Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  The section delineates the concept of the availability cascade, describing how public fears can escalate based on media amplification of a minor risk incident. It explains that heightened emotional responses to such events can trigger self-sustaining cycles where media coverage generates increasing public concern, leading to significant policy responses disproportionate to the actual risk. Kuran and Sunstein illustrate this dynamic through case studies like the Love Canal disaster and the Alar scare, demonstrating how emotional narratives shape collective perceptions and influence government action. These examples illuminate the dangers of allowing availability cascades to dictate policy priorities without careful scrutiny and highlight fundamental flaws in the decision-making processes surrounding perceived risks. This chapter explores how availability cascades and representativeness heuristics distort our assessment of risk and likelihood, illustrating the psychological mechanisms that lead to misjudgments in public perception and decision-making. In this chapter, Kahneman articulates the psychological phenomena of availability cascades and their consequences for public perception of risk. He argues that vivid media portrayals of rare events, particularly terrorism, evoke disproportionate fear and anxiety that overshadow statistical realities. For instance, he notes that despite the relatively low number of casualties from terrorist attacks compared to traffic deaths, the former receives far greater attention due to the emotional weight of media coverage. Drawing from the work of Paul Slovic, Kahneman introduces the concept of 'probability neglect,' where people prioritize emotional responses over rational assessments of risk frequency. He acknowledges the dual challenge policymakers face: balancing public concern with empirical risk data, thereby stressing that fear—whether rational or irrational—must be factored into public policy considerations. This section establishes the concept of availability cascades, particularly in the context of terrorism, illustrating how emotional resonance with vivid events can distort public perception of risks. Kahneman references the relatively low casualty rates from terrorist attacks compared to other hazards, like traffic accidents, yet emphasizes how relentless media coverage creates an exaggerated sense of threat. He invokes the work of Slovic and Sunstein to discuss “probability neglect,” highlighting how public fear can overshadow statistical likelihoods, leading to misallocations of resources in public policy. As a mediator between expert opinion and public sentiment, Kahneman stresses the importance of acknowledging irrational fears when crafting policy decisions, warning that attempts to exclude public emotions can often lead to policy rejection. This section underscores the essential dialogue between acknowledging real dangers and the emotional experiences that accompany them, advocating for a balanced approach in shaping risk management strategies.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We had to think fast to respond openly and transparently. In being willing to do this we built trust, confidence, and deep engagement with the team.” Said Verhun, a few weeks in, the executives found that they no longer were the only ones responding to queries. “Our doctors and team began to mentor each other and answer each other’s questions faster than we could read them in the chat. That told us that everybody was helping build solutions and helping to lead collectively to the goals the leadership team had identified for the organization. This was only possible because of the clarity provided up front and the unwavering guiding principles and values our entire team understood that we used to make decisions.” By midyear, FYidoctors clinics were opening back up and the company was reporting its best monthly results and growth in its twelve-year history. One need look no further than the decline of Yahoo for an example of how detrimental a lack of transparency can be to morale during uncertain times. Despite an optimistic outward appearance to investors, employees had begun doubting the company’s viability by the mid-2010s. According to New York Times interviews with Yahoo employees, leaders had embarked on a series of “stealth layoffs.” They called in a handful of people each week and fired them quietly. No one knew who would be safe or who would be gone next, and fear paralyzed many workers. The entire process was confusing and demoralizing to loyal employees who loved the company and believed in its platforms. “We all want to make as much impact as we can and leverage Yahoo’s existing strengths,” employee Austin Shoemaker said at the time, summing up the feelings of many loyal Yahoos. Finally, in March 2015, CEO Marissa Mayer told the staff at an all-hands event that the bloodletting was over. She even darkly joked that no one would be laid off that week. Yet shortly thereafter, more cuts began. Employees were well aware of how fierce Yahoo’s competition was. The company was also struggling with an industrywide drop in display advertising, not to mention a challenge in trying to excel at so many things—from news and sports to web searches and email. But employees interviewed said they wanted to face the hurdles as a cohesive team, even if that meant that some might have to depart the company for it to survive. While Mayer tried to hide layoffs behind the euphemism “remixes,” one employee told the New York Post : “I don’t think people want to be mollified. They want to be respected and trusted with facts so they can plan their lives, and also help.”

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Chapter 13 begins with a critical examination of availability bias, a cognitive phenomenon where individuals assess the frequency and significance of certain events based on how readily they can recall instances. Kahneman references a study by Schwarz that demonstrates this bias: students asked to generate more examples of assertive behavior rated themselves higher in assertiveness when they could list more instances. This paradox highlights that ease of retrieval can sometimes outweigh the actual content of memory, suggesting a flawed self-perception. Notably, when participants were informed that an external factor, such as background music, influenced their retrieval process, their evaluations of assertiveness shifted significantly, as they no longer equated lower fluency with lower ability. As the chapter progresses, it delineates the boundary between the intuitive judgments made by System 1 and the more deliberate assessments generated by System 2. Kahneman outlines how emotional involvement can disrupt the reliance on fluency as a heuristic; for instance, students with a family history of heart disease engaged more seriously with their task, allowing the content of their recalled instances to guide their assessments rather than the fluency of retrieval. This emphasizes how personal stakes can sharpen judgment, contrasting with those who were less personally invested and thus swayed by ease of recollection. Kahneman further connects availability bias to broader themes of emotion and risk perception based on the impactful research by Paul Slovic and others. He presents how media coverage influences public perception of risks, often leading to dramatic distortions in judgment. For example, after notable tragedies, such