I think that people, including myself, often do not know exactly what their motives are. Statistically, a man's wealth is very important in determining his attractiveness to woman.
How aware do you think most women are of the fact that this is one of the primary determining factors in their decision making about men?
I don't think they're necessarily aware. To be anecdotal, yesterday when we were filling out surveys, I had no opinion on how much older or younger I'd want my mate to be. I thought to myself, "just write down the first thing you think of." Turns out it was they preferred ratio among men. It's possible their motives are not always conscious, but manifest in subtle ways.
In regards to age/status, I was thinking about situations that don't necessarily align with the norm, specifically the example of older women with young men, like the teacher-student relationships that have made news in recent decades. Are such situations just outliers, or is the media/legal attention that follows a form of gaining status?
I had never thought of the teacher-student relationship as an increase in status, but I guess you are right in that they are creating fame for themselves in the media. But I think crediting relationships that make the news to just an increase in status ignores the fact that these two people could be in love. I would hope there was more of a relationship between the two if they have to endure negative media attention.
I was curious if we as a class could think of any women long term mate preferences that aren't based in evolutionary psychology. All the preferences that modern women have seem to root back to a reason from our ancestors. But are there any that are solely unique to modern women?
The textbook explains that women weigh love and commitment heavily when selecting a mate. However, it seems that women fall in love more quickly than men in our culture. How are women able to fall in love so easily before a man has fallen in love with them?
I thought the reading did little to clarify how these preferences get integrated together into 'strategies.' For example, there wasn't much exploration of the relative weights of all these preferences, which ones are abandoned under which circumstances and why. Why might one woman prioritize similarity or stability over masculine features while another does the opposite? Maybe this kind of knowledge doesn't exist yet, but the book didn't really mention it at all. Instead, it presented resources, status, physical dominance, masculinity, similarity, dependability, ambition, willingness to invest in children and general high mate value as 'favorable.' It felt repetitive and while it's all good science, a lot of the studies sounded like they had really similar designs [or at least similar measurement systems]. The cross-cultural aspect of these studies strengthens conclusions about species-wide stuff but few of the studies seemed to dive in much deeper than establishing general/average preferences. I wonder how valuable further research into species-wide preferences would be. It seems like narrowing the scope to specific cultures or maybe 'types' of women might yield a lot of information beyond the list of preferences here. That said, i'm not trying to sound dismissive of the stuff in this chapter.
This may be jumping the gun a bit on topics, but I was curious about how much weight women give to commitment from men. I assume we'll talk about this in men's short-term strategies, but offering commitment (and not following-through) seems like a very easy way for a man to get with a woman if she believes he will commit. However, I would hope that women had evolved (or are in the process of evolving) some kind of defense against this, especially since this seems like one of the few attributes they look for that can be faked relatively easily. Or is it because this is just one trait among many others that there is not as much concern about the truth of intent?
This week's reading states that, in general, women have a preference for older men. I can see why this makes sense because physical strength and amount of resources will normally increases as a man ages (up until a certain point). However in the previous chapter, the pleiotropic theory of senescence states that men are genetically programmed to be more successful in mate competition earlier in life, but eventually incur fatal costs to their health as they age. Putting these two concepts together, my question is: Is there an age cut-off range in which the risks of mating and reproducing with an older man (thus introducing the possibility of passing on the man's deteriorating genes to your offspring) outweigh the benefits of having access to his resources?
The text mentions that on average, women prefer a man who is older than she is. Would this differ depending on the age of the woman? The chapter places a lot of emphasis on how woman desire a mate that can provide resources for her. However, if the woman was in her 30's, there are plenty of men who have an acceptable earning capacity and who are younger than she is, and additionally, they have a greater number of years that they can continue to provide resources.
I found the little blurb about lesbian mate preferences very fascinating. It made me wonder, do lesbians who aren't on oral contraceptives experience a draw towards more butch potential mates near ovulation, just as straight women are drawn to more masculine men during that time?
It was also mentioned that females do not prefer mates who are addicted to drugs. If that is the case, then why is there such a prevalence of women who like "bad boys" who are often heavily involved in drugs. Is this a preference for risk taking males overruling the dislike for drug addicted males, or perhaps addiction is tolerable as long as the potential mate can still provide resources for the female?
I saw the additional reading that Buss wrote to be rather similar to the section on Long Term Mating for Women in his textbook. Really I saw that many things he detailed were scientific confirmations of the obvious (women want men who will be able to provide for them, to protect them, and to have good genetic makeup). I think that the strength of this chapter is more in the comparison of the strategies women have for mating with the strategies that men have for long term mating, where I can summarize this comparison in a nice tight syllogism: for men its about sex and looks but for women its a whole lot more complicated. I really wish that Buss could have provided a better conclusion for long term womens mating at the end of the chapter which argued that while women have a huge amount of choice amongst mates that there is some kind of compromise they make for a mate.
