12-15-2010 Transcript - Proceedings at Trial - Day 13

1
Todd Shackelford (for the Amicus)

In chief on qualifications by Mr. Dickson
1 December 15, 2010

2 Vancouver, B.C.
3
4 (DAY 13)
5 (PROCEEDINGS COMMENCED AT 10:00 A.M.)
6
7 THE CLERK: Order in court. In the Supreme Court of
8 British Columbia at Vancouver, this 15th day of
9 December, 2010, calling the matter concerning the
10 constitutionality of section 293 of the Criminal
11 Code, My Lord.
12 THE COURT: Mr. Dickson.
13 MR. DICKSON: My Lord, yes, Dickson, D.T., for the
14 amicus.
15 The first witness this morning, My Lord, is
16 Professor Todd Shackelford, and as you see he's
17 sitting there in the witness box and he will
18 affirm.
19 TODD SHACKELFORD, a
20 witness called by the
21 Amicus, affirmed.
22
23 THE CLERK: Please state your full name and spell your
24 last name for the record.
25 THE WITNESS: Todd Kennedy Shackelford, last name
26 S-h-a-c-k-e-l-f-o-r-d.
27 MR. DICKSON: My Lord, you'll find Professor
28 Shackelford's affidavit at Exhibit 75.
29 THE COURT: Thank you.
30 MR. DICKSON: I intend to, if it's okay with my
31 friends, to lead Professor Shackelford a little
32 bit through his qualifications relatively quickly.
33
34 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF ON QUALIFICATIONS BY
35 MR. DICKSON:
36 Q Professor Shackelford, you are a professor of
37 psychology and I understand the chair of the
38 Department of Psychology at Oakland University in
39 Rochester Michigan?
40 A That is correct.
41 Q And your CV is at Exhibit A to your affidavit. I
42 understand you have your affidavit in front of
43 you, do you?
44 A I do.
45 Q Yes. And your CV is at Exhibit A, and as you set
46 out there you have a PhD in psychology from the
47 University of Texas at Austin and you obtained
2
1 that in 1997; is that right?

3 Q And before that you obtained a masters in
4 psychology from the University of Michigan?
6 Q And before you became a professor at Oakland
7 University you were at Florida Atlantic University
8 where you were a professor?
10 Q And I understand there you founded and were the
11 chair of the PhD program in evolutionary
12 psychology; is that right?
13 A That's right.
14 Q And describe for His Lordship if you would your
15 field.
16 A My field is evolutionary psychology which
17 essentially is the study of the features of the
18 mind with specific reference to our ancestral
19 past. It's a way of trying to understand why
20 and -- how and why we behave in the present with
21 reference to our ancestral history.
22 Q And going back to your CV, just on the first page
23 you list local, national and international honours
24 and awards, and I'm not going to take you through
25 you all of them but I see you're a fellow of
26 several associations. And I understand that the
27 Association for Psychological Science is a
28 somewhat prestigious association, and could you
29 explain what it is and what it means to be elected
30 as a fellow to it?
31 A Yes. The Association of Psychological Science is
32 the largest group of research psychologists --
33 research oriented psychologists in the Americas
34 and to be elected fellow is an honour bestowed by
35 one's peers in recognition of achievements in
36 terms of publications and impact on the field.
37 And I don't know the exact figure, but my
38 understanding is it's roughly 3 to 5 percent of
39 members are eventually elected fellow of the
40 society.
41 Q Fair enough. And you are also a fellow of the
42 International Association for Research on
43 Aggression and what does that body do?
44 A The International Association for Research on
45 Aggression is the largest international
46 association of scholars whose work focuses
47 explicitly on aggression, and as with the
3
1 Association of Psychological Science, a fellow

2 status is bestowed by one's peers in recognition
3 of impact on the field, in this case on the field
4 of aggression.
5 Q Very well. And beginning on the next page of your
6 CV you list your publications, and it's what I'll
7 call quite a vast list of publications. You've
8 published, I see, 226 articles and chapters listed
9 on this version of your CV and among those are 173
10 journal articles. And what kind of journals are
11 you publishing in there?
12 A These are exclusively peer reviewed journals.
13 They are journals that are recognized as
14 appropriate outlets for scholarly research, and in
15 each case the articles that are submitted go
16 through a peer review process where once an
17 article is submitted it's sent out to scholars in
18 the community to decide whether or not the
19 articles should be published.
20 Q Very well. And what are some of the leading
21 journals in your field?
22 A Some of the leading journals in evolutionary
23 psychology include a journal called Evolutionary
24 Psychology, a journal called Evolution and Human
25 Behaviour and a journal called Human Nature.
26 Q And you list a number of book chapters as well.
27 Are those peer reviewed?
28 A All of the book chapters are peer reviewed in a
29 sense of being reviewed at least by the editorial
30 board of that particular book. Peer review in
31 book chapters tends to be less rigorous than peer
32 review with journal articles, but in each case the
33 chapters that I publish have been peer reviewed by
34 at least the editors of that volume and in many
35 cases they're actually sent out anonymously to
36 peers for review, as is similarly done with
37 journal articles.
38 Q Beginning on page 12, the handwritten page 12 of
39 your CV, you list books that you've been involved
40 with publishing as an editor. And I noticed a
41 number of Oxford handbooks on various topics
42 published by Oxford University Press, and describe
43 those books if you would.
44 A Yes, Oxford University Press is one of the leading
45 academic presses and Oxford University Press
46 approached me to edit several volumes within the
47 fields of evolutionary psychology, family
4
1 psychology and related areas. And in each one of

2 these cases these are volumes that contain between
3 25 and 30 chapters, each one of which is peer
4 reviewed before the decision to include it, and
5 each one of these volumes includes -- so 30
6 chapters, each chapter is about 50 pages or so.
7 Q Very well. And then I see a number of other books
8 below that, including Evolutionary Cognitive
9 Neuroscience, published by MIT Press; is that
10 right?
11 A That's correct.
12 Q And then you list many pages of conference
13 presentations and I'm not going to take you
14 through those, and you've chaired graduate student
15 theses as well as you list there. On page 22,
16 again a handwritten page 22, you set out some of
17 your work in editing journals including being the
18 editor, being an associate editor, being on the
19 editorial board, and describe for us what an
20 editorship entails there first.
21 A Yes. An editorship -- I'm currently the editor of
22 the journal called Evolutionary Psychology, and an
23 editorship entails sort of the -- I have ability
24 to make a final decision about whether or not a
25 paper is published, and indeed when a paper is
26 initially submitted what I then do as an editor is
27 send it out to one of -- in this case one of my
28 ten associate editors who then sends papers out to
29 peer review -- to peers to review and report back
30 on whether or not a paper should be published.
31 Q And I see that one of the journals of which you're
32 the editor is Evolutionary Psychology; is that
33 right?
35 Q And by editor, that means editor in chief, does
36 it?
37 A That is correct. Yes.
38 Q And you've been a guest editor for a special issue
39 of Human Nature?
41 Q And down on the editorial board membership section
42 here you list a number of journals. What are the
43 more significant journals on which you have or do
44 sit on the editorial board?
45 A Those journals include journals that are published
46 by the American Psychological Association which is
47 sort of the largest group of psychologists in the
5
1 Americas and these are the Journal of Comparative

2 Psychology, the Journal of Family Psychology. I
3 have also served on the editorial boards of the
4 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And
5 I'm currently an associate editor as well of a
6 journal called Personality and Individual
7 Differences which is also an outlet on
8 evolutionary psychology.
9 Q Very well. And the last thing I want to ask you
10 about -- on your CV is just over the next page,
11 with respect to your editorial and consulting
12 research work you list a number of book publishers
13 and then a number of peer reviewed journals and I
14 just -- I note among the book publishers the
15 Cambridge University Press and Oxford University
16 Press. What are you doing there? What does that
17 work entail?
18 A That work entails I'm approached by a book
19 publisher who has received a proposal for a book
20 by a prospective author, and they then -- for
21 these academic publishers, they then send out a
22 proposal to peers in the community, scholars in
23 the community, to comment on whether or not this
24 is a proposal that should be pursued by the
25 publisher.
26 Q Very well. And with peer reviewed journals
27 there's a long list. Perhaps bring to
28 His Lordship's attention some of the journals that
29 are among the more prominent.
30 A Yes, and these are journals for which I don't
31 necessarily sit on the editorial board but
32 journals that have approached me about serving as
33 a peer reviewer for manuscripts submitted to that
34 journal, and that would include journals such as
35 The Lancet. Journals such as The Proceedings of
36 the Royal Society of London, and journals that
37 sort of are the interface of psychology, biology
38 and anthropology.
39 Q Very well. Now, if you could describe a little
40 bit your research. How long your research has
41 been conducted and what it has focussed on.
42 A Yes, I've been conducting research on -- broadly
43 speaking on conflict in monogamous relationships
44 for about the past 20 years or so, and in
45 particular my research has focussed on men's
46 violence, aggression and psychological and indeed
47 sexual abuse against their partners in monogamous
6
In chief by Mr. Dickson
1 relationships.
2 Q Very well. And what methodologies are you using
3 in that research?
4 A Much of this research involves survey research
5 where we'll ask men and their partners about the
6 goings on in their relationships. I have also
7 conducted cross-cultural research. I have also
8 been involved in experimental research, and in
9 each case an important part of this research is
10 the use of statistics to determine whether or not
11 a set of results is something that can be reliably
12 reported to the scientific community.
13 Q Very well. I'm hearing that statistics is an
14 important part of your research. Have you had
15 experience in teaching statistics?
16 A Yes, for about 10 years or so I taught a course
17 called "experimental design and statistical
18 inference." That was at the undergraduate level.
19 And I have also taught in many graduate courses
20 where statistics is an important part of that
21 course.
22 MR. DICKSON: Very well. My Lord, I tender
23 Professor Shackelford as an expert in evolutionary
24 psychology and in conflict between men and women
25 in monogamous relationships. And again, that's
26 evolutionary psychology and in conflict between
27 men and women in monogamous relationships.
28 MR. JONES: My Lord, it's my position that
29 Dr. Shackelford is extremely well qualified. He
30 is, in fact, an internationally recognized leader
31 in the field of evolutionary psychology and it's
32 an honour to have him here.
33 MR. CAMERON: No questions, My Lord.
34 THE COURT: Thank you. Thank you all. Qualified.
35 Thank you.
36
37 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF BY MR. DICKSON:
38 Q Professor Shackelford, you have read the
39 affidavits of Professor Henrich filed in this
40 reference, have you?
41 A Yes.
42 Q And prior to swearing your affidavit you of course
43 only had Professor Henrich's first affidavit; is
44 that right?
46 Q I would like to take you to your affidavit if I
47 could. You have it in front of you.
7
1 A Yes.
2 Q In paragraph 5 of your affidavit?
3 A Thank you.
4 Q In paragraph 5 of your affidavit you say that
5 Professor Henrich has ably summarized various
6 negative correlates and apparent consequences
7 associated with polygynous relationships as
8 documented in scholarly literature, but you point
9 out that negative correlates and apparent
10 consequences can be seen in any kind of mating or
11 marriage relationship. And I'm going to ask you
12 to explain that, but first I would like to take
13 you to the bracketed words in the middle of that
14 paragraph 5, where you say this:
15
16 I say "apparent" because causation and
17 correlation are separate matters and the bulk
18 of the literature reports correlational
19 rather than causal relationships.
20
21 And could you explain for His Lordship a little
22 more what you mean by that.
23 A Sure. A correlational relationship indicates that
24 two variables go together, so as one variable goes
25 up the other one goes up, or as one variable goes
26 up the other goes down. In other words, there's
27 some relationship between these two variables.
28 What one can't say is whether or not one variable
29 causes the other variable, or indeed whether the
30 causal direction may work in the opposite path.
31 The issue with correlation, and, in fact, this
32 is something that is sort of part of a first
33 lecture in experimental design and statistical
34 inference, is that one cannot, simply cannot make
35 statements about causal relationships on the basis
36 of correlational data.
37 Q Very well. And so what I hear there, when there
38 is a correlational relationship you don't know the
39 direction of any causal relationship, and is there
40 any other factor that might undermine the
41 existence of a causal relationship?
42 A Yes, there's what is known as the third variable
43 problem. It actually goes by that particular
44 label in statistics, and this is in correlational
45 research you may find that there is a relationship
46 between two variables but it is always possible
47 that there is a third variable that you haven't
8
1 measured or that you're not aware of that, in

2 fact, is causing both of the variables that you
3 happen to be assessing.
4 Q And could you illustrate that with an example for
5 His Lordship.
6 A Sure. An example that I like to use in my
7 statistics courses is if you measure the amount of
8 consumption of ice cream, for example, and you
9 measure the consumption of -- sorry, and if you
10 measure the frequency with which people drown you
11 may find that there is a relationship between as
12 people eat more ice cream there's also an
13 increased frequency of drowning. But this is not
14 because of any causal relationship between these
15 two variables. It turns out that both variables
16 are caused by or impacted by increases in
17 temperature during the summer months. So as the
18 temperature goes up people tend to buy more ice
19 cream. People also tend to go swimming and
20 therefore be at greater risk of drowning.
21 Q Fair enough. Now, I want to take you to your
22 statement at the bottom of your paragraph 5 there
23 where you say "negative correlates and apparent
24 consequences can be seen in any kind of mating or
25 marriage relationship," and speak to His Lordship
26 a little bit about what you mean by that
27 statement.
28 A What I mean is that in my own work studying
29 monogamous relationships I have, in fact, been
30 focussing my research on some of these many
31 negative correlates and consequences in monogamous
32 relationships including violence. Much of this
33 work has focussed on men's violence,
34 psychological, physical and sexual aggression
35 against their partners. And really in any sort of
36 mating relationship, indeed in any sort of
37 relationship, where people do not have identical
38 interests you will find that there are or there is
39 conflict. There may also be cooperation and
40 feelings of love and care, but in every such
41 mating or marital relationship what is very
42 typically found is some element of conflict.
43 Q Very well. In paragraph 6 there you're describing
44 your research with respect to male sexual
45 jealousy, and if you can put that into your words
46 here. What is the point of that evidence in
47 paragraph 6?
9
1 A Yes, this is a summary of my own work over the

2 past couple of decades which has focussed on male
3 sexual jealousy in the context of monogamous
4 relationships. And what my work indicates is that
5 male sexual jealousy is unfortunately a very good
6 predictor of all sorts of undesirable consequences
7 including violence against men's partners,
8 psychological abuse, sexual coercion, indeed rape.
9 And then also working with people at the FBI and
10 also with Chicago police department their own
11 police records. And my own work on these topics
12 indicates that male sexual jealousy indeed is one
13 of the leading predictors of men actually killing
14 their partners. All of this work is in the
15 context of monogamous relationships.
16 Q Very well. And in paragraph 7 you mentioned
17 another negative correlate or consequence of
18 monogamy and that is, as I understand it,
19 residence by a child with a stepparent or a
20 stepfather. And explain what that research is
21 about.
22 A Yes, this work, some of which I conducted but a
23 good deal conducted by my colleagues, indicates
24 that -- and this is all done in the context of
25 monogamous relationships, that residence with a
26 stepparent turns out to be the single best
27 predictor of child -- of neglect, abuse, and
28 filicide, which is the term indicating the killing
29 of a child by a parent. And this is something
30 that has been documented now cross-culturally and
31 indeed the rates of child abuse, neglect and
32 killing for children who live with one stepparent
33 relative to children who live with two genetic
34 parents can be as high as 40 to 100 times greater.
35 Q Very well. And in paragraph 8 you give a very
36 brief summary of this evidence in your affidavit,
37 and take a moment to summarize for His Lordship.
38 A Yes, my summary is sort of bringing together what
39 I have reported in the first portion of the
40 affidavit and that is that monogamy, like any sort
41 of mating relationship, carries with it all sorts
42 of correlates and undesirable consequences. And
43 my own work over the last couple of decades has
44 sort of outlined and investigated just some of
45 these consequences.
46 Q Very well. Now, you've not undertaken in your
47 affidavit a comparison between monogamy and
10
1 polygamy; is that so?

3 Q And why haven't you?
4 A I have not undertaken such comparison. To be
5 honest I'm not aware of any work that has
6 explicitly compared the negative consequences and
7 correlates of -- some of these negative
8 consequences and correlates in polygamous and
9 polygynous relationships with those in monogamous
10 relationships. And it simply is not my area of
11 expertise. I was providing in this affidavit a
12 summary of my own work that indicates that -- in
13 short that polygyny doesn't have the market
14 cornered, so to speak, on some of these negative
15 correlates and consequences.
16 Q And have you -- in your research have you -- I
17 think you mentioned earlier that you've conducted
18 cross-cultural research; is that so?
19 A Yes.
20 Q And speak a little, if you would, to the
21 challenges in undertaking cross-cultural research.
22 A Yes, perhaps the greatest challenge in undertaking
23 cross-cultural research in order -- my own work
24 studies relationships, romantic relationships --
25 in order to compare relationship processes and
26 dynamics in one culture to those in another
27 culture one has to be very sensitive to whether or
28 not there might be differences in that other
29 culture that might impact the very processes that
30 you're attempting to investigate.
31 Q Very well. And what are -- I mean, flesh out a
32 little bit what you mean by the differences you
33 might find.
34 A Well --
35 MR. CAMERON: Excuse me, My Lord. Sorry for a second.
36 It seems that my friend is asking Mr. Shackelford
37 to go far beyond what is in his report and I just
38 ask him in direct to confine himself to what is in
39 the statement. This appears nowhere -- in general
40 sort of statistical cross-cultural comparisons
41 appears nowhere in the report.
42 MR. JONES: My Lord, perhaps I could just speak to that
43 because I would ask many of these questions of --
44 in cross-examination. I certainly have no
45 objection and I think it's very helpful to have
46 this conversation as broad as we can.
47 THE COURT: Well, it's not in the report?
11
1 MR. DICKSON: He doesn't speak.

