SEXUAL SELECTION AND HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOUR Flashcards
(9 cards)
What does the evolutionary approach suggest?
that animals are motivated to select a ‘mate’ with the best possible genes, who will ensure the offsprings future health and survival.
What is anisogamy?
refers to the difference between the 2 sex cells (or gametes), involved in reproduction.
This difference leads to men and women using different strategies when choosing partners.
What are the men sex cells
men have sperm cells, which can reproduce quickly with little energy expenditure, and once they start being produced, they typically do not stop until the man dies.
Female sex cells:
eggs or ova: are much less plentiful; they’re released within a limited time frame (between puberty and menopause) and require significantly more energy to produce.
Intersexual selection
is the preferred strategy of females, who tend to value quality over quantity. Intersexual selection occurs when one gender makes mate choices based on specific characteristics in the opposite gender. Females lose more resources than men if they choose a sub-standard partner, making them pickier about their selection - likely to choose someone genetically fit, and r4emain by her side as the child grows.
Intrasexual selection:
Refers to competition between same sex for access to a mate of the opposite sex. characteristics that led to success in mating are passed onto the next generation.
preferred strategy of males, who tend to value quantity over quality. Anisogamy suggests that men’s best evolutionary strategy is to have as many partners as possible. To succeed, men must compete with other males to present themselves as the most attractive mate, showcasing features like muscles, showing ability to protect them both and their offspring.
Buss:
conducted a survey of over 10,000 adults in 33 countries and found that females reported valuing resource based characteristics when choosing a male (jobs), while men valued good looks and preferred younger partners,
Social desirability bias? Western answers?
How are evolutionary explanations limited here?
Kasser and Sharma (1999) found, in their analysis of 37 cultures, that females predominantly valued a mate with resources in societies where women’s access to education and the workplace was severely limited. However, in modern Western societies, women may no longer be looking for a man to provide them with resources, making other qualities in a mate, such as thoughtfulness or a good sense of humour, more important. This means that evolutionary explanations are limited, as they explain human mate choice mainly in terms of evolutionary adaptiveness, ignoring other important factors such as culture and social norms. This is a limitation of the evolutionary theories, as sexual selection cannot explain why, in societies where women have more economic stability, they are not necessarily attracted to wealthy men as potential partners, which impacts the validity of these theories.
evolutionary reductionism.
Finally, evolutionary explanations of relationships suffer from evolutionary reductionism, as they argue that strategies for choosing a mate are the result of genetic inheritance and a drive for reproductive success. However, this is not always straightforward in real life, where individual differences in partner choices play a huge role. For example, evolutionary explanations fail to account for homosexual relationships, where the choice of partner does not result in reproductive success and so does not provide an evolutionary advantage. This is a limitation of these theories because sexual selection is not always the primary reason for attraction to potential partners. Therefore, other explanations, such as the filter theory, which suggests that similar attitudes and demographic factors are more important than genetic differences between genders, must also be considered.
