The chapter talked about how the presence of attractive women can motivate men to perform riskier acts. I wonder if there is a similar effect among women? Do derogation tactics increase in quantity and level of hostility when in the presence of attractive men, or are they more of a constant occurrence? I would assume that an attractive man makes derogation worse and more frequent.
I read an article a few months ago where a man sued his wife for giving birth to ugly children (I'll post the link on the Facebook group). The woman spent $100,00 on plastic surgery to become beautiful. She then married an attractive man and they had three "ugly" children. He was shocked that his kids were ugly and didn't understand how it could have happened. She told him the truth and then he sued her for lying about the surgeries. The crazy part is he won the case!
I know this is an extreme situation but it made me think of the topic of women altering their appearance. Is it fair for women to completely change their appearance to deceive a man and then not tell him the truth? From an evolutionary perspective the man chose this women for her good genes based on her looks but was wrong. Do men need to take into consideration the measures women take to change their looks when they make a choice in mate?
I read over the section on mens preferences for mates, and indeed it was decidedly less complex than women. Buss put in very polite terms that men are quite a bit less picky in terms of mates than women are and he did not use any fancy statistics with as many numbers and nice charts, which was a letdown of sorts. My two favorite parts of the chapter were the sections dealing with the rational for men seeking long term relationships and Busss conjecture that homosexuality is known to be linked to dramatically reduced reproductive success (which seems rather obvious no matter how hard gay men try with each other, they will not have children). I think that argument that Buss made in his exposition on why men look for long term relationships is that men need the connection was interesting because it has not been put forward before. He connected the notion of men gaining the connections of the womans family as a justification for seeking a long-term relationship.
I think that this seems to be an interesting proposition because I see men looking at the womans family as a strong argument for men wanting to be in long-term relationships but this goes against how men choose mates, where they are less concerned about their social standing. I know that this counter argument is weak at best, but I think that this might suggest that men place more emphasis on social standing of women than Busss evidence may suggest (though Id agree that hes still right on the whole).
Question: Is the phenomena of men leaving the household suggest that there is a finite amount of time men want to be in a long term relationship?
To rhiatt - regarding suing wife over ugly children:
I think that it does make sense for the husband to be able to sue. A marriage is a contract of sorts, and while the wife did not directly lie about her looks, there was an intention to deceive, which is a type of fraud.
To adam - regarding men leaving the household after a certain time
I think that your idea that men leaving marriages after children have finished there most important years of growth makes sense. After you have gotten your children off to a good start, why not look for a new relationship with a younger woman with a higher reproductive value?
Why do committed men have lower testosterone?
*Is it to decrease the likelihood he will abandon the wife and children?
*Is it because testosterone is harmful to health, and is no longer so needed?
Do men's testosterone levels rise again once the children are grown, or have died?
It seems that there's a lot of image-related societal pressure on women [certainly way more than on men]. The book remarked that women are way more likely than men to change their appearance, using makeup and surgery of various kinds. Furthermore, there's a firmly established stereotype that women stress about relationships more than men do, particularly during the early stages. Given parental investment theory and the far greater number of factors that women value and prioritize, it seems odd that women appear to experience more anxiety about mating. Male anxiety certainly exists [hence penis-enlargement spam emails] but i don't see it as often either in real life or in media/culture. maybe there's a bunch of male anxiety is buried underneath the whole macho thing...
I found it interesting that men felt less satisfied with their mates/wives after being shown pictures of attractive women. I wonder, does this has anything to do with the testosterone spikes seen when men are seeking and competing for mates? Studies showed that talking to young attractive women increased testosterone in men and also increased men's risk taking behavior. Could it be that men are dissatisfied with their current mate after seeing photos of the attractive women because they are in a more risk taking oriented state of mind, and therefore the risk of trying to find a new more attractive mate is not as daunting as it normally would be?
It seemed to me the way this chapter was written implied that men can usually make the final say in choosing a mate. However, the chapter on women's long-term mating strategies also seemed to imply that women get the final say. Do we think (or have any empirical evidence) that one sex gets the final say more than the other, or is it entirely contextual?
