Abstract
Across taxa, strength and size are elementary determinants of relative fighting capacity; in species with complex behavioral repertoires, numerous additional factors also contribute. When many factors must be considered simultaneously, decision-making in agonistic contexts can be facilitated through the use of a summary representation. Size and strength may constitute the dimensions used to form such a representation, such that tactical advantages or liabilities influence the conceptualized size and muscularity of an antagonist. If so, and given the continued importance of physical strength in human male-male conflicts, a man’s own strength will influence his conceptualization of the absolute size and strength of an opponent. In the research reported here, male participants’ chest compression strength was compared with their estimates of the size and muscularity of an unfamiliar potential antagonist, presented either as a supporter of a rival sports team (Study 1, conducted in urban California, and Study 2, conducted in rural Fiji) or as a man armed with a handgun (Study 3, conducted in rural Fiji). Consistent with predictions, composite measures of male participants’ estimates of the size/strength of a potential antagonist were inversely correlated with the participant’s own strength. Therefore, consonant with a history wherein violent intrasexual selection has acted on human males, a man’s own physical strength influences his representations of potential antagonists.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For this test to be meaningful, the stimulus items must be recognizable to participants. Although we did not systematically measure such familiarity, on the basis of extensive immersion in the local culture, MG estimates participants’ ranked degree of familiarity with these items as (1) saw; (2) gun; (3) drill; (4) stapler; (5) caulking gun. Handsaws are common in Fijian villages and are integral to all house building. Guns are rare in Fiji, and absent from villages, but they are common in the few action movies that villagers have seen on DVD (such a movie might be played once or twice a month on a weekend night when a generator is running at the house of one of the few villagers with a TV and DVD player). Drills are occasionally used by government workers constructing schools and similar buildings in the villages and are used at the lone tourist resort on the island (1.5 h walk from the villages), where village men are sometimes employed; the latter is also true of staplers and caulking guns.
The stimuli used in Study 3 were taken from Fessler, Holbrook, and Snyder (2012). Consistent with the thesis that relative formidability is represented using the dimensions of size and strength, Fessler et al. (2012) found that, among U.S. Internet users, men holding either guns or a knife were conceptualized as larger and more muscular than men holding tools. The departure of our results in this regard from those of the previous paper likely stems from the marked difference in sample sizes between the two investigations, as all of the previous samples were more than 10 times larger than our present sample.
By the same token, we are not proposing that strategic self-deception occurs—we do not suggest that strong men harbor illusions (whether adaptive or otherwise) regarding the real physical properties of other men. Rather, we argue, conceptualized muscularity and conceptualized bodily size are the dimensions of a mental image that captures many properties, be they somatic, social, or technological, of the antagonist relative to the self. Strong men do not conceptualize the target differently than do weak men because the former are deluded; rather, they do so because they possess a tactical asset—their strength—that the latter do not.
Although in the present studies only nonsignificant trends linked the independent variable of interest (own strength) with the conceptualized height/size of the target individual, much of the prior work reviewed in this paper reports expected correlations between relative formidability and the conceptualized height/size of the target.
References
Ache Dias, J., Wentz, M., Külkamp, W., Mattos, D., Goethel, M., & Borges Júnior, N. (2012). Is the handgrip strength performance better in judokas than in non-judokas? Science & Sports, 27(3), e9–e14. doi:10.1016/j.scispo.2011.10.005.
Amtmann, J., & Berry, S. (2003). Strength and conditioning for reality fighting. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 25(2), 67–72.
Archer, J. (2007). Physical aggression as a function of perceived fighting ability among male and female prisoners. Aggressive Behavior, 33(6), 563–573.
Archer, J. (2009). Does sexual selection explain human sex differences in aggression? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(3–4), 249–266.
Archer, J., & Benson, D. (2008). Physical aggression as a function of perceived fighting ability and provocation: An experimental investigation. Aggressive Behavior, 34(1), 9–24.
Archer, J., & Thanzami, V. (2007). The relation between physical aggression, size and strength, among a sample of young Indian men. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(3), 627–633.
