, but
39 it's not going to lead to the downfall of a
40 culture of equality, is it?
41 A Well, certainly not in the short term; right? So
42 one of the problems with our thinking is we tend
43 to think, well, this couldn't happen tomorrow, it
44 couldn't happen next week, it couldn't happen in
45 10 years. But if your estimates project 50 years,
46 it doesn't seem implausible that we could lose
47 ground on gender equality in 50 or 100 years.
107
Joseph Henrich (for AGBC)
Cross-exam by Ms. Pongracic-Speier

1 Now, I'm speculating, right, so I'm not --


2 Q Right. You're speculating. So in your
3 speculation you would speculate that Canadian
4 women would, if polygamy were decriminalized,
5 start to backtrack on the rights that they fought
6 so hard to win through the 20th century?
7 A And we see that when we look at the cross-national
8 studies of the developed countries.
9 MS. PONGRACIC-SPEIER: And I put it to you,
10 Dr. Henrich, that in Canada that is entirely
11 implausible. Thank you. Those are my questions.
12 THE COURT: Thank you. Mr. Wickett?
13 MR. WICKETT: I wish to save us all the trouble of
14 coming back tomorrow. I have no questions,
15 My Lord.
16 THE COURT: Thank you. Any redirect?
17 MR. JONES: Nothing in redirect.
18 THE COURT: Thank you very much. You're excused now.
19 Thank you very much. We don't have anything
20 further.
21 MR. JONES: We don't. Dr. Henrich was originally
22 scheduled for two days. I appreciate everybody's
23 efforts in keeping it shorter. There is a
24 possibility that we could line up some videos, but
25 given what we were talking about earlier, that
26 might be difficult as to which ones. So we're in
27 Your Lordship's hands, but I think we may have a
28 day off.
29 MR. MACINTOSH: I'll reluctantly agree with my friend.
30 THE COURT: Okay. Thank you. And we're sitting on --
31 not till Tuesday.
32 MR. JONES: I believe Monday for Dr. Beaman.
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108
Certification

1 THE COURT: Dr. Beaman on Monday. Good. Thank you


2 very much.
3 THE CLERK: Order in court. Court is adjourned to
4 December 13, 2010, at 10:00 a.m.
5
6 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 4:00 P.M.)
7
8 I, SPENCER J. CHAREST, OFFICIAL REPORTER
9 IN THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA,
10 DO HEREBY CERTIFY:
11
12 THAT THE PROCEEDINGS WERE TAKEN DOWN BY
13 ME IN SHORTHAND AT THE TIME AND PLACE HEREIN
14 SET FORTH AND THEREAFTER TRANSCRIBED, AND THE
15 SAME IS A TRUE AND CORRECT AND COMPLETE
16 TRANSCRIPT OF SAID PROCEEDINGS TO THE BEST OF
17 MY SKILL AND ABILITY.
18
19 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I HAVE HEREUNTO
20 SUBSCRIBED MY NAME THIS 28TH DAY OF JANUARY
21 2011.
22
23
24
25 ______________________
26 SPENCER J. CHAREST
27 OFFICIAL REPORTER
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