Evolutionary Psychology Unit 3

Bateman Principal (is for males not women)

• More mating opportunities → higher reproductive success

• Men should have the adaptation to increase partner number

More interest in novelty

More new partners

More long-term mating contexts

Met get more choosy when picking a mate

Preference for novelty across culture

Men still prefer a high number of sex partners cross culturally

Sexual regret for women

More often regret saying yes to casual sex

Sexual regret for men

More often regret saying no to casual sex

Sexual regret in Norway

Still exist in gender equal countries

Mens’s short-term mating psychology should be sensitive to novelty

Pay offs for novel females are higher than for familiar females

Coolidge Effect

Renewed sexual interest when a new, receptive female is introduced

Attraction-Reduction effect

• “Post-nut clarity”

• Most often seen in males

Men’s sexual fantasies

• Multiple partners, strangers, no commitment

• Rapidly move from meeting to an explicit sexual encounter

Womens sexual fantasies

• A single partner they currently or have dated in the past

• Fantasies build slowly and did not always involve explicit genital sexual activity

Dating Apps

• Men like a lot of profiles

• Women are more selective

• Women receive far more matches

Sexual over-perception bias

• Men over-perceive arousal in photos

• Women under-perceive arousal

• Men over-perceive arousal more when the woman was more physically attractive

Closing time phenomenon

Women became more attractive at the end of the night because men were losing their opportunity

As mating opportunities decrease…

Available options become more attractive

Selective attunement to fertility cues

Men in short-term mating and Long-term mating choose to look at a woman’s body instead of her face because the body reveals more fertility cues than the face

Selective attunement in women

Women in short-term mating and long-term mating choose to look at a man’s face

Attracting short-term mates

• Conspicuous consumption

• Risky displays ← Showing off

Peripheral male strategy- Gamma Mates

• More feminine, but gaining access to women because people think he’s gay

• Metrosexual

• Hangs out with Alpha Males

Knowledge of a person’s mate preferences

Allows a prediction of that person’s biological sex

Hypotheses of the functions of homosexuality

• Dual mating strategy

• Kin Altruism theory

• Alliance formation theory

• Pleiotropic theories of homosexuality

• Female fertility hypothesis

Kin Altruism theory

Augmenting fitness via lateral investment in relatives

Pleiotropic theories of homosexuality

Genes yield advantage in typical genetic environmental contexts

Female fertility hypothesis (Has most evidence backing it)

• Mothers and aunts of gay men average 2.7 children (vs. 2.3 children)

• “Gay” genes may increase men’s and women’s attraction to men

Men are not united as a group to keep women down

Individual men have conflict with individual women and vice versa

Patriarchy

Men trying to out compete other men for resources to get access to women

Battle of the sexes

Epiphenomenon emerging from conflict at an individual level

Men’s prefered mating strategies can interfere with women’s preferred strategies, and vice versa

Can lead to conflict between the sexes

Strategic interference

One’s preferred strategy is different from another person’s preferred strategy, which can lead to conflict

• i.e. Men lying about commitment level to gain sexual access to women

Choosing one’s mate offers clear adaptive benefits

Men and women choose mates based on criteria that have implications for fitness

Being coerced into mating with someone that one did not choose

Is very costly especially for women because she would have to carry a pregnancy for 9 months

Women evaluation sexual coercion

Rated as almost the most traumatic thing a women can experience

Men evaluation sexual coercion

Rated lower than women

Sexual coercion would benefit…

Men because there is no cost

Sexual coercion perpetrators

Overwhelmingly male

Majority of women

Have experienced one for of sexual aggression

Rape

Ultimate act of sexual aggression

• About sexual access without consent ← Not soley about power

Eliminating women’s right to choose sex partners

Deeply costly

Deep cost

Deep psychological pain/trauma

Victims of forced sex

Disproportionately young ← years in fertility prime

Men who rape

Have a lot of previous sexual partners ← not the ‘loser’ type of men

Rape pregnancy rate

Is over 2x higher than consensual sex, because men pick up on ovulating cues when choosing a vicitm

Marital rape

Most likely when infidelity suspected and around a breakup

When is rape seen in other species

When the females are choosy

Water fowl

Females adapted dead-end sacs to counteract male sexual aggression

Male victims of sexual assault

• Lower frequency of women

• 1 out of 10 rape victim is male

Men can be assaulted by women but…

Perpetrators are typically other men

Sexual asssault rate in LGBTQ community

• Are very high

• Gay and bisexual men and women are the most common victims

Fear magnitude → positively related to costs (impacts fitness)

• Women fear stranger rape more than acquaintance rape, despite the higher likelihood of acquaintance rape

• Women are victimized more during peak fertility

• Ovulating women engage in fewer risky activities

:Psychological pain from rape experiences

• Very traumatizing

• Greatest near lifetime high fertility