Evolution of human mate choice

Geary, David C.; Vigil, Jacob M.; Byrd‐Craven, Jennifer

doi:10.1080/00224490409552211

Cited by 208 publications

(207 citation statements)

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“…From a lifehistory perspective, parental willingness to invest in children coevolved with the long developmental period (Bogin, 1999) and the combination functions, in part, to facilitate children's ability to add to their reproductive potential before reproducing themselves (Alexander, 1987;Geary & Flinn, 2001;Kaplan, Hill, Lancaster, & Hurtado, 2000). Most generally, reproductive potential constitutes the ability to attract a desirable mate in adulthood and to invest in parenting (Geary, Vigil, & Byrd-Craven, 2004). The primary traits that comprise reproductive potential are (a) the physical components associated with fertility and the ability to birth or sire healthy children and (b) the social and behavioral components that signal the ability to invest in these children during the long period of development.…”

Section: The Evolution Of Human Parental Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting and community background and variation in women's life-history development.

Vigil

Geary

2006

Journal of Family Psychology

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For a community sample of 623 low-income women (mean age ϭ 26.9 years), the authors use life-history theory to explore relations between parenting and community background and timing of reproductive development and sexual behaviors. Among other patterns, reported levels of paternal involvement during childhood were related to delayed menarche and ages at 1st sexual intercourse and 1st childbirth. The relation between parental investment and women's reproductive delay varied with estimates of wealth in the community in which the participants grew up. The results suggest that parents increased their investment as the level of community wealth increased, and in ways that likely facilitated women's ability to compete for social status in adulthood. Implications for future research on the relation between parenting and child outcomes are discussed.Keywords: child development, parenting style, sexual behaviors, life history, family relations Developmental research has demonstrated a correlation between parenting quality and children's long-term physical (Flinn, 1999), emotional (Amato, 1998, and social (Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2003) well-being. Current attention now focuses on the relative strength of parenting on child outcomes (e.g., maladjustment) and the influences of heritable factors, extra-parental experiences (e.g., peers), and context (e.g., neighborhoods) on these outcomes. One potentially innovative approach to better understand these relations is life-history theory. Life-history research focuses on the biological trade-offs (e.g., allocation of calories to staying alive vs. growing larger) associated with the competing demands of surviving, growing, and behaviorally and socially preparing for reproduction in adulthood (Geary, 2002;Roff, 1992;Stearns, 1992;Stearns & Koella, 1986). One area of research that has successfully used life-history theory is the study of the relation between family environment and pubertal timing; having a more supportive family, especially a warm relationship with father, is related to later onset of menarche in girls (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991;Ellis, 2004;Vigil, Geary, & Byrd-Craven, 2005).The broader question concerns potential moderators of the relation between parental investment and other aspects of reproductive development (e.g., age of first childbirth) and of course other child outcomes (e.g., educational achievement), as well as the question of whether all children benefit equally from high levels of parental investment. K. M. Harris and Marmer (1996) found the often reported positive correlation between increased father-child involvement and children's long-term economic and educational success is stronger in wealthier families, and concluded that "the positive effect of father's behavioral involvement . . . . are less effective for children who experience long term poverty" (p. 632; see also Klebanov, Brooks-Gunn, McCarton, & McCormick, 1998;Roosa, 2000). At first glance, these findings appear counterintuitive; we might expect that children living in ...

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Section: The Evolution Of Human Parental Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting and community background and variation in women's life-history development.

Vigil

Geary

2006

Journal of Family Psychology

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“…It is argued that ancestral women were subjected to selective pressures that enabled those who chose men with greater resources, and/or capacity for resource acquisition, to have greater reproductive success compared to those who did not choose a partner with such characteristics (Brase and Guy 2004;Castro and Lopes 2011;Geary et al 2004;Pawlowski 2000). Although physical attributes appear to have less importance in female mate choice compared to male preferences (Castro and Lopes 2011), male physical appearance can also give women clues about the genetic quality of a potential partner, as well as their capacity for protection, dominance, competitive ability, and achieving high social status (Buss and Shackelford 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Investment in Beauty, Exercise, and Self-esteem: Are They Related to Self-perception as a Romantic Partner?

