My college dollars at work...
A flow chart behind the cut...
I showed a prototype in pencil and multi-colored pen to my Bio of Human Sexuality Instructor and she suggested putting it into PowerPoint and sending it so she could read it.
I attempted to get PowerPoint 2007 to play nice, got tired of having to reset all the fonts and styles and wedge things together on a small sheet and whipped it together in MS Paint with a little help from MS Word.
As many of you know, female sexuality is an interest of mine, especially sociosexuality.
While researching a paper last semester for Genetic Psych, I came across three studies that made me think about what sort of environment women may have evolved the several mechanisms that show up as differences in partner selection criteria by degree of fertility and differences in perceived attractiveness. Two of the studies showed sociosexuality as a heritable trait in women (.46 to .49), while showing males to have only a .25 heritability and .25 common environment effect. The third study, a social psych experiment, showed an interaction between the degree of patriarchy and rigid gender roles and female sociosexuality.
I knew from various anthropology courses that most hunter-gatherer societies did not have very patriarchal societies and that implied a high degree of evolutionary pressure was likely to be involved with female sociosexuality.
Which doesn't make sense if you assume a monogamous or even serially monogamous male-female situation.
The week before spring break, a class I'm in at Main recieved a presentation by Dr. Kim Hill that talked about primitve societies, third party punishment, and the fact most hunter-gatherer tribes are obligative cooperative breeders because reproducing women and reproducing couples do not produce as much food energy as they consume. This showed up in practice via a skewed sex ratio, a significant number of mails that never reproduced, and highly enforced rules regulating who could mate/marry with who.
I was reminded of the (disputed) studies done on male homosexuals that determined there was a birth-order effect to homosexuality that seemed to protect the eldest male which would allow the reduction of competition for mated for the eldest brother.
I was also reminded of a study I think I saved but can't locate right now regarding women having an increased likelihood of orgasming and more intensely orgasming with more atttractive men (I think it was a fluctuating asymetry study).
Oh, and the shift away from obvious, honest indicators of fertility in human females versus chimps and bonobos.
Then I realized that this--in combination--is a terrain where you would or could adapt a female system that both allowed social attachment and selection for good genes from other men and it would be adaptive.
I know I need to do more research and see if someone else is already pursuing it, but it's a start.
So... essentially, it's a diagram why women tend to be... able to have more than one "significant other" unless pounded down by desperation, religion, or cultural pressures.
Yeah.
So...
Most of the stuff in the upper right corner is the work of Dr. Kim Hill at ASU. Others are from other studies.
EDIT:
Hypothesis: Female adaptations toward cryptic choice evolved in an environment with the following criteria:
Independent Variable 1 (IV1): Female Sociosexuality
Operational Definition: TBD.
Independent Variable 2 (IV2): TBD
Operational Definition: (To be determined)
Dependent Variable (DV): Reproductive success.
Operational Definition: TBD.
Predicted Relationship: TBD.
Confounds:
Rationale: Mating with multiple males selectively would reduce risks of infanticide by increasing paternity uncertainty. Mechanisms correlating orgasm likelihood with good genes and conception probability with orgasm would allow increased female choice in who fathers her offspring. Concealment of ovulation, graded range of perception of attraction (intimate --> close visual range) would increase the ability of the woman to manage other male interest in exchange for resources and/or decreased risk of infanticide. Cognitive changes in risk aversion correlated with perceptions of risk and attractions to risk in testosterone rich/dominant/good genes males would provide a proximate mechanism for changes in mate preference. An increase reliance on emotional input versus cognitive input in females-especially correlated with elevated levels of sociosexuality-would boost the effect of such a system. The heritability of sociosexuality in relatively egalitarian societies of approximately 45-50% genetic, 10% experiential, and 40 to 45% experiential factors might imply a frequency dependent trait with adaptive value. The potential for female fecundity to be correlated with male homosexuality in their line may also be a mechanism to reduce infanticide risk to their nephews, nieces, and siblings by reducing male-male competition for limited female mates while increasing the male-to-female sex skew to enhance resources available to their female kin. Additionally, menopause may be related as another way to diffuse male-female competition by presenting males with females that are sexually competitive with but not reproductively competitive with their daughters reducing male-male competition for females and reducing infanticide risk. (Fill in!)
Subjects: TBD.
Procedures: TBD.
Notes:
References: TBD.
I showed a prototype in pencil and multi-colored pen to my Bio of Human Sexuality Instructor and she suggested putting it into PowerPoint and sending it so she could read it.
