Male Idiot Theory: not that such a scientific theory ever existed, but a study by that title does.
As for the Darwin Awards, named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, they “commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it”.
Time to face the facts guys, 88.7% of the Darwin Award winners were male – that’s according to the recent study published in the British Medical Journal reported MSN.
“Recently, a group of British researchers decided to analyze the data provided by the Darwin Awards as a way of finding out whether men are more likely to engage in foolishly risky behavior than women — as has previously been indicated by studies of hospital records and financial risk-taking.”
From their findings, it is clear that men are much, much more likely to die taking truly idiotic risks.
Realize however, these awards are from a list of nominated acts which could directly influence the results says NPR:
“…women may be more likely to nominate men
…male candidates …may be more newsworthy than female candidates.”
So how does the study end?
Research hasn’t finished, and in fact may continue this holiday season, not from the Darwin Awards perspective, but from some insightful looks at male and female behavior. So if we men have any hope of detaching ourselves from that newsworthy, distinguishing, and stereotyped label, there’s still hope for us.
Perhaps pressuring the researchers to start looking at all of “fail videos” so widely shared on the Internet would turn the statistics around and in our favor.
But, for the record, the researchers as quoted through an NPR article have said:
“With the festive season upon us, we intend to follow up with observational field studies and an experimental study — males and females, with and without alcohol — in a semi-naturalistic Christmas party setting.”
Even if the outcome is the same, it may at least shed further light on the differences between men and women, if only from a more season-appropriate setting.
Cheers ladies! Please don’t let me jump off the bridge, at least not without it being shared on Youtube!
News to Share Brief sources: “Study: Men are much more likely than women to take truly idiotic risks that cost their lives” in MSN Health & Fitness AND “Are Men Idiots Who Do Stupid Things? Study Says Yes” in NPR’s The Two-Way article
Image licensing CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay by PublicDomainPictures (page 2);
…page 1 composite image by News to Share from Pixabay images by Nemo and geralt
