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57 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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From a male perspective, there can always be some probability that another male has fertilized the female's eggs
One explanation for the widespread occurrence of females investing more than males in parental care |
Paternity uncertainty
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Missed additional matings as a direct result of effort devoted to offspring
Since these are generally higher for males than females, males will be less likely than females to take on parental care. |
Mating opportunity costs
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When mating opportunity costs are higher for males in society:
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There is a surplus of women, making it easier for males to pursue a short term mating strategy, making them less likely to take on parental care
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What two hypotheses aim to explain differences in male and female parental investment, as well as individual differences?
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Paternity uncertainty hypothesis
Mating opportunity cost hypothesis |
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When mating opportunity costs are lower for males in society:
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There is a surplus of men vying for a few women, so they find it difficult to pursue a short term mating strategy, making them more likely to take on parental care
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Mechanisms of parental care will favor some offspring over others, those who are likely to provide a higher reproductive return on the investment
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Parental favoritism
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Evolved mechanisms of parental care should be sensitive to what 3 contexts?
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Genetic relatedness to offspring
Ability of offspring to convert parental care into fitness: will investment make a difference in survival & reproduction of children? Alternative uses of the resources that might be available to invest in offspring: best invested in own children or sister's children/additional mating opportunities? |
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Why do the beliefs of "the myth of the cruel stepparent" recur so commonly across so many diverse cultures?
What are some themes for stepfather? |
Few stepparents claim to have any parental feelings
Those living with one genetic and one stepparent are 40 times more likely to be abused Rates of child murder are far higher for stepparents than genetic, especially in the infant age Lustful and cruel (abusive) stepfathers |
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What are the two sources of information does a man use to consider the likelihood that he is the genetic father of a given child?
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Information about the partner's sexual fidelity during the period in which she conceived
Perceptions of child's resemblance to him |
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Who are newborn babies said to resemble more and is it actually true?
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During and immediately after births, mothers were 4 times more likely to make remarks about the baby's resemblance to the father than to herself
Filling out a questionnaire, the mother, as well as the mother's relatives, were biased in saying the baby resembled the father more often No, when photographs were matched, more accurate matches were made with the mothers |
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How do perceptions of resemblance affect men's subsequent investment in the child?
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Those who perceive their children resemble them invest more heavily: give more attention, spend more time with them, get more involved in their schoolwork
Men show greater cortical activity than do women when shown children's faces that resemble their own There is a correlation between perceptions of resemblance and men's severity of abuse on spouse: Men who rated their children as not looking like them were more likely to inflict sever physical injuries on partner |
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What are Daly & Wilson's findings on stepparents and abuse?
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The less genetically related the adult is to a child, the higher probability of infanticide
Children living with one stepparent and one genetic parent are 40 times more likely to be abused, with the 0-4 age range being affected the most: poverty and SES controlled for Rates of abuse in stepfamilies are roughly the same across different levels of socioeconomic status |
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The health status of the child would affect the degree of positive maternal behavior
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Healthy baby hypothesis
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Evidence for the healthy baby hypothesis
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When infants were 4 months old, half of the mothers directed more positive maternal behavior toward healthier infants
By 8 months all of the mothers directed more positive behavior towards the healthy infants. Twin studies |
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What is the level of investment mothers devote based on when health of child is a factor?
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Level of resources
Mothers lacking resources follow healthy baby hypothesis Mothers abundant in resources invest more in high-risk that low-risk infants, they can afford to give them to the needier child |
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Parents will produce more sons and invest more in sons when parents are in good condition and hence have a chance of producing a son who will be highly successful in mating.
Conversely, parents in poor condition or with few resources to invest should invest more in daughters |
Trivers-Willard hypothesis
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What are some examples of the Trivers-Willard effect?
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Among the Kipsigis of Kenya, poorer families were more likely to invest in the educations of their daughters than in their sons, while reverse was found among richer families
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Who is most likely to commit infanticide? Least?
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Young (<19), unmarried women
Old (>35), unmarried women |
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The conflict between parents and children over the optimal allocation of resources parents should be giving.
