Women, Pain, and Altruism.

"Women feel the pain for their best friend" New Scientist 5th May 2007 (p. 21)

Yesterday I read an article in the New Scientist describing a type of experiment that I had actually suggested some seven or eight years ago in Chapter 9, or possibly Chapter 10, I can't remember and can't bother to check. The experiment had volunteers enduring pain by squatting in what I suppose the American military would call a "stress position" for as long as they could in order to earn a benefit for a relative, friend, or charity. The research was of course nothing to do with pain which was my interest, in connection with the anti-libidinal capability, it was investigating altruism. Unsurprisingly, it found that people held out longer than the benefit went to a closer relative than to a charity. There was a difference found between the altruism of women and men. Women, it seemed, were willing to endure more pain for best friends than they would for cousins, men on the other hand put all family members ahead of friends. It seems also that in the altruism stakes, women treated all relatives more equally than men did and researchers suggested that this was because, again that hoary chestnut in my view, women tend to move away from their families. But to be fair to them they also suggested it could be because females are just more social. No comment on what it tells us about any male tendency to form alliances as in hunting groups, which surely would require this kind of altruism! And no interest at all apparently in why volunteers were willing to endure unnecessary pain for the benefit of unrelated researchers. Not that the article called them volunteers so I suppose they might have been students or others with some unknown connection, though it does say they were from various cultural backgrounds.