In 1989, psychologist David Buss published a pioneering study of mate preferences in 37 cultures around the world. He found that in every culture, females placed more emphasis than males on a potential mate's financial prospects. Actually, women may not be attuned so much to a man's wealth as to his social status; among hunter-gatherers, status often translates into influence over the divvying up of resources, such as meat after a big kill. In modern societies, in any event, wealth and status often go hand in hand, and seem to make an attractive package in the eyes of the average woman. It's no surprise that flowers and other tokens of affection are more prized by women than by men.
One might imagine that this analysis is steadily losing its relevance. After all, as more women enter the work force, they can better afford to premise their marital decisions on something other than the man's income. But though a modern women can reflect on her wealth and her independently earned status, and try to gauge marital decisions accordingly, that doesn't mean she can easily override the deep aesthetic impulses that had such value in the ancestral environment. In fact, modern women do not override them. Psychologists have shown that the tendency of women to place greater emphasis than men on a mate's financial prospects persists regardless of the income of the woman in question.
In judging potential partners, women needn't literally ask about these issues, or even be aware of them. Much of our species' history took place before our ancestors were smart enough to ask much of anything.
In the case of sexual attraction, everyday experience suggests that natural selection has wielded its influence largely via emotional spigots that turn on and off such feelings as tentative attraction, fierce passion, and swoon-inducing infatuation. A woman doesn't size up a man and say, "He seems like a worthy contributor to my genetic legacy." She just sizes him up and feels attracted to him--or doesn't. All the "thinking" has been done--unconsciously, metaphorically--by natural selection. Genes leading to attractions that wound up being good for her ancestors' genetic legacies have flourished. Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that--in many realms, not just sex--we're all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.
It would be misleading to say that men are selective about mates, but in theory they are at least selectively selective. They will, on the one hand, have sex with just about anything that moves, given an easy chance. In one experiment, three-fourths of the men approached by an unknown woman on a college campus agreed to have sex with her, whereas none of the women approached by an unknown man were willing to do so.
On the other hand, when it comes to finding a female for a long-term joint venture, discretion makes sense. Males can undertake only so many ventures over the course of a lifetime, so the genes that the partner brings to the project--genes for robustness, brains, whatever--are worth scrutinizing.
The distinction was nicely drawn by a study in which both men and women were asked about the minimal level of intelligence they would accept in a person they were "dating." The average response, for both males and females, was: average intelligence. They were also asked how smart a person would have to be before they would consent to sex. The women said: Oh, in that case, markedly above average. The men said: Oh, in that case, markedly below average.
In the psychology laboratory, David Buss has found further evidence that men do dichotomize between short-term and long-term partners. Cues suggesting promiscuity (a low-cut dress, perhaps, or aggressive body language) make a woman more attractive as a short-term mate and less attractive as a long-term mate. Cues suggesting a lack of sexual experiences work the other way around.
Psychologist Donald Symons believes that the lifestyle of the modern philandering bachelor--seducing and abandoning available women year after year, without making any of them targets for ongoing investment--is not a distinct, evolved sexual strategy. It is just what happens when you take the male mind, with its preference for varied sex partners, and set it down in a big city replete with contraceptive technology.
Still, even if the ancestral environment wasn't full of single women sitting alone after one-night stands muttering, "Men are scum," there were reasons to guard against males who exaggerate commitment, only to leave after fathering a child. Divorce happens even among modern-day hunter-gatherers (whose lifestyle mirrors that of our ancestors), and polygyny is often an option. Given such prospects, a women's genes would be well served by her early and careful scrutiny of a man's likely devotion. Gauging of a man's commitment does seem to be a part of human female psychology; and male psychology does seem inclined to sometimes encourage a false reading. One study found that males, markedly more than females, report depicting themselves as more kind, sincere, and trustworthy than they actually are.
Tags:
common goal,
evolution,
evolutionary explanation,
gene machine,
genetic differences,
human psychology,
infatuation,
infatuations,
knobs,
love,
lust,
passions,
raw lust,
sibling rivalry,
social environment,
spigots,
states of mind,
unconscious mind