as earthquakes, people often increase precautions and insurance purchases, only to revert to complacency as media focus wanes and memories fade. The chapter culminates by illustrating how emotional reactions and the availability cascade—where heightened public concern can prompt significant governmental and societal responses—have resulted in both meaningful policy shifts and misguided overreactions to relatively minor risks. The section introduces availability bias as a cognitive phenomenon significantly impacting self-assessment, particularly in students when evaluating their assertiveness. Through experimental findings by Norbert Schwarz and colleagues, it illustrates that students who generate more examples of assertive behavior tend to rate themselves higher—a paradox that arises from ease of retrieval rather than actual assertiveness. The researchers explore conditions under which this bias might be reversed, noting that when participants are made aware of external influences such as background music affecting fluency in retrieval, their self-assessments are substantially altered. This underscores that judgments can be influenced more by contextual factors than by the content or number of recalled instances, revealing the complex interplay between cognitive expectation and emotional responses.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  In this section, Kahneman reflects on how societal perceptions of rare events are influenced by vivid imagery and sensational narratives that amplify the perceived risk. He cites the common cycle of risk perception, where initial exaggeration leads to fear, followed by neglect as the issue fades from public consciousness. The section serves to critique not only public concerns about rare natural disasters but also the broader implications of effective communication strategies required in discussing risks comprehensively. Kahneman underscores the importance of structured alternatives in discussions of risk to prevent misinterpretations based on emotionally charged recountings of rare events, advocating for informed, balanced representations of risks. This chapter explores how narrow and broad framing in decision-making influences investors' emotional responses and risk-taking behaviors, ultimately arguing for a strategic approach to risk management. In this chapter, Kahneman discusses the implications of narrow versus broad framing on investment decisions. He details an experimental study where participants' emotional responses to gains and losses were measured under different decision-making instructions. In the narrow-framing condition, participants made choices as if each decision stood alone, leading to heightened emotional responses during losses. In contrast, those in the broad-framing scenario, which encouraged them to think of investments as part of a larger portfolio, displayed lower emotional reactivity and an increased inclination to accept risks. This suggests that broad framing can alleviate the emotional burden of investing and encourage more prudent risk-taking. Kahneman then introduces the concept of risk policies that enable investors to streamline their decision processes and improve outcomes. Instead of facing each decision in isolation, he advocates for the adoption of established risk policies, such as minimizing the frequency of portfolio evaluations to reduce exposure to short-term fluctuations. He argues that rigid adherence to a well-thought-out policy allows investors to sidestep the emotional pitfalls of loss aversion, leading to greater financial prosperity over time. The chapter culminates in emphasizing the need for investors and decision-makers to formulate these risk policies, citing Richard Thaler's discussions with top executives to illustrate how collective risk acceptance can be advantageous. Furthermore, Kahneman asserts that mental accounting—how individuals categorize and track their financial resources—strongly influences behavior, often leading to decisions that reflect psychological scores rather than financial rationality. For investors, this results in the well-documented disposition effect, where individuals are more likely to sell winning stocks while holding onto losing ones, driven by emotional satisfaction and the desire to 'close accounts' with gains rather than losses. He concludes by noting that decision-makers must recognize their biases and actively counter them to align with rational economic principles and achieve better financial results.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  In this compelling section, Kahneman explains how goals serve as reference points that dictate behavior through their relationships with losses and gains. He illustrates that individuals often set conservative targets, reducing their effort once these goals are met, which can counter traditional economic logic. This effect is further exemplified through the analysis of New York cab drivers’ working patterns and performance in golf, where the aversion to negative outcomes—such as falling short of a par score—drives better performance. The research conducted by economists Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer shows that professional golfers perform better when attempting to avoid losses (missing par) than when attempting to achieve gains (making a birdie). Kahneman’s exploration of these examples clarifies how cognitive biases influence behaviors and economic decisions, highlighting the critical role of psychological factors in achieving or failing to meet designated goals. This section addresses how loss aversion results in a conservative bias that often favors the status quo over potential change. Kahneman articulates how established reference points govern negotiations, complicating consensus as concessions felt by one party are perceived as losses, while their counterparts view them as gains. This psychological imbalance leads to difficulties in reaching agreements, particularly in high-stakes situations or those involving reallocation of resources. Citing the behavior of territorial animals, he underscores how defenders are often more determined in conflicts than aggressors, a principle that also applies to human interactions in institutional reforms. Kahneman elucidates that loss aversion's conservative force manifests in personal and institutional settings, creating inertia that impedes progressive change while favoring established norms and routines. In this final section, Kahneman explores the perception of fairness in economic transactions, revealing how loss aversion influences societal judgments about equity. Through a series of studies conducted with colleagues, he showcases how behaviors that impose losses on individuals are deemed unfair by the public, even if rational economic theory suggests otherwise. Kahneman illustrates this with vivid examples, such as a price increase for snow shovels after a snowstorm, where consumer reactions highlight entrenched expectations based on previous reference points. The findings challenge standard economic models that overlook the weight of psychological perceptions in defining fairness, underscoring the significance of loss aversion in shaping economic policies and practices. This exploration emphasizes the moral dimensions entwined with economic decision-making, positioning loss aversion as a critical factor in understanding market behaviors and consumer reactions. This chapter examines how perceptions of fairness influence economic behavior, revealing that concerns about loss affect individuals and organizations in profound ways, often overriding strict self-interest.