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The Pros and Cons of Polygamy

An apples between two pears

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

In the state of nature, people were generally polygamous, as are most animals. With many animals, the male leaves the female soon after copulating and long before any offspring are born. A male bear is liable to kill and eat any bear cub that it encounters, even if the cub happens to be its own.

On the other hand, over 90 per cent of avian species are socially monogamous, as are the emperor penguin, the prairie vole, and the red-backed salamander. The flatworm Schistosoma mansoni, one of the major agents of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis (bilharzia), is monogamous in its male-female pairings within the human body—challenging the common prejudice that monogamy is more sophisticated, or ‘higher order’, than polygamy. There may be quite a bit of romance going on in the restaurant of your gut.

According to genetic studies, it is only relatively recently, around 10,000 years ago, that monogamy began to prevail over polygamy in human populations. A rise in monogamous unions may have been tied to the development of sedentary agriculture, helping to maintain land and property within the same narrow kin group.

Polygamy may enable a male to sire more offspring, but monogamy can, in certain circumstances, represent a more successful overall reproductive strategy. By sticking with the same female, a male can be more or less sure that the female’s offspring are also his, and protect them from being killed by male rivals intent on returning the female to fertility (breastfeeding being a natural contraceptive).

Historically, most cultures that permitted polygamy permitted polygyny (a man taking two or more wives) rather than polyandry (a woman taking two or more husbands). In his first-hand account of the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar says that, among ancient Britons, ‘ten and even twelve men have wives in common’, particularly brothers, or fathers and sons—which sounds more like group marriage than polyandry proper.

Polyandry is typically tied to scarcity of land and resources, as, for example, in certain parts of the Himalayas, and serves to restrain population growth. If it involves several brothers married to the same wife (fraternal polyandry), it also protects the family’s land and assets from division.

In Europe, this preservation of patrimony was generally achieved through the feudal rule of primogeniture (‘first born’), still practised today among the British aristocracy, by which the eldest legitimate son inherits the entire estate (or almost) of both parents. Primogeniture has antecedents in the Bible, with Esau selling his ‘birthright’ to his younger brother Jacob. Being a firstborn, I’m all for it.

Polygamy Today

Today, most countries that permit polygamy—almost invariably in the form of polygyny—are countries with a Muslim majority or sizeable Muslim minority. In some countries, such as India, polygamy is legal only for Muslims. In others, such as Russia, it is illegal but not criminalised.

Under Islamic marital jurisprudence, a man can take up to four wives, so long as he treats them all equally. But while it is true that Islam permits polygyny, it does not require or impose it: in principle, marriage can only occur by mutual consent, and a bride is able to stipulate that her husband-to-be is not to take a second wife. Monogamy is by far the norm in Muslim societies, as most men cannot afford to maintain more than one family, and of those who can many would rather not. Still, polygyny remains common across much of West Africa, rooted in part in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which, for a long time, led to important gender imbalances in those regions.

Polygamy is criminalised across Europe and the Americas, as well as in China, Australia, and other countries. Even so, there are many instances of polygamy in the West, especially within immigrant communities and religious groups such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS Church) and other Mormon fundamentalists.

But why would a man want more than one wife in the first place, when many men wouldn’t want even one?

The Pros of Polygamy

A man who takes more than one wife satisfies more of his sexual appetites, signals high social status, and generally feels better about himself. His many children supply him with a ready source of labour, and the means, through arranged marriages, to create multiple, reliable, and durable economic, social, and political alliances. Polygyny may be costly, but in the long term it can make a rich man richer still.

Even in monogamous societies, powerful men often establish long-term sexual relationships with women other than their wives (called concubinage), although in this case the junior partners and the children born to them do not enjoy the same legal protections as the formal or ‘legitimate’ wife and children. The Sun King, Louis XIV of France, had several official and unofficial mistresses. His chief mistress at any one time carried the title of maîtresse-en-titre (‘official mistress’), and the most notorious one, Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan, bore him no fewer than seven children.

In some cases, a man—most famously Henry VIII of England—might get divorced to marry a much younger woman (serial monogamy), thereby monopolising the reproductive lifespan of more than one woman without suffering the social sanctions of polygamy.