2 THE COURT: He attaches some of his articles.
3 MR. DICKSON: That's right. And as we heard, My Lord,
4 he's conducted cross-cultural research and he
5 hasn't spoken specifically to that issue in his
6 affidavit but it arises out of his research. And
7 the trend that I've seen in the reference so far
8 is to allow latitude.
9 THE COURT: Well, we have been careful to ask experts
10 to stay within the confines of their reports just
11 so you don't take anybody by surprise. But
12 Mr. Jones points out, of course, that he can ask
13 what questions he wishes within reason. So
14 Mr. Cameron, are you still concerned?
15 MR. CAMERON: I just prefer that Mr. Jones, if he wants
16 to ask those questions that he do so in redirect,
17 and my friend can redirect in the end if he sees
18 fit.
19 MR. DICKSON: Well, My Lord, I recall Professor
20 Grossbard bringing up matters of Angela Campbell
21 and qualitative research and -- or her literature.
22 THE COURT: She was replying to Ms. Campbell, yes.
23 MR. DICKSON: Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, I'll --
24 THE COURT: Well, Mr. Jones has told you he's going to
25 help you out on this one.
26 MR. DICKSON: Right. Right. Fair enough, My Lord. I
27 will leave it for redirect.
28 THE COURT: His idea of helping out may not be yours.
29 MR. DICKSON: It might be different. It might be
30 different. One hopes it's the same.
31 Q Professor Shackelford, you have read the second
32 affidavit of Professor Henrich, have you?
33 A Yes.
34 MR. DICKSON: And, My Lord, that's Exhibit 5 if you
35 would like to turn to it.
36 Q Professor Shackelford, I take you to the affidavit
37 of -- number 2 of Professor Henrich because in a
38 fair amount of that affidavit he is replying
39 specifically to your affidavit. And on the first
40 page of his report, which is just three pages in,
41 it's Exhibit A, in the second paragraph below the
42 "Overview" heading?
43 MR. JONES: Sorry, what page are you on?
44 MR. DICKSON: Page 1 of his report.
45 Q Second paragraph under the "Overview" heading
46 Professor Henrich notes that Professor Shackelford
47 supplies no empirical evidence regarding
12
1 polygynous families and none of his data permits a

2 statistically controlled comparison of the
3 relative rates of these negative outcomes in
4 monogamous versus polygynous marriages. And what
5 if any comment do you have in response to that
6 statement?
7 A That is the case, that I did not provide any
8 statistical comparisons between some of these
9 outcomes in monogamous versus polygynous
10 relationships. I am not aware of such evidence
11 within a particular culture, the comparison of
12 some of these outcomes in monogamous relationships
13 versus polygynous relationships. And nor do I
14 find such comparisons -- such statistical
15 comparisons in Professor Henrich's report.
16 Q Very well. Professor Henrich addresses three
17 topics that are directly in reply to your
18 affidavit: Violence among unrelated family
19 members, conflict among co-wives, and the role of
20 sexual jealousy and age disparity. And I would
21 like to go through each of the topics and ask you
22 just to briefly summarize what you understand
23 Professor Henrich to be saying in that particular
24 portion of his affidavit and then ask you if you
25 have any comments in response.
26 So violence among unrelated family members.
27 His discussion begins on page 2 of his report.
28 And again, please summarize briefly what he's --
29 what Professor Henrich is saying there and then
30 provide any comments you might have in response.
31 A Sure. Well, my understanding of what Professor
32 Henrich is saying here, he's actually using --
33 he's referencing results that have been -- data
34 that have been collected in monogamous
35 relationships by myself and my colleagues and then
36 he's applying that -- some of those results to
37 what you might expect to find in polygynous
38 relationships.
39 So for example, in some of my own work and in
40 the work of my colleagues there has been an
41 indication that where there are unrelated family
42 members, notably husbands and wives, who are
43 typically unrelated, what you find is that this is
44 a good predictor of violence in these
45 relationships. And Professor Henrich appears to
46 be arguing that in polygynous relationships where
47 you have not just two unrelated people but several
13
1 unrelated people, namely husband and several

2 wives, you would therefore by this logic expect
3 there to be greater amounts of violence.
4 Q Very well. And do you have any comments in reply
5 to that proposition?
6 A Well, my key comment is that I'm not sure it makes
7 sense to apply full force or directly what we know
8 based on monogamous relationships directly to what
9 we might know about polygynous relationships. I
10 am not sure it makes sense to consider three
11 unrelated women who happen to be co-wives as a
12 random set of unrelated people, given that we know
13 that -- well, there may be some pressure on these
14 co-wives in a cultural context to actually attempt
15 to get along better, to treat one another's
16 children in a way that is in the best interests of
17 the children. And so I guess my key comment is
18 that I'm not sure it's reasonable to simply apply
19 full force data collected in one context to data
20 collected in what may well be a qualitatively
21 different context.
22 Q Very well. I would like you to turn then to
23 page 5 where Professor Henrich begins his
24 discussion of conflict among co-wives, and please
25 follow the same sort of format. Summarize briefly
26 what he's saying there and then if you have any
27 comments please provide them.
28 A Sure. Professor Henrich begins by noting that
29 there is evidence of conflict among co-wives. He
30 then indicates that he expects that there will
31 actually be more conflict among siblings or
32 children in polygynous relationships given that
33 they will not be full siblings. So there will be
34 some siblings which are related only as half
35 siblings by virtue of having different mothers.
36 And he's making this prediction on the basis of
37 work that's been conducted explicitly in
38 monogamous families.
39 Another general comment I'll make is that --
40 well, it is the case that there is conflict among
41 co-wives but also I think it's important to
42 recognize in the larger context that there also
43 can be cooperation among co-wives and there can be
44 feelings of friendship and care and love. I think
45 in any relationship there will be conflict and
46 there will be cooperation. So I think it's worth
47 pointing out that conflict is not the defining
14
1 feature or the single feature of co-wife

2 relationships, or I presume that is not the case.
3 And generally again, my concern is that
4 Professor Henrich is using the results of
5 investigations of monogamous families and
6 relationships among siblings in monogamous
7 families and then applying them directly to
8 relationships among polygynous families which may
9 in fact be qualitatively different.
10 Q Very well. Now, in the third paragraph of
11 Professor Henrich's discussion under this heading
12 he cites an article by Elbedour and colleagues,
13 2002, and the full title of that article is set
14 out on page 12. It's Elbedour and then there are
15 some other names, Elbedour et al., 2002, "The
16 effect of polygamous marital structure on
17 behavioural, emotional and academic adjustment in
18 children: A comprehensive review of the
19 literature." Have you read that article?
20 A Yes, I have.
21 Q And I'll just hand up a copy of the article to
22 His Lordship. And Professor Henrich makes this
23 statement to summarize in part that article. He
24 says children -- he says that Elbedour and
25 colleagues write that "children from polygamous
26 families experience higher incidents of marital
27 conflict, family violence and family disruptions
28 than do children of monogamous families." And
29 does that summary accord with your reading of that
30 article?
31 A No, it does not.
32 MR. JONES: My Lord, I'm just a little concerned here
33 that this isn't my recollection of an article that
34 my friend put to Dr. Henrich when he was here.
35 And I think in fairness if he's going to suggest
36 that Dr. Henrich mischaracterized the findings of
37 this article he should have done so. This is not
38 the correct form for that, in my submission.
39 MR. DICKSON: My Lord, we recently had this point come
40 to our attention. And Professor Shackelford is
41 here. He's read the article. He made a comment
42 to me and I think it would be useful evidence and
43 I'd ask that he be able to speak to it.
44 THE COURT: Anything else, Mr. Jones? Well, the ruling
45 doesn't render the answer inadmissible but it does
46 go to weight to be given to the answer in light of
47 the fact that the previous witness was not
15
1 confronted, but go ahead.

2 MR. DICKSON: Very well. Thank you, My Lord.
3 Q And so I asked you whether Professor Henrich's
4 summary of this article accords with your reading
5 of it, and what is your answer and if you could
6 explain a little bit.
7 A Professor Henrich's summary of this article does
8 not accord with my reading of this article in the
9 sense that what Elbedour and colleagues do in this
10 article is they lay out not just some of the
11 research that indicates that children in
12 polygynous relationships may have a variety of --
13 may experience a variety of outcomes that are more
14 negative than those in monogamous relationships,
15 but Elbedour and colleagues cite a variety of
16 studies that indicate that -- some of these
17 studies that indicate that, in fact, children in
18 polygynous relationships actually have a variety
19 of outcomes that are more positive than those
20 children in monogamous relationships. And then in
21 fairness, Elbedour and colleagues cite work that
22 is simply mixed. So my conclusion, having read
23 this article, is that the research is mixed.
24 Q As of 2002, yes?
25 A Yes.
26 MR. DICKSON: Very well. I would ask that that article
27 be marked as an exhibit.
28 THE COURT: An exhibit or for identification?
29 MR. DICKSON: I'm happy with either.
30 THE COURT: Let's do it for identification. Exhibit?
31 THE CLERK: Exhibit N for identification, My Lord.
32
33 EXHIBIT N: 17 pages; p/c; titled "The Effect of
34 Polygamous Marital Structure on Behavioral,
35 Emotional and Academic Adjustment in Children: A
36 Comprehensive Review of the Literature"
37
38 MR. DICKSON:
39 Q Professor Shackelford, I would like to take you to
40 the third general point that Professor Henrich is
41 making in reply to your affidavit, and that is the
42 role of sexual jealousy and age disparity, and
43 that discussion begins towards the end of page 7
44 in his affidavit. And again, what is Professor
45 Henrich saying there and what is your comment if
46 any?
47 A What Professor Henrich is arguing.
16
1 Q I'm sorry. Exactly.

2 A He's actually relying again on data that had been
3 collected in the context of monogamous
4 relationships, some of which I myself have
5 conducted and some of which some of my colleagues
6 have conducted, which indicates that where there
7 is an age disparity between husbands and wives
8 there tends to be greater sexual jealousy on the
9 part of husbands toward their wives and that
10 greater sexual jealousy in turn is related to a
11 higher frequency or higher risk of older husbands
12 inflicting violence on their partners.
13 What Professor Henrich is arguing is that
14 well, he's saying let's apply that, what we know
15 from monogamous relationships, to polygynous
16 relationships. And he's arguing that if in
17 polygynous relationships we have a greater age
18 disparity among husbands and, say, their younger
19 wives we would therefore predict -- we don't know,
20 but we would therefore predict that men in these
21 polygynous relationships would be more sexually
22 jealous and as a consequence are more likely to
23 inflict violence on their partners.
24 Q And do you have any comments in reply to that
25 proposition?
26 A Well, my comment, consistent with the comments I
27 have had on his previous -- on the previous
28 sections is that I'm not sure it's reasonable to
29 take the results of work conducted on monogamous
30 relationships -- all of the work that he cites is
31 work conducted on monogamous relationships, and
32 apply it directly, one to one, to polygynous
33 relationships. There may well be cultural
34 differences, context differences in polygynous
35 relationships that render those relationships
36 qualitatively different from monogamous
37 relationships.
38 Q Very well. And then just turning over to page 10
39 Professor Henrich has a brief conclusion on this
40 portion of his affidavit in which he is replying
41 to your evidence.
42 A Yes.
43 Q And he suggests that the application of
44 evolutionary theory and some empirical evidence
45 would lead one to suspect that intrafamilial
46 violence, abuse, child mortality, neglect, stress
47 levels and sexual jealousy would be at least as
17
Cross-exam by Mr. Jones
1 bad and probably worse in polygynous families than

2 in monogamous ones, and do you have any overall
3 comment in reply to that?
4 A Well, my overall comment is that Professor Henrich
5 has not provided any direct evidence of a
6 statistical comparisons of these -- the risks for
7 these various negative outcomes in polygynous
8 marriages as compared to monogamous marriages
9 within the same cultural context. And I do
10 question whether it's a reasonable assumption that
11 what you find in the context of monogamous
12 relationships can be applied full force and
13 without regard for any potential cultural or
14 contextual differences in polygynous
15 relationships.
16 MR. DICKSON: Very well, Professor Shackelford. Those
17 are my questions. Thank you.
18 THE COURT: Thank you. Mr. Jones. Are you first?
19 MR. JONES: Thank you, My Lord.
20
21 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. JONES:
22 Q Forgive me, Dr. Shackelford. I have many sources
23 of notes and I may be a little disjointed as a
24 result of that.
25 I've prepared for ease of reference a binder.
26 Perhaps I'll hand one to the court, one to my
27 friends and one for the witness. And if I can
28 just direct you to the index of the binder. This
29 contains just very few documents, the first
30 affidavit of yourself, the only affidavit of
31 yourself, the affidavit number 22 of Professor
32 Henrich that we've been talking about, an article
33 that you had co-written some time ago called "Sex
34 Differences and Similarities in Preferred Mating
35 Arrangements" and then some excerpts from the book
36 by Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works. And I'm
37 going to be discussing some of these things with
38 you.
39 I should say I suppose at the outset apologize
40 a little bit. I hope to take advantage of you
41 over the next hour or two because I think the
42 breadth of your expertise bears on some very
43 important questions in this reference. So I am
44 going to go well beyond what we've been talking
45 about with respect to your affidavit and the
46 ongoing discussion, or the discussion, if I can
47 put it that way, between yourself and Professor
18
1 Henrich over violence in polygamous and monogamous

2 marriages. We can return to that later. But
3 first if it's okay I would like to speak more
4 generally about your work and the findings of
5 evolutionary psychology with respect to human
6 mating behaviour.
7 A Sure.
8 Q And one of the central issues that His Lordship is
9 going to be dealing with eventually is going to be
10 the extent to which we might expect polygamy to
11 spread through society in which it's permitted,
12 and in particular in North American society in
13 which it's permitted, and all of the potential
14 factors that might affect that. But you have --
15 for His Lordship's benefit you have talked about
16 your area of specific expertise for which you're
17 internationally renowned and that's with respect
18 to violence and male aggression within monogamous
19 relationships, but your knowledge doesn't stop
20 there. You have written quite extensively on
21 human mating behaviour cross-culturally and
22 intraculturally, if I can put it that way; is that
23 correct?
25 Q In fact, you're the person that newspapers like
26 the New York Times have to get comments when some
27 famous figure has engaged in, shall we call it, de
28 facto polygyny on the side and taken a mistress or
29 had an affair, and so they look for an
30 evolutionary psychology perspective and you're one
31 of the people they might call in that regard?
33 Q Okay. Now, maybe you've explained generally what
34 evolutionary psychology means and it is, if I can
35 paraphrase what you've said, it is the notion that
36 was once fairly radical but now seems mainstream
37 that we have behaviours that are more or less
38 determined -- I know that's a difficult word --
39 more or less determined by our evolutionary
40 history; is that fair?
41 A I would not use the word "determined" but --
42 Q Right.
43 A -- certainly that we can understand our current
44 behaviours by appreciating our evolutionary past.
45 Q Okay. And we talked a little about cross-cultural
46 studies and how careful we have to be when we're
47 extrapolating from the results of one culture to
19
1 another. But it's fair to say, isn't it, that in

2 the specific field of evolutionary psychology
3 there's a particular value to cross-cultural
4 studies because they allow us to determine the
5 degree of universality of traits?
6 A I think that is fair to say, not just with regard
7 to evolutionary psychology but with regard to
8 psychology more broadly.
9 Q So if a behaviour is more universally present in
10 all kinds of cultural contexts then we can
11 hypothesize at least at least, and I appreciate
12 your correlation causation argument, we can
13 hypothesize at least that it is a more innate
14 behaviour, and more -- and I know you hate this
15 term as well -- hardwired behaviour as opposed to
16 a very fungible or culturally determined
17 behaviour?
18 A We could, but we could also hypothesize that it is
19 indeed a culturally determined behaviour where all
20 cultures are enlisting and encouraging the same
21 set of behaviours.
22 Q Right. And that might be an evolutionary process
23 in itself?
24 A Absolutely, yes.
25 Q Now, we're going to be hearing a couple of names
26 in the course of our conversation and one of them
27 is an author to whom you've referred in many of
28 your articles and I have read many of your
29 articles now, and that's Professor Steven Pinker
30 from Harvard. Can you tell us a little bit
31 Professor Pinker?
32 A Yes. Professor Pinker is a psychologist, a
33 professor of psychology at the Harvard University,
34 and although his original work, that is, where he
35 became well-known for his work on language,
36 language acquisition, he quickly became well-known
37 as also, and I think he would describe himself as
38 an evolutionary psychologist. He is someone who,
39 like myself, studies the features of the mind and
40 how the mind works but always with explicit
41 reference to a consideration of our evolutionary
42 past.
43 Q And do you respect his work?
44 A Deeply.
45 Q And you said that he talks about how the mind
46 works and, in fact, that's the title of his
47 probably most famous book?
20
1 A Yes.
2 Q How the Mind Works?
3 A Yes.
4 Q And we're going to be referring to that and I'm
5 going to bounce some ideas in it off of you and
6 get your thoughts on that a little later.
7 When we talk about -- when we talk about
8 human behaviours that evolutionary psychologists
9 have determined, have placed on the scale, from --
10 I don't know what words you would like to use
11 instead of hardwired but with fungible or
12 malleable on one end and universal on the other,
13 can you say where human mating behaviour tends to
14 fit on that spectrum?
15 A Not generally.
16 Q I see.
17 A Various features of human behaviour -- well, I
18 don't know if you want to me give examples.
19 Q Please. Yeah.
20 A Well --
21 Q Maybe I can short circuit the conversation a
22 little bit.
23 A Sure.
24 Q I don't want to cut you off. I want to make sure
25 that you give as full answers you can on anything,
26 but nor do I want to take us too far afield.
27 Questions of mate choice and mate preference I
28 would propose, and questions of mating strategy
29 are toolkits that are more on the hardwired end of
30 the spectrum; would you agree with that?
31 A In the sense that what we find about mate
32 preference and mating strategy indeed is found in
33 multiple cultures, not just, for example, Canada
34 or the United States.
35 Q Right. Okay. And if I can summarize -- correct
36 me if I'm wrong, you've done a lot of work with
37 respect to mating strategy particularly comparing
38 monogamy or long-term monogamous sexually
39 exclusive pair-bonding with casual sexual
40 relationships. You've written a number of
41 articles on that very topic; is that right?
43 Q And those are seen as two available mating
44 strategies for -- let's just say for men right
45 now?
46 A Correct.
47 Q And under different environmental conditions men
21
1 will tend to select one perhaps more than the

2 other?
4 Q And somewhere in between those two opposed mating
5 strategies, in other words, having as much sex as
6 you can with as many partners as you can on the
7 one side and devoting yourself exclusively to the
8 core nuclear family model on the other, there is
9 polygyny; is that right? It fits somewhere in
10 between those things in that you have multiple
11 permanent pair-bonds as opposed to multiple casual
12 relationships?
13 A Yes, or you might have one long-term pair-bond and
14 then multiple casual relationships on the side.
15 Q Right. But I suppose when I think of the term
16 polygamy or polygyny it suggests multiple
17 long-term as opposed to simply one monogamous
18 relationship with a bunch of affairs, wouldn't you
19 say?
20 A I would not say in the sense that effective
21 polygyny is a term that's used to describe much of
22 male -- sexual behaviour in the sense of there's a
23 long-term pair-bond and it may be that a man
24 actually pursues short-term sexual affairs, and
25 that has been referred to as effective polygyny in
26 the biological literature.
27 Q Okay. It's effective polygyny in the sense that
28 he has opportunity for multiple reproductive
29 opportunities. The advantage to the monogamous
30 model, the end of the spectrum, is that the
31 genetic prospects of the male are improved under
32 certain environmental conditions because he can
33 invest in the offspring more carefully than he can
34 with the casual encounters; is that right?
35 A That's correct, and many argued the evolution of
36 monogamy is in part a response to men's interest,
37 not conscious interests, but interests in
38 maintaining relative certainty of paternity of
39 offspring.
40 Q Right. And that's exactly where I'm going, I
41 suppose. I know we're using clinical terms, but
42 to the extent that is an advantage over the have
43 as much sex as you can casually and not invest in
44 the offspring, polygyny provides the best of all
45 worlds for the man to the extent that he can
46 support and guard a number of mates and a number
47 of families and invest in the offspring -- that
22
1 polygyny has the best of the monogamy advantages

2 and also provides many of the advantages --
3 multiple partners -- that the casual model; would
4 you agree with that?
5 A I would also, you know, want to indicate that it
6 also carries all of the costs of monogamy for men
7 involved in monogamous relationships, namely
8 extensive investments in a particular woman and
9 children with that particular woman. So indeed
10 there are both costs -- well, there are benefits
11 but there are also costs from an evolutionary
12 perspective in long-term relationships between
13 both men and women.
14 Q Certainly. But if a man can afford it in an
15 economic, and I appreciate we're not talking about
16 money here. If a man can afford it in an economic
17 sense the ideal strategy would be to mate with as
18 women as possible but to invest also in the
19 offspring of all of those women?
20 A I'm not sure I would agree that it's ideal. I
21 guess one would need to know the various costs and
22 benefits associated with that strategy in that
23 particular cultural context, that environmental
24 context and that ecological context.
25 What we do know from work for example by a
26 woman called Laura Betzig that when men attain
27 tremendous power and status and resources
28 occasionally men do seek to maintain the control
29 of multiple women in the form of harems, for
30 example.
31 Q Right. We'll get to some of that research and I
32 might suggest to you that it's more than
33 occasional, that it's actually a fairly
34 predictable tendency. But I will ask you to
35 comment on that I suppose in due course.
36 But I took a digression because we'd started
37 off asking you about Dr. Pinker and you mentioned
38 how deeply you respect his work. And another that
39 we might hear about, and I understand you have
40 personal connection, and that's Professor Buss?
41 A Yes.
42 Q Could you tell us something about his work in the
43 field of evolutionary psychology?
44 A Yes. Professor David Buss is a leading
45 evolutionary psychologist and is often regarded as
46 someone who has founded the field of evolutionary
47 psychology. He served as my graduate advisor, my
23
1 PhD advisor, and I have published many papers with