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  This section delves into the role of System 1, the intuitive part of the mind that continuously monitors the environment and generates assessments without deliberate effort. Kahneman discusses how System 1 evaluates threats and opportunities, influencing decision-making even in non-urgent situations. An example provided involves Alex Todorov's research on facial assessments, demonstrating how these rapid judgments about others—specifically their dominance and trustworthiness—can sway opinions and decisions, particularly in political contexts. This section underscores the evolutionary importance of these assessments while also highlighting their implications in modern voting behavior and social interactions. In this section, Kahneman describes the "mental shotgun" phenomenon where System 1 inadvertently computes more than just the relevant answer. This excess computation can lead to errors and inefficiencies in judgment, as demonstrated through various experiments. One experiment illustrated how irrelevant comparisons—such as word spellings—can slow down decision-making even when only sound recognition is required. The section emphasizes that while System 1's operations are essential for rapid assessments, the unintended consequences of these processes, such as invoking irrelevant information, can hinder accurate reasoning and prompt misguided judgments. Kahneman introduces the concept of substitution, whereby individuals resort to answering simpler heuristic questions when faced with challenging target questions. This cognitive shortcut is often unintentional and stems from the mental shotgun effect. By accepting the heuristic question, individuals provide answers that may lack the rigor necessary for sound judgment. Kahneman illustrates this with examples, emphasizing how affective responses can substitute for deeper analysis, potentially leading to significant errors in judgment. This process highlights the importance of recognition and caution when forming intuitions in complex scenarios. This chapter explores how cognitive shortcuts, such as substitution and heuristics, can lead to significant misjudgments in our reasoning processes, particularly in statistical interpretations and emotional assessments. Kahneman introduces the concept of the 'mental shotgun,' illustrating how intuitive responses often generate quick answers to complex questions by substituting easier ones. He discusses the impact of heuristics like the 3-D heuristic and mood heuristic, showing how emotions and perceptions can skew judgments. The chapter emphasizes the importance of recognizing these biases to avoid errors in judgment. Kahneman introduces the concept of the "mental shotgun," illustrating how intuitive responses often provide quick answers to complex queries by substituting more manageable questions. This mental process favors immediate emotional responses, allowing individuals to answer difficult questions without deep reasoning. For example, rather than evaluating a political candidate's policies critically, people might gauge their charisma instead. Kahneman elaborates on systems of cognition, where System 1 readily shares emotional impressions while System 2 is resistant to deeper analysis but often endorses these heuristic responses without scrutiny. This section accentuates how cognitive efficiency can lead to significant misjudgments by merging easy and complex queries.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Kahneman analyzes the phenomenon of overconfidence among corporate financial officers, highlighting a striking disconnect between their predictions and actual market behavior. Citing a comprehensive study revealing that CFO forecasts consistently lacked accuracy—with a correlation of less than zero—he underscores the inherent overconfidence with which these executives approach stock market predictions. This section reveals how, despite a demonstrated inability to forecast accurately, CFOs remain blissfully unaware of their limited predictive capabilities. Kahneman illustrates that this overconfidence breeds a false sense of security, leading to a cascade of unexpected outcomes labeled as “surprises.” He asserts that the prevalence of overconfidence within corporate decision-making can cause significant financial repercussions and underscores the necessity for a more informed approach that acknowledges inherent uncertainties in market predictions. This chapter examines the pervasive problem of overconfidence among experts and its implications for decision-making under uncertainty, proposing the premortem as a strategy to mitigate its effects. Kahneman explores how overconfidence among experts can lead to poor decision-making, particularly in high-stakes environments like finance and medicine. He discusses the societal biases favoring confidence over humility and introduces the premortem technique as a method to counteract overconfidence. In this section, Kahneman examines the societal and organizational norms that elevate overconfidence among experts, especially in finance. He illustrates this through a study indicating that CFOs who display excessive optimism regarding the S&P index are likely to engage in riskier behaviors, which can have detrimental effects on their companies. The discussion extends beyond finance as he references Nassim Taleb's insights on the dangers of a collective blindness to uncertainty that emerges from competitive pressures within professional environments. This section lays the groundwork for understanding how overconfidence contributes to decision-making failures, highlighting the importance of acknowledging uncertainty in high-stakes situations. Kahneman broadens his investigation of overconfidence to the medical field, illustrating the dangerous impacts it has on clinical decisions. He cites a striking study showing that physicians who were completely certain about their diagnoses were wrong 40% of the time upon autopsy review. This section explores the cultural expectation that clinicians must project confidence, which not only undermines their ability to accurately assess uncertainty but also places patients at significant risk. He argues that the prevailing norm discourages professionals from openly acknowledging their uncertainty, leading to misguided decisions that could be fatal. In this section, Kahneman introduces the concept of the "premortem," a technique developed by Gary Klein to counteract the detrimental effects of overconfidence in decision-making. The premortem involves envisioning a future failure and analyzing its causes prior to finalizing any decisions. Kahneman argues that this method permits organizations to identify hidden threats and counteract groupthink by legitimizing doubts and encouraging open discussion among team members. While not a cure-all, the premortem empowers groups to confront their biases, promoting a more balanced approach to risk assessment and decision-making. Kahneman examines how reference points influence decision-making, challenging traditional expected utility theory and introducing the principles of prospect theory that reveal the asymmetrical nature of risk perception.