Children will always want more than any siblings, while parents normally prefer to distribute equally among children |
Parent-offspring conflict
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Specific hypotheses of the parent offspring conflict (3)
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1. Parents and children will get into conflict about the time at which the child should be weaned, parents wanting to wean sooner and child wanting to continue to receive resources longer
2. Parents will encourage children to value siblings more than children are naturally inclined to 3. Parents will tend to punish conflict between siblings and reward cooperation |
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Selection creates mechanisms in the fetus to manipulate the mother to provide more nutrition than will be in the mother's best interest to provide
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Mother-Offspring conflict in Utero
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What are the adaptations the mother has in facing the mother-offspring conflict in utero?
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Mothers will spontaneously abort a fetus when chromosomal abnormalities are present, so mother does not have to invest heavily in a child who will die young
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What are the adaptations the fetus has in facing the mother-offspring conflict in utero? Evidence?
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Fetuses will secrete a hormone into the mother's bloodstream that prevents the mother from menstruating and allows fetus to remain implanted
When the fetus perceives it needs more nutrition from the mother, it releases substances into bloodstream that cause arteries to constrict, higher blood pressure, and thus getting more food. Preeclampsia occurs when damage to tissues happens because of this. Higher blood pressure - less spontaneous abortions |
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What are the 6 adaptive problems for which aggression might be an evolved solution?
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1. Co-opt resources of others - gaining access to valuable resources held by others
2. Defend against attack - prevent potential harm to one's relatives, loss of resources, status, and reputation 3. Inflict costs on intrasexual rivals - degrade status and reputation to make them less desirable to other sex 4. Negotiate status and power hierarchies - way to increase status or power 5. Deter rivals from future aggression - solves the adaptive problem of others attempting to co-opt resources and mates 6. Deter long-term mates from sexual infidelity - so they are not cuckolded |
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Why is there the sex difference in violent aggression?
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Since women have more obligatory parental investment, males are able to produce more offspring than females.
This difference leads to differences in the variances in reproduction between the sexes: there are higher variances among males, with some having a lot and some none The greater the variance, the more selection favors riskier strategies within the sex that shows the higher variance (males and violence) |
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What are two reasons males use aggression in competitive contexts with some degree of polygyny?
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Aggression can allow male to win big and gain access to multiple mates
Aggression to avoid total reproductive failure |
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Young men appear to be the most prone to engaging in risky forms of aggression, which puts them at a risk of injury or death
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Young male syndrome
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Reasons for young male syndrome to be present
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Especially risk prone because adolescence through mid-20s is the time of most intense selection for confrontational competitive abilities among ancestors to raise reputation
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Trends of young male syndrome
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Males in the age group 15-29 compared with >30 show more collective/coalitional aggression
Killings of males skyrockets after age 10 and does not decrease until mid-20s |
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3 contexts that trigger men to men aggression
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Marital and Employment Status - unmarried and unemployed most of perpetrators and victims
Status and Reputation - attempt to impugne status Sexual Jealousy and Intrasexual Rivalry - men more likely to kill in love triangles, mate guarding |
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What are the two ways in which women derogate their rivals?
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Verbally by attacking appearance and implying they are sexually promiscuous
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What are Tooby and Cosmides's 4 essential conditions that must be met for warfare adaptations to evolve?
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1. The average long term gain in reproductive resources must be sufficiently large to outweigh the reproductive costs of engaging in warfare over evolutionary time: sexual access to females
2. Members of their coalitions must believe that their group will emerge victorious 3. The risk that each member takes and the importance of each member's contribution to the success must translate into a corresponding share of the benefits - more risk, more reward 4. Men who go into battle must be cloaked in a "veil of ignorance" about who will live or die - must think there is possibility of something to gain |
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What are Tooby and Cosmides's 4 specific predictions from the evolutionary theory of warfare?
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1. Men, not women, will have psychological mechanisms designed for coalitional warfare - evidence across cultures
2. Sexual access to women will be the primary benefit that men gain from joining male coalitions 3. Men should have evolved mechanisms that lead them to panic and defect from coalitions when death appears imminent and should be more likely to go to war when odds of success appear high 4. Men should have mechanisms designed to detect traitors, cheaters, defectors and enlist men who are able to contribute to success |
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What is the evidence for this evolutionary theory of warfare based on predictions?
