Evolutionary Psychology PDF

ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 152 The mere presence of an attractive woman causes men to increase their level of risk-taking (skateboarding study) as well as their level of testosterone—a key hormone involved in mating efort. The Necessities and Luxuries of Mate Preferences Norman Li and colleagues...

ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 152 The mere presence of an attractive woman causes men to increase their level of risk-taking (skateboarding study) as well as their level of testosterone—a key hormone involved in mating efort. The Necessities and Luxuries of Mate Preferences Norman Li and colleagues have devised an important method—the budget allocation method—to determine which mate qualities are “necessities” and which are “luxuries.” Imagine that you are fnancially poor and thus have a limited budget (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsemeier, 2002). You might spend most of your money on the necessities of life, such as food. As your budget increases, however, most people would spend more on luxuries—TVs, iPads, expensive cars, or designer clothes. Li applied these economic concepts to the domain of mate preferences. What do people prefer when they have a low versus a high budget of “mating dollars,” a concept that corresponds to mate value? To fnd out, Li and colleagues gave participants varying budgets—low, medium, and high. They discovered that when given a low budget and asked to allocate their mating dollars across a number of mate attributes, men allocated a relatively large proportion of their budget to physical attractiveness and women allocated a relatively large proportion of their budget to resources— precisely in line with the sex diferences found in all the other studies of mate preferences. As the budget increased, however, men and women spent increasing proportions of their mating dollars on “luxuries” such as kindness, creativity, and liveliness (although kindness and intelligence came very close to being necessities). The varying budgets—low, medium, and high—are likely to show some parallels to individual diferences in mate value. Those low in mate value have less choice, so they want to ensure adequate levels on the necessities of mating—for men, some minimum level of attractiveness; for women, some minimum level of resources and status. As mate value increases, people can aford to be choosier on a wider array of characteristics. Efect of Men’s Preferences on Actual Mating Behavior In this section, we examine the impact of men’s long-term mate preferences on behavior through personal ads, responses to personal ads, actual marriages, vocal patterns, size of tips in restaurants, money paid for wedding engagement rings, and patterns of intrasexual competition. 5 MEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES Men’s Responses to Women’s Personal Ads If men act on their preferences for women who are young and physically attractive, then they should respond more to women who display these qualities. In a natural experiment, two psychologists examined the responses of men to personal ads placed in two newspapers, one in the Midwest and the other on the West Coast (Baize & Schroeder, 1995). The mean age of the sample respondents was 37, with a range from 26 to 58. When responses to the ads placed by men and women were compared, several striking diferences emerged. First, men tended to respond to women’s ads more than women responded to men’s ads. Men tended to receive only 68 percent as many letters as women did. Second, younger women received more responses from men than did older women. Third, although mentioning physical attractiveness produced more responses from both sexes, it produced signifcantly more responses for women than for men. In sum, men’s responses to women’s personal ads provide a natural source of evidence suggesting that men act on their preferences. Marital Decisions and Reproductive Outcomes Actual marriage decisions confrm the preference of men for women who are increasingly younger than they are as the men age. American grooms exceed their brides in age by roughly 3 years at frst marriage, 5 years at second marriage, and 8 years at third marriage (Guttentag & Secord, 1983). Men’s preferences for younger women also translate into actual marriage decisions worldwide. In Sweden during the 1800s, for example, church documents reveal that men who remarried following a divorce had new brides 10.6 years younger on average (Fieder & Huber, 2007; Low, 1991). In all countries around the world, where information is available on the ages of brides and grooms, men on average exceed their brides in age, as documented in Chapter 4 (Buss, 1989a). The average age diference between brides and grooms gets larger as men get increasingly older—a fnding based on a sample drawn from the Island of Poro over a 25-year period (Kenrick & Keefe, 1992). Men in their 20s tended to marry women just a year or two younger. Men in their 30s tended to marry women 3 to 4 years younger than themselves. Men who married in their 40s, however, married women who were 13 or 14 years younger. These data are representative of the general trend for men to marry women who are increasingly younger as they grow older (Kenrick & Keefe, 1992). Similar fndings have been discovered in Brazil, in an analysis of 3,000 newspaper announcements of forthcoming marriages (Otta, Queiroz, Campos, da Silva, & Silveira, 1999). The cross-cultural data confrm the age diferences between brides and grooms in actual marital decisions. The age diference ranges from about 2 years in Poland to roughly 5 years in Greece. Averaged across all countries for which we have good demographic data, grooms are 3 years older than their brides, roughly the same diference that is expressly desired by men