Human Sexual Behavior

Tim Walker Biology L19 11/20/2007 Library Assignment Human Behavior in Choosing a Mate In this paper I will discuss and compare three articles in relation to how humans have evolved and continue to select the way they will evolve through the process of choosing mates. There is more to it than hormones and pretty faces, humans subconsciously are looking for ways to enhance their gene pool and the only way this is possible is through being selective of their mates. All three studies were published in the “Evolution of Human Behavior” scientific journal. The first study was done to see the amount of impact parents had on the choice of their offspring’s mates through marriage in hunter gatherer societies (Apostolou, 2007). The study was conducted by observing the records of 190 different hunter gatherer societies to observe how couples were joined together in marriage. This study found that, in a high percentage of these communities, parents chose their children’s mates, though had a higher level of decision in that of their daughters than their sons. The next most likely scenario was that siblings chose mates for them. Only a very small margin of daughters had the choice of actually courting a mate, while in most of these cases the parents still had the final word on whether or not the marriage would take place. Also, this study found that, in a majority of situations, the father had control of choice, whereas next was an even amount of influence from both the parents. In cases where the parents both had a say in their child’s spouse, it was more likely that the father had more say than the mother. In only one case is found that the mother was the only one to make the decision. This amount of influence by the parents was often found to be

contradictory to what the child would have chosen themselves, and thus it was most common for daughters to be married off at the time of reaching puberty. It was also shown that in the cases where parents married chose the spouse of their children, divorce was almost as common as marriage, and the parents had less say in the remarriage than they did the original. It is found that the parents are often looking for an in law that will be more supportive of them in their old age than one who would be more supportive of their daughter, whereas the exact opposite was said for what the daughter would have picked. Thus, in these societies the common idea that women have had an great deal of influence on the evolution of the human race through the selection of their mates is shown to be false, the parents, and even more so the father, seem to have had the predominate roll in choosing our path of evolution. The second study was on the hypothesis that women look for a man who is willing to invest in his offspring (Penton-Voak, Cahill, Pound, Kempe, Schaefler, & Schaeffler, 2007). This test involved 63 subjects having their pictures taken and shown to a group of women who would rate then from 1-7 on several categories, including attractiveness in short and long term relationships, prosociality, whether they would be a good father, and manliness. The men were told to record directions for a map orally for both an adult and a child at different times. The results showed that when the man spoke as if to a child he lengthened vowels, raised pitch, and talked slower. This type of speech is called child-directed, or CD speech. It was thought that men who displayed better CD speech and deemed themselves as liking children and wanting to have children would be directly associated with the long term attractiveness of the man. However, in contradiction it was found that the men who varied their speech more towards children and claimed to like and want

children were rated less attractive and prosocial, however also rated to be a better father. This is found to be against the original hypothesis and shows that women do not pick up cues of men being good fathers and better with children as being more physically attractive. The third study was done because the researches believed that the current measure of sociosexuality in humans was insufficient (Jackson & Kirkpatrick, 2007). The current model in for measurement of an individual’s socialsexual mindset is that they either seek a short term or long term relationship, saying that they are two opposite poles of sexuality and that both are not sought at the same time. They proposed a new, two dimensional model that was based off their partner choice, their level of romantic attachment, as well as their own self perceived value as a mate. In order to conduct this study, 328 psychology students were given questionnaires, either on paper or on a computer to test they comparison of all the different proposed parts of the new scale. They found that the three categories, as expected, did not always correlate exactly with each other, so the scale could not be a single one dimension, because if it was, the answers to the questions would have to go together exactly on each form, matching up all the categories currently associated with long term seeking or short term seeking, not a mixture as was found. Out of all three of these studies, the second by Cahill et al seemed the most sound. The methods of testing were well documented and the results were all easily shown for comparison. However, the study by Apostolou does not explain what was done to determine the results, whether actually members of the society were asked or if it went strictly by records. This leaves it to seem that the study was merely a culmination of facts read from the researcher’s sources. Also the societies that were

pictured were only separated by continent, and thus it did not seem that the smaller scale would have been accurate for the larger area. Possibly the article could have reported more specific areas, such as countries at least, that would give a better idea of the region where the facts were coming from. The third study by Jackson and Kirkpatrick seemed fairly sound, but lacked anything more than simple questionnaires done by students, who had had few or no sexual contact making their ideas possibly not suitable for the study. It could have been better done in an older age group, such as mid to late 20’s however it is reasonable to believe that since the study was done at a university, students were the easiest and most populace group to pull samples from.

Works Cited Apostolou, M. (2007). Sexual selection under the parental choice: the role of parents in the evolution of human mating. Evolution and Human Behavior 28 , 403-409. Jackson, J. J., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2007). The structure and measurement of human mating strategies: towards a multidimensional model of socio sexiality. Evolution and Human Behavior 28 , 382-291. Penton-Voak, I. S., Cahill, S., Pound, N., Kempe, V., Schaefler, S., & Schaeffler, F. (2007). Male facial attractiveness, perveived personality, and child-directed speech. Evolution of HUman Behavior 28 , 253-259.