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  It took weeks to finally convince the leaders they were safe, but in one meeting North American President Mark Fields took a chance and admitted a new vehicle launch under his purview would be delayed. Other executives looked on nervously. Mulally said, “I could see it in people’s eyes that they thought doors would open up behind Mark and two large human beings would remove him. ‘Bye-bye Mark.’” Instead, Mulally began a round of applause and said, “Mark, thank you so much. That is great visibility.” Then he asked the group, “Is there anything we can do to help Mark out?” Within seconds, ideas were flying around the room. Said Mulally, the moment passed in the blink of an eye but changed everything. As he frequently told his leaders, “You have a problem; you are not the problem.” Method 4: Regularly Check In on ProgressWhile micromanaging is definitely to be avoided, we advise managers that they must keep good track of the progress their team members are making, and this is especially important for perfectionists. Leaders can help them understand that their work is going just fine and uncover procrastination or wrong turns, if that’s the case. A great example of creating a system for checking on progress is that of managers at SpaceX, who found a way to make faster decisions for their biggest client—NASA. Until recently, NASA sent a fax (seriously) whenever they had a query, and once a week SpaceX brought together a fifty-person team to address each question before sending responses back. Using collaborative technology, SpaceX has now given NASA direct visibility into each project so they can identify the SpaceX engineers who are working on which components. NASA can directly talk with those engineers and make decisions in real time. This collaboration has allowed SpaceX to cut its average wait time for defining product requirements by 50 percent and eliminate the costly weekly four-hour status meeting. The key in making check-ins less anxiety-inducing is to put more control of these conversations in the hands of employees. Ambiguity creates anxiety, so instead of subjective measures, use individual and team roadmaps to evaluate how people are coming on hitting their goals. Also, make check-ins regular. When they become an expected part of work life, versus surprise inspections, anxiety about reporting in is reduced substantially. Finally, when managers go out of their way to offer up support with problems or missed deadlines during check-ins—and they come from a place of understanding—it can help create a relationship where people know they will be held accountable, but in positive ways.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The Aché diet, for example, includes 78 different species of mammal, 21 species of reptiles and amphibians, more than 150 species of birds, and 14 species of fish, as well as a wide range of plants. 14 In addition to the reduced nutritional value of the agricultural diet, the diseases deadliest to our species began their dreadful rampage when human populations turned to agriculture. Conditions were perfect: high-density population centers stewing in their own filth, domesticated animals in close proximity (adding their excrement, viruses, and parasites to the mix), and extended trade routes facilitating the movement of contagious pathogens from populations with immunity to vulnerable communities. 15 When James Larrick and his colleagues studied the still relatively isolated Waorani Indians of Ecuador, they found no evidence of hypertension, heart disease, or cancer. No anemia or common cold. No internal parasites. No sign of previous exposure to polio, pneumonia, smallpox, chicken pox, typhus, typhoid, syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, or serum hepatitis. 16 This is not as surprising as it may seem, given that almost all these diseases either originated in domesticated animals or depend upon high-density population for easy transmission. The deadliest infectious diseases and parasites that have plagued our species could not have spread until after the transition to agriculture. Table 3: deadly diseases from domesticated animals 17 HUMAN DISEASE ANIMAL SOURCE Measles Cattle (rinderpest) Tuberculosis Cattle Smallpox Cattle (cowpox) Influenza Pigs and birds Pertussis Pigs and dogs Falciparum malaria Birds The dramatic increases in world population that paralleled agricultural development don’t indicate increased health, but increased fertility: more people living to reproduce, but lower quality of life for those who do. Even Edgerton, who repeatedly tells the longevity lie (Foragers’ “lives are short—life expectancy at birth ranges between 20 and 40 years …”), has to agree that, somehow, foragers managed to be healthier than agriculturalists: “Agriculturalists throughout the world were always less healthy than hunters and gatherers.” The urban populations of Europe, he writes, “did not match the longevity of hunter-gatherers until the mid-nineteenth or even twentieth century.” 18 That’s in Europe. People living in Africa, most of Asia, and Latin America have still not regained the longevity typical of their ancestors and, thanks to chronic world poverty, global warming, and AIDS, it’s unlikely they will for the foreseeable future. Once pathogens mutate into human populations from domesticated animals, they quickly migrate from one community to another. For these agents of disease, the initiation of global trade was a boon. Bubonic plague took the Silk Route to Europe. Smallpox and measles stowed away on ships headed for the New World, while syphilis appears to have hitched a ride back across the Atlantic, probably on Columbus’s first return voyage. Today, the Western world flutters into annual panics over avian flu scares emanating from the Far East. Ebola, SARS, flesh-eating bacteria, the H1N1 virus (swine flu), and innumerable pathogens yet to be named keep us all compulsively washing our hands.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  His manuscripts were confiscated, and his [discovery] was never permitted to be mentioned again until centuries after his death.” 7 Beware the Devil’s Teat The “illness” that led frustrated women to the offices of vibrator-wielding doctors a century ago often led someplace far worse in medieval Europe. As historian Reay Tannahill explains, “The Malleus Maleficarum (1486), the first great handbook of the witch inquisitors, had no more difficulty than a modern psycho-analyst in accepting that [a certain] type of woman might readily believe she had had intercourse with the Devil himself, a huge, black, monstrous being with an enormous penis and seminal fluid as cold as ice water.” 8 But it wasn’t only sexual dreams that attracted the brutal attentions of erotophobic authorities. If a witch-hunter in the 1600s discovered a woman or girl with an unusually large clitoris, this “devil’s teat” was sufficient to condemn her to death. 