worldwide (Buss, 1989a). In polygynous cultures the age diference is even larger. Among the Tiwi of Northern Australia, high-status men often have wives who are two decades younger (Hart & Pilling, 1960). Men who marry younger women also tend to have greater reproductive output. A study of more than 10,000 postreproductive Swedish men and women who had not changed marital partners examined ofspring production as a function of parental age diference (Fieder & 153 154 ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG Huber, 2007). Ofspring production peaked when wives were roughly 6 years younger than their husbands. Men married to women 6 years younger had, on average, 2.3 children; men married to women 6 years older, in contrast, had on average 1.7 children; and men married to women 9 years older had an average of 1.2 children. There is also evidence that physically attractive women, prior to the advent of modern birth control, had more children than less attractive women. Physically attractive Ache women of Paraguay had higher age-controlled fertility rates than less attractive women (Hill & Hurtado, 1996). A study of 1,244 women from Wisconsin, born between 1937 and 1940, also found that attractive and very attractive women, as rated from high school yearbook photos, had more children than their less attractive counterparts (Jokela, 2009). A smaller study of 47 modern Polish women, however, failed to fnd a link between female attractiveness and reproductive output (Pawlowski, Goothroyd, Perrett, & Kluska, 2008). It is possible that modern birth control technology may sever the historical link between female beauty and ofspring production. Men’s evolved mate preferences for young and attractive women, of course, continue to be activated and acted upon in modern environments, whether or not they currently lead to the reproductive outcomes that occurred in ancestral environments. Efect of Men’s Preferences on Attention, Vocalization, Tips, and Engagement Rings Men’s mate preferences also seem to infuence a range of behavior, ranging from perceptual attention to their actual allocation of cash resources. A laboratory study used a visual cuing task in which participants frst focused on a particular stimulus such as an attractive or average man or woman and then were instructed to shif their attention to a diferent point on the computer screen (Maner, Gailliot, & DeWall, 2007). When the initial stimulus was an attractive woman, men had greater difculty disengaging their attention to the new point on the screen. It was as if men’s visual attention got stuck (attentional adhesion) on the attractive woman. This perceptual bias occurred for all men but was especially pronounced in men who tend to pursue a short-term mating strategy (see Chapter 6). Recall that women prefer men with more masculine vocal qualities—those with lower-pitched voices. In a clever study, researchers had men make phone calls to women they believed to be real after being shown photographs of them that were prerated as varying in physical attractiveness (Hughes, Farley, & Rhodes, 2010). Men who believed that they were speaking with an attractive woman lowered their voice pitch below their normal level, in contrast to those who believed they were speaking with an unattractive woman. When these vocal episodes were played to independent raters, the raters judged the voices to be signifcantly more pleasant. Furthermore, men’s skin conductance increased signifcantly when conversing with the attractive woman than the less attractive woman, suggesting that they were more physiologically aroused, or nervous with “mating anxiety.” Men’s preferences for attractive women are also expressed in the behavioral metric of hard cash expenditures. An ecologically valid study of 374 restaurant waitresses calculated the average tips they received, recorded as a percentage of the bill (Lynn, 2009). Waitresses who were younger and had larger breasts, blond hair, and a smaller body size received more generous tips than did women lacking these attributes. And a study of 127 men who used their own funds to purchase engagement rings for the purpose of surprise proposals of marriage found that men proposing to younger women spent signifcantly more money if their hoped-for bride-to-be was young (Cronk & Dunham, 2007). The authors conclude that, like bride-price payments in other societies such as the Kipsigis of Kenya, the amounts men spend on engagement rings refect evolved standards of female mate quality. 5 MEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES Efect of Men’s Mate Preferences on Women’s Competition Tactics Recall that the preferences of one sex are predicted to infuence the forms of competition that occur in the opposite sex. Specifcally, if men’s preferences have exerted an important impact on mating behavior over time, we would predict that women would compete with one another to fulfll or embody what men want. Three sources of data are relevant to examining this prediction: research on the tactics that women use to attract men, research on the tactics that women use to derogate competitors, and research on the self-descriptions that women include in their personal ads when seeking men. In one study, Buss (1988c) examined the self-reported usage and the perceived efectiveness of 101 tactics of mate attraction. Appearance enhancement fgured prominently. Women, signifcantly more than men, reported using the following attraction tactics: “I wore facial makeup,” “I went on a diet to improve my fgure,” “I learned how to apply cosmetics,” “I kept myself well-groomed,” “I used makeup that accentuated my looks,” and “I got a new and interesting hair style.” People perceive acts of appearance enhancement to be more efective mate attraction tactics for women than for men. The cosmetic enhancements that