I attempted to get PowerPoint 2007 to play nice, got tired of having to reset all the fonts and styles and wedge things together on a small sheet and whipped it together in MS Paint with a little help from MS Word.
As many of you know, female sexuality is an interest of mine, especially sociosexuality.
While researching a paper last semester for Genetic Psych, I came across three studies that made me think about what sort of environment women may have evolved the several mechanisms that show up as differences in partner selection criteria by degree of fertility and differences in perceived attractiveness. Two of the studies showed sociosexuality as a heritable trait in women (.46 to .49), while showing males to have only a .25 heritability and .25 common environment effect. The third study, a social psych experiment, showed an interaction between the degree of patriarchy and rigid gender roles and female sociosexuality.
I knew from various anthropology courses that most hunter-gatherer societies did not have very patriarchal societies and that implied a high degree of evolutionary pressure was likely to be involved with female sociosexuality.
Which doesn't make sense if you assume a monogamous or even serially monogamous male-female situation.
The week before spring break, a class I'm in at Main recieved a presentation by Dr. Kim Hill that talked about primitve societies, third party punishment, and the fact most hunter-gatherer tribes are obligative cooperative breeders because reproducing women and reproducing couples do not produce as much food energy as they consume. This showed up in practice via a skewed sex ratio, a significant number of mails that never reproduced, and highly enforced rules regulating who could mate/marry with who.
I was reminded of the (disputed) studies done on male homosexuals that determined there was a birth-order effect to homosexuality that seemed to protect the eldest male which would allow the reduction of competition for mated for the eldest brother.
I was also reminded of a study I think I saved but can't locate right now regarding women having an increased likelihood of orgasming and more intensely orgasming with more atttractive men (I think it was a fluctuating asymetry study).
Oh, and the shift away from obvious, honest indicators of fertility in human females versus chimps and bonobos.
Then I realized that this--in combination--is a terrain where you would or could adapt a female system that both allowed social attachment and selection for good genes from other men and it would be adaptive.
I know I need to do more research and see if someone else is already pursuing it, but it's a start.
So... essentially, it's a diagram why women tend to be... able to have more than one "significant other" unless pounded down by desperation, religion, or cultural pressures.
Yeah.
So...
Most of the stuff in the upper right corner is the work of Dr. Kim Hill at ASU. Others are from other studies.
EDIT:
Hypothesis: Female adaptations toward cryptic choice evolved in an environment with the following criteria:
- Females require male support for reproduction.
- Infanticide risk is high.
- Females have access to multiple males.
- Paternity confusion can be created.
- Male-male intrasexual competition is restricted.
- Male-to-female sex ratio is skewed and maintained because of energy requirements of the band.
Independent Variable 1 (IV1): Female Sociosexuality
Operational Definition: TBD.
Independent Variable 2 (IV2): TBD
Operational Definition: (To be determined)
Dependent Variable (DV): Reproductive success.
Operational Definition: TBD.
Predicted Relationship: TBD.
Confounds:
- TBD.
- Cultural effects on sociosexuality.
- Socio-economic Status (SES).
- Reliance on male inherited resources for survival.
“Selective breeding” for monogamy secondary to patriarchal agricultural or pastoral lifestyles.
Rationale: Mating with multiple males selectively would reduce risks of infanticide by increasing paternity uncertainty. Mechanisms correlating orgasm likelihood with good genes and conception probability with orgasm would allow increased female choice in who fathers her offspring. Concealment of ovulation, graded range of perception of attraction (intimate --> close visual range) would increase the ability of the woman to manage other male interest in exchange for resources and/or decreased risk of infanticide. Cognitive changes in risk aversion correlated with perceptions of risk and attractions to risk in testosterone rich/dominant/good genes males would provide a proximate mechanism for changes in mate preference. An increase reliance on emotional input versus cognitive input in females-especially correlated with elevated levels of sociosexuality-would boost the effect of such a system. The heritability of sociosexuality in relatively egalitarian societies of approximately 45-50% genetic, 10% experiential, and 40 to 45% experiential factors might imply a frequency dependent trait with adaptive value. The potential for female fecundity to be correlated with male homosexuality in their line may also be a mechanism to reduce infanticide risk to their nephews, nieces, and siblings by reducing male-male competition for limited female mates while increasing the male-to-female sex skew to enhance resources available to their female kin. Additionally, menopause may be related as another way to diffuse male-female competition by presenting males with females that are sexually competitive with but not reproductively competitive with their daughters reducing male-male competition for females and reducing infanticide risk. (Fill in!)
Subjects: TBD.
Procedures: TBD.
Notes:
References: TBD.