This may seem personally conciliatory (I know Im actually awesome, but), I think that Buss could have made his argument stronger for womens long term mating strategies arguing how women make some kind of cost benefit analysis in terms of selecting a mate not just in light of a mates traits but in terms of length of courtship, because if a woman is consistently trying to optimize her position for a mate and if she is expected to be monogamous, she does not have much time to find a mate and become pregnant.
Is there an evolved mechanism for women to make a speedy mate choice?
The chapter mentions that women tend to find men more attractive when they are surrounded by many other women, a phenomena called mate copying. In addition, women desire mates who are high in social status and economic resources. However, women also tend to desire men who are more likely to stay and care for/invest in children with them, who will not cheat on them, and who are generally stable. It seems that these two desires are at odds - men who are surrounded by women seem much more likely to be "players", or people who won't invest and be stable. Is one set of traits more important than the other for mate selection? Or does it depend on the woman making the choice?
Also, I think Kim's question about the age of the woman selecting a mate could have an effect on whether or not she choses an older partner. I could see a 30 year old choosing a mate in his 20s, but I could also see how if men evolved to prefer younger women, the women who were more likely to reproduce were those who preferred older men (not just because they can provide, but because of men's preference for younger women), so women's preference could be multifaceted and more complicated than just looking for wealth/ability to provide.
-- Edited by Laurel on Wednesday 5th of February 2014 08:53:46 PM
I think that people, including myself, often do not know exactly what their motives are. Statistically, a man's wealth is very important in determining his attractiveness to woman.
How aware do you think most women are of the fact that this is one of the primary determining factors in their decision making about men?
I think women are pretty aware of why they are attracted to certain characteristics in men - wealthy men can provide a better life, stronger men can provide protection, etc. But they may not be cognizant of the EP perspective of this attraction and how these impulses tie back to a hunter/gatherer society. It's been said that forearms are like a man's cleavage - women find this part of the male body extremely attractive, but it seems arbitrary. From an EP perspective, forearms can be indicative of strength or even protection, but that's not what comes to mind immediately, it's merely "oh! that's sexy," and there's no afterthought about why exactly it's an attractive feature.
Yesterday we talked about how men would say whatever they want about how committed they are to the relationship to get women in bed or whatever. And it seems like most women do realize that it's just a "trick" that men do but why do a lot women still fall for that anyways?
If women are normally attracted to older men and men are normally attracted to younger women then wouldn't "cougars" go against the norm? Are they just outliers or would it be considered more of a short term mating situation? There are also a few other examples of young men dating older women, like teachers dating students. What might cause this or is it a desire for attention and therefore raised social status.
I also wish there was more on lesbian relationships. It seems to have a completely different dynamic and I think there is a lot of room for exploration. Can all lesbians be grouped into butch and femme though? This seems to make the assumption that all lesbians can be classified as one or the other which seems dubious.
I thought it was interesting to bring up cultures practicing polygyny. Based on the parental investment theory, men are the more competitive gender, so it makes sense they would want to have more than one mate to increase the number of children they have. But why are women in these societies ok with their husband having more than one wife? Considering women prefer men who provide stable environments (both physical and emotional) for them and their children, doesn't having to compete with another wife take a negative emotional toll? Wouldn't a man who has to split his resources among multiple wives and children have less to offer than a man who is monogamous?
I wonder how much of the gift giving expectations that we are surrounded by today are based on evolutionary mechanisms as opposed to our current culture of consumerism and materialism. It makes a lot of sense that a man buying a woman an expensive gift is a way of showing willingness to commit, but its also interesting to look at how modern culture has taken this and turned it into such a commercial opportunity. I'm mostly thinking about the traditions of expensive wedding rings, the prevalence of big jewelry companies, and the creation of holidays where giving expensive gifts is expected (Valentines Day).
Why do women who are successful in their careers or financially still seek men who achieve even more success? The balance won't be there in terms of raising a family if both parents are mostly invested in their work as opposed to the family.
Nowadays, the divorce rates in the United States are very high. If we have evolved all these mechanisms to find the perfect mate for us, what could be the reasoning behind the rising divorce rates?
In the section regarding a preference for willingness to invest in children, it said that men evaluate the likelihood that they are the actual genetic father of a child and tend to withhold investment from the child if they know or suspect that the child is not their own. Why then would women risk the chance of cheating and not only getting these resources cut off from their children, but also maybe invest in another child for another nine months at the same time?
With the rise of women in the workforce, particularly in powerful positions (e.g: Sheryl Sanberg, Indra Nooyi, Janet Yellen), there seems to be a trend for women to look for a man that is willing to focus on the family as a stay-at-home dad, or at least be willing to split the family tasks equally. Even though we have an evolutionary preference to men who are more successful than women, would it ever be possible for women to actively look for a man willing to be equals? To what extent do changing social norms affect the hierarchy of evolutionary preferences that women have in search for a mate?
