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Thursday, December 03, 2009

This must be a joke... please tell me this is a joke

Nature's laws of shopping: Men hunt, women gather
University of Michigan psychologist Daniel Kruger has found that how we shop has an awful lot to do with how we once found our food. Men hunt. Women gather. Conjugal chaos ensues.
[...]
As a scientist, he refused to do the sensible thing – shrug his shoulders. He wanted to know the reason. He combed over studies of aboriginal tribes and did a battery of tests on student volunteers. The results will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology.

Kruger found that our habits haven't changed. Our environment and our goals have.

In prehistory, women gathered or foraged for food. This kept them close to home, performing a daily, intensive and social activity. A good memory, a keen eye and a lot of patience when choosing help make a good gatherer.

Men hunted for meat. This was an intermittent, asocial activity that earned them prestige only through the biggest catches. Short bursts of energy were followed by long periods of sitting around waiting for women to bring in the harvest.

There are so many things wrong with this article, I don't even know where to begin.