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Men engage in warfare, cross culturally
Men are more likely to spontaneously assess their fighting ability - evaluate conditions in which it is wise to war, self-assessment in relation to other men: imagine outcomes of fights with other men Men have adaptations that facilitate success in war: men look at outgroup members with stronger bias than women Sexual access as a recurrent resource that flows to victors - is increased sex partner numbers among those who are apart of gangs |
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Humans have evolved specific psychological mechanisms that predispose them to kill others under certain predictable circumstances such as warfare, intrasexual rivalry, or spousal infidelity or defection
More evidence for this |
Homicide adaptation theory
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Males have evolved a psychological propensity for violence as a means of coercive control and eliminating sources of conflict which results in threats of violence or sublethal violence as behavioral output
Accidentally bubbles over into homicide |
Slip-up hypothesis
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Two hypotheses for evolved homicide mechanisms
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Homicide adaptation theory
Slip-up hypothesis |
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A conflict between the evolutionary interests of individuals of the two sexes
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Sexual conflict
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What are some examples of sexual conflict?
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Males and females typically want to have sex at different points in relationship
Male rape conflicting with female choice |
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Applies to conflicts like the timing of sexual intercourse, sexual harassment in the workplace; it is when a person employs a particular strategy to achieve a goal and another person blocks the successful enactment of the strategy
There is an action component and an emotional component following, which often includes anger and distress |
Strategic interference theory
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Sexual overperception bias
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Men typically tend to overestimate sexual intent of women, because the cost of missing out on a chance to propogate their genes outweighs the cost of embarrassment if they are wrong
Men possess mind reading biases designed to minimize costs of missed sexual opportunities |
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Evolved mind reading mechanisms will be biased to produce more of one type of inferential error over another; unlikely cost-benefit consequences of the two types of errors would be identical
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Error-management theory
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Who is more inclined to exhibit a pronounced sexual overperception bias?
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Men who view themselves as especially high in mate value
Men who are dispositionally inclined to pursue a short term mating strategy |
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Women have evolved an inferential bias designed to underestimate men's actual level of romantic commitment to her in early courtship
Minimizes the costs of being sexually deceived by men pursuing a short term strategy |
Commitment skepticism bias
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This proposes that selection has favored ancestral males who raped in certain circumstances
Men assess vulnerability of potential victims, prefer fertile victims, increase in sperm counts of rape ejaculates |
Rape-as-adaptation theory
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This proposes that rape is a nondesigned and nonselected for by-product of what other evolved mechanisms?
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by-product theory of rape
Male desire for sexual variety, a desire for sex without investment, a psychological sensitivity to sexual opportunities, and general capacity to use physical aggression to achieve goals |
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What are the sex differences in jealousy?
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Men are more likely to be distressed at partner's sexual infidelity: risk of devoting resources to child that is not theirs
Women are more likely to be distressed at partner's emotional infidelity: risk of loss of resources from male |
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What is the evidence for sex differences in jealousy?
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Hypothetical scenarios of infidelity
Physiological measures |
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This refers to the fact that some individuals within a group reliably gain greater access than others to key resources, which contribute to survival and reproduction
These determine allocation of resources |
Dominance hierarchy
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Prestige vs. dominance
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P - something conferred to individual, usually have special skills, knowledge or social connections
D - involves use or threat of force |
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Social scale that measures ideology of legitimacy of one group's domination over another, deservingness of discrimination and subordination, and allocation of more perks to one group over another
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Social dominance orientation (SDO)
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Which gender is higher in SDO and why?
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Men because such an orientation led ancestral men to greater control of and access to women
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Humans have evolved domain-specific strategies for reasoning about social norms involving dominance hierarchies including aspects of permissions, obligations, and prohibitions
These cognitive strategies will emerge prior to, and separate from, other types of reasoning strategies |
Cummins' dominance theory
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What type of reasoning emerges early in childhood that supports Cummins' theory of dominance?
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Deontic, about rights and obligations
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This refers to the quality and quantity of attention others pay to a particular person
Humans compete with each other to be attended to and valued by others in the group |
Social attention-holding potential (SAHP)
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What are hypothesized reactions to loss of status?
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Social anxiety
shame rage depression envy |
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Self-esteem functions as a subjective indicator or gauge of other people's evaluations
Lower SE stems from less inclusion and acceptance from group |
Leary's sociometer theory
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