women typically use function to increase perceptions of their facial femininity. One marker of facial femininity is called “facial contrast,” which is the contrast in luminescence between facial features such as the mouth and the facial skin or the eyebrows and the skin. Since women’s skin is generally lighter than men’s skin, women typically have higher facial contrast than men. The use of makeup, such as lipstick and mascara, enhances facial contrast and renders women’s faces both more feminine and more attractive (Jones, Russell, & Ward, 2015). William Tooke and Lori Camire (1991) looked at the usage and efectiveness of tactics of intersexual deception—the ways in which men deceive women and women deceive men in the mating arena. They asked male and female undergraduates to report on their performances and rate the efectiveness of various tactics of deceiving the opposite sex. Women, more than men, used tactics of deception involving their physical appearance: “I sucked in my stomach when around members of the opposite sex,” “I wore a hairpiece around members of the opposite sex,” “I wore colored contact lenses to make my eyes appear to be a diferent color,” “I dyed my hair,” “I wore false fngernails,” “I wore dark clothing to appear thinner than I really was,” and “I wore padded clothing.” Independent raters judged women’s use of deceptive appearance enhancement to be signifcantly more efective in attracting mates than men’s use of such tactics. Another study found that as women get older, they tend to withhold information about their age when they place personal advertisements for mates (Pawlowski & Dunbar, 1999b). In sum, when it comes to attracting the opposite sex, women’s behavior appears to be well predicted by the preferences expressed by men, pointing to another domain in which mate preferences infuence actual mating behavior. Women also appear to be sensitive to the mate preferences of men in their interactions involving rivals (Buss & Dedden, 1990). One tactic involved derogating a rival’s physical appearance using acts such as “made fun of the rival’s appearance,” “told others that the rival was fat and ugly,” and “made fun of the size and shape of the rival’s body.” Derogating a rival’s physical appearance was judged to be more efective when women used it than when men used it. Interestingly, Maryanne Fisher found that women in the high estrogen (fertile) phase of their cycle are more likely than women in the low estrogen phase to derogate a rival’s physical appearance (Fisher, 2004). She concludes: “If women compete intrasexually for ‘good’ mates via attractiveness, it would be advantageous to have heightened levels of competition when it matters most—during times critical for reproduction” (Fisher, 2004, p. S285). Interestingly, women perceivers feel more threatened by women with more feminine faces, larger breasts, and 155 ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 156 lower WHRs when they attempt to firt with the perceiver’s romantic partner (Fink, Klappauf, Brewer, & Shackelford, 2014). Sarah Hill and her colleagues found that when women are primed by cues of economic hardship, they actually ramp up their spending on beauty-enhancement products—a phenomenon called “the lipstick efect” (Hill, Rodehefer, Griskevicius, Durante, & White, 2012). These beauty-enhancement products presumably are used by women to attract men with resources. An even larger sex diference centers on derogation of the rival’s sexual fdelity. One derogation tactic, “calling competitor promiscuous,” violates men’s desire for a faithful wife with acts such as “called rival a tramp,” “told others that the rival had slept around a lot,” and “told others that the rival was loose, and would sleep with just about anybody.” Calling a competitor promiscuous was judged to be more efective for women than for men. We can conclude that women’s derogation tactics are sensitive to men’s long-term mate preferences, especially on the dimensions of physical appearance and desire for fdelity. The efects of the premium men place on physical appearance may lead to negative or maladaptive outcomes for women—eating disorders. According to the sexual competition hypothesis, eating disorders such as anorexia (a disorder involving extremely restricted food intake and an obsessive desire to lose weight) and bulimia (binge eating, followed by purging through vomiting or fasting) are maladaptive by-products of a mate competition strategy of pursuing thinness (Abed, 1998). U.S. women who are engaged in especially intense intrasexual competition for mates are more prone than other women to be dissatisfed with their bodies and experience a high drive for thinness, which in turn contributes to the eating disorders of anorexia and bulimia (Faer, Hendriks, Abed, & Figueredo, 2005). The authors argue that the combination of (1) the importance men place on physical appearance in mates, (2) media images depicting thinness in models, and (3) the high levels of health in the United States cause a kind of runaway intrasexual competition to appear youthful, with thinness being a key cue to youth (see Salmon, Crawford, Dane, & Zuberbier, 2008). In summary, many sources of evidence support the notion that men’s preferences afect actual behavior in the mating arena. First, men respond more to personal ads advertising qualities that fulfll men’s expressed preferences, such as a desire for women who are physically attractive and young. Second, men actually marry younger women, an age diference that increases with each successive marriage. Third, men’s restaurant tipping behavior and expense of engagement rings are predicted by qualities men prioritize in a mate—youth and attractiveness. And fourth, women’s mate attraction tactics and derogation of rival tactics map closely onto the dimensions that men prefer