Contemporary mate preferences can provide important clues to human reproductive history. Little is known about which characteristics people value in potential mates. Five predictions were made about sex differences in human mate preferences based on evolutionary conceptions of parental investment, sexual selection, human reproductive capacity, and sexual asymmetries regarding certainty of paternity versus maternity. The predictions centered on how each sex valued earning capacity, ambition— industriousness, youth, physical attractiveness, and chastity. Predictions were tested in data from 37 samples drawn from 33 countries located on six continents and five islands (total N = 10,047). For 27 countries, demographic data on actual age at marriage provided a validity check on questionnaire data. Females were found to value cues to resource acquisition in potential mates more highly than males. Characteristics signaling reproductive capacity were valued more by males than by females. These sex differences may reflect different evolutionary selection pressures on human males and females; they provide powerful cross-cultural evidence of current sex differences in reproductive strategies. Discussion focuses on proximate mechanisms underlying mate preferences, consequences for human intrasexual competition, and the limitations of this study.

/pdf/sex-differences-in-human-mate-preferences-evolutionary-227sbaq8b2.pdf

Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures

The motivation, planning, production, comprehension, coordination, and evaluation of human social life may be based largely on combinations of 4 psychological models. In communal sharing, people treat all members of a category as equivalent. In authority ranking, people attend to their positions in a linear ordering. In equality matching, people keep track of the imbalances among them. In market pricing, people orient to ratio values. Cultures use different rules to implement the 4 models. In addition to an array of inductive evidence from many cultures and approaches, the theory has been supported by ethnographic field work and 19 experimental studies using 7 different methods testing 6 different cognitive predictions on a wide range of subjects from 5 cultures.

The four elementary forms of sociality : framework for a unified theory of social relations

Receiver psychology and the evolution of animal signals

/pdf/the-genetical-theory-of-natural-selection-1r6nymdvib.pdf

The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.

Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict

If baboon and macaque mating systems constitute a form of female defense polygyny, male mating strategies should be intrasexually selected and should vary in predictable ways with female defensibility, and demographic factors which affect the numbers of competing males per estrous female in populations. Substantial behavioral evidence exists for intrasexual selection of male mating strategies in baboons and macaques. Limited evidence also offers tentative support for theorybased predictions about the relationship between male mating strategy and female defensibility. Although male dominance rank generally predicts mating success, there are a number of factors which tend to increase the success of subordinate males above that expected from a simple dominance-based model of priority of access to mates.

Intrasexual selection and male mating strategies in baboons and macaques

In this paper I argue (a) that the study of kin selection may be facilitated by looking for influences of inbreeding, which is an important aspect of a population's genetic structure; (b) that in nonhuman primates the level of inbreeding will be largely a function of the rate of migration by individuals, usually only of one sex, between social units or troops; (c) that many primate species live in relatively outbred groups, and that their social structure reflects this; and (d) that extensive social contrasts between bonnet and pigtail macaques reflect evolution by kin selection under different levels of inbreeding.

Inbreeding, kin selection, and primate social evolution

In recent years, two authors (Gartlan, 1968; Rowell, 1974) have examined and found wanting the application of concepts of social dominance to the behavior of, primarily, nonhuman primates. These criticisms, I believe, fulfill the purpose of ridding us of an outmoded unitary concept, but they also suffer from a degree of unclarity and excessive zeal, brushing aside many well-established, puzzling, and interesting findings. While preparing a reply to these criticisms, I found two ideas to be of underlying importance. One of these is that discussions of social dominance must guard against muddling of conceptual levels. The other is that certain time-honored approaches to the study of dominance attempt to dispense with variability when that variability is itself likely to be our clue to any further understanding. These and other, minor, novelties I hope will make this paper more than just a reply to a critique.

Status and Hierarchy in Nonhuman Primate Societies

The paper examinesBateson’s idea that social relationships can be described according to the degree that behavior is symmetric (mutual) or complementary (non-mutual). It was suggested that in primates complementary relationships are most typical and stable.Bateson’s definitions were quantified and applied to observations of paired rhesus females, showing that familiar dyads had complementary relationships, probably reflecting social status, while unfamiliar dyads had symmetric relationships.

Complementarity and symmetry in social relationships of nonhuman primates

Peer Review Comments on Seeds of Science articles (2021-2022)

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