Do you have a reputable source that summarizes mankind’s instincts? I don’t know what the scientific consensus is, but I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of things.
What I posted shouldn’t be astonishing. There are trade offs to every trait, even traits that seem positive. While it may be tempting to think a preference for a certain trait is driven by instinct, before we assume that we should consider how these traits could become reproductively harmful in another culture or environmental condition. And yes, I believe this applies to all species.
I don’t think people are looking at this in the right way. Because you don’t really have wealth “independent of other attributes”. I mean unless the guy literally just has some big bank account he never touches because he doesn’t care about it.
Having money affords you to do things that you would not otherwise be able to do. And a lot of those things make you appear more interesting and attractive.
But all things being equal, choosing between two nice, attractive, hard-working guys, I think most women would prefer the guy with the waterfront condo, family home in the Hampton’s and who can afford to take her on vacations to Paris, Rome and Rio de Janeiro.
We don’t. And I don’t think anyone here is defending the large amount of weak science in evo-psych, although a lot of people who claimed otherwise seem inordinately fond of just-so stories.
But the fact that we don’t know the details with certainty doesn’t invalidate the principle that we evolved heritable behaviors through natural selection in the ancestral environment that (to some degree) still contribute to human behavior. And it doesn’t invalidate basic principles of evolutionary biology that are based on mountains of research and hard evidence. Some here seem inexplicably hostile to the idea that humans have instincts at all.
For example, based on fundamental principles of how evolution works, I think the suggestion that it’s plausible that human males do not have genetic predisposition to favor devoting more resources to their own kin seems to me roughly equivalent to claiming that because we can’t study the exact composition of the planets orbiting some distant star, maybe they are composed of different elements than those found in the periodic table.
But unless the fitness trade-off nets precisely to zero, natural selection will operate. So - yes, your claim is astonishing. We would expect that natural selection operated on human behavior in ancestral humans just as we know it operates on the behavior of all other species. The details may be murky, but the fundamental process is not.
Natural selection - as I understand it (and I believe monstro is actually a biologist with like a graduate degree - I’m an accountant/IT project manager/historian whose Science knowledge is profoundly dated) doesn’t happen on an individual level. Ducks don’t say “oh, the blue footed ones have a better chance of survival, I think I’ll find me a blue footed mate.” The blue footed ones in that environment survive in larger numbers to mate and pass along their genes.
Sure, populations evolve, not individuals. I’m not sure what you think that implies about what I said?
A genetically determined behavioral trait may have a fitness advantage upon which natural selection operates, in just the same way as a genetically determined physical trait.
And what I’m saying is you can’t just look at a trait and say that it yields a net advantage, and then from there also conclude that it’s arose from selective pressure.
You have yet to supply cites that support the idea that it is instinctual for men to be concerned with paternity assurance. For something so obvious, surely this should’ve gotten some ink by social scientists.
I think maybe I understand what you’re getting at, although I’m not really sure about the significance of the blue feet. You seem to be assuming that preference for blue feet is reasoning, rather than a genetically determined trait in itself? (And maybe you’re remembering an account of sexual selection, which is a rather separate discussion?)
In order for natural selection to operate, a trait must be genetically determined, and there must exist genetic variation for that trait within the population. With a difference in fitness for the phenotypes associated with the various genotypes, of course. Given that basic principle, behavioral traits like a desire to sit on eggs can evolve through natural selection in just the same way as physical traits like beak shape. If birds with a genetic predisposition to sit on eggs are more successful at raising young, they will pass on the genes for that trait to their more numerous offspring, and the behavior “sit on eggs” becomes more common than “don’t sit on eggs” in the population.
And while you’re looking for a cite, ** Reimann**, see this one.
Interesting stuff here:
In the living arrangements we’ve spent most of our existence in, the cost of reproduction has been very minimal for the male half of the species. They provided resources to their children, sure, but if he was too picky with whom he gave these resources to, women would be pissed off. A pissed off woman doesn’t want to have sex with you, and is there any question that a man’s sex drive is stronger than pretty much anything else? A woman wants all her kids to be happy and loved, so the more accepting men are of all her rugrats, the more he’s going to get laid.
And the more likely he’s also going to get the other benefits of companionship. Like someone to cook for him or tend to him when he’s ill. Someone to mend his clothes and sing songs to him when he’s bored.
Humans are remarkable in that they don’t just partner up for sex. They are social creatures and thus seek each other out for social reasons, first and foremost. Sociality promotes health, well-being, and yes, fitness. It really doesn’t benefit a whole lot of people to be a stuck-up, seditty snob, but it is easy to think there’s a benefit because that’s what we’ve been taught to believe.
A woman who is a friend to all is likely to be more an “ecological success” than a woman who saves her affections only for the “best”. The woman who saves her affections only for the best may get mammoth steaks in the end, but she will still be no match ecologically for the woman who has no shortage of boyfriends. The generalist is always going to do better than a specialist in an environment full of change and fluctuating resources. This is certainly true today, so I have no reason to think it was not true in the past.
So the multiple studies cited that document that across cultures, from foraging to HG to agricultural societies, higher status men in general have more reproductive success, are not compelling reason to think that to you. Okay then.
Your bit about regarding prison inmates and males working at Fortune 500s misses one very basic bit: these two populations may live in the same country but compete for mates within very different communities, really different worlds. The meaningful question is if within the communities that the prison population males were competing within, were males with more conspicuous displays of wealth (be they jewelry, fancy car, clothing choices, whatever, more successful in getting mating opportunities than those who did not have any such displays? Is having bling and displays of power of no attraction value?