Mafra

Castro

Lopes

2015

Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Men and women prefer certain characteristics that are interpreted as clues to the reproductive quality of potential partners. Physical appearance, for example, is an important characteristic for both sexes because it can signal youth and fertility in females and capacity for protection, dominance, competitive ability, and high social status in males. Therefore, we predicted that people would put significant effort into improving their physical attractiveness in order to compete in the mating market, and this relationship would be influenced by self-perception and socioeconomic status. In order to investigate whether investment in beauty and exercise are related to self-perception as romantic partners and self-esteem, this study was conducted with 205 men and women of lower socioeconomic status from Brazil. They were asked about their self-esteem (Rosenberg self-esteem scale), socioeconomic status, investment in beauty, time exercising, and self-perception as a romantic partner. Although no significant relationship between self-perception as a romantic partner and exercise was found, our results suggest that female investment in beauty is related to their financial condition, whereas male investment in beauty is related to greater evaluation in handsome face, beautiful body, sociability, and agreeableness, being correlation stronger when controlled by participants' self-esteem. The results support Leary and Baumeister's sociometer theory (2000 cited in Bale and Archer Evolutionary Psychology, 11, 68-84, 2013) and Penke and Denissen's (Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1123Personality, 42, -1129Personality, 42, , 2008 findings, in which men would associate more characteristics of their self-perception in a mate market with their self-esteem.

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“…Assortative mating (homophily), where individuals that share a trait are more likely to mate with one another (11)(12)(13)(14), and fitness differences may both affect the evolutionary trajectory of a population. In a previous model of cultural niche construction (15), we considered two dichotomous cultural traits, one that determined a cultural phenotype and one niche-constructing trait that controlled the level of selection and assorting on the other trait.…”

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Complexity in models of cultural niche construction with selection and homophily

Creanza

Feldman

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Niche construction is the process by which organisms can alter the ecological environment for themselves, their descendants, and other species. As a result of niche construction, differences in selection pressures may be inherited across generations. Homophily, the tendency of like phenotypes to mate or preferentially associate, influences the evolutionary dynamics of these systems. Here we develop a model that includes selection and homophily as independent culturally transmitted traits that influence the fitness and mate choice determined by another focal cultural trait. We study the joint dynamics of a focal set of beliefs, a behavior that can differentially influence the fitness of those with certain beliefs, and a preference for partnering based on similar beliefs. Cultural transmission, selection, and homophily interact to produce complex evolutionary dynamics, including oscillations, stable polymorphisms of all cultural phenotypes, and simultaneous stability of oscillation and fixation, which have not previously been observed in models of cultural evolution or gene-culture interactions. We discuss applications of this model to the interaction of beliefs and behaviors regarding education, contraception, and animal domestication. T hroughout history, humans have dramatically modified their ecological niche, for example by constructing densely populated settlements, using agriculture, and domesticating animals. This niche construction, which has involved major cultural changes, has influenced our own evolution and that of other species (1-4) by affecting the selective forces that act on human populations. A classic example of this gene-culture coevolution is the spread of dairy farming through Europe and the corresponding increase in the allele frequency of the lactase persistence gene, which enables humans to digest milk into adulthood (5-9). Less widely studied is the evolutionary pressure that one culturally transmitted behavior can exert on another cultural trait, either by altering the rate of transmission or the fitnesses of variants of the latter; this has been called cultural niche construction (4, 10).Assortative mating (homophily), where individuals that share a trait are more likely to mate with one another (11-14), and fitness differences may both affect the evolutionary trajectory of a population. In a previous model of cultural niche construction (15), we considered two dichotomous cultural traits, one that determined a cultural phenotype and one niche-constructing trait that controlled the level of selection and assorting on the other trait. In that model, assorting and selection could induce complex evolutionary dynamics, including stable polymorphisms and multiple simultaneously stable equilibria. Polymorphisms were only possible when the three evolutionary forces in the model interacted: fitness differences between phenotypes, assortative mating, and non-Mendelian transmission of at least one trait. The two elements of cultural niche construction in that model-the levels of selection and as...

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Evolution of human mate choice

Cited by 208 publications

References 143 publications

Parenting and community background and variation in women's life-history development.

Parenting and community background and variation in women's life-history development.

Investment in Beauty, Exercise, and Self-esteem: Are They Related to Self-perception as a Romantic Partner?

Complexity in models of cultural niche construction with selection and homophily

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