9 Medieval Europe suffered periodic plagues of incubi and succubi, male and female demons thought to be invading the dreams, beds, and bodies of living people. Thomas Aquinas and others believed that these demons impregnated women on their nocturnal visits by first posing as a succubus (a female spirit who has sex with a sleeping man in order to obtain his sperm), and then depositing the sperm in an unsuspecting woman in the form of an incubus (a male spirit ravishing a sleeping woman). Women thus thought to have been impregnated by malevolent spirits flitting about like nocturnal honeybees were at special risk of being exposed as witches and dealt with accordingly. Any stories these women might have told regarding the true origins of their pregnancy conveniently died with them. Though now considered one of the finest novels ever written, Madame Bovary was denounced as immoral when it was first published in late 1856. Public prosecutors in Paris were upset that Gustave Flaubert portrayed a headstrong peasant girl who flaunted the rules of established propriety by taking lovers. They felt her character met with insufficient punishment. Flaubert’s defense was that the work was “eminently moral” on those terms. After all, Emma Bovary dies by her own hand in misery, poverty, shame, and desperation. Insufficient punishment? The case against the book, in other words, turned on whether Emma Bovary’s punishment was agonizing and horrible enough, not on whether she deserved such suffering at all or had any right to pursue sexual fulfillment in the first place.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  His mother had gone into premature labor upon hearing that the Spanish Armada was about to attack England. “My mother,” Hobbes wrote many years later, “gave birth to twins: myself and fear.” Leviathan, the book in which he famously asserts that prehistoric life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” was composed in Paris, where he was hiding from enemies he’d made by supporting the Crown in the English Civil War. The book was nearly abandoned when he was taken with a near-fatal illness that left him at death’s door for six months. Upon publication of Leviathan in France, Hobbes’s life was now being threatened by his fellow exiles, who were offended by the anti-Catholicism expressed in the book. He fled back across the channel to England, begging the mercy of those he’d escaped eleven years earlier. Though he was permitted to stay, publication of his book was prohibited. The Church banned it. Oxford University banned it and burned it. Writing of Hobbes’s world, cultural historian Mark Lilla describes “Christians addled by apocalyptic dreams [who] hunted and killed Christians with a maniacal fury they had once reserved for Muslims, Jews and heretics. It was madness.” 8 Hobbes took the madness of his age, considered it “normal,” and projected it back into prehistoric epochs of which he knew next to nothing. What Hobbes called “human nature” was a projection of seventeenth-century Europe, where life for most was rough, to put it mildly. Though it has persisted for centuries, Hobbes’s dark fantasy of prehistoric human life is as valid as grand conclusions about Siberian wolves based on observations of stray dogs in Tijuana. To be fair, Malthus, Hobbes, and Darwin were constrained by the lack of actual data. To his enormous credit, Darwin recognized this and tried hard to address it—spending his entire adult life collecting specimens, taking copious notes, and corresponding with anyone who could provide him with useful information. But it wasn’t enough. The necessary facts wouldn’t be revealed for many decades. But now we have them. Scientists have learned to read ancient bones and teeth, to carbon-date the ash of Pleistocene fires, to trace the drift of the mitochondrial DNA of our ancestors. And the information they’ve uncovered resoundingly refutes the vision of prehistory Hobbes and Malthus conjured and Darwin swallowed whole. Poor, Pitiful Me We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without. I MMANUEL K ANT If George Orwell was correct that “those who control the past control the future,” what of those who control the distant past? Prior to the population increases associated with agriculture, most of the world was a vast, empty place in terms of human population. But the desperate overcrowding imagined by Hobbes, Malthus, and Darwin is still deeply embedded in evolutionary theory and repeated like a mantra, facts be damned.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Darwin), 25, 30, 155, 266 DeSteno, David A., 144–45 Destroying Angel, The (Money), 286 detribalization, 22, 165 Devil, 252, 341 n de Waal, Franz, 53, 69, 76–77, 178, 188, 319 n, 333 n on bonobos, 69, 71, 72, 75, 96–97, 101, 339 n on pair bonds, 77, 115 on promiscuity, 225 Diamond, Jared, 9, 175, 222, 329n Diamond, Lisa, 278 Dickson Mounds, 173–74 “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (Rousseau), 87 disease, 10, 174, 202, 203, 206–10, 207, 334n heart, 162, 206, 209, 210, 238, 297–98 hysteria, 247–48, 250, 251 masturbation and, 250 slavery and, 118, 254 syphilis, 130, 206, 250 testosterone and, 297–98 tuberculosis, 178–79, 206, 207 “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race” (Cartwright), 118 divorce, 4, 41–42, 97, 119, 120, 122, 299–300 Dixon, Dwight, 308 Dixon, Joan, 308 Dixson, Alan F., 45, 234, 257, 265, 266, 339 n on female orgasm, 263, 342 n on paraphilias, 280 DNA, 61–62, 70, 136–37, 158, 159–60, 264, 330 n environmental catastrophe and, 160, 191 in sperm cells, 237, 238 testicles and, 226–27, 243 dolphins, 320 n dominance: female, 71–72, 133–34 male, 75, 133, 218, 229 Dongba, 127 Donne, John, 213 dopamine, 168 double-blind methodology, 117 double standard, 26, 35 drapetomania, 118, 254 Drucker, Doris, 111 Druckerman, Pamela, 303 Dugum Dani, 184–85, 184, 331n Dunbar, Robin, 171 Dunbar’s number, 171 dysaethesia aethiopica, 118 East Anglia, University of, 328n Easton, Dossie, 310 Ebola, 207 Ecological Implications of Minilivestock (Paoletti), 21 economic game theory, 49, 52 economics, 166–72, 328n Homo economicus and, 166–68 scarcity-based, 180 sexual, 48–51 tragedy of the commons and, 169–70 ecosystems, 160 Ecuador, 206 Edgerton, Robert, 124, 192–93, 207 egalitarianism, 93, 162, 163, 166, 176, 179, 182–83, 333 n fierce, 9, 11, 100–101 Egalitarians, The (Power), 187–89 eggs (ovum), 25, 53, 55, 220, 226, 235, 265, 266, 267 Egypt, 119–20 Einstein, Albert, 113 ejaculations, 12, 86, 220–21, 222, 227–29, 231, 235, 243 chemicals in, 228 copulation calls and, 258 health and, 238 seminal volume in, 236 Elders, Joycelyn, 287 Encounters at the End of the World, 135 Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, 339 n enemas, 286 Engels, Friedrich, 43 England, 157, 164, 181, 191 commons in, 169, 170 environment, 84, 101, 241–42 body and, 215 catastrophes and, 160, 191, 328n genetics and, 36 toxins in, 237, 240, 340n Ephron, Nora, 292 erections, 233, 286–87 Erikson, Philippe, 94, 108 Essay on the Principle of Population, An (Malthus), 154–55, 169 estrogen-like compounds, 237 Ethical Slut, The (Easton and Liszt), 310 Europe, 142, 159, 207, 241, 289, 294, 327n, 332n foundling hospitals of, 111, 203 medieval, 252 Eve’s Seed (McElvaine), 111 evolution, 46, 58 Darwin’s views on, 27–33, 35–36 rapid change in, 226–27 evolutionary psychology (EP), 23, 36–39, 42, 48–53, 114, 122, 177, 214, 322n human universal and, 115 paternity certainty and, 49 Evolution of Cooperation, The (Axelrod), 168 Evolution of Human Sexuality, The (Symons), 51, 57–58, 126, 295–96 exclusivity, sexual, 48–50, 97, 98, 122, 136 extinction, 160, 191, 293, 327n–28n extra-pair copulations (EPCs), 57, 96, 121, 125 Fagan, Brian, 319n, 328n Fall, the, 35, 81–82 family, 2, 6, 41, 53, 75, 107, 109–12, 276, 293, 297, 300 Morgan’s views on, 43 Mosuo, 127, 128 nuclear, 4, 5, 34, 54, 66, 77, 106, 109–10, 115, 116, 117, 216, 219, 242, 246, 263, 306, 310 polyamorous, 305–6, 310 family values, 3 famine, 21–22, 154, 169–70 fascinum, 233 fathers, 108, 109, 112, 128 multiple, 92, 94, 320n see also paternity; paternity certainty fear, 147–48, 327n Feinstein, David, 32 Female Choices (Small), 116 Ferguson, Brian, 193, 194, 334n fertility, 124, 220, 237–40, 