Archer, J., & Thanzami, V. (2009). The relation between mate value, entitlement, physical aggression, size and strength among a sample of young Indian men. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(5), 315–321.
Barrett, H. C. (2005). Adaptations to predators and prey. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 200–223). Hoboken: Wiley.
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B. F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the Southern culture of honor: An “experimental ethnography.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 945–960.
Collier, T., Johnson, A. L., & Ruggiero, J. (2012). Aggression in mixed martial arts: An analysis of the likelihood of winning a decision. In R. T. Jewell (Ed.), Violence and aggression in sporting contests (pp. 97–109). New York: Springer.
Duguid, M. M., & Goncalo, J. A. (2012). Living large: The powerful overestimate their own height. Psychological Science, 23(1), 36–40.
Ellis, L. (1995). Dominance and reproductive success among nonhuman animals: A cross-species comparison. Ethology and Sociobiology, 16(4), 257–333.
Felson, R. B. (1996). Big people hit little people: Sex differences in physical power and interpersonal violence. Criminology, 34(3), 433–452.
Fessler, D. M. T. (2011). Twelve lessons (most of which I learned the hard way) for evolutionary psychologists. In X. T. Wang & Y. J. Su (Eds.), Thus spake evolutionary psychologists (pp. 281–293). Beijing: Peking University Press.
Fessler, D. M. T., & Haley, K. J. (2003). The strategy of affect: Emotions in human cooperation. In P. Hammerstein (Ed.), The genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation (pp. 7–36). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fessler, D. M. T., & Holbrook, C. (2013). Friends shrink foes: The presence of comrades decreases the envisioned physical formidability of an opponent. Psychological Science, 24(5), 797–802.
Fessler, D. M. T., & Holbrook, C. (2013b). Bound to lose: Physical incapacitation increases the conceptualized dimensions of an antagonist. PLoS ONE, 8(8), e71306, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071306.
Fessler, D. M. T., & Machery, E. (2012). Culture and cognition. In E. Margolis, R. Samuels, & S. Stich (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of cognitive science (pp. 503–527). New York: Oxford University Press.
Fessler, D. M. T., Holbrook, C., & Snyder, J. K. (2012). Weapons make the man (larger): Formidability is represented as size and strength in humans. PloS One, 7(4), e32751. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032751.
Fessler, D. M. T., Tiokhin, L., Holbrook, C., Gervais, M., & Snyder, J. K. (2014). Foundations of the crazy bastard hypothesis: Nonviolent physical risk-taking enhances conceptualized formidability. Evolution and Human Behavior, 35, 26–33.
Fox, E., Griggs, L., & Mouchlianitis, E. (2007). The detection of fear-relevant stimuli: Are guns noticed as quickly as snakes? Emotion, 7(4), 691.
Frederick, D. A., & Peplau, L. A. (2007). The UCLA Body Matrices II: Computer-generated images of men and women varying in body fat and muscularity/breast size to assess body satisfaction and preferences. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Memphis, TN.
Gallup, A. C., White, D. D., & Gallup, G. G., Jr. (2007). Handgrip strength predicts sexual behavior, body morphology, and aggression in male college students. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(6), 423–429.
Gallup, A. C., O’Brien, D. T., White, D. D., & Wilson, D. S. (2010). Handgrip strength and socially dominant behavior in male adolescents. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(2), 229–243.
Galperin, A., & Haselton, M. G. (2012). Error management and the evolution of cognitive bias. In J. P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, & C. Sedikedes (Eds.), Social thinking and interpersonal behavior (pp. 45–64). New York: Psychology Press.
Gervais, M. M. (2013). Structures of sentiment: Mapping the affective bases of social relationships in Yasawa, Fiji. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
Henrich, J., & Henrich, N. (2014). Fairness without punishment: behavioral experiments in the Yasawa Island, Fiji. In (J. Ensminger and J. Henrich, eds.), Experimenting with social norms: Fairness and punishment in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Available online at https://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/ensminger/13521-09_CH09_4thPgs.pdf.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83.
Hess, N., Helfrecht, C., Hagen, E., Sell, A., & Hewlett, B. (2010). Interpersonal aggression among Aka hunter-gatherers of the Central African Republic. Human Nature, 21(3), 330–354.
