Evolutionary Explanations Of Attraction

Question 1

Inter-sexual selection = ?

Answer 1

Inter-sexual selection = based on female choosiness

Question 2

What did Buss (1989) find across 37 cultures?

Answer 2

Women rated having resources (or the potential to acquire them) as more important in mate choice than men do.

Question 3

Intra-sexual selection = ?

Answer 3

Intra-sexual selection = based on male competition

Question 4

What percentage of men and women said yes to the question “would you go out with me tonight?” from an attractive total stranger of the opposite sex in Clark and Hatfield (1989)?

Answer 4

Men - 50%

Women - 50%

Question 5

What percentage of men and women said yes to the question “would you come over to my apartment tonight?” from an attractive total stranger of the opposite sex in Clark and Hatfield (1989)?

Answer 5

Men - 69%

Women - 6%

Question 6

What percentage of men and women said yes to the question “will you go to bed with me tonight?” from an attractive total stranger of the opposite sex in Clark and Hatfield (1989)?

Answer 6

Men - 75%

Women - 0%

Question 7

Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992) asked male and female students to imagine their current boy/girlfriend a) having sex with someone else or b) in love with them. What distressed them most?

Answer 7

1. More women (85%) were distressed by emotional infidelity than sexual fidelity (15%)
2. Men were more distressed by sexual infidelity (60%) than emotional infidelity (40%)

Question 8

What are the limitations with Trivers’ Parental Investment Theory (PIT)?

Answer 8

1. PIT suggests that men don’t desire long-term relationships
2. PIT ignores the evidence that women engage in short-term relationships
3. PIT tells us little about homosexual relationships, which are non-reproductive