260–62, 292, 341n fertilization, 264–65, 266 fetus, 90–91, 105 fidelity, sexual, 10, 120–21, 129, 305, 309, 310, 311 female, 7, 15, 48–50, 54, 142 finches, 36, 243 Finkel, Michael, 323n Finkers, Juan, 195 Fisher, Helen, 34, 49, 59, 60, 72–76, 114, 137, 305 Fisher, Maryanne, 325n Fisher, Terry, 277 FitzRoy, Robert, 164 Flanagan, Caitlin, 302–3 Flatheads, 325n Flaubert, Gustave, 253 Flintstones, The, 32, 317n Flintstonization, 31–36, 48, 75, 76, 107, 117 Florida State University, 52 Flynt, Larry, 5 food, 8, 49, 54, 59, 125–26, 139, 149, 160, 173–76, 302, 328n, 331n caloric reduction and, 208–9 conflict over, 160, 188, 190 Garden of Eden and, 81–82 masturbation and, 288, 345n sexual anatomy and, 237, 240, 242 sharing of, 6, 11, 34, 67, 70, 78, 99–100, 141, 174, 179 surplus and storage of, 68, 173, 174 taste in, 20–22, 165 see also agriculture food additives, 237, 240 Food and Drug Administration, 21 foraging, 9, 11–14, 21, 44, 54, 67, 76, 82, 93, 131–32, 173–77, 179–81, 205–6, 210, 315 n, 344 n delayed-return (complex), 11n egalitarianism and, 9, 11, 100–101, 176, 179, 182–83 immediate-return (simple), 11 n, 190, 330 n, 331 n infanticide and, 203 population growth and, 156, 159, 326 n, 327 n research subjects and, 143–44 sedentary, 330 n –31 n social life and, 87–88, 94, 100, 139, 160 transition to farming from, 8, 83, 173–75, 319 n, 328 n uneconomic man and, 181 war and, 182–85, 184, 190, 193, 330 n –31 n Ford, Clellan, 96 foundling hospitals, 111, 203, 322 n Fourier, Charles, 43 Fowles, John, 28, 316n France, 157, 203, 303 Franklin, Benjamin, 113, 322n Freeman, Derek, 321n French Lieutenant’s Woman, The (Fowles), 28 Freud, Sigmund, 28, 43, 271, 279, 288 Friedman, David, 233–34 Fromm, Erich, 179 fruit flies, sperm of, 229–30 frustration, sexual, 282–83, 284, 344 n illness and, 10, 247 Fry, Doug, 193 Fuegia, Fuegians, 164 Galápagos, 36, 243 Galileo Galilei, 3, 254 Gallup, Gordon G., 235, 267 Galton, Francis, 37 gangbang, 231 Garber, Paul, 188 Garden of Eden, 81–82 Gawande, Atul, 319 n –20 n Gebusi, 184–85, 184, 194 Gekko, Gordon, 152 generosity, 54, 68, 70, 72, 76, 139, 163, 167, 177, 212 genetic economics of sex, 49 genetics, genes, 26, 36, 37–38, 54, 57, 94 n, 107, 293 compatibility and, 264–65, 276 egalitarianism and, 100–101 as legacy, 49, 56 male vs.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), a lonely, frightened war refugee in Paris, was Flintstoned when he looked into the mists of prehistory and conjured miserable human lives that were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” He conjured a prehistory very much like the world he saw around him in seventeenth-century Europe, yet gratifyingly worse in every respect. Propelled by a very different psychological agenda, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) looked at the suffering and filth of European societies and thought he saw the corruption of a pristine human nature. Travelers’ tales of simple savages in the Americas fueled his romantic fantasies. The intellectual pendulum swung back toward the Hobbesian view a few decades later when Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) claimed to mathematically demonstrate that extreme poverty and its attendant desperation typify the eternal human condition. Destitution, he argued, is intrinsic to the calculus of mammalian reproduction. As long as population increases geometrically, doubling each generation (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), and farmers can increase the food supply only by adding acreage arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), there will never— can never —be enough for everyone. Thus, Malthus concluded that poverty is as inescapable as the wind and the rain. Nobody’s fault. Just the way it is. This conclusion was very popular with the wealthy and powerful, who were understandably eager to make sense of their good fortune and justify the suffering of the poor as an unavoidable fact of life. Darwin’s eureka moment was a gift from two terrible Thomases and one friendly Fred: Hobbes, Malthus, and Flintstone, respectively. By articulating a detailed (albeit erroneous) description of human nature and the sorts of lives humans lived in prehistory, Hobbes and Malthus provided the intellectual context for Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Unfortunately, their thoroughly Flintstoned assumptions are fully integrated into Darwin’s thinking and persist to the present day. The sober tones of serious science often mask the mythical nature of what we’re told about prehistory. And far too often, the myth is dysfunctional, inaccurate, and self-justifying. Our central ambition for this book is to distinguish some of the stars from the constellations. We believe that the generally accepted myth of the origins and nature of human sexuality is not merely factually flawed, but destructive, sustaining a false sense of what it means to be a human being. This false narrative distorts our sense of our capacities and needs. It amounts to false advertising for a garment that fits almost no one. But we’re all supposed to buy and wear it anyway. Like all myths, this one seeks to define who and what we are and thus what we can expect and demand from one another. For centuries, religious authorities disseminated this defining narrative, warning of chatty serpents, deceitful women, forbidden knowledge, and eternal agony. But more recently, it’s been marketed to secular society as hard science.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Dare we ask whether mothers, fathers, and children are all being shoe-horned into a family structure that suits none of us? Might the contemporary pandemics of fracturing families, parental exhaustion, and confused, resentful children be predictable consequences of what is, in truth, a distorted and distorting family structure inappropriate for our species? Nuclear Meltdown If the independent, isolated nuclear family unit is, in fact, the structure into which human beings most naturally configure themselves, why do contemporary societies and religions find it necessary to prop it up with tax breaks and supportive legislation while fiercely defending it from same-sex couples and others proposing to marry in supposedly “nontraditional” ways? One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all—apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection? Furthermore, if the nuclear triad is so deeply embedded in our nature, why are fewer and fewer of us choosing to live that way? In the United States, the percentage of nuclear family households has dropped from 45 to 23.5 since the 1970s. Married couples (with and without children) accounted for roughly 84 percent of all American households in 1930, but the latest figure is just under 50 percent, while the number of unmarried couples living together has mushroomed from about 500,000 in 1970 to more than ten times that number in 2008. Before Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942), the most respected and influential anthropologist of his day, declared the issue settled, there was plenty of debate over whether or not the mother-father-child triad was, in fact, the universal atomic unit of human social organization. Malinowski scoffed at Morgan’s notion that societies could ever have been organized along nonnuclear lines, writing: These actors are obviously three in number at the beginning—the two parents and their offspring…. This unquestionably correct principle has become … the starting point for a new interpretation of Morgan’s hypothesis of a primitive communal marriage. [They are] fully aware that group-marriage implies group-parenthood. Yet group-parenthood [is] an almost unthinkable hypothesis…. This conclusion has led to such capital howlers as that “the clan marries the clan and begets the clan” and that “the clan, like the family, is a reproductive group” [emphasis added]. 