2 Professor Buss and continue to have a working
3 and -- a working relationship with him and also a
4 friendship with Professor Buss.
5 Q And safe to say you deeply respect his work as
6 well?
7 A I do.
8 Q Now, you've mentioned this, and I think it's
9 probably obvious, but perhaps I can get you to
10 reiterate that one of the criticisms frequently
11 levelled, one of the myths as you've identified in
12 one of your articles, of evolutionary psychology
13 is that it equals determinism. That the
14 suggestion that stuff is hardwired somehow turns
15 us all into robotic automatons and we're all just
16 guilty of our -- carrying out the will of our
17 genes. Could you say something about that to
18 clarify?
19 A Yes, as you mentioned I do think it is a frequent
20 sort of misconception that evolutionary
21 psychologists, indeed evolutionary biologists,
22 sort of believe that -- we could talk about
23 humans -- are somehow sort of determined fully by
24 their genes and can do nothing to stop it, and
25 culture is irrelevant. And, you know, sort of all
26 men wish to have sex with as many people as
27 possible because that's what their genes are
28 telling them to do. And I do think it's a
29 misconception and I think it's something that has
30 been very much sort of addressed notably with work
31 that indicates just how important cultural
32 contexts are in predicting and motivating human
33 behaviour.
34 Q Thank you. So when we're talking about these
35 behaviours, these evolved behaviours, and we're
36 recognizing that to greater or lesser extent
37 they're fungible we need to know that social
38 rules, norms and laws control -- have a role to
39 play in controlling the manifestation of these
40 tendencies. Is that a fair characterization?
41 A Yes.
42 Q And so for instance you've reviewed, I know, and I
43 think written about sexual coercion as a male
44 strategy, rape at the very end of that spectrum?
45 A Yes.
46 Q And so we all accept, and certainly it shines
47 through your writing, that this is an abhorrent
24
1 behaviour notwithstanding that it is an evolved

2 tendency; is that fair?
3 A That is fair.
4 Q And so one of the things that we do to control
5 this evolved tendency is impose laws against rape?
6 A Yes.
7 Q Okay. I want to take you to Professor Pinker's --
8 Dr. Pinker's article -- or not article, the
9 section, the few pages of his book that I
10 reproduced at tab 4.
11 And this, My Lord, for the record is in the
12 Brandeis brief. A much larger excerpt is in the
13 Brandeis brief.
14 And I'm doing this because we've been talking
15 about some of these things but Professor Pinker
16 puts it in I think a good summary way and I want
17 to go through it with you and ask you to the
18 extent you agree with it and if there's anything
19 you don't agree with please feel free to let us
20 know. This is the section beginning on page 76
21 that's called "Husbands and Wives" and it talks
22 about male mating behaviour. And this is a
23 book -- this is a book designed for -- I mean,
24 it's Steven Pinker writing, if I can put it this
25 way, as a public intellectual as opposed to a
26 purely academic work; is that right?
28 Q And as a result there isn't the obsessive
29 footnoting that you might expect in a purely
30 academic work. He has a bunch of end notes as
31 references but we don't see a lot of these things
32 footnoted, so it's why I want to put them to you
33 and make sure that he's not misrepresenting what
34 evolutionary psychology would tell us.
35 So he's talking here about -- and I'm going
36 to read quite a lengthy passages of this. Under
37 "Husbands and Wives" he says:
38
39 In evolutionary terms a man who has a
40 short-term liaison is betting that his
41 illegitimate child will survive without his
42 help or his counting on a cuckolded husband
43 to bring it up as his own.
44
45 And let me pause there, because some of the
46 language here might seem bizarre if you don't
47 understand that when he says that people are
25
1 counting on something or that they're adopting

2 this strategy that that suggests conscious
3 thought, and that's not the case; is that right?
5 Q So, I'm sorry, I'll continue.
6
7 For the man who can afford it a surer way to
8 maximize progeny is to seek several wives and
9 invest in all their children.
10
11 And I think that's the point I was just making and
12 I think you generally agree with that; is that
13 right?
14 A Yes, but again, I think you pointed out that the
15 language is rather, you know, not careful. Given
16 that this is not a journal article.
17 Q Of course. Of course. And maybe when we get
18 through some bigger passages I will ask you to the
19 extent to which you qualify what Dr. Pinker says.
20 It says:
21
22 Men should want many wives, not just many sex
23 partners, and in fact men in power have
24 allowed polygyny in more than 80 percent of
25 human cultures. Jews practised it until
26 Christian times and outlawed it only in the
27 10th century. Mormons encouraged it until it
28 was outlawed in the late 19 century, and even
29 today there are thought to be tens of
30 thousands of clandestine polygynous marriages
31 in Utah and other western States.
32
33 And here is the part of that paragraph I should
34 pose -- I would underline:
35
36 Whenever polygyny is allowed men seek
37 additional wives and the means to attract
38 them.
39
40 Would you agree with that?
41 A Yes, I would generally agree with that.
42 Q And I'll carry on.
43
44 Wealthy and prestigious men have more than
45 one wife; Ne'er-do-wells have none.
46 Typically a man who has been married for some
47 time seeks a younger wife, the senior wife
26
1 remains his confidant and partner and runs

2 the household. The junior one become his
3 sexual interest.
4
5 I appreciate that's a generalization but not
6 unfair in your view?
7 A Not unfair in my view.
8 Q And then he says:
9
10 In foraging societies wealth cannot
11 accumulate, but a few fierce men, skilled
12 leaders and good hunters may have two to ten
13 wives. With the invention of agriculture and
14 massive inequality, polygyny can reach
15 ridiculous proportions.
16
17 And then it talks about the Laura Betzig work that
18 you were just mentioning.
19 A Yes.
20 Q
21 Laura Betzig has documented that in
22 civilization after civilization despotic men
23 have implemented the ultimate male fantasy, a
24 harem of hundreds of nubile women closely
25 guarded, often by eunuchs, so no other man
26 can touch them. Similar arrangements have
27 popped up in India, China, the Islamic world,
28 sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. King
29 Solomon had a thousand concubines, Roman
30 emperors called them slaves, and medieval
31 European kings called them serving maids.
32
33 Is that a generally fair characterization of what
34 Dr. Betzig found?
35 A Yes.
36 Q And you'd earlier said that she said that that
37 occasionally resulted in harems and I said I might
38 want to revisit that with you. It seems what
39 Dr. Betzig was saying and what Professor Pinker
40 accepts is that this really is -- has been
41 commonplace through history, at least where
42 massive inequality pertains; is that fair?
43 A Yes, what I mean by occasionally very, very few
44 men accumulate the resource that are required to
45 hold these harems of women. That's what I meant
46 by occasionally. As in one in a million.
47 Q I understand. Right. So when we're talking
27
1 about -- I think the term that Pinker uses

2 elsewhere is hyperpolygynists?
3 A Yes.
4 Q It's in that phenomenon, where you could actually
5 support hundreds of wives, has been historically
6 fairly rare?
7 A Yes.
8 Q Okay. And then the next paragraph he says:
9
10 Polyandry by comparison is vanishingly rare.
11 Men occasionally share a wife in environments
12 so harsh a man cannot survive without a
13 woman, but the arrangement collapses when
14 conditions improve. Eskimos have
15 sporadically had polyandrous marriages, but
16 the co-husband are always jealous of one, and
17 one often murders the other. As always,
18 kinship mitigates enmity, and amongst Tibetan
19 farmers two or more brothers sometimes marry
20 a woman simultaneously in the hope of putting
21 together a family that can survive in the
22 bleak territory. The junior brother, though,
23 aspires to have a wife of his own.
24
25 I don't know if you have much familiarity with the
26 research regarding polyandry but is that a fair
27 characterization of the phenomenon?
28 A It is, yes.
29 Q Thank you. Continuing:
30
31 Marriage arrangements are usually described
32 from the man's point of view, not because the
33 desires of women are irrelevant, but because
34 powerful men have usually gotten their way.
35 Men are bigger and stronger because they have
36 been selected to fight one another and they
37 can form powerful clans, because in
38 traditional societies sons stay near their
39 families and daughters move away.
40
41 And let me make another digression here and ask
42 you about some other evidence that this court has
43 heard. There is some suggestion in the literature
44 and in fact Dr. Pinker mentions it, that polygyny
45 can be good for women because it makes them as a
46 scarce resource more valuable and they can in the
47 economic marketplace get more for their
28
1 availability than otherwise. You have heard those

2 arguments made?
3 A Yes.
4 Q And we have Dr. Grossbard who is an economist from
5 Stanford -- I'm sorry, San Diego?
6 A Yes.
7 Q Who studied the polygamy for 30 years, and she
8 suggested that yes, that's true from a purely
9 econometric point of view, but the difficulty is
10 that given male power in society women cannot
11 capture the added value that they have in those
12 circumstances.
13 Would you accept that as a criticism of the
14 free market model?
15 A I guess I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.
16 I'm sorry, could you please rephrase.
17 Q Yeah. Well, I'm sorry, I tried to set up what I
18 understood to be the free market model, which is
19 essentially that women become more valuable in a
20 partially polygynous society because of the
21 increased demand for women, and therefore they
22 have extra value but they can't capture that value
23 in these societies because of the institutions of
24 male power that you prevent them from doing so,
25 that accrue to the males; is that fair?
26 A I would say that that may be true in some
27 cultures, but I'm not comfortable saying it's
28 generally true.
29 Q I understand. Certainly it's plausible that the
30 amount of equality in the society for instance as
31 a starting point might actually have an impact on
32 the extent to which polygyny could catch on?
33 A Yes.
34 Q And we'll get to a discussion about that in a bit.
35 Okay. Let me carry on with this paragraph if
36 I might, because it follows from that thought.
37 Dr. Pinker says:
38
39 The most florid polygynists are always
40 despots. Men who could kill without fear of
41 retribution.
42
43 And here's a fun anecdote:
44
45 According to the Guinness Book of World
46 Records the man with the most recorded
47 children in history, 888, was an Emperor of
29
1 Morocco with the evocative name of Mulai

2 Ismail the Bloodthirsty. The hyperpolygynist
3 not only must fend off the hundreds of men he
4 has deprived of wives, but most oppress his
5 harem. Marriages always have at least a bit
6 of reciprocity and in most polygynous
7 societies the man may forego additional wives
8 because of their emotional and financial
9 demands. A despot can keep them imprisoned
10 and terrified.
11
12 And then he carries on with what I have just
13 talked about, this free market idea, and he says:
14
15 But oddly enough, in a freer society polygyny
16 is not necessarily bad for women. On
17 financial and ultimately on evolutionary
18 grounds a women may prefer to share a wealthy
19 husband than to have undivided attention of a
20 pauper and may even prefer it on emotional
21 grounds. Laura Betzig summed up the reason:
22 Would you rather the third wife of John F.
23 Kennedy or the first wife of Bozo the Clown.
24
25 And maybe I'll just draw a line underneath
26 that one. That sets out, I think, the discussion
27 we were just having, that there may be very good
28 reasons in any individual case for women to choose
29 polygyny over monogamy or over nothing at all,
30 whether or not they were harmful in a social
31 sense; would that be fair?
32 A Yes, it would be fair.
33 Q And I'll flip over -- the next few paragraphs sort
34 of expand on that economic theory that we've just
35 discussed. The paragraph following which starts
36 in the middle of 478, and this talks about another
37 sort of economic theory of monogamy as an
38 agreement among men. It says:
39
40 Legal monogamy has historically been an
41 agreement between more and less powerful men,
42 not between men and women. Its aim is not so
43 much to exploit the customers in the romance
44 industry, women, as to minimize the costs of
45 competition among the producers, men.
46
47 So this is talking about the origin perhaps of
30
1 monogamy as a way of enforcing equality of man

2 versus man, and at the time it originated they
3 weren't terribly concerned in ancient Greece
4 perhaps of the equality of men and women; is that
5 right?
6 A That is the argument, yes.
7 Q And then he carries on:
8
9 Under polygyny men vie for extraordinary
10 Darwinian states: Many wives versus none,
11 and the competition is literally cutthroat.
12 Many homicides and most tribal wars are
13 directly or indirectly about competition for
14 women. Leaders have outlawed polygyny when
15 they needed less powerful men as allies and
16 when they needed their subjects to fight an
17 enemy instead of fighting one another.
18 Early Christianity appealed to poor men
19 partly because the promise of monogamy kept
20 them in the marriage game and in societies
21 since egalitarianism and monogamy go together
22 as naturally as despotism and polygyny.
23
24 And that's just reiterating what we said, that
25 this may have all started as again between among
26 men that set this standard for that equality. And
27 we've heard theorizing that subsequent to that,
28 that that was the beginning of equality among men
29 in western society and that that formed the
30 platform much later for the development of
31 equality man versus woman. And that once you had
32 monogamy established on the basis of the selfish
33 interests of men suddenly it became a platform
34 from which women could assert their own equality.
35 Do you have any thoughts on that?
36 A I'm aware of the argument and it seems plausible
37 but I'm not intimately familiar with any of the
38 data that had been collected on that front.
39 Q I understand. But it seems plausible?
40 A Yes.
41 Q And then this talks about something that the New
42 York Times would call you about:
43
44 Even today inequality has allowed a kind of
45 polygyny to flourish. Wealthy men support a
46 wife and a mistress, or divorce their wives
47 at 20-year intervals and pay them alimony and
31
1 child support while marrying younger women.

2
3 This is, and we've heard about it from other
4 witnesses, the phenomenon of serial monogamy --
5 A Yes.
6 Q -- where again, if I can put it in evolutionary
7 biology terms, a single man dominates more than
8 his share of the reproductive life of females.
9 Every female has a 25-year reproductive life, say,
10 and if you have more than that they you're sort of
11 a de facto polygynist.
12 A Yes, or an effective polygynist.
13 Q An effective polygynist. Right. And so that
14 exists as men inclined towards polygyny exploit
15 the loopholes and the social rules to do what they
16 can to be polygynous; is that fair?
17 A It is, but I would note that some men are
18 especially sensitive to the costs involved in
19 doing so, in terms of, you know, maintaining
20 social status. I mean, maintaining a relationship
21 with their regular long-term partner.
22 Q Right.
23 A So I don't think it's a given that men who have
24 the opportunity will pursue it.
25 Q Certainly. And there are obvious costs that
26 society itself imposes --
27 A Sure.
28 Q -- on that behaviour by, for instance, insuring
29 alimony payments, child support payments and that
30 sort of thing we can put some friction on it, if I
31 can put it that way, in that sense, to control it?
32 A Yes.
33 Q And we do?
34 A Yes.
35 MR. JONES: My Lord, this is a great time.
36 THE COURT: We'll take the morning break. Thank you.
37 THE CLERK: Order in court.
38
39 (WITNESS STOOD DOWN)
40 (MORNING RECESS)
41
43 Todd Shackelford, a
44 witness for the Amicus,
45 recalled.
46
47
32
1 THE COURT: Thank you. Mr. Jones.

2 MR. JONES: Thank you, My Lord.
3
4 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. JONES: (Continued)
5 Q Doctor, I just put away the excerpt from Steven
6 Pinker. The reason I put that to you, and
7 obviously I stopped you at crucial passages and
8 confirmed that that information accorded with your
9 understanding. I chose that passage because it
10 was the best synoptic explanation of the
11 evolutionary psychology view of polygyny that I
12 could find.
13 Do you know of a better one that you could
14 refer us to, or is that pretty good?
15 A I think it's a pretty good sort of broad summary
16 for sort of an intelligent layperson.
17 Q Right. Okay. That's fine, thank you. And you
18 know of no better that you might refer us to?
19 A Not at the moment.
20 Q Yes. Sorry to put you on the spot.
21 Before we leave the topic of broad strokes, I
22 wanted to talk a bit about this correlation versus
23 causation distinction that you've made, and
24 obviously we appreciate that things have a number
25 of different causes, and a great example you used
26 was ice cream consumption and swimming. And if we
27 were looking at that relationship -- I'm sorry,
28 drowning.
29 A Drowning.
30 Q Yes. Quite the opposite.
31 A Right.
32 Q If we were looking at that relationship someone
33 might hypothesize drowning causes ice cream
34 consumption. Someone else might hypothesize ice
35 cream consumption causes drowning. Perhaps
36 slightly more plausible than the first?
37 A Sure.
38 Q And then someone might come along and hypothesize
39 maybe it was the weather, and then you would --
40 you would introduce that variable into your
41 regression analysis and you would test to see what
42 you could determine?
43 A Yes.
44 Q Now, the choice of the variable is obviously
45 informed to a great extent by common sense and
46 experience. One would not simply conclude that
47 drowning caused ice cream consumption, because the
33
1 hypothesis is implausible?
2 A Yes.
3 Q One might say, as our mothers used to, that eating
4 ice cream before swimming gives you cramps and
5 therefore causes drowning. Slightly less
6 implausible explanation for the correlation. Or
7 one might say actually there is something more
8 obvious going on here and so we will introduce
9 that variable.
10 So part of the challenge in identifying these
11 things is identifying the variables to measure,
12 and can we call them potential confounding factors
13 as well?
14 A Indeed. Yes.
15 Q Now, evolutionary psychology in itself is an
16 explanatory framework, a series of hypotheses; is
17 that correct?
18 A Yes.
19 Q So we can notice phenomena, we can weigh them
20 against our hypotheses that they are caused by
21 evolutionary forces, and then we can decide what
22 variables we're going to control for to see if we
23 can tease the causation from the correlation; is
24 that right?
25 A Yes.
26 Q So as you've pointed out, and I think this is
27 crucial when His Lordship weighs the evidence in
28 this case, and maybe I should just stop there and
29 ask your level of familiarity with the evidence in
30 this case. You've read Professor Henrich's
31 reports?
32 A Indeed.
33 Q Have you read anything else. Has anything else
34 been provided to you in this case?
35 A Yes, I have read Grossbard's report.
36 Q Right.
37 A And I have read once through Rose McDermott's
38 report.
39 Q Okay. And that's all?
40 A And I have seen various newspaper reports.
41 Q Fair enough. Fair enough. So you don't have or
42 pretend to any comprehensive knowledge of the
43 evidence in this case with respect to the harms of
44 polygyny for instance?
45 A No.
46 Q And you can appreciate, before I leave this
47 correlation causation question, that the extent to
34
1 which harms are caused by polygamy as opposed to

2 simply correlated with polygamy is a central issue
3 before His Lordship?
4 A That is my understanding.
5 Q But it's not something upon which you can give any
6 evidence?
7 A Other than to comment on what I have seen in the
8 affidavits, which provides correlational evidence
9 of a relationship between polygyny and some of the
10 undesirable outcomes that have been referenced.
11 Q Well, you said in your affidavit, sir, that most
12 of the research reported was correlational, but
13 some of it purports to at least strong indications
14 of causation, doesn't it?
15 A No, I would actually say that the work that I'm
16 familiar with and that was referenced I was being
17 cautious in saying that my understanding of the
18 literature is that it's wholly correlational
19 literature.
20 Q And have you gone back and reviewed the literature
21 that was referred to?
22 A I've seen the literature that was referred to in
23 the reports but I don't confess to be an expert on
24 polygyny.
25 Q When you say you've seen the things referred to,
26 there were hundreds of articles obviously referred
27 to. You didn't go back and read them all?
28 A No, I did not.
29 Q Evolutionary psychology tells us also, as you've
30 pointed out, a lot about male aggression; is that
31 right?
32 A Yes, I think it's a very useful perspective for
33 understanding male aggression, yes.
34 Q And you've studied male aggression. You've
35 focussed your attention on aggression and violence
36 in intimate relationships, but you're also aware
37 of evolutionary psychology's work with respect to
38 aggression, violence, anti-social behaviour of
39 males in society generally?
40 A I am aware of this, yes.
41 Q And is it fair to say, Dr. Shackelford, that males
42 are disproportionately responsible for crime and
43 anti-social behaviour in society?
44 A Most definitely.
45 Q And that that is particularly the case with young
46 males?
47 A Absolutely.
35
1 Q And even more the case with unmarried males?

