Evolution - Is it down to Us?

Interesting thread. Women are for the most part the selectors. It's a largely sellers market, but it depends on the particular market. This varies across ages and cultures and socio economic groups. It also depends on the level of the social attractiveness of the woman too. While analogising this too closely with market forces etc there is something to it.

I read an interesting article recently where the researcher noted trends in african american men and women and other groups like hispanic americans and european americans. Simply put african american women had much poorer choices of males than hispanics or whites in the female selection market. Hispanics had the highest choice interestingly because hispanic men were more socially/economically hungry than the other groups. There were far fewer single parent hispanic families than the other groups. I sadly couldn't find it online. New scientist anyway.

All things being equal young women are more likely to go for "bad boys" as they trigger an appeal for many traits desirable to younger women, mostly as a holdover from the past. The typical "bad boy" is likely to be more physically attractive(and knows it) has higher testosterone, is more socially powerful and has a greater pool of women to choose from(even if this is not the case, if he fakes it she may believe it).

Young women who are at their most fertile are looking for these type of males to mate and have children with. They may not want to stay with these males as the same traits do not mark them out as good long term providers when compared to lower testosterone males.

As Thaed wrote women find different things attractive at different times in their menstrual cycle. At their most fertile they respond much more to high testosterone male faces, at their lowest fertility they go for lower test male faces. When they are pregnant they go for the lower test male face even more. This suggests that they want to mate and have children with high test males, but trust low test males more with those same children.

Interestingly women on the pill(essentially hormonally pregnant) skew that. Studies have shown that women are statistically more likely to dump/divorce a guy they met while on the pill when they come off it. They're also more likely as couples to have fertility problems outside of coming off the pill. They are more likely to have more similar immune systems(normally people are more attracted to those with different immune systems).

As women get older and less fertile they will tend to change tack and be more attracted to low test males. Basically better long term partners.

So women biologically appear to be both hedging their bets and trying to do a balancing act with the guys they want to reproduce with. Genetic studies that have thrown up a surprisingly high number of men raising kids that they think are theirs but aren't. Apparently the first child is nearly always the partners, it's the second or third that's the cuckoo in the nest. This is clearly advantageous to the woman biologically as this gives her the best chance of a spread of genes for her offspring. A man has more options theoretically as he can simply have more children. A man also has more options because he is fertile for longer.

Men know this and could explain why highly patriarchal societies tend to heavily restrict womens sexuality and place a very high value on virginity. That way the man increases his chances of being the father of his children and not "waste" resources on kids that aren't his. When we went from hunter gatherer societies to settled this became even more important to males because of resources going to the next generation.

IMHO and one thing I wouldn't agree with is that nowadays men have less choice. I would contend they have more. Way more than in the past. Ironically the more "feminist" a society becomes the man's choices go up though they men may not see that. In an old fashioned highly patriarchal society, the restriction on female sexuality limits the options for men too, or limits them to sexually available women normally beyond the pale.

Nowadays the average male of 25 would have far far more sexual partners than his grandfather. Now the women of 25 do too, but, if a man chooses to never settle down and milk this freedom, he can do so very easily. He can essentially string along one woman after the other for decades. A rolling harem so to speak. Even if he gets one pregnant, he can walk away from that much more easily than in the past when shotgun weddings were popular. I know of a guy who has slept with literally hundreds of women and left 3 kids behind and in his mid 30's is still in the market. Indeed shows no sign of slowing, if anything he has more women interested. Men also have the advantage that they can settle and have a family with one woman, leave her at say 45 50 and go out and start up aother family with a new woman. Economics being the only real restriction.

In the end I reckon women in general are the ones who drive the choice, but a small group of men can and do use this to their advantage and have more choice for longer because of it.

Now there's a loooong post.:D

metrovelvet wrote: »

I have to disagree that women being attracted to bad boys is evolutionary. My own opinion of this is that they can remain more in control because you are less likely to become attached to a jerk.

Oh I agree. It can be mutually beneficial to both. It only goes beyond that when they end up with one. Though I do think those evolutionary triggers are there.