Study: Men's Biceps Predict Their Political Ideologies (opens in new tab)

> (...) it is a fitness error for weaker contestants to attempt to seize resources when they cannot prevail and for stronger ones to cede what they can cost-effectively defend

I call bullsh* on that one.

How can biceps circumference relate so strongly with evolution when nowadays bulging muscle is largely a result of gym training and nutrition (which, btw, costs money, biasing this study even further)?

I would say it's more about ego relating to muscle mass than the other way around. Egotistical rich men are more likely to be focused on their appearance and willing to turn into gym rats.

Or, biceps and support for redistribution are both correlated to something else, the far more likely and simpler explanation.

Why not link them the other way? The article claims that individuals who are stronger physically will try to claim socio-political highground, but it seems much more realistic to me to observe this data and say that people who aren't as competitive or interested in gaining from others don't have the bent to exercise their biceps.

A better experiment for this hypothesis would be to take these original subjects and have some of them adopt an exercise system and others to abandon one. Then test if ideologies actually change as a result of physical strength.

Lets see, amongst the poor, blue collar workers (doing manual labour) tend to be more conservative. Amongst the wealthy, feelings of entitlement are correlated with time to go to the gym. Evolutionary psychologist: if you keep publishing nonsense like no one will take your field seriously.

These nerds have never thrown a punch if they think bicep size is responsible for fighting ability.

Journalists really like substituting 'correlated with' with 'predict'...

I have to wonder if the biceps size is correlated with something like geography, which in turn is correlated with political affiliation.

Maybe I missed it, but I did not see a sample size. Without this, the study is meaningless - the odds of a correlation between two variables each with two possibilities is not that improbable (i.e. flipping two coins and hitting heads both times in one group, and tails in the other group, with 20 percent error).

N.B. the headline does not match the original article

better:

'men's biceps predict economically rational self-interest'