Ray Huang, Evolutionary Psychologist

Ray Huang, 1587, The Year of No Significance, p. 171:

The composition of Ch’i’s infantry squad also reflected social influences. When recruiting, he deliberately turned away volunteers from the cities and accepted only peasants. It was with more than prejudice that he classified the former as crafty and roguish. It would be illogical for a man with steady trade in the city to join the army as a soldier, whose pay was never abundant and possibility for career advancement even less promising. The recruitment, therefore, usually only attracted urban misfits who looked at enlistment as temporary solution to the food and lodging problem until something else turned up. Such undesirables, singled out by Ch’i for rejection, were those, whose “countenance was fair, whose eyes were shiny, and whose movements were light and nimble”. Did his army have no use for nimbleness? His experience had taught him that a man fulfilling this description would, before facing the enemy, “work out a method of self-preservation and, at the critical moment, not only desert but also instigate others to do so in order to provide cover for himself”.

The foregoing analysis is only partly of social influences (that city folks are smarter than country folk by virtue of having grown up in a more varied environment, are used to better opportunities in life and on both accounts less easily manipulated). This analysis is also partly evolutionary psychological – it associates looks with certain behavioral patterns: that nimble, handsome, intelligent-looking fellows are untrustworthy because they know how to look out for themselves. The description sounds poetic: a woman might describe her lover in these words. Yet, she would be describing the features of a man likely to avoid the fetters of settling down with her; she still would love him all the same because she would want his genes – the survival genes – for her sons.