Male ‘idiotic’ behavior deemed legit: study

A theory that says men are more likely than women to do “idiotic” things is supported by an analysis of the Darwin Awards, says a new study in BMJ.

Although it’s well documented that men take more risks than women in sports and jobs, “there is a class of risk — the ’idiotic’ risk — that is qualitatively different,” said United Kingdom researchers, including two that are associated with the Institute of Cellular Medicine at Newcastle University.

This “idiotic” risk class refers to “senseless” actions, “where the apparent payoff is negligible or non-existent, and the outcome is often extremely negative and often final,” project manager Dennis W. Lendrem, wrote in BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

To examine the hypothesis that a “male idiot theory” exists, the researchers looked at the Darwin Awards, a posthumous “honor” given to people who have died doing such remarkably foolish or dangerous things that their loss “ensures the long-term survival of the species.”

One winner, for instance, mailed a letter bomb to his intended victim with insufficient postage. When the package came back, he opened it and “was blown away,” according to the Darwin Awards website.

Deaths that cannot be verified or are believed to be accidental are not included in the tally, said the website, which is founded and run by Wendy Northcutt and the Darwin Awards Committee.

The U.K. researchers started by assuming that the 318 verified Darwin Award winners between 1995 and 2014 would be equally divided by male and female.

But they found that 282 awards were given to males and 36 to females. Such a highly statistical difference would be entirely consistent with “male idiot theory,” they concluded.

The study has limitations, Mr. Lendrem wrote. There could be selection bias in that women could be more likely to nominate men for the awards than the other way around.

The news media may also be biased, finding “idiotic male candidates” to be “more newsworthy than idiotic female” candidates.

There could even be gender-based differences in alcohol use — that after a few drinks, a man feels “bulletproof.”

One Darwin Award, for instance, went to three men who started arguing in a Cambodian bar in 1999. One man brought in an “unexploded anti-tank mine” he had found in his backyard, and put it under their table in the bar. The trio then “began playing Russian roulette, each tossing down a drink and then stamping on the mine,” the Darwin Awards website said.

Everyone else fled the bar, which was destroyed — as well as the three men — when the mine finally exploded.