2 A Indeed.
3 Q And so you accept from an evolutionary biology
4 perspective that the more unmarried males are in a
5 society the more crime and anti-social behaviour
6 you can expect?
7 A Indeed.
8 Q And you are aware of Professor Henrich's review of
9 the -- both cross-cultural and intracultural China
10 and India stuff with respect to the consequences
11 of this gender imbalance that resulted from the
12 effect of one child policies in those countries?
13 A I am aware of his work, yes.
14 Q And that accords very well with your understanding
15 of what you expect from evolutionary psychology?
16 A Yes.
17 Q I was intrigued by some of your other articles
18 that I read, Dr. Shackelford, that dealt with
19 imitative mating behaviour. Do you recall
20 studying that subject? There was research done,
21 for instance, when people were shown videos of
22 mate selection processes, speed dating, that kind
23 of stuff, and that actually affected the way they
24 engaged in mate selection afterwards, their
25 preferences; is that right?
26 A I have not conducted work on mate copying or mate
27 choice copying behaviour but I am aware of such
28 work.
29 Q I see. You've written about it?
30 A I may have cited it -- yeah, I may have referenced
31 it, but I have not myself conducted work directly
32 on that topic.
33 Q I see. One of the things Dr. Henrich talked about
34 when he was here was work that he had done with
35 respect to the extent to which ideas spread
36 throughout society based on kind of a Malcolm
37 Gladwell thing, the idea that there are figures
38 that are imitated?
39 A Yes.
40 Q Generally high status, wealthy, famous people; is
41 that right?
42 A Yes.
43 Q So quite often if they adopt a certain behaviour
44 that spreads throughout society?
45 A Yes, it certainly can happen. Yes.
46 Q And quite quickly, in fact?
47 A Yes.
36
1 Q Perhaps, Doctor, I can turn you to another subject

2 of our conversation and that's your back and forth
3 with Dr. Henrich. And what got my attention this
4 morning -- and you'll see I apologize that I
5 interrupted my friend's examination of you, but
6 that was this article by Salman Elbedour, and
7 Dr. Henrich had characterized this in a way to
8 which you took objection. And let me just go to
9 his characterization. Dr. Henrich's report --
10 second report is at tab 2, and if I can remind you
11 of what he said. This was I think the only
12 instance in which you took actual exception to his
13 summary of the science, if I can put it that way.
14 And that's at page 5, handwritten page 5, and
15 Dr. Henrich had said:
16
17 Elbedour and colleagues summarize by writing
18 that children from polygamous families
19 experience higher incidence of marital
20 conflict, family violence and family
21 disruptions than do children of monogamous
22 families. They also suggest that the
23 creation of step-parents is common as men
24 often leave their first wives to be with
25 their newer wives but they keep the children,
26 opening the door for abuse and neglect by
27 unrelated mothers.
28
29 And you said, well, that was a bit of a
30 misrepresentation because actually Elbedour and
31 colleagues said they were mixed and that there
32 were, in fact, positive outcomes in the literature
33 with respect to polygamy versus monogamy; is that
34 right?
35 A That's what they reported, yes.
36 Q Right. Okay. Well, let me take you if I can to
37 the Elbedour article.
38 A Sure.
39 Q And I want to put maybe a slightly different
40 emphasis on their findings and see if you agree
41 with me. Their summary and conclusions is on
42 page 264. And what they say, and I'll read just
43 from the beginning of that section.
44
45 As described in the previous section
46 researchers have been able to identify
47 multiple risk factors associated with
37
1 polygamy. These multiple stressful factors

2 would be expected to have a highly disruptive
3 effect on the home environment required by
4 children to foster a sense of dependency and
5 security and to provide a foundation for
6 sound development. Indeed, some researchers
7 hypothesize that problems associated with
8 polygamous marriages negatively affect the
9 family unit and constrain children to an
10 attenuated, less adaptive range of coping
11 strategies, et cetera, et cetera.
12
13 And that paragraph refers to the work that was
14 cited previously, and if I can ask you if this is
15 a fair characterization. There were controlled
16 studies done of negative outcomes in polygamy
17 versus monogamy, sometimes intraculturally like
18 Al-Krenawi, for instance, had monogamous Bedouins
19 versus polygamous Bedouins, and some
20 cross-culturally where you are trying to control
21 for all of the confounding variables that might
22 occur. Is that a fair summary of what they've
23 done? And they've found some negative
24 associations?
25 A Indeed.
26 Q And then the summary continues, and I think this
27 is the point you were making:
28
29 However, not all researchers agree with this
30 viewpoint. In fact, some researchers posit
31 that large families provide a greater number
32 of role models for children and this has a
33 positive effect.
34
35 Swanton et al. posited a positive correlation; is
36 that right?
37 A I have not read Swanton, but that's my
38 understanding.
39 Q There's no indication here that they found a
40 positive correlation with polygamy?
41 A There is no indication in that statement.
42 Correct.
43 Q Right. Okay. And carrying on:
44
45 Further, these researchers hypothesize that
46 polygamous families provide more warmth and
47 affection than do monogamous ones, which
38
1 benefits children mental health and self

2 esteem.
3
4 So again we see someone hypothesizing
5 something, but there is no indication there that
6 there were any hard findings; is that right?
7 A Correct. I haven't read the paper so I don't
8 know.
9 Q I understand. And then it says:
10
11 Authors from this school of thought contend
12 that children are not necessarily negatively
13 affected by polygamy despite the host of risk
14 factors associated with it. These findings
15 may suggest that a well adjusted child would
16 not suffer lasting negative outcomes,
17 et cetera, et cetera.
18
19 So let me just summarize I think what we've
20 just gone through Elbedour and his colleagues are
21 saying, that there is on the one hand of the
22 scale, if I can put it that way, hard science
23 associating polygamy with these harms.
24 On the other end of the scale there are
25 scholars who posit and hypothesize that that might
26 not be so, but no mention of hard science in that
27 regard.
28 And then the next paragraph -- sorry, am I
29 right so far?
30 A In the context of this particular article, yes.
31 Q That's right?
32 A That's my understanding.
33 Q That's right. This article is all I'm talking
34 about?
35 A Sure.
36 Q Because I just want to -- to the extent there's a
37 mis-summary in Dr. Henrich's -- I just wanted to
38 be absolutely clear on what this article purports.
39 The next paragraph says this:
40
41 The divide between advocates and proponents
42 of polygamy has been exacerbated by the fact
43 that findings from the few empirical
44 investigations on the effect of polygamy on
45 children have been mixed.
46
47 And then it talks about Al-Krenawi, Cherry,
39
1 Epin, Elbedour, et al. have documented negative

2 effects of polygamous marital structure on the
3 developmental outcomes of children, whereas others
4 i.e. Elbedour in another article have not found
5 evidence that polygamy places children at risk for
6 adverse consequences.
7 And so here they're using "mixed" in the term
8 that some have found harm and some have not found
9 that association; right?
10 A Correct.
11 Q In the same sense that there have been many
12 studies linking tobacco with lung cancer and a few
13 that haven't found a link, and of course for 50
14 years the tobacco companies told us that the
15 results were mixed. There was a controversy?
16 A True.
17 Q But it's not mixed in the sense that you're
18 comparing negatives and positives and that there's
19 hard science on either end of the spectrum; is
20 that fair?
21 A Yes, in the context of this article.
22 Q Thank you. Okay. Well, we'll leave that article.
23 Returning if I can to the debate, such as it
24 is, between you and Professor Henrich, I think it
25 seems to me that you probably agree on much more
26 than you disagree on, would you say?
27 A Yes.
28 Q And the point of contention is this, Dr. Henrich
29 looked at your unquestionable conclusions with
30 respect to violence in -- and questioned anyway,
31 with respect to violence in monogamous
32 relationships and said yeah, that's right, but it
33 doesn't tell us anything about the harms of
34 polygamy; it tells us something about the harms of
35 monogamy; is that right?
37 Q And if I can use another analogy, and forgive me
38 for these, we might say that drunk driving causes
39 a certain set of harms. Broken bones, deaths,
40 these sorts things. We might also say that sober
41 driving causes those very same harms. You would
42 accept that?
43 A Yes.
44 Q The question though is does drunk driving cause
45 more of the harms or perhaps particularly
46 different harms. You would agree that would be
47 the important determination?
40
1 A Yes.
2 Q If we were considering banning drunk driving as
3 opposed to sober driving?
4 A Yes.
5 Q So it doesn't get us very far, Doctor, and I
6 appreciate that you were only answering the
7 question that was posed to you, but it doesn't get
8 us very far in the larger issue simply to say
9 there are harms in monogamous relationships, does
10 it?
11 A Well, that depends on the goal, I guess.
12 Q Right.
13 A But in my case I simply was presenting that there
14 were harms associated with monogamous
15 relationships.
16 Q Right.
17 A Yes.
18 Q But if we're considering the criminal prohibition
19 of polygamous relationships then the more
20 interesting question, you would agree, is whether
21 there are either more of the same types of harms
22 or unique harms?
23 MR. DICKSON: My Lord, that sounds like it's a matter
24 that might be addressed in argument rather than
25 through this witness.
26 THE COURT: Mr. Jones?
27 MR. JONES: I didn't see anything inappropriate about
28 the question, My Lord, but it's nothing but an
29 obvious point. I think I can move on.
30 THE COURT: Okay.
31 MR. JONES:
32 Q So Dr. Henrich's response as you understand it is
33 to essentially say, yes, he's right about the
34 harms in monogamous relationships, but what's of
35 interest to us when we're comparing monogamy
36 versus polygamy is is there anything about the
37 quality of those harms that might lead us to think
38 that they would be different in polygamous
39 relationships. You understand that to be his
40 exercise?
41 A Yes.
42 Q And so he said that there are at least a couple of
43 things, and I'll just focus on two, that would
44 make your ears perk up. One of them is this
45 incredible risk associated with genetic
46 non-relatedness that you've identified through
47 your work and --
41
1 A Yes.
2 Q And I'm sorry, I should give you a chance to say
3 yes because the transcript -- you would agree with
4 that?
5 A Yes.
6 Q And looking back at your work and other work in
7 the field I was struck by the profundity of this
8 effect. This is a huge risk factor in families,
9 genetic unrelatedness; you would agree?
10 A Yes.
11 Q And, in fact, everything from the likelihood that
12 someone is going to be murdered to the likelihood
13 that a mother is going to strap her children into
14 a car seat is affected by -- let's put it this
15 way, correlates with a lack of genetic
16 relatedness?
17 A Yes, specifically the presence of a male. That is
18 the most profound risk is the presence of an
19 unrelated male parent figure.
20 Q Certainly that's the most profound risk?
21 A Sure.
22 Q There are other risks. One of them is the
23 presence of an unrelated female figure. It's
24 about one-third, but it's still there?
25 A Sure.
26 Q Okay. And when we're talking about, for instance,
27 the neglect of children which was measured with
28 the seatbelt test as a proxy?
29 A Yeah.
30 Q That was a test done with respect to mothers; is
31 that right?
32 A Sorry, the seatbelt test?
33 Q There was research from Australia that indicated
34 that women are more likely to buckle their genetic
35 children into car seats than they were their
36 non-genetic children. Do you recall that?
37 A Yes, yes.
38 Q And so that was research done with respect to
39 mothers.
40 A Yes.
41 Q And using that as a proxy they determined
42 essentially that mothers are more neglectful with
43 respect to their non-related children?
44 A Yes.
45 Q Even when it's the same mother with different
46 children?
47 A Yes.
42
1 Q Which is a pretty good control you would agree?

2 A Yes.
3 Q So the presence of an unrelated person in the
4 household, not just a father, is this enormous
5 risk factor, and so if you were looking at
6 comparing models of polygyny versus monogamy and
7 you realized the -- I won't say exponential
8 because I know that has a particular term, but the
9 vast increase in the number of unrelated pairs,
10 adult/child pairs, adult/adult pairs in a
11 household, that it's not unreasonable to
12 hypothesize, and I appreciate there's no data,
13 it's not unreasonable to hypothesize that what you
14 suggest as the cause or a cause of the violence,
15 genetic unrelatedness, might play out -- would
16 play out as at least as bad and might play out
17 worse -- no more than a hypothesis, I appreciate
18 that -- in a polygynous relationship. That's not
19 an unreasonable conclusion to draw?
20 A Well, there simply are no data. I mean, it may or
21 may not be the case that it's appropriate to make
22 that comparison.
23 Q Right.
24 A And I'm -- not being an expert on polygynous
25 relationships, I can't say whether that is a
26 reasonable thing to do.
27 Q I understand. But part of exercise in determining
28 the cause -- I mean, one of the fascinating
29 implications of teasing out this genetic
30 relatedness thing as you've done over the years is
31 to say how can we use this information; right?
32 How can we extrapolate from this idea that genetic
33 unrelatedness can cause neglect of children to
34 assist us in policy making; right?
35 A I haven't done much writing on that but certainly
36 people have thought about that and what do we do
37 with this kind of information, yes.
38 Q Right. Okay. Well, let me turn from the genetic
39 unrelatedness to the other thing that would make
40 one's ears perk up in the context of polygamy, and
41 that is the notion of -- well, no, no. Before I
42 leave that, let me back up.
43 The hypothesis of causation with respect to
44 genetic unrelatedness and harm, neglect or murder
45 or however you want to measure it, the hypothesis
46 is that we care less, that our genes are not
47 programmed to care as much about people who are
43
1 unrelated to us, and therefore when we're put in a

2 close environment like a family where you're going
3 to have all kinds of disputes over whatever that
4 it's more likely to bubble up into violence when
5 the person is unrelated than when the person is
6 related; right?
7 A Correct.
8 Q And so that's the working hypothesis that you
9 might apply when making policy decisions in other
10 contexts?
11 A Yes, although the work that Henrich was referring
12 to is work on parents and children.
13 Q Right.
14 A And then he's applying it to sort of saying well,
15 there are more people -- it's like monogamy but
16 there are more people.
17 Q Right.
18 A More unrelated people. And I'm not sure that that
19 is a sensible thing to do. It may be. I just
20 don't know.
21 Q Sure. Well, you would accept certainly that there
22 are more unrelated parent/child relationships in a
23 polygynous household than a monogamous one?
24 A Yes.
25 Q All other things being the same?
26 A Yes.
27 Q And you would accept that there are, even assuming
28 the father is the same as all the children, there
29 is at least a degree of separation in the genetic
30 relatedness of the co-siblings?
31 A Indeed.
32 Q More so than in an ordinary monogamous family?
33 A Yes.
34 Q And it's not just parent/child or parent/parent
35 violence that is linked to genetic unrelatedness,
36 but it's also sibling violence and sibling
37 rivalries, in fact; isn't that right?
38 A Yes.
39 Q And so the more distantly related the siblings in
40 a family one would expect on this hypothesis the
41 greater levels of conflict and violence among the
42 siblings?
43 A Yes.
44 Q Okay. Let me leave the topic of genetic
45 relatedness in families and just go to the other
46 aspect which was the potential for violence
47 increasing with age disparity between husband and
44
1 wife, and the data took me by surprise I'll be

2 honest with you. We find that husbands are more
3 likely to kill their wives if they're considerably
4 older than the wife?
5 A Indeed.
6 Q And, in fact, that the younger wife is more likely
7 to kill the husband if he's considerably older
8 than her?
9 A Indeed.
10 Q But not as -- obviously not as likely and the
11 effect isn't as large either, isn't that right,
12 with respect to women --
14 Q -- compared to men. And the effect isn't linear,
15 is it, with respect to the age disparity?
16 A Yes.
17 Q Let me tell you what I mean by that. There is
18 very little difference between a two-year age gap
19 and a three-year age gap with respect to this
20 level of violence. And it goes up, and then
21 around about -- I think it was around about 14
22 years it spikes?
23 A Yes.
24 Q So relationships, marriages where the husband is
25 14 years have a risk factor almost off the scale
26 compared to people who are closer in age?
27 A Indeed.
28 Q And the hypothesis for that from a evolutionary
29 psychology standpoint is that -- well, maybe you
30 can explain what the hypothesis is. Why would our
31 evolved behaviour make us more violent towards one
32 another as the age gap increases?
33 A Well, the hypothesis, or one of the hypotheses, is
34 men who are much older than their partners, than
35 their spouses, and as far as I'm aware all this
36 work has been done with monogamous
37 relationships --
38 Q Yes.
39 A -- become increasingly suspicious about their
40 partner's sexual behaviour. With those increased
41 suspicions about their partner's sexual behaviour
42 there is an increased likelihood of acting out on
43 that sexual jealousy, and one of the sort of
44 unfortunate sort of common ways of acting that out
45 is by virtue of violence or other sorts of
46 controlling behaviour.
47 Q Controlling behaviour. And this is -- when you
45
1 say sexual jealousy and what you take from your

2 articles is that sexual jealousy is the conscious
3 manifestation of an evolved behaviour of mate
4 guarding. That's something that is referred to in
5 the literature. Can you explain what that is?
6 A Yes. In the broader context of evolutionary
7 biology the argument is that sexual jealousy as
8 expressed by humans is sort of one way in which
9 men and women, I should be clear, express what has
10 been referred to as mate retention behaviours or
11 mate guarding behaviours or ways in which men and
12 women attempt to -- not necessarily consciously --
13 attempt to thwart their partner from getting
14 involved sexually or emotionally with alternative
15 partners.
16 Q So we would expect, and it seems to be borne out
17 in the data, that mate guarding, sexual jealousy,
18 control of wives by husbands would increase as the
19 relative ages increase?
20 A Yes.
21 Q And we use murder as a proxy, and maybe I can just
22 ask you to confirm one of the reasons that
23 statisticians, particularly criminologists and
24 people like yourself that research crime, love to
25 use murder as a proxy is because it's almost
26 always regard recorded and almost always known.
27 It's a very hard figure; is that right?
29 Q As opposed to something like spousal battery which
30 is, to understate it, a fungible reporting
31 phenomenon?
32 A Indeed.
33 Q So we can extrapolate from an increased number of
34 murders as the age gap increases not just that
35 what's going on is suddenly at 14 years someone
36 decides to kill their partner, but rather that the
37 environment is changing in a way that the man is
38 exerting much more control, exhibiting this mate
39 guarding behaviour, and far more likely to be
40 exhibiting sexual jealousy. Those things all go
41 together?
42 A Yes.
43 Q Now, your understanding of polygyny as it
44 typically manifests is that it is serial polygyny
45 in the sense that a man doesn't go out and marry
46 12 wives at once?
47 A Sure.
46
1 Q A man tends to, when he's reasonably young, marry

2 the first wife and then after establishing a
3 family marries the second and so on, at certain
4 intervals. It seems to be 5 to 7 years. Of
5 serial polygyny?
6 A Yes. Of serial polygyny?
7 Q Yes.
8 A Or serial monogamy.
9 Q No, no, serial polygyny. I used a novel
10 expression and perhaps I shouldn't. What I'm
11 getting at is that polygyny manifests itself
12 generally not all at one, but starts off as a
13 monogamous relationship. I mean, not necessarily
14 a validly monogamous but de facto monogamous, and
15 then a second wife is added. There's the senior
16 wife and the junior wife?
17 A Yes, so you mean in actual polygyny?
18 Q Yes.
19 A Sure, yes. That's my understanding.
20 Q And then a third wife might be added at a later
21 time?
22 A Yes.
23 Q But it's a sequence of wives being added opposed
24 to all being added at once?
25 A That is my understanding, yes.
26 Q And so one might expect in those circumstances
27 that at some point in a polygynist's career he's
28 going to find himself as a -- much older than his
29 bride; is that fair?
30 A Indeed.
31 Q And, in fact, as Dr. Henrich points out,
32 disparities of 14 years are not uncommon in
33 polygyny?
34 A That's my understanding, yes.
35 Q Now, I want to take you through a bit of our
36 larger theory here and get your comments on it.
37 But you understand probably from reading
38 Dr. Henrich's report -- I don't know if you read
39 any of the material prepared by counsel in this
40 case. Did you read our opening statement or
41 anything? Was any of that given to you?
42 A I'm sorry, I did not.
43 Q No, don't apologize. Believe me, you saved
44 yourself some valued evenings.
45 I'll just explain one of the theories here,
46 that in a polygynous society with either an equal
47 number of men and women or already with an excess
47
1 of men, that polygyny creates a shortage of women