Beyond that of course is there are many other differences than status and wealth between those two worlds, many of which might swamp any impact of wealth in isolation. One that I can note right off has to do with the women within each of the communities. Across cultures more highly educated women with more resources are more likely to exert more control over the timing and number of children they have. The Fortune 500 world contains more women of higher education that will exert such controls than does the world from which these hypothetical prison inmate stereotypes come from. Which informs naught as to whether or not they would be more likely to find same sweet caring kind funny smart Joe more attractive if they knew Joe was the CEO with a multimillion dollar salary than if they knew Joe was the well educated mail room guy working the same hours making just over minimal wage, much less than she makes.
Again, not determinism. Joe CEO could be an oafish narcissistic misogynistic boor, and Joe mailroom witty caring supportive and brilliant. The impact of wealth alone would be swamped several times over. Or Joe mailroom could be a MAGA hat wearing ignoramus while the CEO is smart and sweet. Just one factor among many including ones of culture and personal histories.
I appreciate the great in-depth posts but this is really veering off into evolutionary-psychology stuff. To get back on track, monstro mentioned the difference between visceral attraction and cerebral attraction (the former being “panties getting wet” and the latter being knowing that someone would make a responsible mate) - does the visceral attraction get triggered by money (i.e., when some male lottery winners get mobbed by women, is it really only the latter factor; the cerebral knowledge that he’d have the resources to sustain a family, or are they truly actually “feeling hot for him?”)
Edit: using Elliot Rodger as an additional example again per OP, one of his main goals (as outlined in his manifesto) was to strike it rich in the lottery. Had he actually hitten the numbers, would he have indeed become much more appealing to women, as he imagined he would have been?
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for evidence for. Are you really questioning whether it’s a significant/widespread behavior at all for human males to prefer to devote resources to their own kin? Or the extent to which such behavior has a genetic basis? I’m bemused.
I mean, your snip from that paper (which is all I have to go on at the moment) implies that the author(s) (like any evolutionary biologist) take for granted that the general state of affairs is the virtual tautology that all animals will exhibit adaptive preference for getting their own genes into the next generation - because the very process of evolution is, you know, preferentially getting genes into the next generation. And that what’s notable here is that there may be certain unusual circumstances under which human males may also contribute substantially to the care of non-kin, for reasons which require an evolutionary account and make a paper worth writing, since they are not so trivially obvious.
I question whether it’s instinctual for men to be concerned about paternity. You’ve mentioned selective pressure in relation to this, yes? This means you think genes are behind this observation.
I don’t disagree that this is a widespread behavior.
That’s a Daily Mail article that doesn’t link to or provided a citation that would allow me to find the original research. It appears to be about studies in non-human animals, not humans. And without seeing the actual research I wouldn’t take the headline any more seriously than the dozen articles a year published with the headline “New Research Shows Darwin Was Wrong”. The article says:
Exactly what you’d expect; the magnitude of the effect is the only thing that might be interesting, but that depends on the type of species were studied, apparently not humans. Incidentally, recent studies claim that cuckoldry rates are astonishingly low in all known human societies, of the order of 1-3%, although nobody really understands why, or what the implications are.
Again, there’s nothing surprising about this. We are a prosocial species, we help one another in the expectation that favors will be returned, especially when it costs us little to do so.
Presumably there’s something interesting about this research if it got into PLOS Biology, but it’s not apparent what that is from this article.
If civilization as we know it fell apart, leading to anarchy, lawlessness, and disorder, it would be apparent right away how much in the same world we all are in.
And 10,000 years after today’s civilization falls, I think it’s probable the population of humans that survive will look more like the progeny of today’s prison population than it will the progeny of CEOs. Can only guess at that, of course. But there’s valid reasons for thinking this way.
There is more to reproductive success than mating. Survival is in the equation too.
Well, evolution is the proliferation of genes that are good at getting themselves copied into the next generation, so the notion that any organism will exhibit adaptive behaviors of some kind that favor transmitting its own genes rather than other different genes is pretty much just equivalent to saying “I accept the theory of evolution by natural selection”.
Of course, there are many possible strategies for getting your genes copied, and they may sometimes be complex and counterintuitive. The particular strategy of controlling paternity may not be widespread among species. In fact, humans may be exceptional even among the Great Apes.
But when control of paternity is observed to be present, as it is in humans, it represents such a direct way to ensure the transmission of your own genes that I don’t think any evolutionary biologist would seriously question that the roots of the behavior are genetic, even if the detailed exposition of the behavior in any particular society has strong cultural components (such as religion, obviously). I mean, in principle we should never take anything for granted, but I think writing a grant to research this would be like asking for money to prove that bears shit in the woods.
Actually, on reflection that’s a poor analogy. We assume that bears shit in the woods, and it would also be easy to prove it if we cared to. Although I think no evolutionary biologist would have any doubt (based on what we know about the general principles of evolution) that control of paternity is adaptive, there are certainly also cultural elements, and it would not be easy to prove the relative contributions conclusively.
In my experience, not backed by any sort of evolutionary theory…women are more complex than that binary structure implies.
For women (again, based off my own experience, talking to other women, and light non-technical reading), sex happens as much in the brain as in the body. And the visceral reaction to “God, he is hot” is tempered with “I could wind up raped, murdered, pregnant, with herpes, or having wasted my time because he is a narcissistic dud in bed who thinks I should be getting off merely sucking his dick” So any sort of visceral reaction may be in regards to his scruffy good looks, tattoos and motorcycle, or may be in regards to his clean cut good looks, well made suit, and Audi convertible. But few women are ready to jump into bed with either guy until the cerebral calculations come into play. Not enough upside, a hell of a lot of risk.