If divorce has become so common, it is in part because people are living for much longer, whereas in the past death would have done the job of divorce. ‘Till death do us part’ means a great deal more today than it ever has.

Polygyny might even benefit the women involved, who may come to enjoy one another’s company, and share the burdens of housekeeping and childrearing. Younger wives may add to the status and standing of the first wife, while subtracting from her duties.

In times of war, with high male absenteeism and mortality, polygyny supports population growth and replenishment by ensuring that every female can find a mate.

So far, polygyny may seem an attractive proposition: more offspring and status for the husband; companionship and shared labour for the wives; and, under certain circumstances, demographic advantages for society. But things, of course, are not so simple.

The Cons of Polygyny

First and foremost, polygyny sanctions and perpetuates gender inequality, with co-wives officially and patently subordinated to their husband.

Women in polygynous unions tend to marry at a younger age, into a setup that is bound to foster jealousy, competition, and conflict, with instances of co-wives poisoning one another’s offspring in a bid to advance their own.

Although the husband ought in principle to treat his co-wives equitably, in practice he will almost invariably favour one over the others—typically the youngest, most recent one. Tensions may be reduced by establishing a clear hierarchy among the co-wives, or if the co-wives are sisters (sororal polygyny), or if they each keep a separate household (hut polygyny).

While polygyny may benefit the men involved, it denies wives to other men, especially young, low-status men, who, like all men, tend to measure their success by their manhood, that is, by the twin parameters of social status and fertility. With so little to lose or look forward to, these frustrated men are much more likely to turn to crime and violence, including sexual violence and warmongering—and it is perhaps telling that polygamy is practised in almost all of the twenty most unstable countries on the Fragile States Index.

These social inequalities are only aggravated by the brideprice, a payment from the groom to the bride’s family. Brideprice is a frequent feature of polygynous unions, and intended to compensate the bride’s family for the loss of a pair of hands. Divorce typically requires that the brideprice be returned, leaving many women with no choice but to remain in miserable or abusive marriages. If polygynous unions are common enough, a resulting shortage of brides inflates the brideprice, raising the age at which young men can afford to marry while incentivising families to hive off their daughters at the earliest opportunity, even at the cost of interrupting their education. Brideprice is often paid in cows, leading some young men to resort to cattle raids and other forms of crime. Gang leaders and warlords attract new recruits with the promise of a bride or an offer to cover their brideprice.

Polygyny also tends to disadvantage the offspring. On the one hand, children in polygynous families share in the genes of an alpha male (or, at least, an upper-class male) and stand to benefit from his protection, resources, influence, outlook, and expertise. On the other hand, their mothers are younger and less educated, and they are set to receive a divided share of their father’s attention, which may instead be directed at his latest wife, or at amassing resources for the next one. Children in polygynous families are also at greater risk of violence from their kin group, especially the extended family. Overall, infant mortality in polygynous families is significantly higher than in monogamous families.

The same arithmetic keeps returning. However wealthy or powerful the husband, some things cannot be multiplied: his time, his attention, his presence, his love… For the exceptional man with wealth, power, and desire, polygyny may offer advantages—but even for him, those advantages come at a price. The evolutionary appeal of having several mates is easy enough to understand. But several mates is not the same as several wives, hence what actually goes on.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into For Better For Worse, an unconventional exploration of romantic love, marriage, and lasting relationships. For a broader exploration of love, desire, jealousy, and the emotions that shape our lives, see Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.

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Every Theory of Laughter Explained—and Superseded

A gorilla and a human laughing

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

I’ve been searching for years for a unified theory of laughter. I still haven’t found one. Lol.

Philosophers and psychologists have proposed any number of explanations for why we laugh. We laugh because we feel superior, because tension has been released, because something is incongruous… Each theory explains something. None explains everything.

And that may be because laughter is more complicated than we think.

Is Laughter Good or Bad?

When looking for romance on dating sites and apps, people often ask for, or promise to offer, a good sense of humour (GSOH).

Today, we tend to think of laughter as a good thing, but historically, this has not always been the case. Laughter seldom features in Plato’s dialogues, and, when it does, it is usually in the mouths of sophists and fools. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates suggests that, to set a good example, heroes in myths and stories should never be portrayed as being overcome with laughter.