2 and that that drives down the age of average
3 marriage of girls because the demand for more
4 women requires a larger pool of women and where
5 are you going to get those women but from younger
6 women.
7 Do you accept the basic contours of that
8 hypothesis?
9 A Um, well, I understand it, but I'm not aware of
10 the data that bears directly on that.
11 Q No, no. Setting aside the data it seems like a
12 rational thing you might want to test?
13 A Indeed. I understand that, yes.
14 Q Okay. And if it were true that this phenomenon
15 occurred, that polygynous societies were also
16 societies that married very young women compared
17 to men that the effect would be the same in
18 polygynous and in monogamous marriages in that
19 society? Would you accept that? Following that
20 hypothesis?
21 A Do you mean that the age difference would increase
22 in monogamous relationships as well?
23 Q Exactly.
24 A It certainly could.
25 Q Okay. And that was going to be my next question
26 but I think you've covered that off.
27 The other aspect of the theory is there is a
28 second pressure created from this mathematical
29 effect of polygamy, which is that more unmarried
30 or unmarriageable young men will be produced in
31 society and that if that happens we would expect
32 the effect we were talking about earlier, more
33 crime, more anti-social behaviour. That would
34 follow as well?
35 A Indeed.
36 Q And the third effect of the mathematics, and
37 you've spoken to this with respect to age
38 disparity, but the third aspect of the theory is
39 that the increased scarcity of available women
40 will lead men to design and enforce more control
41 institutions on women in society generally, both
42 monogamists and polygamists. Would you say that
43 would follow too?
44 A Not necessarily, but it would, yes.
45 Q Right. And it could follow simply as a
46 consequence of what we spoke about earlier, that
47 the age disparity increase might also lead to that
48
1 effect?
2 A Indeed.
3 Q Now, Doctor, we talked about the importance -- of
4 the particular importance of murder data and how
5 we shouldn't take these murder studies to be
6 indicative of nothing more than of tiny percentage
7 of men go crazy at some point and start killing,
8 that they're actually indicative of a much larger
9 phenomenon of sexual jealousy and all of the harms
10 associated with that; is that right?
11 A Yes.
12 Q And I asked you, at that point we were discussing
13 how valuable the murder data is, though, because
14 it is -- it's an excellent proxy in that it's an
15 extreme manifestation of that behaviour and it is
16 almost always reported?
17 A Yes.
18 Q So it's valuable data, for instance,
19 cross-culturally because in almost every country
20 murders are fairly reliably reported?
21 A Yes.
22 Q And similarly other types of death. Let me put it
23 this way: One of the reasons researchers rely on
24 infant mortality as a proxy for the neglect -- the
25 neglect of children or children's health or
26 however you want to put it, is because the death
27 of a child is almost always reported and logged
28 whereas the sickness of a child or the abuse of a
29 child or the neglect of a child is much less
30 certain; is that fair?
31 A Yes.
32 Q You've worked an awful lot with crime statistics
33 from various cities in the United States in your
34 primary research and also in your secondary
35 research. Your observations with respect to the
36 reporting of intrafamily crimes, I'm going to
37 propose to you that even compared to crime in
38 general -- well, let's put it this way: In crime
39 in general not every crime is reported, but
40 particularly with respect to intrafamily crimes
41 there's a problem of underreporting; is that
42 right?
43 A I think that probably is the case.
44 Q And certainly with respect to sexual crimes,
45 underreporting is an issue?
46 A Indeed.
47 Q And crimes against children in particular. Vastly
49
1 underreported, would you say?

2 A I would say so.
3 Q And lesser forms of child abuse, same category,
4 neglect and other forms of abuse that might not be
5 purely criminal, you would say those would be
6 underreported as well?
7 A Yes.
8 MR. JONES: If I could just take a moment and consult
9 my notes, My Lord. I think I'm done.
10 THE COURT: You want to mark the binder as we have been
11 doing?
12 MR. JONES: Yes, please, My Lord. I think we have
13 identified everything in it.
14 THE COURT: Exhibit.
15 THE CLERK: 115, My Lord.
16 THE COURT: Sorry, 115?
17 THE CLERK: Yes, My Lord.
18
19 EXHIBIT 115: 1 black binder titled "Polygamy
20 Reference (s. 293 of Criminal Code) S-097767
21 Binder for AGBC's Cross-Examination of Todd
22 Shackelford"; 1 page index before tabs 1 to 4;
23 p/c's
24
25 MR. JONES:
26 Q Perhaps in the greatest of fairness to you,
27 Doctor, I should take you back to a question that
28 I said that we would get to and we haven't
29 actually got to it directly, and maybe I want to
30 give you the opportunity to get to it as directly
31 as possible.
32 One of the questions that His Lordship is
33 going to be wrestling with is if we remove the
34 criminal prohibition on polygamy if it becomes --
35 we're going to bicker over language, but if it
36 becomes legalized or if it becomes permitted that
37 it will spread. We've learned of its presence,
38 and I think you've noted its presence through
39 Pinker at least, in discrete communities like the
40 fundamentalist Mormon communities. You would
41 agree that it exists in many countries around the
42 world from which we draw immigrant populations?
43 A Yes.
44 Q But I wanted to see whether you could offer us any
45 guidance regarding what we might expect of its
46 adoption in mainstream society. And I understand
47 that this is conditioned by many uncertainties.
50
1 We're economically advanced. We have a fairly

2 advanced rights framework, human rights framework.
3 Relative equality between men and women. Do you
4 as an evolutionary psychologist -- and let me
5 preface this all again by saying and yet you said
6 that it does seem to bubble up around the edges as
7 it were through serial monogamy. But do you as an
8 evolutionary psychologist have any view on the
9 likely transmission of the behaviour in mainstream
10 society? Should it be permitted?
11 A Well, I should preface this by saying that I'm not
12 comfortable sort of making any predictions in the
13 sense that I'm not an expert in polygyny, but it
14 occurs to me that given our previous discussion
15 about people's interest in what high status,
16 highly valued people do and how they behave. They
17 often may, and this is what advertisers do, they
18 use celebrities to present their case.
19 Given that, I mean, that makes me wonder
20 whether or not if polygyny were legal, and given
21 the very low status with which many polygynous
22 groups are held by mainstream Americans and
23 Canadians, I wonder about the extent at which it
24 would sort of immediately be something that people
25 are interested in pursuing. But the reality is I
26 simply don't know.
27 Q So you're saying that the role models as they
28 exist now aren't the people that mainstream
29 society would typically imitate. We don't have
30 great ambitions to move to Bountiful and become
31 the next Winston Blackmore?
33 Q Okay. Let me -- well, something in one of your
34 older articles caught my attention. Perhaps I can
35 take you to it and it's at tab -- sorry, wrong
36 binder. It's at tab 3 and this is an article that
37 you co-wrote from, gosh, 2005?
38 A Yes.
39 Q And you were testing for something else here and I
40 appreciate that. You were testing for whether
41 people would prefer monogamy versus casual sex
42 under sort of which arrangements, if I can put it
43 that way; is that right?
45 Q But the questions you asked and the answers given
46 kind of caught my attention, and maybe I can take
47 you to those. And they are at page 273 here in
51
1 this table. And this offered the various choices

2 and asked men and women what would their ideal
3 lifetime mating behaviour be; is that right?
5 Q And so what I saw when I looked down here, and I'm
6 going to deal with the men's category, 78 percent
7 of men favoured marriage to one partner. Then the
8 next one down, 13.4 wanted marriage to one partner
9 with freedom to have casual sex partners. And
10 then it started to get interesting to me, as you
11 can probably imagine. Faithful marriage to two or
12 three partners was 1.6; marriage to 2 or 3
13 partners with freedom to have casual sex partners
14 was 2.2; faithful marriage to 2 or 3 partners with
15 option of adding limit of 10 new marriage partners
16 was .5; marriage to limit of 10 partners with
17 freedom to have casual sex partners was 1.1. And
18 then it says no marriage was an option selected by
19 I suppose those aspiring to -- well, we'll leave
20 that.
21 So I just added these things. Category 3, 4,
22 5 and 6 which are all forms of polygamy, or in the
23 case of the men polygyny, I presume. And they
24 added up to over 5 percent of the population
25 listed -- confessed that their ideal lifetime
26 lifestyle would be polygamy; is that right?
27 A Yes, although forgive me, but I think we sort of
28 couched that with and there were no costs
29 associated with this behaviour.
30 Q Sure.
31 A Yes.
32 Q And, in fact, you couched it another way that I
33 thought interesting. You thought that, in fact,
34 the reporting bias was obscenely overweighted in
35 favour of monogamy given the empirical research
36 that had demonstrated the extent to which people
37 are actually engaging in de facto polygynous
38 behaviour; right?
39 A Indeed.
40 Q So if anything in the polygyny versus monogamy
41 figures in this table polygyny is low?
42 A Yes, in terms of what men and women report.
43 Q Right.
44 A What would be ideal, yes.
45 Q Right.
46 A Indeed.
47 Q Okay. And something that surprised us when
52
1 Dr. Henrich was testifying, and I'll just bounce

2 it off you and see if you have any comments on it.
3 He teaches evolutionary psychology as one of his
4 courses and he has one of these clicker instant
5 poll devices, and so he can put up on the screen a
6 question. And so he has a question for women
7 only, and the question is you have a choice
8 between marrying two men otherwise identical. One
9 is a billionaire already married and the other one
10 is the same guy, middle class, single. You can be
11 the first wife of the nice middle class single guy
12 or you can be the second wife of the billionaire.
13 And to his shock and horror 70 percent of his
14 female university students selected the
15 billionaire with either 75 or 100 percent
16 probability. I've got to say that surprised me.
17 Does it surprise you?
18 A Did you say 17 percent?
19 Q 75 percent?
20 A 75 percent.
21 Q Yeah.
22 A That does surprise me that it's quite that high.
23 Yes.
24 Q You would expect it to be lower. Perhaps an order
25 of magnitude lower?
26 A I would have expected that, yes.
27 Q 17 percent would have seemed more reasonable?
28 A 17.
29 Q Is that right?
30 A Yes.
31 Q But nevertheless it doesn't surprise you that a
32 significant portion of even well educated
33 presumably successful unlimited option university
34 women would select that option given those
35 choices?
36 A No, it doesn't surprise me, yes.
37 MR. JONES: Those are my questions, My Lord.
38 THE COURT: Thanks, Mr. Jones. It's 12:25. Would it
39 be better if we waited until this afternoon?
40 MR. CAMERON: My Lord, I have only less than five
41 minutes of questions.
42 THE COURT: Okay.
43 MR. CAMERON: I don't know if --
44 MS. GAFFAR: No, I was trying to communicate via sign
45 language with Mr. Jones.
46 MR. JONES: May I pursue that semaphore before I
47 conclude, My Lord.
53
1 MS. GAFFAR: My Lord, I hate to impose but I'm

2 wondering if we can conclude at this point for the
3 lunch hour and resume just very briefly at 2:00
4 with the witness.
5 THE COURT: Let's do that. Thank you.
6 THE CLERK: Order in court. Court is adjourned until
7 2:00 p.m.
8
10 (NOON RECESS)
11
13
14 TODD SHACKELFORD, a
15 witness for the Amicus,
16 recalled.
17
18
19 THE COURT: Mr. Jones.
20
21 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. JONES: (Continued)
22 Q My Lord, I'm grateful for my friend's semaphore.
23 I do have one final question by way of synthesis
24 perhaps, Doctor. The question that I half
25 assed -- half asked that I would bring your
26 attention back to was this question of from an
27 evolutionary biology perspective whether we could
28 expect polygamy to spread in North American
29 society. And you had mentioned at different
30 points in your testimony some factors that might
31 impact on that and I just wanted to preface my
32 question with a review of those.
33 One of them, of course, we've seen your survey
34 results and also the anecdote from Professor
35 Henrich that suggests that perhaps even well
36 educated university students are receptive to the
37 idea in the present. You remember us discussing
38 that?
39 A Yes.
40 Q And your observation that accorded with Professor
41 Henrich's, that serial monogamy as we experience
42 it is in part an expression of repressed
43 polygynous behaviour, if I can put it that way?
44 A I suppose.
45 Q That would factor into the consideration of
46 whether it would spread?
47 A I'm sorry, I don't understand.
54
1 Q I'm obviously not being clear. You have observed

2 the phenomenon of serial monogamy?
3 A Sure.
4 Q As a form I think I called it de facto polygamy
5 and you called it effective polygyny?
6 A Yes.
7 Q And I suggested to you that that was a
8 manifestation of an otherwise repressed will to
9 polygyny, if I can call it that, or an inclination
10 to polygyny.
11 A Okay, yes.
12 Q And the third thing was your qualification that
13 quite often behaviours spread through society
14 based on imitation of high status people, and so
15 weighing against these factors would be that at
16 present there aren't any high status practitioners
17 of polygamy that people might imitate. Do you
18 remember us talking about that?
19 A Yes.
20 Q And you'd said that that was a means by which an
21 idea or a behaviour could spread particularly
22 quickly through society?
23 A Well, I think you said particularly quickly. Now,
24 I'm not sure -- I guess it would depend on what
25 the reference was. I mean, it could. Certainly
26 there's evidence that high status individuals,
27 their behaviour can be imitated more quickly, for
28 example, than someone who is of moderate --
29 Q Right. And so your observation was that the
30 present practitioners of polygamy seem to be
31 generally low status people in society generally,
32 and that would militate against the other
33 factors --
34 A Yes.
35 Q -- in its immediate spread?
36 A Yes.
37 Q So let me ask you, taking all of those things into
38 consideration, with the depth of your background
39 in evolutionary psychology would you agree with me
40 that it is -- with this characterization: That
41 it's plausible that polygamy would spread as a
42 behaviour in North America if it were permitted,
43 but how fast or how big it would be is
44 speculative?
45 A It's plausible. I mean as opposed to impossible,
46 it's plausible, yeah.
47 Q Well, you seem --
55
Cross-exam by Mr. Cameron
1 A It seems terribly, terribly unlikely. But is it

2 plausible? Yes, it's plausible.
3 Q When you say terribly unlikely, reviewing the
4 behaviour -- we've seen that 5 percent of
5 university males would consider it the ideal in
6 your survey?
7 A So they report.
8 Q Yes. And you've said for the reasons that we
9 reviewed that that was perhaps low given your
10 observations in that article?
11 A Well, that's one issue. Another issue is that
12 it's one thing to report that this would be an
13 ideal. It's quite another to actually pursue it
14 given that there are potential costs involved in
15 pursuing such behaviour.
16 Q Right. For those who could afford it in economic
17 and monetary sense?
18 A Some would, I presume.
19 MR. JONES: Thank you. Those are my questions,
20 My Lord.
21 THE COURT: Thank you. Mr. Cameron.
22
23 CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. CAMERON:
24 Q Professor Shackelford, I'm -- my name is Craig
25 Cameron. I'm with the Attorney General of Canada.
26 I just have a few questions for you and I'm hoping
27 I don't cover any of the same ground as my friend
28 from the Province, but I will have to do my best
29 in that regard.
30 Am I correct that you testified that in all
31 mating relationships there's some level of
32 conflict?
34 Q Okay. Would you agree that there's varying levels
35 of conflict between different mating
36 relationships?
37 A Yes.
38 Q Or mating relationships of different types, to the
39 layperson?
40 A Yes.
41 Q Okay. And some types of mating relationships have
42 more conflict than others?
43 A Yes.
44 Q And you can't tell the court whether polygamous
45 relationships have more or less conflict than
46 monogamous relationships, can you?
47 A I cannot.
56
1 Q Okay. Now, I believe you also testified that

2 there may be some factors in polygamous
3 relationships that mitigate the level of conflict.
4 There may be?
5 A There may be, yes.
6 Q But you would agree that polygamous relationships
7 raise some elements that are distinct from
8 monogamous relationships, wouldn't you?
9 A Indeed.
10 Q New complications from a research point of view?
11 A Indeed.
12 Q And I assume you would agree that there may also
13 be some exacerbating factors of polygamous
14 relationships that exacerbate the conflict within
15 those relationships?
16 A Yes.
17 Q Okay. Now, if I understand your work on conflict
18 in relationships you state that male sexual
19 jealousy is predictive of spousal violence?
20 A Indeed.
21 Q And male sexual jealousy if I understand it, and
22 I'm blundering a way into an area that of course
23 is your specialty. Male sexual jealousy is
24 manifested by what we would call controlling
25 behaviours on the part of men?
26 A In part, indeed. Yes.
27 Q But that's one of the indicators?
28 A Yes.
29 Q Of male sexual jealousy, and that's one of -- also
30 one of indirectly the predictors of spousal
31 violence?
32 A Yes.
33 Q Okay. And if these controlling behaviours, if I
34 may call them that for a layperson, are increased
35 then presumably you would predict greater levels
36 of spousal violence?
37 A Yes.
38 Q So if there are -- would it follow then -- I
39 assume it would follow then that if there are
40 increased controlling behaviours in polygamous
41 relationships you could expect that it would be
42 likely to find increased levels of violence within
43 those relationship, couldn't you?
44 A Indeed.
45 Q Now, you list some of these controlling behaviours
46 in your articles. Not an exhaustive list, but you
47 list them. I'm speaking of your article "From
57
1 Mate Retention to Murder"?

2 A Yes.
3 Q And on page 328 under the heading of "Male Sexual
4 Jealousy and Mate Retention Behaviour" you list
5 some of the controlling behaviours. Now, I'm
6 assuming that this isn't an exhaustive list?
7 A It is not an exhaustive list.
8 Q Okay. Now, would I be correct in assuming that
9 such controlling behaviours manifest -- in your
10 article you seem to cite them more on an
11 individual level, meaning controlling behaviours
12 by the individual.
13 A Yes.
14 Q But would I be correct in assuming that such
15 behaviours could also manifest themselves on a
16 community level or become entrenched as community
17 norms?
18 A They could.
19 Q Okay. So I want to ask you whether you would
20 agree that the following could very well be
21 incidences of controlling behaviours on a
22 community level. Arranged marriages?
23 A Indeed.
24 Q Decreased reproductive autonomy given to the
25 female?
26 A Yes.
27 Q And underage marriages?
28 A Yes.
29 Q Okay. So those might be behaviours that would be
30 entrenched on a community level to in a sense
31 control women for the purposes of, as you've
32 outlined in your papers, making sure from an
33 evolutionary perspective that they stay within the
34 group?
35 A Yes.
36 Q And those also might be predictors of spousal
37 violence?
38 A Indeed.
39 Q On -- I'm not going to take you to the article.
40 I'll just read you a sentence from the article and
41 if you require more context please tell me. In
42 your article, as I fumble through it, "Spousal
43 Homicide Risk and Estrangement."
44 A That's not my article.
45 Q Sorry.
46 A Yes.
47 Q Margo Wilson and Martin Daly's article. One you
58
1 attached to your affidavit though.

