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Published byMaya Winch Modified over 9 years ago
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One can, in effect, treat the sexes as if they were different species, the opposite sex being a resource relevant to producing maximum surviving offspring. - Robert Trivers (1972)
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Men and women designed for lifetime deep, monogamous love Female fidelity is good for males, so females developed fidelity
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all known human cultures have marriage (though varying types of marriage) › having a family is the norm › but 980 of 1154 human societies allow men to have more than one wife though polygynous marriage is not the norm
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amount of resources, time, energy, etc, male parents spend on raising their children humans exhibit high MPI relative to other species
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Moved from forests into savanna Became smarter and more upright › Narrow pelvis Clinging baby + mother gathering food › helpless tiger bait
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Females reproduce once in a long time Females should be more selective about who they mate Want high ongoing investment
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› Women: average intellect › Men: average intellect Intelligence of someone you’d have sex with? › Women: Oh, in that case, above average intellect › Men: Oh, in that case, below average intellect
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As much sex as they can get away with Attracted to fertile-looking females High MPI species, so s omewhat selective
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measured with electrodes on skin › Sexual infidelity – Men more upset › Emotional infidelity – women more upset
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two kinds of women: the kind you respect and the kind you just sleep with “the male may actually encourage the early sex for which he will ultimately punish the woman.”
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Men and women tend to be, respectively, exploiter and exploitee Men have more to gain from deserting family
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Selection favors males who can deceive about future devotion › Self-deception effective too Selection favors females who can spot deception
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“resource extraction” hypothesis “seeds of confusion” hypothesis “best of both worlds” hypothesis Women are more sexually active around ovulation.
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Successful male infidelity is advantageous for males And if female infidelity was not long- standing… Average testes weight to average male body weight
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Margaret Mead › No needless anxieties about sex › Casual lovemaking › No ideas of exclusiveness, jealousy, or undeviating fidelity › If husband caught wife in adultery, appeased by harmless ritual
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Derek Freeman Upon marriage, good girls manually deflowered If girl found with a boy and suspected to have lost her virginity, her brothers would “upbraid and sometimes beat” her Young men who failed at the mating game sometimes “forcibly deflower” a woman and threaten to tell others unless she married him If woman found to be non-virgin on wedding day, publically denounced “whore”
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Madonna or whore, cad or dad? During childhood, assess local social environment More attractive adolescent girl, more likely to “marry up” Evolutionarily advantageous to be flexible
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Could think of many different hypotheses for why these sexual strategies were shaped But cannot argue that evolutionary psychology is irrelevant to the whole discussion
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monogamy is not our nature Might be better off without this strict monogamy
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