The Stoics, too, frowned upon laughter, as did, for many centuries, the monasteries. Even the mild Rule of St Benedict condemns laughter in the strongest terms, for example, in Chapter VI, Of Silence: ‘Coarse jests, and idle words or speech provoking laughter, we condemn everywhere to eternal exclusion.’

Nowadays, most people associate laughter with happiness, health, and a virtuous attitude. But if laughter were that innocent, it wouldn’t be so fun.

The Superiority Theory

The notion that laughter can overcome reason or corrupt moral character finds an echo in the superiority theory of laughter, according to which laughter is a way of raising oneself by putting others down.

The superiority theory is most closely associated with the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who conceived of laughter as ‘a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly’.

When we think of mediaeval mobs jeering at people in stocks, or, closer to our time, Candid Camera, we can see that Hobbes had at least half a point. But the superiority theory is unable to account for all cases of laughter, such as laughter arising from joy, surprise, or relief.

The Relief Theory

According to the relief theory of laughter, most often associated with Sigmund Freud, laughter represents a release of pent-up nervous energy.

Like dreams, jokes are able to bypass our inner censor, enabling a repressed emotion such as xenophobia (or, at least, the nervous energy associated with the repression) to surface—explaining why, at times, we can be embarrassed by our own laughter. By the same token, a comedian might raise a laugh by conjuring some costly emotion, such as admiration or indignation, and then suddenly puncturing it.

More flexible than the superiority theory, the relief theory is able to account for how we might use laughter as a form of release, or to tell or reveal some uncomfortable truth. Upon awakening on her deathbed to see her entire family around her, Nancy Astor quipped, ‘Am I dying, or is this my birthday?’ But not all laughter arises from a release of pent-up energy—not, for example, laughter at a pun or word play—and those who laugh the hardest at offensive jokes are not generally the most decorous or repressed of people.

The Incongruity Theory

Much more popular today is a third theory, the incongruity theory of laughter, associated with the likes of Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard, according to which the comedian raises a laugh, not by conjuring an emotion and then killing it, but by creating an expectation and then contradicting it.

In the Critique of Judgement, Kant shares a few jokes to illustrate his theory of laughter, for example:

A merchant returning from India to Europe with all his wealth in merchandise was forced to throw it overboard in a heavy storm, and grieved thereat so much that his wig turned grey the same night!

In the Poetics, Aristotle states that ‘the ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others…’ Leaning on Aristotle, Kierkegaard highlights that the violation of an expectation is the core not only of comedy but also of tragedy—the difference being that, in tragedy, the violation leads to pain or harm.

Possibly, it is not the incongruity itself that we enjoy, but the light that it sheds, in particular, on the difference between what lies inside and outside our heads. Kant compares the pleasure of laughter, the free play of thought, to the pleasure of music, the free play of sound, and to the pleasure of gambling, the free play of fortune.

Perhaps the only difference between the comedian, the psychologist, and the philosopher is that you can’t pretend to be a comedian.

The incongruity theory is arguably more basic than the relief and superiority theories. When someone laughs, our inclination is to search for an incongruity; and though we may laugh for superiority or relief, even then, it helps if we can pin our laughter on some real or imagined incongruity.

But although the incongruity theory takes us closer to a general theory, it struggles to explain why incongruity should produce laughter rather than, say, surprise, confusion, or mere indifference.

The Social Corrective Theory

In Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, the monk Jorge de Burgos commits a string of murders to prevent the sole surviving copy of Aristotle’s treatise on comedy (the lost second book of the Poetics), hidden in the abbey’s labyrinthine library, from ever coming to light. For Jorge, the book is dangerous, because laughter, once understood, could undermine the very foundations of religion and society.

After Aristotle, the first major philosopher to write a book specifically on laughter was Henri Bergson.

In On Laughter (1900), Bergson begins by making three observations:

  • Laughter is a human preserve. ‘Many philosophers have defined man ‘a laughing animal’, but they could also have said a ‘laughable animal’—for if another animal can make us laugh, this is only insofar as it reminds us of man.’
  • More than that, laughter is a social activity. Even when we laugh alone, it is because we have conjured up a social context, a gathering of ghosts—‘for laughter implies a certain complicity with others, whether real or imaginary.’
  • Emotion is the enemy of laughter, inasmuch as laughter presupposes a certain distance, a certain indifference, even if it is only momentary—and, in fact, manufacturing this distance can be one of the purposes of humour.