2 A Yes.
3 Q And presumably you adopt the conclusions in the
4 article?
5 A Yes, I think it's --
6 Q Okay. Well, let me be fair to you and read you
7 the conclusion I'm hoping you'll adopt and then we
8 can go from there.
9 A Sure.
10 Q On page 13 of that article they write:
11
12 We have argued that violence against wives
13 can best be understood as one outcome of a
14 sexually proprietary masculine psychology
15 which treats wives as valued sexual and
16 reproductive commodities that might be
17 usurped by rivals.
18
19 A I agree with that.
20 Q Okay.
21 A Yes.
22 Q So would it then -- would you then agree that the
23 more a community treats its wives as valued sexual
24 and reproductive commodities that must be
25 protected the more one would expect increased
26 levels of violence within that community?
27 A Yes, generally I would agree with that.
28 Q Okay. Again to one of the articles you have in
29 your affidavit "Methods of Filicide" and I believe
30 this is one of your articles.
31 A It is.
32 Q Written by you and I would assume your wife
33 co-authored?
34 A Indeed.
35 Q On page 76 you cite some research stating:
36
37 Stepparents also spend less money on step
38 children relative to genetic parents'
39 monetary expenditures on their children.
40
41 And that's one of the I would say hazards, I
42 suppose, of living with -- of a child of living
43 with a stepparent?
44 A Yes.
45 Q Can I ask you just to expand on what effects
46 result when a stepparent or any parent spends less
47 on some children than others. Why is that a
59
1 problem?
2 A Well, in this particular context it was presented
3 as -- this wasn't my own research I should be
4 clear.
5 Q Right.
6 A This was summarizing work that casts a much
7 broader net, a much wider net on the relationships
8 between stepparents and stepchildren. And much of
9 that work, some of which we summarize here, has
10 focussed on sort of an extreme form, namely
11 killing. But indeed there is other work done by
12 colleagues that indicates that as a matter of fact
13 stepparents actually spend less money on their
14 stepkids. They pay less for tuition, for example,
15 for college education, and it's another indicator
16 of proxy of relative disinvestment or less
17 investment in one stepchildren relative to one's
18 genetic children.
19 Q Okay. So if I understand that -- what you've just
20 explained to me that research is about, it would
21 be that children in whom parents invest less or
22 spend less on suffer harms from that -- from that
23 disparity?
24 A Or at a minimum they're not receiving the same
25 benefits that genetic children might receive.
26 Q But relative to -- children that on whom -- let me
27 try to phrase this in a less torturous way. If
28 there are two children in a large family and one
29 child receives more expenditures or more
30 investment financial -- I assume that spending
31 less money on a child is a proxy for spending less
32 resources generally on the child for example?
33 A Yes.
34 Q So if one child receives less investment they are
35 in a sense going to have more deleterious outcomes
36 than the child who receives more, one would
37 expect?
38 A Yes. One would expect, yes.
39 Q Okay. And if you took a two-family forum, if
40 there is one family in which the investment in the
41 children is less because of circumstances then the
42 children in that family are going to suffer
43 vis-a-vis children in another family in whom -- in
44 which the parents sort of expend more investment?
45 A Generally speaking, yes.
46 Q Okay. Now, I believe you testified this morning
47 conflict is not a defining feature or a single
60
1 feature of a co-wife relationship. I believe

2 that's what you said; am I correct?
3 A Yes.
4 Q Okay. But you have no information about the level
5 of conflict among co-wives in polygamist
6 relationships, do you?
7 A No, only what I've read in the context of this
8 particular case.
9 Q And you have no way of evaluating the strength or
10 weakness of that evidence?
11 A No. In fact, really my comment was simply to
12 indicate that I wasn't aware of any sort of
13 relationship where there was utter cooperation or
14 utter conflict.
15 Q But just again to my question --
16 A Yes.
17 Q -- you've got no information about the level of
18 co-wives -- you have got no information that you
19 can attest to for the benefit of the court that
20 co-wives in polygamous relationships have more or
21 less levels of conflict?
23 Q So you can't say whether -- you can't say really
24 whether conflict is a significant feature of a
25 co-wife relationship?
26 A No.
27 Q And you can't say whether it's a defining feature?
28 You just can't say either way?
29 A Right. I would feel more comfortable with that.
30 Q Okay. Good. So generally speaking I take it then
31 in relation to the evidence of Professor Henrich
32 which my friend took you to today, and actually
33 both counsel took you to, I take it your evidence
34 is, and let me try to summarize it, that we should
35 be cautious about applying research from
36 monogamous situations to polygamous situations
37 holus bolus?
39 Q And is that the extent to which in a sense you're
40 commenting on Professor Henrich's evidence?
41 A Yes.
42 Q I mean, if I was to reduce it down?
43 A Yes.
44 Q Okay. So just to be clear, you can't reference
45 any specific research that states the effects you
46 found in monogamous don't apply in a polygamous
47 context, do you?
61
Rose McDermott (for AG of Canada)
In chief on qualifications by Ms. Wray
1 A That's correct.
2 Q So you can't cite any specific evidence that sort
3 of refutes what Dr. Henrich has said?
4 A That's correct.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Those my questions. Thank you,
6 Doctor.
7 THE COURT: Any other parties hoping cross-examine?
8 Any redirect? Professor Shackelford, thank you
9 for coming to court.
10 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
11
12 (WITNESS EXCUSED)
13
14 MS. WRAY: My Lord, B.J. Wray, last name spelled
15 W-r-a-y, for the Attorney General of Canada. The
16 next witness here this afternoon is Professor Rose
17 McDermott. Ms. McDermott is in the public
18 gallery. I wonder if we might have a couple of
19 minutes for her to come to the witness box. We
20 have computer to get set up as well.
21 THE COURT: Okay. Did you want me to stand down?
22 MS. WRAY: Just maybe for five minutes, please.
23 THE COURT: Sure.
24 THE CLERK: Order in court. Court stands down.
25
26 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED)
27 (PROCEEDINGS RECONVENED)
28
29 THE COURT: Ms. Wray.
30 MS. WRAY: Yes, My Lord. Professor McDermott is in the
31 witness box and I ask that she be affirmed at this
32 time.
33 ROSE MCDERMOTT, a witness
34 called by the AG of
35 Canada, affirmed.
36
37 THE CLERK: Please state your full name and spell your
38 last name for the record.
39 THE WITNESS: Rose McDermott. M-c-D-e-r-m-o-t-t.
40 MS. WRAY: Professor McDermott's expert report is I
41 believe Exhibit 411 in reference. The AGC has
42 provided a white binder. It would be at tab 11 of
43 that binder.
44 THE COURT: I have got -- I have it in a couple of
45 locations and at tab 9. Thank you.
46 MS. WRAY: I will be, My Lord, leading Professor
47 McDermott at least partially through her
62
1 qualifications as we are doing just to try to

2 expedite matters. The curriculum vitae for
3 Professor McDermott is found at the end of her
4 report. It's appended to it. You will note as
5 well that on page 1 and 2 of her report she
6 provides a brief synopsis of her qualifications.
8
9 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF ON QUALIFICATIONS BY MS. WRAY:
10 Q Professor McDermott, you are currently a professor
11 of political science at Brown University in Rhode
12 Island?
13 A Yes.
14 Q And you have held that position since 2008?
15 A Yes.
16 Q Can you tell the Court some of the courses you
17 teach at Brown?
18 A I teach the introduction to international
19 relations course. I teach the basic American
20 foreign policy course and I teach several
21 undergraduate seminars including a class on war in
22 film and literature.
23 Q And before that, from 2002 to 2008 you were
24 assistant professor and then associate professor
25 of political science at the University of
26 California, Santa Barbara?
27 A Yes.
28 Q And you taught many of the same courses I assume?
29 A I taught the same courses and then I taught some
30 additional courses. So I taught graduate courses
31 in international relations theory and in
32 international security. I also taught an
33 undergraduate class in international security,
34 undergraduate and graduate classes in political
35 psychology and graduate classes in experimental
36 methods.
37 Q And prior to your time at UC Santa Barbara, from
38 1998 to 2002 you were an assistant professor of
39 government at Cornell?
40 A Yes.
41 Q And again, many of the same courses or different
42 ones?
43 A Many of the same ones and then some additional
44 ones including undergraduate seminars on rational
45 choice approaches to international relations.
46 Q At the beginning of your academic career, or I
47 guess the end of your degrees, you received a PhD
63
1 in political science from Stanford and that was in

2 1991?
3 A Yes.
4 Q And also an MA in experimental social psychology
5 from Stanford as well?
6 A Yes.
7 Q You also I noted on your CV -- I just noted this
8 because I'm not familiar with what this is, you
9 completed the preclinical core in psychiatry at
10 the Stanford medical school. I'm wondering if you
11 could tell the court what that entailed?
12 A Yes, I needed to take some additional classes to
13 complete my masters degree in experimental social
14 psychology and there were not enough classes in
15 the psychology department, so my advisor directed
16 me to the medical school at Stanford where I took
17 a year of courses in the preclinical core in
18 psychiatry, and that comprised three courses. But
19 it was prior to clinical work so I didn't see
20 patients, but I took all the courses that all the
21 incipient psychiatrists take through the medical
22 school.
23 Q I'm going to turn now to some of your fellowships
24 and awards. I apologize, this CV is not page
25 numbered so that's why I'm not referring to it
26 directly, but the fellowships and awards start at
27 around page 2 of the CV. You have held a number
28 of post doctoral fellowships throughout your
29 academic career. I'm wondering if you can just
30 highlight for us some of the recent ones?
31 A In 2008/2009 I was a fellow for the Center of
32 Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at
33 Stanford University, and then this year I'm a
34 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
35 Study at Harvard University.
36 Q At Stanford what was your research project?
37 A The research project I had at Stanford was to work
38 on an application of behaviour genetics to the
39 origins of political ideology.
40 Q Similar work at Harvard or different?
41 A The work at Harvard involved a sequence of
42 experiments both examining the biological basis of
43 leadership, so compares leaders and non-leaders as
44 well as differences among leaders themselves
45 looking at basically hormonal and genetic
46 underpinning, as well as a series of experiments
47 that are not done with leaders looking at some of
64
1 the biological and genetic contributors to various

2 aspects of political ideology.
3 Q Turning to your professional service then, and for
4 the most part this is found about the last three
5 or four pages of Professor McDermott's CV. You
6 are currently the chair of the political
7 psychology division of the American Political
8 Science Association?
9 A Yes.
10 Q And what does that association do?
11 A It's the American national association that
12 comprises the main professional organization of
13 political scientists, and there's about 10,000
14 members and we have several divisions by sub-field
15 and political psychology is one of those
16 divisions.
17 Q And in your role as chair, what does that entail?
18 A It involves selecting the program person who helps
19 decide whose papers and whose panels get presented
20 at our yearly national meeting, and it involves
21 putting together a series of committees that award
22 prizes for best dissertation and best papers and
23 other awards associated with the division.
24 There's also some, you know, social aspects
25 of holding gatherings at the national meeting.
26 Q And I note too that you are the incoming president
27 of the International Society of Political
28 Psychology?
29 A Yes.
30 Q And what is that international society all about?
31 A It's an international society that has about half
32 of its members from North America and half of its
33 members from outside North America. And it's the
34 main international organization that is devoted to
35 the scholarly study of political psychology. And
36 we have a yearly meeting. It changes locales
37 every year, half the time in North America, half
38 the time outside of North America. And we're
39 devoted to supporting the study and investigation
40 and outreach of topics related to political
41 psychology.
42 Q Now, I realize you're just the incoming president
43 so you haven't assumed this role yet, but what is
44 it that you would anticipate you would be doing in
45 your role as president?
46 A It involves helping to orchestrate the yearly
47 meeting, so the year that I will be president the
65
1 meeting held in Israel, in Herzliya Israel. So I

2 will be in charge of basically organizing the
3 meeting there, coming up with a theme for the
4 meeting, organizing panel chairs for the
5 subdivisions and also putting together awards
6 committees for people who win awards for good work
7 and for books or papers.
8 And my particular goal as incoming president
9 is to join the American division of political
10 psychology to international division so that they
11 join on similar things like their involvement in
12 the journal. So the Journal of Political
13 Psychology comes under the auspices of
14 International Society of Political Psychology and
15 I'm the chief of editorial board and I want to
16 join it with the American Political Science
17 Association.
18 Q What exactly is political psychology?
19 A Well, you'll probably get as many answers as there
20 are practitioners, but the way that I understand
21 it historically is that it's typically been an
22 application of theories and models and methods
23 from psychology, especially social and cognitive
24 psychology, to applied questions of interest in
25 political science. And those topics can include
26 things like elite decision making and leadership
27 but also things like mass political behaviour and
28 voting.
29 Q Could you give us an example perhaps of some
30 studies that have employed political psychology
31 other than your own.
32 A Sure. There is quite a lot of work that, for
33 example, looks at various demographic factors and
34 how they affect voting behaviour. So you might
35 look at, for example, how it is that economic
36 circumstances affect the likelihood that the party
37 in power gets thrown out. So as a very simple
38 example, the economy right now in the United
39 States is very bad so when we had our midterm
40 elections it wasn't surprising that the Democrats
41 lost their majority and that the Republicans came
42 into power because of work that we had showing a
43 relationship between economic downturns and voters
44 tending to throw the opposition -- throw the
45 seated power out and bring the opposition in.
46 Q Is there a field or fields of specialization that
47 you have within political psychology?
66
1 A Yes, I tend to focus on the area of international

2 relations, and in political psychology that would
3 fall under the rubric of elite decision making
4 behaviour mostly. So I'm more interested in elite
5 decision making than in mass political behaviour
6 like voting.
7 Q And going back to your role within the
8 International Society of Political Psychology you
9 have held other positions within that society as
10 well?
11 A Yes, I have been on the governing council for two
12 years and I was a vice president for three years.
13 Maybe I was on the governing council for three
14 years and a vice president for three years.
15 Q You've mentioned already that you serve on the
16 editorial board of the Journal of Political
17 Psychology.
18 A M'mm-hmm.
19 Q I'm wondering if you could give us some examples
20 of other editorial boards you're currently
21 involved in. Again, this is about the second-last
22 page of Professor McDermott's CV. There are
23 numerous boards that over your lifetime you have
24 served on, especially for academic journals, but
25 if you could highlight some of the current ones.
26 A For the journals that I'm currently sitting on the
27 editorial board of include the Journal of Conflict
28 Resolution, International Studies Quarterly and
29 Foreign Policy Analysis in addition to Political
30 Psychology.
31 Q How would you characterize the status of these
32 journals in their respective fields?
33 A They are all first or second-ranked, peer
34 reviewed, well established, highly respected
35 journals in their relative sub-field.
36 Q And what exactly do you do on the editorial board
37 of these journals?
38 A Mostly what you do is you review articles that
39 come in that are submitted for publication and you
40 vet them for whether or not you think that they
41 meet the methods and theoretical sophistication
42 that warrants publication in a peer reviewed
43 journal. And sometimes you also offer guidance to
44 the main editor where reviews may be discrepant
45 and one reviewer says it's a great paper and one
46 reviewer say it's a terrible paper, and you help
47 them make up their mind as to whether or not it
67
1 should deserve publication. And then sometimes I

2 also offer additional supporter advice. Like for
3 example, with the Journal of Conflict Resolution
4 they needed to write a new policy on what kind of
5 human subjects protections needed to be in place
6 to publish experimental work, and I wrote the
7 policy for that.
8 Q You have said you would review papers that come
9 into the journal or that were given to you to
10 review. Are those papers that are confined to
11 your area of expertise?
12 A They're wide ranging across many areas of my
13 expertise, so I review probably eight to ten
14 journal articles a month.
15 Q And what areas of expertise would those encompass,
16 or are they wide ranging -- maybe just give us a
17 few?
18 A It depends on -- each journal tends to send me
19 different things but it's mostly experimental
20 work. Work on the influence of emotion on
21 decision making, work on behaviour genetics and
22 evolutionary psychology, work on presidential
23 illness and other aspects of presidential decision
24 making, and a certain amount of work on
25 risk-taking behaviour.
26 Q Now, on that list of editorial boards I also note
27 that you are a reviewer for some of the academic
28 presses?
29 A Yes.
30 Q And could you describe your current involvement in
31 those presses.
32 A I have some academic presses that send me books to
33 review to decide whether or not those books should
34 be published. Those include, you know, presses
35 like Princeton University Press, but the press I
36 am most closely aligned with at the moment is the
37 University of Chicago Press where I co-edit a
38 series on leadership for them. And I solicit
39 manuscripts and review manuscripts that are book
40 manuscripts for publication by the University of
41 Chicago Press.
42 Q I would like to turn now just to some of your
43 publications. This, My Lord, takes up the bulk of
44 the CV.
45 You have a substantial body of publications
46 which you have as stated in your report includes
47 over 70 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.
68
1 Now, are these all in academic journals or

2 published by academic presses?
3 A Yes.
4 Q On many of the topics you were describing as your
5 expertise above?
6 A Yes.
7 Q I'm not going to take the court in any detail
8 through those publications, instead I'd rather
9 focus us on the sole-authored books you have
10 written and also the co-edited books that you have
11 edited. So if you could start please with your
12 three solo-authored books and tell us what those
13 were about and when and where those were
14 published?
15 A The first book was based on my dissertation and it
16 was published by University of Michigan Press in
17 1998, and it's a book on risk taking and
18 international relations.
19 So the book takes a psychological theory of
20 risk taking, about how and when people take risks.
21 It was developed by Amos Tversky and Daniel
22 Kahneman who actually won the Nobel prize for this
23 work. It's called Prospect Theory. And it
24 applies it to four cases in American foreign
25 policy. So it basically looks at when people take
26 risks and when they're likely to be cautious, and
27 I go through four sets of American presidential
28 decisions.
29 The second book, which was also published by
30 the University Michigan Press in 2004, is an
31 overview of the field of political psychology and
32 international relations, and there's specific
33 chapters on leadership, on attitudes, on emotion,
34 on behaviour. And it's really an overview book.
35 The third book, which was published at the end
36 of 2007 by Cambridge University Press, is a book
37 that looks at the influence of illness, aging,
38 psychological and physical illness and addiction
39 on decision making. And I go through a series of
40 five cases that involve US presidential foreign
41 policy decision making and look at the influence
42 of illness on how those decisions were made and
43 how they were biased by illness.
44 Q And then your two co-edited books, one of those is
45 currently published and I understand one is
46 forthcoming; is that correct?
47 A That's right. One of them is called Measuring
69
1 Identity and I co-edit it with three people who at

2 the time were colleagues of mine at Harvard. One
3 has since left Harvard. Iain Johnston, Yoshiko
4 Herrera and Rawi Abdelal. And the book looks at
5 ways that social scientists measure identity and
6 the concept of identity, whether it's sexual
7 identify, ethnic identity, religious identity, and
8 looks at difference ways you can measure it using
9 different methods. So experimental methods or
10 discourse analysis or content analysis, and how
11 conflicting identities can be examined a sort of
12 rigorous, social scientific way.
13 The forthcoming book, which is coming out
14 from the University of Chicago this coming August,
15 so ten months from now, is co-edited with somebody
16 named Pete Atomy [phonetic], and it's an overview
17 of the emerging field of political behaviour
18 genetics and how it is we can use ideas from
19 evolutionary psychology and from behaviour
20 genetics to examine the basic foundation of
21 political ideology.
22 Q In your own research what types of research
23 methodologies have you employed?
24 A I tend to use two different kinds. First I use a
25 lot of experimental work which involves
26 quantitative analysis of pretty large numbers of
27 data, and then I also use pretty extensive
28 qualitative data in the work that I've done on,
29 say, presidential illness by doing things like
30 spending a lot of time in presidential archives
31 looking through documents and records and oral
32 histories and doing interviews and conducting
33 extensive analysis of secondary source material.
34 Q Have you employed statistical analysis in
35 particular in your prior research?
36 A Yes, especially in the experimental work.
37 Q Could you perhaps give us an example or two of
38 that.
39 A So whenever I've run experiments you have a lot of
40 data points from the subjects that you run through
41 your studies, and then you take that information
42 and you analyse it statistically to look at the
43 relationship between the variable that you
44 manipulate and the outcome you're interested in
45 explaining.
46 So, for example, in one study that I looked
47 at I looked at manipulating the way that a
70
1 particular issue was characterized to a subject

