During human evolutionary history, there were “trade-offs” between expending time and energy on child-rearing and mating, so both men and women evolved conditional mating strategies guided by cues signaling the circumstances. Many short-term matings might be successful for some men; others might try to find and keep a single mate, investing their effort in rearing her offspring. Recent evidence suggests that men with features signaling genetic benefits to offspring should be preferred by women as short-term mates, but there are trade-offs (...) between a mate's genetic fitness and his willingness to help in child-rearing. It is these circumstances and the cues that signal them that underlie the variation in short- and long-term mating strategies between and within the sexes. Key Words: conditional strategies; evolutionary psychology; fluctuating asymmetry; mating; reproductive strategies; sexual selection. (shrink)

Female coital orgasm may be an adaptation for preferentially retaining the sperm of males with “good genes.” One indicator of good genes may be physical attractiveness. Accordingly, R. Thornhill, S. W. Gangestad, and R. Comer (1995) found that women mated to more attractive men reported an orgasm during a greater proportion of copulations than did women mated to less attractive men. The current research replicates this finding, with several design variations. We collected self-report data from 388 women residing in the (...) United States or in Germany. Results support the hypothesis that women mated to more attractive men are more likely to report an orgasm at the most recent copulation than are women mated to less attractive men, after statistically controlling for several key variables. Discussion addresses (a) the inability of the present research to specify the causal link between female orgasm and male attractiveness and (b) the proactive nature of female sexuality documented in recent research guided by an evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

A study of twenty-five popular women’s novels and six famous romantic stories has led to the conclusion that such novels and stories are tales of mate selection and mating commitment. Pérusse’s (1994) predictions with respect to mate choice are confirmed by the activities of male and female protagonists in the novels (binomial test,p<.01 in all cases). Males choose mates on the basis of sexual exclusivity and fertility. Females choose mates on the basis of economic factors and parenting potential. As well, (...) male and female characters differ in terms of their display of functional emotions. (shrink)

Sexually dimorphic mate selection strategies were examined in 200 university students reporting their willingness to engage in casual sexual encounters with hypothetical individuals of the opposite sex. Using a questionnaire format, the possibility of forming a long-term relationship was manipulated, while risk of disease, pregnancy, and detection was eliminated across all conditions. In addition, potential partners varied in level of attractiveness, and in personality and behavioral characteristics. As expected, men reported a greater anticipated willingness to engage in sexual intercourse across (...) all conditions compared with women. The possibility of forming a long-term relationship elevated women’s, but not men’s, willingness for sexual intercourse. While a potential partner’s attractiveness had a significant positive overall effect on responses, reducing their relative attractiveness had a greater negative impact on men’s responses. Reference to the parental qualities of a potential partner significantly increased women’s, but not men’s, anticipated willingness for sexual intercourse. Describing a hypothetical partner as non-aggressive marginally increased women’s willingness and did not affect men’s responses. The wording of items relevant to this condition may have resulted in the potential partner sounding "wimpy" rather than nonaggressive, and this may have reduced the expected effect of this manipulation. The possibility that women may trade off personality and behavioral characteristics with attractiveness to a greater degree than men when assessing potential mates is considered. (shrink)

Sociobiologists and feminists agree that men in patriarchal social systems seek to control females, but sociobiologists go further, using Darwin’s theory of sexual selection and Trivers’s ideas on parental investment to explain why males should attempt to control female sexuality. From this perspective, the stage for the development under some conditions of patriarchal social systems was set over the course of primate evolution. Sexual selection encompasses both competition between males and female choice. But in applying this theory to our “lower (...) origins” (prehominid ancestors), Darwin assumed that choices were made by essentially “coy” females. I argue here that female solicitation of multiple males (either simultaneously or sequentially, depending on the breeding system) characterized prehominid females; this prehominid legacy of cyclical sexual assertiveness, itself possibly a female counter-strategy to male efforts to control the timing of female reproduction, generated further male counter-strategies. This dialectic had important implications for emerging hominid mating systems, human evolution, and the development of patriarchal arrangements in some human societies. For hominid males who will invest in offspring, there would be powerful selection for emotions, behaviors, and customs that ensure them certainty of paternity. The sexual modesty that so struck Darwin can be explained as a recent evolved or learned (perhaps both) adaptation in women to avoid penalties imposed by patrilines on daughters and mates who failed to conform to the patriline’s prevailing norms for their sex. Other supposedly innate universals, such as female preferences for wealthy husbands, are also likely to be facultative accommodations by women to constraints set up when patrilines monopolized resources needed by females to survive and reproduce, and passed on intergenerational control of these resources preferentially to sons. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of the characteristics of men who become stepfathers, and their subsequent fertility patterns and lifetime reproductive success. Because women who already have children are ranked lower in the marriage market than women without children, men who marry women with children (e.g., stepfathers) are likely to have lower rankings in the marriage market as well. Using retrospective fertility and marital histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I show that men who become stepfathers have (...) lower levels of education, less income, and are more likely to have been divorced before and to already have children, all characteristics that lower their rankings in the marriage market. Men with one or two stepchildren are just as likely to have children within a marriage as non-stepfathers, although men with three stepchildren show decreased fertility. Among men age 45 and older, stepfathers have lower lifetime fertility than non-stepfathers, although the difference disappears when men’s age at first marriage is controlled for. Additionally, stepfathers have significantly higher fertility than men who never marry. The results suggest that some men become stepfathers to procure mates and fertility benefits that they would otherwise have been unlikely to obtain; for these men, raising other men’s children serves as a form of mating effort. (shrink)