Life, wrote Horace Walpole, is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.

These, then, are Bergson’s conditions for laughter: a human dimension, a social aspect, and a detached attitude.

But what is laughter, all laughter, actually about? It is, says Bergson, about a kind of mechanical rigidity, either in body or mind.

Nature is full of vital energy and never exactly repeats itself, but we human beings tend to fall short, to fall into patterns and habits, to ossify, to lose ourselves to ourselves—and laughter is how we point this out to one another, how we up our collective game.

For example, we may laugh at one who falls into a hole through absentmindedness, or at one who constantly repeats the same gesture or phrase. More subtly, we may laugh at a pun or a literal interpretation of a figure of speech; or at a misunderstanding that arises from a scene so formulaic that it is able to belong at the same time to two completely independent series of events.

I would add that we may also laugh at, or from, an unusual or unexpected lack of rigidity, as, for instance, when we break a habit or have an original idea—although this kind of divine laughter, as I call it, may only arise out of the contrast with our customary rigidity.

Ultimately, says Bergson, we are laughable to the extent that we are a machine or an object, to the extent that we lack self-awareness, that we are invisible to ourselves while being visible to everyone else.

Thus, the laughter of others usually draws attention to our unconscious processes, to our modes or patterns of self-deception, and to the gap, or gulf, between our fiction and the reality. This gap is narrowest in poets and artists, who have to transcend themselves if they are to be worthy of the name.

Zen masters teach that it is much easier to laugh at ourselves once we have transcended our ego. At the highest level, laughter is the sound of the shattering of the ego. It is a means of gaining (and revealing) perspective, of rising beyond ourselves and our lives, of achieving a kind of immortality, a kind of divinity.

Bergson has taken us further than Hobbes or Freud. Laughter is no longer merely an expression of superiority or a discharge of nervous energy: it has become a mechanism by which human beings police rigidity and preserve adaptability. Still, Bergson’s theory cannot explain all laughter, such as the laughter of a baby or a primate.

Evolutionary Theory

Another way to understand laughter is to look at it like a biologist or anthropologist might.

Laughter is evolutionarily much older than language, and we share its precursors with other animals. Primates in particular produce laughing sounds when playfighting, play-chasing, or tickling.

As with human children, it seems that their laughter functions as a signal that the danger is not for real—which may be why characters such as Batman’s Joker, who send a misleading signal, are so unsettling.

Perhaps, then, the basic evolutionary meaning of laughter is extraordinarily simple: this is only play, or the danger is not real.

Derivative Uses

Most laughter is not directed at jokes, but at creating and maintaining social bonds. Humour is a social lubricant, a signal of acceptance and belonging.

It is also a way of communicating, of making a point emphatically, or conveying a sensitive message without incurring the usual social costs.

On top of that, it can be turned into a weapon, a sublimed form of aggression, serving, like antlers or plumes, to pull rank or attract a mate.

The subtlety and ambiguity involved is in itself a form of play, and we know that laughter is associated with stress reduction and other health benefits.

If laughter began as a signal of play or safety, it has, in human beings, evolved a number of other functions, none of which are mutually incompatible. Humour is shaped by culture and education, and, if people laugh differently in Berlin or Tokyo, imagine how differently they must have laughed in Ancient Greece or Ancient India.

The same may be true of complex, elaborated emotions such as Schadenfreude and, indeed, romantic love, which build on primitive mechanisms, or ‘basic emotions’. Evolution lays the foundations; culture builds the house.

Why Can’t I Stop Laughing?

This may be where the search for a unified theory begins to go wrong. Superiority, relief, incongruity, social correction, play, and bonding need not be rival explanations. They operate at different levels and, in many cases, answer different questions.

The incongruity theory is principally cognitive; the relief theory is psychological and physiological; the superiority theory is interpersonal; the social corrective theory is social; the play or danger theory is evolutionary; and theories of bonding and aggression are functional. If someone slips on a banana skin, several of these theories could provide an account of the ensuing laughter.

But laughter often admits of several accounts, and, in fact, the more accounts it admits of, the harder we may laugh, as our mind flits from one account to another. Next time you laugh hysterically, pay attention to this flitting and its cascading effect.