12 “Unquestioningly correct principle?” “Unthinkable hypothesis?” “Capital howlers?” Malinowski seems to have been personally offended that Morgan had dared to doubt the universality and naturalness of the sanctified nuclear family structure. Meanwhile, within a few blocks of the London classrooms where he lectured, untold numbers of infants whose existence threatened to expose the colossal error at the heart of Malinowski’s “unquestioningly correct principle” were being sacrificed, quite literally, in foundling hospitals. The situation was no less horrific in the United States. In 1915, a doctor named Henry Chapin visited ten foundling hospitals and found that in nine of them, every child died before the age of two. Every child. 13 This dark fate awaited inconvenient children born throughout Europe.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  In her memoir of middle-class life in early twentieth–century Germany, for instance, Doris Drucker describes the village “Angel-maker,” who received babies from unwed mothers and “starved the little children in her care to death,” while the unwed, now childless mother was hired out as a wet nurse to upper-class families. 14 How efficient. Horrifying as it is to contemplate, widespread infanticide was not limited to Malinowski’s day. For centuries, millions of European children had been passed through discreet revolving boxes set into the walls of foundling hospitals. These boxes were designed to protect the anonymity of the person leaving the child, but they offered scant protection to the infant. The survival rate in those institutions was little better than if the revolving boxes had opened directly into a crematorium’s furnace. Far from being places of healing, these were government- and church-approved slaughterhouses where children whose existence might have raised inconvenient questions about the “naturalness” of the nuclear family were disposed of in a form of industrialized infanticide. 15 In his book Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, historian Robert S. McElvaine gets off a few “capital howlers” of his own, writing, “the general trend in human evolution is undeniably toward pair bonding and lasting families. Pair bonding (albeit often with some backsliding, especially by men) and the family are,” he insists, “the exceptions notwithstanding, among the traits that characterize the human species [emphasis added].” 16 Sure, forget all the backsliding and the many exceptions, and you’ve got a real strong case! Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Malinowski’s position remains deeply embedded in both scientific and popular assumptions about family structure. In fact, the whole architecture of what qualifies as family in Western society is based on Malinowski’s insistence that each child everywhere has always had just one father. But if Malinowski’s position has won the day, why is poor Morgan’s intellectual body still being regularly disinterred for further insult? Anthropologist Laura Betzig opens a paper on conjugal dissolution (failed marriage) by noting that Morgan’s “fantasy [of group marriage] … expired on encountering the evidence, and a century after Morgan … the consensus is that [monogamous] marriage comes as close to being a human universal as anything about human behavior can.” 17 Ouch. But in truth, Morgan’s understanding of family structure was no “fantasy.” His conclusions were based upon decades of extensive field research and study. Later, a bit less wind in her sails, Betzig admits that “there is still, however, no consensus as to why” marriage is so widespread. That’s a mystery all right.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Social forces that convince people to stretch their necks beyond the breaking point, schmush the heads of their infants, or sell their daughters into sacred prostitution are quite capable of reshaping or neutralizing sexual jealousy by rendering it silly and ridiculous. By rendering it abnormal. The evolutionary explanation for male sexual jealousy, as we’ve seen, pivots on the genetic calculus underlying paternity certainty. But if it’s a question of genes, a man should be far less concerned about his wife having sex with his brothers—who share half his genes—than with unrelated males. Gentlemen, would you be far less upset to find your wife in bed with your brother than with total a stranger? Ladies, would you prefer your husband have an affair with your sister? Didn’t think so. 6 Zero-Sum Sex We mentioned David Buss in our discussion of mixed mating strategies earlier, but most of his work concerns the study of jealousy. Buss doesn’t buy the notion of sharing food or mates, conceptualizing both in terms of scarcity: “If there is not enough food to feed all members of a group,” he writes, “then some survive while others perish.” Similarly, “If two women desire the same man … one woman’s success in attracting him is the other woman’s loss.” Buss has little doubt that evolution is “a zero-sum game, with the victors winning at the expense of the losers.” 7 Far too often, the debate over the nature of human sexuality seems like a proxy war between antagonistic politico-economic philosophies. Defenders of the standard narrative see Cain’s gain as Abel’s loss, period. “That’s just how life is, kid,” they’ll tell you. “It’s human nature. Self-interest makes the world go round, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s a dog-eat-dog world and always has been.” This free-market vision of human mating hinges on the assumption that sexual monogamy is intrinsic to human nature. Absent monogamy (individual male “ownership” of female reproductive capacity), the I-win-you-lose dynamic collapses. As we outlined above, Buss and his colleagues get around the many glaring flaws in the theory (our extravagant sexual capacity, ubiquitous adultery in all cultures, rampant promiscuity in both our closest primate relatives, the absence of any monogamous primate living in large social groups) with pretzel logic and special pleading about Homo sapiens’ internally conflicted, self-defeating “mixed mating strategies.” Twist and stretch. Buss and his colleagues have conducted scores of cross-cultural studies designed to confirm that men and women experience jealousy differently from each other, in consistent gender-specific ways. These researchers claim to have confirmed two important assumptions underlying the standard narrative: that men are universally worried about paternity certainty (hence, his mate’s sexual fidelity is his main concern), while women are universally concerned with access to men’s resources (so a woman will feel more threatened by any emotional intimacy that might inspire him to leave her for another woman).