Holbrook, C., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2013). Sizing up the threat: The envisioned physical formidability of terrorists tracks their leaders’ failures and successes. Cognition, 127(1), 46–56.
Holbrook, C., Fessler, D. M. T., & Navarrete, C. D. (n.d.). Stature or danger? Racial stereotypes influence the conceptual links between threat, social status, and physical size. Manuscript under review.
Horswill, C. A. (2009). Making weight in combat sports. In R. Kordi, N. Maffulli, R. R. Wroble, & W. A. Wallace (Eds.), Combat Sports Medicine (pp. 21–39). Springer: New York.
La Bounty, P., Campbell, B. I., Galvan, E., Cooke, M., & Antonio, J. (2011). Strength and conditioning considerations for mixed martial arts. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 33(1), 56–67.
Langner, O., Dotsch, R., Bijlstra, G., Wigboldus, D. H. J., Hawk, S. T., & van Knippenberg, A. (2010). Presentation and validation of the radboud faces database. Cognition & Emotion, 24(8), 1377–1388.
Levine, F. M., & De Simone, L. L. (1991). The effects of experimenter gender on pain report in male and female subjects. Pain, 44(1), 69–72.
Morgan, M. H., & Carrier, D. R. (2013). Protective buttressing of the human fist and the evolution of hominin hands. Journal of Experimental Biology, 216(2), 236–244.
Muñoz-Reyes, J. A., Gil-Burmann, C., Fink, B., & Turiegano, E. (2012). Physical strength, fighting ability, and aggressiveness in adolescents. American Journal of Human Biology, 24(5), 611–617.
Petersen, M. B., Sznycer, D., Sell, A., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2013). The ancestral logic of politics: Upper body strength regulates men’s assertion of self-interest over economic redistribution. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1098–1103.
Price, M. E., Dunn, J., Hopkins, S., & Kang, J. (2012). Anthropometric correlates of human anger. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(3), 174–181.
Puts, D. A. (2010). Beauty and the beast: Mechanisms of sexual selection in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31(3), 157–175.
Sell, A., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Sznycer, D., Von Rueden, C., & Gurven, M. (2009a). Human adaptations for the visual assessment of strength and fighting ability from the body and face. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276(1656), 575–584.
Sell, A., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2009b). Formidability and the logic of human anger. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 106(35), 15073–15078.
Sell, A., Bryant, G. A., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Sznycer, D., Von Rueden, C., Krauss, A., & Gurven, M. (2010). Adaptations in humans for assessing physical strength from the voice. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1699), 3509–3518.
Sell, A., Hone, L. S. E., & Pound, N. (2012). The importance of physical strength to human males. Human Nature, 23(1), 30–44.
Třebický, V., Havlíček, J., Roberts, S. C., Little, A. C., & Kleisner, K. (2013). Perceived aggressiveness predicts fighting performance in mixed-martial-arts fighters. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1664–1672.
Watkins, C. D., Fraccaro, P. J., Smith, F. G., Vukovic, J., Feinberg, D. R., DeBruine, L. M., & Jones, B. C. (2010). Taller men are less sensitive to cues of dominance in other men. Behavioral Ecology, 21(5), 943–947.
Yap, A. J., Mason, M. F., & Ames, D. R. (2013). The powerful size others down: The link between power and estimates of others’ size. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 591–594.
Young, R. W. (2003). Evolution of the human hand: the role of throwing and clubbing. Journal of Anatomy, 202(1), 165–174.
Young, S. G., Brown, C. M., & Ambady, N. (2012). Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli. Cognition and Emotion, 26(5), 927–933.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Award #FA9550-10-1-0511. We thank Juliette Gerardo and Joji Rayasidamu for assistance with data collection, and the villagers of Yasawa Island, Fiji, for their participation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fessler, D.M.T., Holbrook, C. & Gervais, M.M. Men’s Physical Strength Moderates Conceptualizations of Prospective Foes in Two Disparate Societies. Hum Nat 25, 393–409 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-014-9205-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-014-9205-4