2 and how they chose to vote on it. And then so I
3 had had a number of subjects who would get one
4 treatment where they would read about an issue
5 framed in one way and another set of subjects who
6 would read about the same issue framed in a
7 different way and then you would look at how that
8 would affect the way they would vote on that
9 issue. And in order to understand the
10 relationship between the manipulation and the
11 voting behaviour you have to do statistical
12 analysis, and that's what I did in that case and
13 in many, many, many other examples looking at
14 different kinds of variables.
15 Q Thank you. Turning now specifically to the topic
16 of polygamy how is it that you became interested
17 in this subject?
18 A I was really brought into being involved in the
19 subject by my collaborator Richard Wrangham, who's
20 a biological anthropologist at Harvard University.
21 And he had been a collaborator of mine on a number
22 of other projects before this, and when the
23 attacks on 911 happened he was called into a
24 series of meetings that happened at Harvard. Al
25 Gore brought in 12 senior faculty at Harvard and
26 asked them for help trying to explain the source
27 of the attacks and what was going on. And he
28 hypothesized that some of the sources of male
29 violence may arise from the interests that men
30 have in asserting reproductive control over women.
31 And most of the people in the room didn't find
32 that a particularly compelling hypothesis. And so
33 he came to me and he said, do you know if we have
34 data that we can examine this with, and at the
35 time I assumed that there was and I was wrong, and
36 I naively thought that it existed. And so when I
37 realized that that data really didn't exist I went
38 about trying to participate in obtaining and
39 collecting that data so that we could test
40 Richard's hypotheses to see whether or not his
41 ideas were right.
42 And through another series of unrelated
43 coincidences I had been sent an article to review
44 by a journal at Harvard called International
45 Security that examined the role of sex ratio
46 imbalances on the propensity for male violence in
47 Asia that had been done by Valerie Hudson. And as
71
1 a result of that review process the editor asked

2 me to reveal my identity and I agreed and I made
3 contact with her and she said, you know, I've
4 written a larger book on this and I'm trying to
5 get it published and do you know a press that
6 would take it. And so I suggested Harvard Press
7 which ultimately published it and it went on to
8 win -- the book is called Bare Branches -- it went
9 on to win many international awards including from
10 the American Sociological Association. And in the
11 course of those interactions I asked her if she
12 had data on polygamy we could use to test
13 Richard's hypotheses, and she said, we don't but
14 we're trying to compile this database, would you
15 like to be involved in this project.
16 So I became involved in that project and over
17 the course of the next decade participated in
18 developing this WomanStats database which includes
19 a lot of data on variables related to women and
20 children, some of which are related to polygamy
21 and some of which are related to other variables
22 as well. And we were able over the course of
23 seven or eight years to compile sufficient amounts
24 of data to begin to test some of Richard's ideas.
25 Q So from at least shortly after 911 to the present
26 you have been researching polygamy?
27 A Yes, for about 10 years.
28 Q And in addition to compiling the WomanStats
29 database, which we will talk about later on, have
30 you done other research with respect to this
31 topic?
32 A I've given lectures on it and I've done additional
33 writing and statistical analysis on it.
34 Q And in order to produce those I take it that
35 you've reviewed quite a lot of material?
36 A Oh, yeah. I've read hundreds if not thousands of
37 articles and books on the topic over the last ten
38 years.
39 Q Where have you presented lectures on polygamy?
40 A I presented one at the Centre for Advanced Study
41 in Behavioural Sciences at Stanford. That was in
42 March of 2009. I presented at the inaugural David
43 Easton lecturer at the University of California
44 Irvine in January of 2010, and I presented at the
45 Radcliffe Institute at Harvard in October of this
46 year.
47 Q And I understand since you have submitted the
72
In chief by Ms. Wray
1 version of your CV that the court has you've been

2 asked to contribute your research on polygamy to
3 another academic publication?
4 A Yes. To a special issue of a journal that Lisa
5 Fishbine, who is a lawyer at Brandeis University
6 is putting together on the topic.
7 Q Now, how is it that your research in polygamy is
8 linked to the discipline of political psychology?
9 What are the connections?
10 A Well, a lot of political psychology is about
11 examining the dynamics and mechanisms of
12 individual behaviour and individual psychology and
13 how it affects macro level political processes.
14 And I think of polygyny or any kind of complex
15 social behaviour or complex political institution
16 as an example of the ways in which micro level
17 individual choices aggregate to have societal
18 level impacts. So it's one example of the
19 fundamental dynamics that political psychology is
20 designed to illuminate.
21 Q And is this research on polygamy linked to your
22 own previous scholarship, your actual research
23 topics?
24 A It's not linked to quite a bit of substantial
25 experimental work I have done on sex differences
26 and aggression. That has mostly been experimental
27 work and has mostly involved biological
28 underpinnings, looking at things like
29 testosterone.
30 Q And where have you presented that research?
31 A At numerous national and international conferences
32 and that's widely published.
33 Q In academic peer reviewed journals?
34 A Yes, the main work on testosterone has actually
35 been published in the fourth-ranked world general
36 science journal, the Proceedings of the Royal
37 Society of London Biological Sciences.
38 MS. WRAY: My Lord, I would seek to have Professor
39 McDermott qualified to give the opinions in her
40 report as an expert in political psychology with
41 specializations in international relations and
42 sexual differences.
43 THE COURT: Any submissions or cross on qualifications?
44 MR. MACINTOSH: Not from me, My Lord.
45 THE COURT: Thank you. I will qualify Dr. McDermott on
46 that basis. Thank you.
47 MS. WRAY: Thank you.
73
1
2 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF BY MS. WRAY:
3 Q Professor McDermott, you have your expert report
4 in front of you?
5 A Yes.
6 Q And you prepared this report for the purposes of
7 providing evidence in the reference?
8 A Yes.
9 Q If I could take you to paragraph 22. This is on
10 page 1. You state there that you are aware of
11 your duty to the court to assist the court and not
12 to be an advocate. You prepared your report in
13 accordance with that duty?
14 A Yes.
15 Q And the testimony that you will give here today
16 will be in accordance with that duty?
17 A Yes.
18 Q Thank you. Did you have any assistance in
19 preparing this report?
20 A Yes, I had some assistance on some aspects of the
21 statistical analysis.
22 Q So what exactly did your assistant do then?
23 A He helped develop some of the statistical models
24 and run them through a statistical software
25 package called Stata.
26 Q What are his academic qualifications?
27 A He has a PhD in political science from Yale
28 University and he has taught for 15 years at
29 various institutions including Cornell University,
30 University of California Santa Barbara and
31 University of Miami.
32 Q Could you state and spell the name?
33 A His name is Jonathan Cowden, C-o-w-d-e-n.
34 Q You alone are responsible then for the contents of
35 this report?
36 A Yes.
37 Q All right. Now, let's start into the substance of
38 your report. At paragraph 12 you are outlining
39 the three issues that you were asked to examine?
40 A Yes.
41 Q In this report. Could you tell the Court what
42 those are, please.
43 A Yes. I was asked to examine the impact of
44 polygynous relationships on women's equality
45 first. Secondly, on the influence on children
46 including the health and welfare of children born
47 of polygynous marriages, and third the influence
74
1 of polygamy on various aspects of the nation

2 state.
3 Q And how did you structure your report to answer
4 those issues?
5 A So the report is structured in three parts to
6 address those issues.
7 The first part of the report discusses the
8 existing literature on these topics, first dealing
9 with women, then with children and nation state
10 issues. Most of that literature comes out of the
11 anthropological literature. Most of it is done --
12 the vast majority of it is done using qualitative
13 methodology examining specific case incidences.
14 Sometimes looking at larger examples of numbers of
15 cases, but basically that's what it is.
16 And then the second part of the report covers
17 the statistical analysis of the data that I have
18 participated in collecting, looking at 18
19 variables that are influenced by polygyny. That
20 also is divided into those that affect women,
21 those that affect children and those that affect
22 the nation state.
23 And the third part of the report discusses
24 some of the theoretical argument about some of the
25 mechanisms that may help support the influence of
26 polygyny on some of the variables that I
27 delineate.
28 Q We will go through the specific findings of your
29 report in due course. I want, though, now for you
30 to provide a very brief overview of the
31 statistical findings from your report.
32 A So in the report I looked as I mentioned at these
33 18 dependent variables and I found that there was
34 a statistically significant relationship between
35 the degree of polygyny in a society and a whole
36 host of specific outcomes, which include with
37 regard to women things like increased number of
38 children, greater maternal mortality, shorter
39 longevity.
40 Women in these societies are more subject to
41 sex trafficking, more subject to female genital
42 mutilation. There is higher levels of
43 discrepancy -- well, let me go through the second
44 part. Influence on children. In more polygynous
45 societies both boys and girls are less likely to
46 receive both primary and secondary levels of
47 education.
75
1 And with regard to the nation state higher

2 levels of polygyny are correlated with greater
3 discrepancy between what the law says on the books
4 and how it's actually practised. Greater inequity
5 in the treatment of family law, meaning the
6 treatment men and women before the law. There are
7 greater amounts of money spent on defence
8 expenditures and weapons procurement and arms
9 expenditures, and there is lower levels of
10 political freedoms and civil liberties in
11 societies with greater degrees of polygyny.
12 Q Thank you. Turning to paragraphs 19 through 21 of
13 your report. This is your definitions section?
14 A Yes.
15 Q You in these paragraphs distinguish between three
16 terms polygamy, polygyny and polyandry. Could you
17 explain how you understand those terms?
18 A Yes, my understanding of polygamy is that it
19 includes one spouse who has more than one partner,
20 so that includes both one man who has multiple
21 wives as well as one woman who has multiple
22 husbands. Polyandry speaks to one woman who has
23 multiple husband. Polygyny is one man who has
24 multiple wives. I restricted the findings in my
25 report only to instances of polygyny, meaning one
26 man with multiple wives. My data speaks in no way
27 to one woman who has multiple husbands.
28 Q And why have you chosen to use or focus on
29 polygyny in your report?
30 A Because it's by far the most prevalent form of
31 polygyny. Polyandry is extremely rare.
32 Q And just while we're on terminology so we are all
33 clear what you mean, at paragraph 26 you use three
34 terms to describe polygynous connections. You use
35 polygynous unions, polygynous relationships and
36 polygynous marriages, and I'm wondering if you
37 could tell us what you mean by those terms.
38 A What I'm really examining in the statistical part
39 of my report is restricted to polygynous
40 marriages. So what I really intend to interrogate
41 is the consequences that befall legal marriages
42 that are polygynous. And that influences
43 specifically things like parental investment
44 strategy, which is why I think marriage is what
45 I'm looking at as an institution and not just
46 cases of, you know, a married man who might have a
47 mistress or an unmarried man who might have lots
76
1 of girlfriends. That's really not what I'm

2 speaking to. What I'm speaking to is the
3 institution of polygynous marriage.
4 Q So whenever you use any of these terms, these
5 three terms in your report, what you mean always
6 is polygynous marriage?
7 A I understand them in my report and I treat them to
8 be synonymous.
9 Q All right. Let's turn to the literature review
10 section of your report which is the first
11 substantive section. This is at page 4,
12 paragraphs 22 through 38. Why did you choose the
13 literature you did?
14 A As I mentioned there is hundreds if not thousands
15 of books and articles on the topic of polygyny
16 from a variety of different sources, from blogs on
17 the web to newspaper articles to scholarly
18 contributions. And I restricted my discussion of
19 the literature to those articles which have
20 appeared in peer reviewed journals that have gone
21 through the most extensive vetting academically
22 and intellectually to assure their credibility and
23 their reliability and their validity. And also
24 those books that come out as university press
25 books that similarly have established credibility.
26 In a couple of cases I have used examples of books
27 that have -- that don't come out of university
28 presses but are widely understood and interpreted
29 and reviewed to be representative of their genre.
30 And in all of these cases I have tried to
31 provide a comprehensive overview of the respective
32 literature that is both comprehensive and
33 representative of the larger body of literature,
34 not all of which can be discussed in any, you
35 know, contained report because there is quite a
36 lot.
37 Q Now, with respect to the three issues you were
38 asked to examine the effects of polygyny on women
39 in the literature review are outlined on page 5 at
40 paragraphs 25 and 26, and what were your findings
41 with respect to these effects from the literature?
42 A So again most of this literature came out of
43 anthropology and it looked at specific instances
44 of how polygynous marriages affected women. Most
45 of that literature showed an outcome where women
46 had -- in polygynous marriages had fewer resources
47 than their monogamous counterparts. It had
77
1 different forms of measurement. Sometimes it

2 meant they had smaller plots of land. Sometimes
3 it meant they had smaller houses. Sometimes it
4 meant they had less money.
5 One of the more comprehensive studies was
6 done by an economist from Stanford, Michele
7 Tertilt, and she says that when -- at least in
8 Africa and sub-Saharan Africa in 22 countries when
9 it was banned, banning polygyny decreased
10 fertility by about 40 percent, increased financial
11 savings by 70 percent and increased per capita
12 outcome by 170 percent.
13 There are also many examples in the
14 literature, again, mostly using specific countries
15 or specific regions as examples to show that there
16 were mental health problems that accrued at higher
17 rates to women in polygynous relationships than
18 those in monogamous marriages.
19 Q And with respect to the effects of polygyny on
20 children, which is your subheading C, what did you
21 find?
22 A There's a number of different anthropological
23 studies that also look at the effect on children.
24 Again some of this work is from specific countries
25 but it congeals on the notion that children who
26 emerge from polygynous marriages are just much
27 more likely to die than children of monogamous
28 marriages, even controlling for factors like age
29 and sex and economic status.
30 Some of those earlier studies showed this was
31 true in Mali. Larger studies which extended it to
32 additional countries in Africa showed around
33 25 percent increased risk in mortality.
34 In addition unrelated work that's not
35 necessarily specifically about polygyny but that
36 looks at the effect of early sexual behaviour on
37 girls shows enormous consequences that befall
38 girls who engage in early sexual activity and
39 there is other research showing that in polygyny
40 girls are much more likely to get married earlier,
41 more likely to suffer the consequences of
42 prepubertal sex as a result, and certainly data
43 from Kanazawa shows that girls in polygynous
44 societies have earlier menarchy, showing that they
45 are much more likely to be fertile at younger ages
46 in polygynous communities than monogamous
47 communities.
78
1 It's also clear that children of young

2 mothers tend to have worse outcomes in life. They
3 are less likely to be educated; they are more
4 likely to fall into the criminal justice system;
5 they are less likely to have equal levels of
6 lifetime socioeconomic achievement over the course
7 of their lifetime, and that's true for both boys
8 and girls, not just girls.
9 So there's a lot of risks that accrue to
10 children born of young mothers and those who are
11 born into polygynous marriages relative to those
12 that are in monogamous marriages.
13 Q Paragraph 31 you refer specifically to shortened
14 interbirth intervals?
15 A Interbirth intervals has to do with how long a
16 period of time you have in between having
17 children. And the data show that any mother who
18 has children at less than 24-month intervals
19 raises risk for various forms of birth defects and
20 other kinds of problems that befall the children.
21 But specifically when you have interbirth
22 intervals that are less than 12 months you have
23 higher rates of bad birth events including those
24 related to pre-eclampsia which is one of the more
25 severe causes of both child mortality, maternal
26 mortality and birth defects in children.
27 Q And this was linked to polygyny?
28 A Yes. And so shorter interbirth intervals are more
29 frequent in polygynous marriages than in
30 monogamous marriages.
31 Q Now, turning to the effects on men you found in
32 the literature. What were those?
33 A The effects on men tend to accumulate particularly
34 to junior boys, so because junior boys need to be
35 ejected from these communities to preserve the
36 asymmetrical balance of one man having multiple
37 women, junior boys in many cases get ejected from
38 the community around the time of puberty when they
39 begin to pose sexual competition. Because of the
40 economic structure that tends to go along with
41 polygynous marriages the junior boys who are
42 ejected tend to come from the poor lower class
43 elements of the society, so when they're ejected
44 they tend not to have the education or the social
45 support to survive on their own. They often
46 become involved in the criminal justice system,
47 become wards on the state in terms of social --
79
1 provision of social welfare and they have a very,

2 very difficult time surviving independently.
3 In parts of Asia where some of this work has
4 been looked at, China and India in particular,
5 they that show governments are aware of the
6 characteristic and work to channel the energies of
7 these young men to either monastic or mercenary
8 kinds of activities. So putting them into
9 Buddhist monkeries or working them into the
10 military so that they can be channelled outward so
11 that they don't pose a threat to the overthrow of
12 the regime itself. This has been documented
13 Valerie Hudson's book Bare Branches with regard to
14 Asia.
15 One of the real harms that arises from the
16 young boys being ejected from the society is that
17 it's very clear, based on the data from Margo
18 Wilson and Martin Daly, that homicide rates
19 accumulate particularly among males age 15 to 35.
20 I would note that the Daly and Wilson data
21 primarily draws on data from Canada, although it
22 also includes some American data, and shows that
23 murder rates are highest amongst this group of men
24 and particularly among this group of young
25 unmarried men. So this group is particularly
26 prone to engage in aggressive violence. And
27 there's good evolutionary reasons potentiated by
28 hormones like testosterone for why young unmarried
29 men would be at particular risk for engaging in
30 violence in this age range.
31 Q And what about the senior men in those societies?
32 Are there effects?
33 A There are some effects. One of the things that a
34 recent piece that David Krueger did looked at --
35 examined the effect of polygyny and mortality and
36 economic inequality and found that slightly more
37 than half of the variance in mortality can be
38 explained as a combination of polygyny and
39 economic inequality, meaning that shortened
40 longevity for men as well as women can be linked
41 in polygyny as well. And that's true for senior
42 as well as junior men.
43 MS. WRAY: Perhaps, My Lord, we could take a break.
44 THE COURT: Let's do that. Thank you.
46
80
1 (AFTERNOON RECESS)
2
4 EXAMINATION IN CHIEF MS. WRAY: (Continued)
5 Q Professor McDermott, I would like you to turn to
6 the statistical analysis section of your report.
7 This is at page 8. Beginning at paragraph 39.
8 And at paragraph 39 you discuss "the limitations
9 that exist in the existing literature." If you
10 could expand on what you mean by that, please.
11 A So a lot of the existing literature speaks to the
12 experience of polygyny in particular countries or
13 particular regions. And while that information
14 can be extremely valuable and can help us generate
15 hypotheses about the relationship between the
16 variables we're interested in, it can be
17 enormously helpful to add statistical analysis to
18 look at whether or not the relationships between
19 these variables are actually significant when you
20 have broad variation.
21 So in order to sort of validate and
22 contextualize and supplement other kinds of
23 literature I wanted to add to the analysis by
24 looking at the mathematical and statistical
25 relationships between polygyny and the dependent
26 variables I was asked to explore by the court.
27 Q Are there benefits to statistical analysis?
28 A Yes, they can help allow us to generalize
29 information and relationships from specific
30 examples to broader phenomenon. So you can say,
31 okay, it just doesn't just apply to this
32 particular region or just apply to this particular
33 individual, but that these relationships hold
34 across different contexts and across different
35 time and across different space because I can show
36 that controlling for these variables or looking at
37 tremendous variance across time and across space
38 you still have these significant relationships
39 that you can document statistically.
40 Q And what about limitations of a statistical
41 analysis especially in relation to the literature?
42 A So the -- with any of the qualitative literature
43 or any of the quantitative statistical literature
44 you can never prove causation. The only method
45 that proves causation is experimentation. But you
46 can't really do experiments with polygyny because
47 it's unethical to enforce people to have randomly,
81
1 you know, manipulated forms of marital structure.