in a long-term mate. From all this empirical evidence, we can conclude that men’s mate preferences afect not only their own mating behavior but also the mating behavior of women in their mate competition tactics. Summary There were many potential benefts to ancestral men who married. They would have increased their chances of attracting a mate, especially a more desirable mate. By marrying, men would have increased their certainty in paternity because they gained continuous or exclusive or predominant sexual access to the woman. In the currency of ftness, men also would have benefted through the increased survival and reproductive success of their children, accrued through paternal protection and investment. Two adaptive problems loom large in men’s long-term mate-selection decisions. The frst is identifying women of high fertility or reproductive value—women capable of successfully bearing children. A large body of evidence suggests that men have evolved standards of attractiveness that embody cues to a woman’s reproductive capacity. Signals of youth and health are central among these cues—clear skin, full lips, small lower jaw, symmetrical features, white teeth, absence of sores and lesions, facial femininity, facial symmetry, facial averageness, and a small 5 MEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES ratio of waist to hips. Standards of beauty linked to youth, health, and fertility are consistent across cultures. Preferences for amount of body fat and WHR vary predictably across cultures depending on relative food scarcity as well as the actual WHR distributions in the local culture. Nonetheless, recent reviews suggest that a low WHR may not be linked to health or fecundity (immediate chances of conception), although it may be linked with younger age and hence higher reproductive value (future reproductive potential). The second large adaptive problem is the problem of paternity uncertainty. Over human evolutionary history, men who were indiferent to this adaptive problem risked raising another man’s children, which would have been costly in the currency of reproductive success. Men in some countries value virginity in potential brides, but this preference is not universal. A more likely candidate for a universal solution is to place a premium on cues to sexual fdelity—the likelihood that the woman will have intercourse exclusively with him. Male homosexual orientation has been called an evolutionary paradox because homosexuality is known to be linked to reduced reproductive success. Of the leading evolutionary theories, the kin altruism hypothesis has received mixed empirical support, whereas the female fertility hypothesis has received the strongest empirical support. Many contexts afect men’s long-term mating strategies. First, men who have what most women want, such as power, status, and resources, are most able to successfully attract women that most men prefer. Second, viewing attractive images of other women appears to lower men’s commitment to their regular partner. Third, getting into a committed mating relationship causes a reduction in T levels in men, but only if they are monogamously oriented and do not desire extra-pair sex. Fourth, interacting with attractive women, and even their mere presence, increases men’s T levels as well as their behavioral risk taking. Fifth, men’s mate preferences shift as a function of their “mating budget.” On limited mating budgets, men place importance on what they view as “necessities” such as an adequate level of physical attractiveness. After these necessities are met, men pay more attention to “luxuries” such as creativity and personality traits. Several sources of behavioral data confrm the hypothesis that men’s mate preferences afect actual mating behavior. First, men respond more frequently to personal ads of women who claim or appear to be young and physically attractive. Second, men worldwide actually marry women who are younger by roughly 3 years; men who divorce and remarry tend to marry women who are even younger, with a 5-year diference at second marriage and an 8-year diference at third marriage. Third, men married to women younger than they are have higher reproductive success. Fourth, men visually attend to attractive women more than less attractive women and have greater difculty disengaging that attention when instructed to do so. Fifth, men interacting with attractive women lower their vocal pitch into a more masculine range that appeals to women. Sixth, attractive waitresses, particularly those who are young and have larger breasts, receive more tips from men. Seventh, men spend more money on engagement rings for younger than on older brides-to-be. Eighth, women devote much more efort than do men to enhancing their physical appearance in the context of mate attraction, including wearing makeup, dieting, and using cosmetic surgery, which suggests that women are responding to the preferences that men express. And ninth, women tend to derogate their rivals by putting down their physical appearance and calling them promiscuous or “slutty”—tactics that are efective in rendering rivals less attractive to men because they violate the preferences that men hold for a long-term mate. Critical Thinking Questions 1. Although men can reproduce simply by having sex, they ofen adopt a mating strategy of long-term commitment to one woman. Explain why, from an evolutionary perspective, men might choose a long-term mating strategy over a short-term mating strategy. 2. Fertilization occurs internally within women, not within men. How does this fact of human reproductive biology create two related adaptive problems for men? 3. Men, compared to women, place a greater value on youth and physical attractiveness in a long-term mate, but many men cannot fulfll these mating desires. Explain why not. 157