It seems like men's preference for appearance makes a huge impact on women's efforts on their physical appearances, which makes me wonder: how far are women willing to go and why? (in terms of tanning, botox, surgery etc)
I find it interesting that certain aspects of men and women's mating strategies are so incompatible. For example, although, evolutionarily speaking, men would prefer to have as many mates as possible, they engage in long-term relationship behaviors in order to appeal to women. Why is it that men and women didn't both evolve to have more compatible mating goals?
We said in class that men befriended women that they were sexually interested in. Do they also befriend women that are friends with people they want to sleep with? They are attracted to some of the girls but not all and hang out with all of them anyways? Might also sibling like relationships sprout up between long time friends? I just don't see men being sexually attracted to every girl they are friends with.
I also thought it was interesting that there are evolutionary theories for homosexuals but they did not address that in terms of lesbians.
The textbook states that male teenagers in general prefer women who are a couple of years older than they are. However, this contradicts the generally accepted idea that as men age, they prefer women who are much younger than they are. One of the reasons why male teenagers prefer slightly older women is because they view older women as more fertile and mature than their younger counterparts. Could it also be because the male teenagers are still young and are not able to contribute any resources to the woman, so instead, they choose to date older women that can provide them with resources? In essence, the older women would act as a "motherly figure" to the male teenagers.
I found it very interesting that men seem to look for muscle tone as a characteristic for an "attractive" woman. There is a common misconception that women just have to do cardio work to look attractive, and that lifting weights will make a woman look bulky. With the low testosterone levels that women have, it is incredibly hard for women to actually look bulky. I believe that the pressure to have the perfect "hourglass figure", or a hip to waist ratio of 0.7, may contribute to this misconception. Lifting weights may help accentuate the HTW ratio or help with the "toned" look. These two factors, while seemingly contradictory, may actually work in tandem with each other.
The text mentions that men like women who are most fertile (teenage boys prefer slightly older women, and older men prefer younger women). The age of woman a man prefers, however, varies with the man's age such that a man who's 50 years old would ideally be with a woman who's about 10 years younger (40 years old), where as a year old man prefers a woman who's about 5 years younger (25 years old) according to a figure in the text. The chapter tries to explain this discrepancy by stating that perhaps it is difficult for older men to attract younger women, and therefore 50 year old men have developed a preference for more attainable 40 year old women although they may not be very fertile. However, if mate value increases with age for men, and humans are seeking a partner with an equivalent mate value, shouldn't older men easily be able to attract younger women, and younger men be struggling?
I am still hung up over why men find long legs attractive. This still doesn't seem to fit to me, as there is no link between long legs and fertility or youth (discovered yet?). I wonder if this is a cultural phenomenon that somehow made its way into the textbook, or if there is another explanation (muscle tone? I don't really buy this).
Are there other physical features that are similar to this? Ones that men prefer universally but have to link to fertility or youth?
The texts state that one of the big problems that men face when choosing a mate, problems of paternity uncertainty, are due to the fact that human woman have cryptic ovulation. While men have evolved to have characteristics and preferences that solve this problem, why would this problem have come about in the first place; why did women evolve to have cryptic ovulation?
Also, although I think the arguments presented in the book about the evolutionary basis for age differences in mating preferences between men and women (younger women with older men), there has been a lot of evidence recently that the older the father and grandfather are when they have children, the more likely their children are to have autism and other disorders. This would suggest that it would be somewhat evolutionarily disadvantageous to be a man over about 45 years having children.
I agree with Ashley - more and more women are "hitting the gym" because lifting weights helps them achieve a toned body, a firmer butt, etc. and I feel men are more attracted to this general perkiness because it signifies youth. Then I started thinking about what keeps older couples together - say our grandparents for example. We see elderly couples that are in love, but from the male's perspective, the female mate at that age is hardly ideal. This begs the question, what is love and how can it be explained with EP and beyond EP? Do men at a certain age start to forgo these mating strategies or is it just suppressed?
I don't understand why it is so unattractive for women to want to work out their upper body like men do. Now-a-days, more and more women are focussing on "toning" rather than necessarily strengthening, and I do not understand why it is so unattractive to males if a woman appears strong rather than brittle and weak.
