Chapter 7: Part 2 Flashcards
Mating Opportunity Cost Hypothesis
missed additional “bearing” opportunities given the effort of “caring”
evolved mechanisms of parental care should be sensitive to 3 contexts
- Genetic relatedness of the offspring (are the children my own)
- Ability of the offspring to convert parental care into fitness ( will a given unit of my investment make a difference in the survival and reproduction of my children)
- alternative use of the resources that might be available to invest in offspring( will a given unit of my investment be best spent investing in children or in other activities like investing in a sibling’s children or additional mating opportunities_
a man has several sources of information to consider the likelihood that he is the genetic father of a given child:
-information about his partner’s sexual fidelity during the period in which she conceived.
i.) female infidelity looms larger than male infidelity and is more likely to prompt divorce
- perceptions of the child’s resemblance to him
i.) both appearance and behavior
evaluation of the effects of men’s paternity uncertainty on their investment in children’s college education: 3 predictions
1.) Men will allocate more resources towards their genetic children than to their stepchildren
2.) Men who are unsure about whether or not that kid is theirs or not- will invest less than men who are certain that kid is theirs
3.) Men will invest more in children when the child’s mother is their current mate than they will in children from former partners n
substitute parents and the “Cinderella effect”
risk of being injured or killed by a step-parent is much higher than the risk of being injured or killed by biological parents
primary caretaker hypothesis
-women will have evolved adaptations that increase the odds that their children will survive
- women, compared to men, show a reduction in risk-taking when they are paired with babies in a laboratory setting - “the baby effect”
Attachment promotion hypothesis
women are better at decoding facial emotional expressions
fitness threat hypothesis
women are better at decoding negative emotional expression
parental neglect and abuse of children with congenital abnormalities
- a large fraction of seriously ill children are institutionalized, and many are not visited often
-children with abnormalities are abused at considerably higher rates than the base rate of abuse in the general population
The Trivers-Willard Hypothesis
Parents will produce more sons and invest more in sons when the parents are in good condition and hence have a chance of producing a son who will be highly successful in the mating game
conversely, if the parents either are in poor condition or have few resources to invest, then they should invest more in their daughters
Blank theory identified the battleground of genetic conflict of interest between parents and children
Tiver’s
selection created mechanisms to manipulate the mother to get more resources in utero
-human chronic gonadotropin(hCG) secreted by the fetus to subvert the risk of spontaneous abortion
-fetus often signals it needs more nutrition, which raises the mother’s blood pressure and can damage tissues
