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Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits.
Sexual attraction is attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest. Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal is an individual's ability to attract other people sexually, and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice. The attraction can be to the physical or other qualities or traits of a person, or to such qualities in the context where they appear. The attraction may be to a person's aesthetics, movements, voice, or smell, among other things. The attraction may be enhanced by a person's adornments, clothing, perfume or style. It can be influenced by individual genetic, psychological, or cultural factors, or to other, more amorphous qualities. Sexual attraction is also a response to another person that depends on a combination of the person possessing the traits and on the criteria of the person who is attracted.
Seduction has multiple meanings. Platonically, it can mean "to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty", or "to lead astray, usually by persuasion or false promises".
Infidelity is a violation of a couple's emotional and/or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, sexual jealousy, and rivalry.
Sociosexuality, sometimes called sociosexual orientation, is the individual difference in the willingness to engage in sexual activity outside of a committed relationship. Individuals who are more restricted sociosexually are less willing to engage in casual sex; they prefer greater love, commitment and emotional closeness before having sex with romantic partners. Individuals who are more unrestricted sociosexually are more willing to have casual sex and are more comfortable engaging in sex without love, commitment or closeness.
A mating system is a way in which a group is structured in relation to sexual behaviour. The precise meaning depends upon the context. With respect to animals, the term describes which males and females mate under which circumstances. Recognised systems include monogamy, polygamy, and promiscuity, all of which lead to different mate choice outcomes and thus these systems affect how sexual selection works in the species which practice them. In plants, the term refers to the degree and circumstances of outcrossing. In human sociobiology, the terms have been extended to encompass the formation of relationships such as marriage.
Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors. Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as mental health, cognitive abilities, personality, emotion, sexuality, and tendency towards aggression. Such variation may be innate, learned, or both. Modern research attempts to distinguish between these causes and to analyze any ethical concerns raised. Since behavior is a result of interactions between nature and nurture, researchers are interested in investigating how biology and environment interact to produce such differences, although this is often not possible.
David Michael Buss is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection. He is considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychology.
Parental investment, in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, is any parental expenditure that benefits offspring. Parental investment may be performed by both males and females, females alone or males alone. Care can be provided at any stage of the offspring's life, from pre-natal to post-natal.
A psychological adaptation is a functional, cognitive or behavioral trait that benefits an organism in its environment. Psychological adaptations fall under the scope of evolved psychological mechanisms (EPMs), however, EPMs refer to a less restricted set. Psychological adaptations include only the functional traits that increase the fitness of an organism, while EPMs refer to any psychological mechanism that developed through the processes of evolution. These additional EPMs are the by-product traits of a species’ evolutionary development, as well as the vestigial traits that no longer benefit the species’ fitness. It can be difficult to tell whether a trait is vestigial or not, so some literature is more lenient and refers to vestigial traits as adaptations, even though they may no longer have adaptive functionality. For example, xenophobic attitudes and behaviors, some have claimed, appear to have certain EPM influences relating to disease aversion, however, in many environments these behaviors will have a detrimental effect on a person's fitness. The principles of psychological adaptation rely on Darwin's theory of evolution and are important to the fields of evolutionary psychology, biology, and cognitive science.
Sexual jealousy is a special form of jealousy in sexual relationships, based on suspected or imminent sexual infidelity. The concept is studied in the field of evolutionary psychology.
In evolutionary psychology, the Cinderella effect is the phenomenon of higher incidence of different forms of child abuse and mistreatment by stepparents than by biological parents. It takes its name from the fairy tale character Cinderella, which is about a girl who is mistreated by her stepsisters and stepmother. Evolutionary psychologists describe the effect as a byproduct of a bias towards kin, and a conflict between reproductive partners of investing in young that are unrelated to one partner.
Human male sexuality encompasses a wide variety of feelings and behaviors. Men's feelings of attraction may be caused by various physical and social traits of their potential partner. Men's sexual behavior can be affected by many factors, including evolved predispositions, individual personality, upbringing, and culture. While most men are heterosexual, significant minorities are homosexual or varying degrees of bisexual.
Monogamous pairing in animals refers to the natural history of mating systems in which species pair bond to raise offspring. This is associated, usually implicitly, with sexual monogamy.
Extra-pair copulation (EPC) is a mating behaviour in monogamous species. Monogamy is the practice of having only one sexual partner at any one time, forming a long-term bond and combining efforts to raise offspring together; mating outside this pairing is extra-pair copulation. Across the animal kingdom, extra-pair copulation is common in monogamous species, and only a very few pair-bonded species are thought to be exclusively sexually monogamous. EPC in the animal kingdom has mostly been studied in birds and mammals. Possible benefits of EPC can be investigated within non-human species, such as birds.
Sexual selection in humans concerns the concept of sexual selection, introduced by Charles Darwin as an element of his theory of natural selection, as it affects humans. Sexual selection is a biological way one sex chooses a mate for the best reproductive success. Most compete with others of the same sex for the best mate to contribute their genome for future generations. This has shaped human evolution for many years, but reasons why humans choose their mates are not fully understood. Sexual selection is quite different in non-human animals than humans as they feel more of the evolutionary pressures to reproduce and can easily reject a mate. The role of sexual selection in human evolution has not been firmly established although neoteny has been cited as being caused by human sexual selection. It has been suggested that sexual selection played a part in the evolution of the anatomically modern human brain, i.e. the structures responsible for social intelligence underwent positive selection as a sexual ornamentation to be used in courtship rather than for survival itself, and that it has developed in ways outlined by Ronald Fisher in the Fisherian runaway model. Fisher also stated that the development of sexual selection was "more favourable" in humans.
In evolutionary psychology and behavioral ecology, human mating strategies are a set of behaviors used by individuals to select, attract, and retain mates. Mating strategies overlap with reproductive strategies, which encompass a broader set of behaviors involving the timing of reproduction and the trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring.
Mate value is derived from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and sexual selection, as well as the social exchange theory of relationships. Mate value is defined as the sum of traits that are perceived as desirable, representing genetic quality and/or fitness (biology), an indication of a potential mate's reproductive success. Based on mate desirability and mate preference, mate value underpins mate selection and the formation of romantic relationships.
Social selection is a term used with varying meanings in biology.
The ovulatory shift hypothesis holds that women experience evolutionarily adaptive changes in subconscious thoughts and behaviors related to mating during different parts of the ovulatory cycle. It suggests that what women want, in terms of men, changes throughout the menstrual cycle. Two meta-analyses published in 2014 reached opposing conclusions on whether the existing evidence was robust enough to support the prediction that women's mate preferences change across the cycle. A newer 2018 review does not show women changing the type of men they desire at different times in their fertility cycle.
References
- ↑ Fellmann, Ferdinand; Walsh, Rebecca (July 2013). "Emotional Selection and Human Personality". Biological Theory. 8 (1): 64–73. doi:10.1007/s13752-013-0093-3. S2CID 86381804.
- ↑ Eriksson, Kimmo; Coultas, Julie C.; de Barra, Mícheál (24 February 2016). "Cross-Cultural Differences in Emotional Selection on Transmission of Information". Journal of Cognition and Culture. 16 (1–2): 122–143. doi:10.1163/15685373-12342171.
- ↑ Fellmann, Ferdinand (2009). "Das Paar als Quelle des Selbst. Zu den soziobiologischen Grundlagen der philosophischen Anthropologie". Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie. 57 (5): 745–56. doi:10.1524/dzph.2009.0062. S2CID 170459403.
- ↑ Huxley, Julian (1942). Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262513661.
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