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'It will be over today, you will see,' said Marya Nikolaevna. Though it was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had noticed was very keen, must have heard. Levin said hush to her, and looked round at the sick man. Nikolay had heard; but these words produced no effect on him. His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look. 'Why do you think so?' Levin asked her, when she had followed him into the corridor. 'He has begun picking at himself,' said Marya Nikolaevna. 'How do you mean?' 'Like this,' she said, tugging at the folds of her woollen skirt. Levin noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it were, trying to snatch something away. Marya Nikolaevna's prediction came true. Towards night the sick man was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his brother or Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked just the same. Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for the dying. While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolaevna stood at the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly returned it to the stand, and after standing for two minutes more in silence, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold. 'He is gone,' said the priest, and would have moved away; but sud denly there was a faint stir in the moustaches of the dead man that seemed glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds— 'Not quite . . . soon.' And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the moustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying out the corpse. The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Levin that sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma, together with the nearness and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn evening when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of apprehending the meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before him more terrible than ever. But now, thanks to his wife's presence, that feeling did not reduce him to despair.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'There's something familiar about that hideous peasant,' thought Anna. And remembering her dream, she moved away to the opposite door, shaking with terror. The conductor opened the door and let in a man and his wife. 'Do you wish to get out?' Anna made no answer. The conductor and her two fellow-passengers did not notice under her veil her panic-stricken face. She went back to her corner and sat down. The couple seated themselves on the opposite side, and intently but surreptitiously scrutinised her clothes. Both husband and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked, would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with a view to smoking but to getting into conversation with her. Receiving her assent, he said to his wife in French something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made inane and affected remarks to one another, entirely for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities. A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to Anna that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that this laughter irritated her agonisingly, and she would have liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third bell rang, there was a whistle and a hiss of steam, and a clank of chains, and the man in her carriage crossed himself. 'It would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that,' thought Anna, looking angrily at him. She looked past the lady out of window at the people who seemed whirling by as they ran beside the train or stood on the platform. The train, jerking at regular intervals at the junctions of the rails, rolled by the platform, past a stone wall, a signal-box, past other trains; the wheels, moving more smoothly and evenly, resounded with a slight clang on the rails. The window was lighted up by the bright evening sun, and a slight breeze fluttered the curtain. Anna forgot her fellow-passengers, and to the light swaying of the train she fell to thinking again, as she breathed the fresh air. 'Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn't conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?' 'That's what reason is given man for, to escape from what worries him,' said the lady in French, lisping affectedly, and obviously pleased with her phrase. The words seemed an answer to Anna's thoughts. 'To escape from what worries him,' repeated Anna.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She has gone away from us for ever. She is . . .' Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, mingled, and all was darkness. 'Death!' she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not realise where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. 'No, anything—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me ! This has been before and will pass,' she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his room. He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost consciousness. In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had recurred several times in her dreams, even before her connection with Vronsky. A little old man with unkempt beard was doing something bent down over some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as she always did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing something horrible with the iron—over her. And she waked up in a cold sweat. When she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in mist. 'There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had a headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we're going away, I must see him and get ready for the journey,' she said to herself. And learning that he was in his study, she went down to him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  In October there were the provincial elections in the Kashinsky province, where were the estates of Vronsky, Sviazhsky, Koznishev, Oblonsky, and a small part of Levin's land. These elections were attracting public attention from several circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking part in them. There had been a great deal of talk about them, and great preparations were being made for them. Persons who never attended the elections were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from abroad to attend these. Vronsky had long before promised Sviazhsky to go to them. Before the elections Sviazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove over to fetch Vronsky. On the day before there had been almost a quarrel between Vronsky and Anna over this proposed expedition. It was the very dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and so, preparing himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold expression, informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to her before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with great composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew that it only happened when she had determined upon something without letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and half sincerely believed in what he longed to believe in—her reasonableness. 'I hope you won't be dull?' 'I hope not,' said Anna. 'I got a box of books yesterday from Gautier's. No, I shan't be dull.' 'She's trying to take that tone, and so much the better,' he thought, 'or else it would be the same thing over and over again.' And he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a candid explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that it was better so. 'At first there will be, as this time, something undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I can give up anything for her, but not my masculine independence,' he thought. XXVI I N September Levin moved to Moscow for Kitty's confinement.