2 So what you do is you work with the information
3 you have and you can examine statistically the
4 variance in relationship between polygamy and
5 these dependent variables.
6 It gives you very strong grounds to look at
7 the correlation between these things, and
8 depending on how strong the statistical
9 relationship is it can tell you that the
10 probability that the causal relationship is untrue
11 is very, very, very unlikely; right? Very remote.
12 But, you know, it cannot prove the relationship
13 any more than anecdotal or qualitative information
14 can prove anything one way or another. The only
15 definitive tests you get that way are
16 experimental.
17 THE COURT: When you say "proved" could you prove it on
18 the balance of probabilities?
19 THE WITNESS: That's basically what statistics does.
20 What it does is it says there's less than, say, a
21 5 in a thousand percent likelihood this chance
22 would emerge as statistically significant by
23 accident under a spurious causal pattern. So even
24 though it's technically correlational most social
25 scientists understand statistically significant
26 relationships to provide the foundation of causal
27 inference. So you can make, you know, people do
28 make causal inferences based on statistics, but an
29 experimental purist would say you still need to
30 document the micro foundational basis with a true
31 treatment manipulation. But again with war,
32 genocide or these other complex social behaviours,
33 there are many, many instances where it's
34 unethical to do experiments or implausible to do
35 experiment.
37 MS. WRAY:
38 Q Have there been any other statistical analyses of
39 the effects of polygyny?
40 A There's been one that has looked at polygyny as a
41 dependent variable, meaning trying to use other
42 things to explain polygyny. But using polygyny to
43 look at the consequences of polygyny on other
44 variables, this is the only one I'm aware of. So
45 in other words this is the only one I'm aware of
46 where polygyny is treated as an independent
47 variable. I'm aware of one other where it's
82
1 treated as a dependent variable.

2 Q Perhaps just while we're on these terms you can
3 give us a brief synopsis of dependent and
4 independent variables.
5 A So independent is the cause and independent is the
6 effect. So what you're looking is the linear
7 temporal relationship between the cause and the
8 effect. Independent variable is the cause. The
9 dependent variable is the effect.
10 Q And in your study polygyny was?
11 A The independent variable.
12 Q The independent variable.
13 A That's what the court asked me to investigate.
14 Q You noted that your analysis is cross countries?
15 A Yes.
16 Q And could you elaborate on why that is important,
17 if it is?
18 A So in the database I used we include every country
19 in the world with a population of more than
20 200,000, so it's 171 countries in most of the
21 variables that we examine. And the reason it's
22 important to do that is because variance is what
23 allows you to get traction on causal inference.
24 And by that I mean that you can't explain a
25 variable with a constant. If nothing ever changes
26 you can't see the effect of that thing on
27 something else that changes. And in order to get
28 the maximum traction and the maximum leverage
29 statistically you need to look for as wide a
30 variation as you can obtain. So in this case we
31 tried to get every country in the world with a
32 large enough population to actually be able to
33 obtain reliable data.
34 MS. WRAY: Well, let's turn now to that data, at least
35 the sources of it, which is the next subsection of
36 your part 3. This is on page 8 where it begins.
37 You outline the sources of your data and as you've
38 already mentioned one of the -- or the primary
39 source of that data is the WomanStats project. My
40 Lord, I am going to ask Professor McDermott to
41 explain in a little bit of detail what that
42 project is and how it came about and how it works.
43 In order to facilitate that Professor
44 McDermott has prepared a very brief PowerPoint
45 consisting of six slides plus three others that
46 are a summary of the findings in her report.
47 We've provided this PowerPoint in advance to all
83
1 counsel and we're now just providing colour

2 copies. If we could have one for the court,
3 please
5 MS. WRAY:
6 Q And Professor McDermott, if you could call up the
7 PowerPoint on your computer.
8 A Do you want it to be full screen?
9 Q Full screen would be better. Yes, please. Where
10 have you taken these slides from?
11 A These slides are captured off of the website where
12 the data is available free for anybody who wants
13 to go on the web.
14 Q The WomanStats website?
15 A Yes. So you will see the circle at the top refers
16 to the URL address for the WomanStats database.
17 This is the first picture you see if you go to
18 this site. And the circle on the left shows what
19 you would click on to enter into the database.
20 MS. WRAY: My Lord, I'm in your hands on how we want to
21 deal with the actual document. It seems we've
22 been marking everything as exhibits. Perhaps that
23 would be appropriate in this case as well?
24 THE COURT: Yes. That's Exhibit -- Madam Registrar?
25 THE CLERK: Exhibit 116, My Lord.
27
28 EXHIBIT 116: 9 pages; p/c; said to be PowerPoint
29 Slideshow; printed in colour
30
31 MS. WRAY:
32 Q Professor McDermott, I'm going to just ask you to
33 please take us through the first six slides of
34 your PowerPoint and explain this database.
35 A Okay. So this is the opening page. This is as I
36 mentioned the URL that you would go to obtain this
37 data. The first time you go to this database
38 you -- we ask you to enter information so that we
39 know who is using it and so on but there is no
40 cost associated with it. And we developed it with
41 the hopes of encouraging researchers to conduct
42 research on factors affecting women and children.
43 Once you hit this, enter the database, this is
44 basically one of the sites that you come to and it
45 allows you to make choices about which kind of
46 data you want to obtain. So for example where it
47 says "bibliography year" there's a drop down menu
84
1 that tells you different years are available and

2 you can say I only want information that comes
3 from 2009 or 2010 or you can go back and say I
4 want the information that is available from
5 previous years as well. And you have that choice.
6 The second choice allows you to make a choice
7 about what source of data you want. Do you want
8 all the data that's in the database or do you want
9 data that's just restricted to particular sources.
10 So, for example, you may only want data that comes
11 from a national government. For example, what the
12 government of Canada says is there, you know,
13 valid reliable data that they will put forward as
14 government data. Or what the United States says
15 and so on.
16 A third party government might be something
17 like the United Nations, so there's quite a lot on
18 information in here from the Convention of
19 Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. So
20 all the CEDAWs reports would come under third
21 party government.
22 IGO stands for intergovernmental
23 organizations. That might include something like,
24 you know, the European Union. There's also things
25 like national -- or sorry non-governmental
26 organizations, so if information was issued by,
27 say, Amnesty International that would be under
28 that category.
29 And you can make a choice about which sources
30 you want to elicit, which ones you believe, which
31 one you prefer to use; that's your choice as the
32 user.
33 Generalizability allows you to make choices
34 about how generalizable this data is to instances
35 beyond the specifics that are described. So you
36 can think of that as the difference between in
37 general qualitative and quantitative data. So
38 less generalizable sources would be qualitative
39 data, data that gives you rich information about a
40 particular person's experience, you know, in a
41 given country. And more generalizable data would
42 look for example at either a larger number of
43 countries or a longer period of time or a broader
44 number of variables.
45 And you can make choices. When I did the
46 analysis I did I used all. So I used all the data
47 in terms of year, all the data in terms of these
85
1 vetted sources, and all levels of

2 generalizability. I should be very clear with
3 regard to the source that there is no way in which
4 this database is a Wiki. Nobody can write in and
5 say my aunt Sally did blah blah and so, you know,
6 we'll put it up here. It has to be vetted. It
7 has to come out of a credible source or we will
8 not mount it. And so this is in no way something
9 that people can hack into and add data that is not
10 credible.
11 And then the two bottom things refer to the
12 ways in which you can collect select your data to
13 be viewed or your data to be downloaded.
14 So with regard to country you can do it by
15 country. So you could say I want to know every
16 variable about Albania or every variable about
17 Canada or every variable about the United States,
18 and then you would click from the drop down
19 country menu whatever country it is and all 260
20 some-odd variables if it's variable would come up.
21 The other way you could look at it is by
22 variable. You say I really want to know what
23 every country in the world's law is on abortion.
24 So I'm going to put a variable that says
25 "abortion" and then all 172 or so countries will
26 come up telling you what the laws are on that
27 particular variable.
28 So once you're at this page -- let's say you
29 don't know what variables you want to look at.
30 That's what the code book is for. And you can
31 click on this code book and it tells you all the
32 variables, all these 260 some-odd variables.
33 We're actually at a slightly higher number than
34 263 right now. And they're across a wide variety
35 of topics. What they're all in common -- what
36 they all share in common is they're all about
37 women and children or focus on women and children.
38 Polygyny and the other dependent variables we
39 look at are variables that are incorporated in
40 here, but there are many, many, many other
41 variables in this database that are not involved
42 in, you know, that don't refer to polygyny or that
43 don't refer to the other dependent variables we
44 look at. But let's you want to look at a
45 particular variable you would go to this code book
46 and this is what you would see. So this captures
47 a picture of what this seeks.
86
1 This as you can see by, you know, how small

2 the -- by how small this is over here, this is
3 only the very top of a very long code book that
4 goes for many, many pages.
5 What you'll see at the top are these omnibus
6 scales that we developed, all three of which I use
7 as dependent variables in the analysis I provide
8 to the court.
9 The first one, physical security of women, is
10 basically the dependent -- dependent variable
11 related to domestic violence. The second one is
12 the discrepancy between law and practice. In
13 other words, the discrepancy between what the law
14 actually says on the books and what actually
15 happens on the ground. And the third has to do
16 with inequity in family law. So are men and women
17 treated equally before the law. That incorporates
18 things like custody laws, inheritance laws, laws
19 related to divorce, abortion, marriage, those
20 kinds of things.
21 And then there's many, many other specific
22 variables. Polygyny is one of the variables that
23 would be way down here, but you can see that there
24 are other ones too. Caloric intake. Differential
25 rates of health care access. You know, there are
26 other topics that you can investigate with this
27 database as well.
28 And then once you -- let me just go back.
29 Once you -- let's say you go to the code book and
30 you say what I really want to look at now is
31 polygyny. You would go to this variable. There
32 are many polygyny variables. One of them is
33 polygyny data. So we have three kinds of data.
34 We have data that is actually data. We have data
35 that provides practice, what people sort of
36 actually do. And then we have other, that's sort
37 of law. They're specific things related to law.
38 One of the items is called "PW data" which is
39 polygyny related to the data that we have on this.
40 And if you pulled it up this is what it would look
41 like. So as you can see on the left it lists
42 countries alphabetically. Each piece of
43 information we have has its own line. Some states
44 you can see we have more information on than
45 others. We obviously have more, say, on Algeria
46 than we do on Azerbaijan.
47 It's important to note that sometimes this
87
1 data will contradict each other, because as long

2 as we consider it vetted data we include it in the
3 database and we allow each researchers to make up
4 their own mind which data they believe and which
5 they don't.
6 So just reading left to right to give you an
7 example of how to read this, the first line tells
8 you the country, Afghanistan, what the data is,
9 and I'll go into greater detail in the next slide
10 with that. Generalizability relates to the issue
11 I had mentioned about how broadly generalizable it
12 is. Can you generalize from this or is it just a
13 single instance that you don't really know very
14 much about. The page, if it's available, tells
15 you the page out of the particular report that we
16 got the information from. The "fully add" thing
17 is actually an internal thing that has to do with
18 our own coding. It's not really relevant for the
19 proceedings here.
20 Bibliography tells you the source, where it
21 came from. You'll see in some instances going up
22 and down some of this comes from the UN, some of
23 it comes from Kanazawa's data. Kanazawa is an
24 evolutionary psychologist at the London School of
25 Economics and he has compiled his own polygyny
26 scale. I didn't use it because it's not quite as
27 comprehensive as the one I have available here,
28 but it's a credible -- credible source.
29 Bibliography year tells you what year the data
30 is from and the bibliography reference number
31 gives a unique identification number to each piece
32 of data that we have.
33 So let's say you're here and you want to know
34 what is going on in Afghanistan, what the
35 particular data is. If you clicked on this what
36 you would then see is this. A window would open
37 up and tell you what that information is. Now,
38 sometimes it might be a single number. Sometimes
39 it might be a sentence. Sometimes it might be
40 pages long. And it will have some information.
41 In this case we have information, so we know from
42 the previous page, right, this is information out
43 of the Nilofar International Intergovernmental
44 Organization from 2007, and when we click on it
45 this is the information we have. Polygamy is
46 common. There should be equality between the
47 wives. If a first wife does not get pregnant then
88
1 a man can take a second wife and so on if he is

2 able to provide financially for all of his wives.
3 A man must be able to provide equality in status,
4 finances and time to all of his wives. Men can
5 take up to four wives. Polygamy is decreasing in
6 prevalence and occurs mostly in rural areas and
7 amongst older generations. In urban areas it is
8 fairly uncommon.
9 And for each one of these lines you would get
10 a similar window that would open up and give you
11 the information we have and it would also tell the
12 source and the year and the page. And I think
13 this is the last of the database slides.
14 Q Yes. Thank you. Now, you mentioned while you
15 were going through those slides that you created
16 your own polygyny scale that is somewhat different
17 from Kanazawa's scale?
18 A Yes.
19 MS. WRAY: The -- my friend the amicus actually asked
20 for this scale and it was provided and I'm going
21 to provide copies of that to the Court and to the
22 interested persons. The AGBC was also provided
23 with a copy of this material.
24 Essentially, My Lord, this is, as you see, a
25 letter that was sent to the amicus. The first two
26 pages outline the scale that was used by Professor
27 McDermott, which I'm going to have her address.
28 And the last four pages are a list of all the
29 countries which Professor McDermott examined in
30 the data, and I'm going to have her discuss what
31 those corresponding numbers are about then.
32 A We developed a scale that is 5-point scale from 0
33 to 4 looking at polygyny in every country, and
34 what it basically scaled to were two things.
35 Whether or not it was legal in that country, and
36 secondly how prevalent it was in that country.
37 And in cases where the two conflicted, so you can
38 have instances where polygyny is legal but quite
39 uncommon and you can have cases where it's illegal
40 but quite common, and where those things
41 conflicted we privileged prevalence over legality
42 because we wanted to speak to the actual
43 experience of people on the ground and the
44 functional consequences institutionally.
45 So we have this 5-point scale. I read
46 through literal ly several thousand entries that
47 we had on every country in world and tried to
89
1 extract the information both about legality and

2 prevalence and then developed this 5-point scale
3 applying to every country. The last 4 pages of
4 this is actual scale of how we code each country
5 from zero through 4, and you can look up any given
6 country to see how it ranks on the scale that we
7 have developed. This became in essence the
8 independent variable that we used in analysing the
9 dependent variables that the Court asked us to
10 investigate in the statistical analysis portion of
11 this study.
12 MS. WRAY: My Lord, may we mark this then as the next
13 exhibit?
14 THE COURT: Thank you. 117.
15
16 EXHIBIT 117: 6 pages; p/c; letter from Deborah
17 Strachan to Tim Dickson dated November 29, 2010
18
19 MS. WRAY: Thank you.
20 Q Just very briefly then, your report also draws
21 upon two other sources of data that you outline at
22 paragraphs 43 and 44 of your report.
23 A Yes.
24 Q If you could just briefly discuss those sources,
25 please.
26 A So the court asked me to examine the effect of
27 polygamy on nation state variables, and those I
28 did not have available within the WomanStats
29 database so I used the most common and credible
30 sources used by social science to look at the
31 variables that I thought were most likely
32 theoretically to be affected by polygyny.
33 So those related to defence expenditures
34 coming out of the Stockholm International Peace
35 Research Institute which is the most widely
36 respected organization that compiles data on arms
37 transfers, weapons spending, defence expenditures
38 or every country in world. It is partly funded,
39 although not exclusively funded, by the Swedish
40 government.
41 The second source that I used is called
42 Freedom House which is the most widely used and
43 widely respected database employed by political
44 scientists to look at rates of political freedoms,
45 civil liberties, and basically provides their
46 scores of degree of freedom in a society for every
47 country in the world. They are understood to be
90
Certification
1 one of the main sources and most of my colleagues

2 would regard them as the best source for ranking
3 countries on, say, level of, you know, democracy
4 relative to levels of authoritarian or oppressive
5 government processes. Both of these databases are
6 available free on the web for anybody to access
7 MS. WRAY: Now, I wonder, My Lord, if it might be
8 prudent to break for the day. I only say that
9 because now we're going to really get into the
10 meat using the figures and the tables. That may
11 take some complex explaining.
12 THE COURT: Right. And in doing that we'll have no
13 trouble finishing tomorrow, will we?
14 MS. WRAY: I don't believe so.
15 MR. MACINTOSH: I think that's right, My Lord. I think
16 we're in good time.
17 THE COURT: Good.
18 THE CLERK: Order in court. Court is adjourned to
19 December 16th, 2010 at noon.
20
21 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 3:54 P.M.)
22
23 I, SPENCER J. CHAREST, OFFICIAL REPORTER
24 IN THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA,
25 DO HEREBY CERTIFY:
26
27 THAT THE PROCEEDINGS WERE TAKEN DOWN BY
28 ME IN SHORTHAND AT THE TIME AND PLACE HEREIN
29 SET FORTH AND THEREAFTER TRANSCRIBED, AND THE
30 SAME IS A TRUE AND CORRECT AND COMPLETE
31 TRANSCRIPT OF SAID PROCEEDINGS TO THE BEST OF
32 MY SKILL AND ABILITY.
33
34 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I HAVE HEREUNTO
35 SUBSCRIBED MY NAME THIS 24TH DAY OF JANUARY
36 2011.
37
38
39
40 ______________________
41 SPENCER J. CHAREST
42 OFFICIAL REPORTER
43
44
45
46
47

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1

Todd Shackelford (for the Amicus)

1 December 15, 2010

1 that in 1997; is that right?

1 Association of Psychological Science, a fellow

1 psychology and related areas. And in each one of

1 Americas and these are the Journal of Comparative

1 measured or that you're not aware of that, in

1 A Yes, this is a summary of my own work over the

1 polygamy; is that so?

1 MR. DICKSON: He doesn't speak.

1 polygynous families and none of his data permits a

1 unrelated people, namely husband and several

1 feature or the single feature of co-wife

1 confronted, but go ahead.

1 Q I'm sorry. Exactly.

1 bad and probably worse in polygynous families than

1 Henrich over violence in polygamous and monogamous

1 another. But it's fair to say, isn't it, that in

1 will tend to select one perhaps more than the

1 polygyny has the best of the monogamy advantages

1 PhD advisor, and I have published many papers with

1 behaviour notwithstanding that it is an evolved

1 counting on something or that they're adopting

1 remains his confidant and partner and runs

1 about -- I think the term that Pinker uses

1 availability than otherwise. You have heard those

1 Morocco with the evocative name of Mulai

1 monogamy as a way of enforcing equality of man

1 child support while marrying younger women.

1 THE COURT: Thank you. Mr. Jones.

1 which harms are caused by polygamy as opposed to

1 Q And even more the case with unmarried males?

1 Q Perhaps, Doctor, I can turn you to another subject

1 polygamy. These multiple stressful factors

1 benefits children mental health and self

1 Epin, Elbedour, et al. have documented negative

1 Q Which is a pretty good control you would agree?

1 unrelated to us, and therefore when we're put in a

1 wife, and the data took me by surprise I'll be

1 say sexual jealousy and what you take from your

1 Q A man tends to, when he's reasonably young, marry

1 of men, that polygyny creates a shortage of women

1 underreported, would you say?

1 We're economically advanced. We have a fairly

1 this table. And this offered the various choices

1 Dr. Henrich was testifying, and I'll just bounce

1 MS. GAFFAR: My Lord, I hate to impose but I'm

1 Q I'm obviously not being clear. You have observed

1 A It seems terribly, terribly unlikely. But is it

1 Q Okay. Now, I believe you also testified that

1 Mate Retention to Murder"?

1 attached to your affidavit though.

1 feature of a co-wife relationship. I believe

1 qualifications as we are doing just to try to

1 in political science from Stanford and that was in

1 the biological and genetic contributors to various

1 meeting held in Israel, in Herzliya Israel. So I

1 A Yes, I tend to focus on the area of international

1 should deserve publication. And then sometimes I

1 Now, are these all in academic journals or

1 Identity and I co-edit it with three people who at

1 particular issue was characterized to a subject

1 a result of that review process the editor asked