When the teacher asks you to tell the class why you were laughing, you’d have to be a genius to explain it.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.

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Why the Answer Is More Complicated Than It Seems

A lizard in a drawer
Some emotions are so ancient that we share them with lizards.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

One day, while holidaying in Mauritius, I opened a kitchen drawer to find a large lizard staring back at me. Before I had time to think, I jumped back and slammed the drawer shut. Only afterwards did I notice that my heart was racing and my body primed for action. But as soon as reason reasserted itself, the fear evaporated, leaving me with nothing more than a mildly inconvenient lizard problem—which, if memory serves, I chose to ignore.

The lizard’s reaction, of course, was just as swift, if not swifter. It darted for cover before either of us had had time to think. In that split second, human and reptile behaved in remarkably similar ways.

This encounter raises an intriguing question. Are some emotions so ancient and basic that they are shared across much of the animal kingdom?

An Ancient Idea

The idea that some emotions are more fundamental than others is an old one. The Book of Rites, one of the Confucian classics, identifies seven basic ‘feelings of men’: joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, liking, and disliking.

In the twentieth century, psychologists sought a more scientific answer. Paul Ekman proposed six universal emotions—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise—while Robert Plutchik proposed eight, arranged in opposing pairs.

The theory was simple and elegant. These emotions evolved because they solved recurring problems faced by our remote ancestors. Fear helped us escape danger. Disgust kept us away from disease. Anger enabled us to defend ourselves and our resources. Being evolutionarily ancient, these basic emotions are thought to be ‘hard-wired’: fast, automatic, and largely unconscious.

It’s an appealing idea—and Plutchik’s Wheel does look striking. But is it true?

Plutchik's WHeel
Plutchik’s Wheel

Is Fear the Most Basic Emotion?

The difficulty is that psychologists cannot even agree on the list. Some propose six basic emotions, others seven or eight, still others many more.

But there is one emotion on which almost everyone agrees: fear. Fear is found almost everywhere in the animal kingdom. A gazelle bolts before a lion. A cat startles at a loud noise. A lizard darts for cover. Before any of these creatures has had time to think, its body has already kicked in.

Fear, more than any other, may be the prototype of a basic emotion.

Beyond Fear

Other emotions are less straightforward. Take anger. We often become angry not simply because something unpleasant has happened, but because we believe we have been insulted, cheated, or treated unfairly. Those judgements involve much more than an unthinking reflex.

Someone pushes past you in a queue. If you assume they simply failed to notice you, you may feel only mild irritation. But if you conclude that they deliberately ignored you because they think they’re more important than you, you are much more likely to become angry. Same event. Different interpretation.

Even fear, perhaps the most basic of all emotions, can be triggered by beliefs and values that are themselves shaped by culture. Imagine waking up in a cold sweat, believing that you have slept through an important exam. Your panic has little to do with the examination itself, and everything to do with what the examination represents: success or failure, opportunity or disappointment, status, perhaps even self-worth. A lizard can fear a predator, but not an examination. The emotional machinery may be ancient, but what sets it in motion is often anything but.

With fear, culture often shapes the object of the emotion. With more complex emotions, it can shape the emotion itself. Schadenfreude (German, ‘harm-joy’)—the pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune—is not common to all peoples in all times.

Neither is romantic love, which seems to have emerged in tandem with the novel. In Madame Bovary, itself a novel, Gustave Flaubert tells us that Emma Bovary only found out about romantic love through ‘the refuse of old lending libraries’.

The Emotional Animal

The search for the basic emotions has taught us something important, even if it has failed to produce a definitive list.

Some emotions are so ancient that we share them even with birds, lizards, and fish, although what triggers them may be entirely different and shaped by our beliefs and values. Others depend increasingly upon language, memory, imagination, and culture.

Perhaps, then, the question is not Which emotions are basic?

It is How much of every emotion is basic?

The startle reflex, the racing heart, and the impulse to flee belong to our evolutionary inheritance. But what those responses are directed towards—and, in more complex emotions, even the emotions themselves—are increasingly shaped by language, culture, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Our emotions are at once among the oldest things about us—and among the newest.

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I explore the basic emotions and much more in Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.

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