Conflict between the sexes.

Question 1

How is Sexual selection mutualistic in some respects.

Answer 1

Intrasexual competition: Good to lower-PI sex to win contests, good for high-PI sex to end up with the winner.
Intersexual choice: good for lower-PI sex to be chosen, and for higher-PI sex to choose the best one.

Question 2

Mating is also not always harmonious.

Answer 2

Across species, many adaptations benefit one sex at the expense of another.
Males can be adapted to take more sexually than females prefer to give (sexual coercion).
Females can be adapted to extract more investment than males want to give. - these adaptations can be anatomical (part of body) or psycho-behavioural.
Further, each sex can evolve counter-adaptations to avoid exploitation by the opposite sex. = Red Queen arms races.
“It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place”.

Question 3

Example of red queen competition in sexual coercion context:

Answer 3

Water striders males mate forcefully with females.
Female counter-adaptation - shield over genital opening which she can choose when to open.
Male counter-counter adaptation - intimidation tactic where male taps the water near the female to attract predators, until she opens the shield.

Question 4

Male sex coercion -

Answer 4

In many taxa, psycho-physical adaptations for sexual coercion may allow males to overpower females.
Physically aggressive mating, especially common orangutans.

Anatomical adaptations include hooks, suction cups, genital locking mechanisms for seizing females - so she stays in place durin copulation.
Bedbug phallus stabs sperm through the females abdomen.
Bypasses genitalia, gets closer to ovaries than competitors.

Infanticide can also be seen as sexual coercion.
Infant loss triggers oestrogous, reproductive opportunity for male.

Question 5

Female forceful extraction of male investment:

Answer 5

Sexual cannibalism -
In various species of insects, females eat the males after copulation.
E.g. black widow.
In theory this could actually benefit the male too (no other pI to offer except self as food). - however, probably usually involuntary.
Mantis females also eat males after copulation - males avoid hungry lookg females.

Question 6

Female promiscuity as a counter-strategy against infanticide.

Answer 6

Mating with multiple males in the troop has the effect of causing paternity confusion.
Every male who has mated with this female believes that the offspring could be his, reducing their incentives to engage in infanticide.

Question 7

‘Strategic interference theory’.

Answer 7

Men and women have different mating strategies; each may have interest in blocking others strategy.
E.g. use of deception/coercion to undermine mate choice preferences of opposite sex.

Question 8

Men tend to overestimate women’s sexual interest:

Answer 8

Reflects males’ strategic interest in havin gsex sooner, females in waiting for commitment signals.
Men and women interpret the same interaction differently:
Ppts watch video of woman asking male authority figure for a favour; males more often perceive her motives as sexual (Abbey, 1982).
This is calles ‘sexual over-perception bias’ evident in relatively egalitarian societies.

Question 9

Speed dating study - men more likely to over-perceive sexual interest if they:

Answer 9

Are higher in sociosexuality.
Rate the women more attractive
Rate themselves more attracrtive
Similarly, women perceive men as less sexually interested than they actually are (Levesque et al., 2006).

Question 10

Male sexual over-perception bias explained in terms of ‘error management’ (Haselton and Nettle, 2006).

Answer 10

False positive (perceiving attraction when it is not there) is less costly than a false negative (not perceiving attraction when it is there).
Missing mating opp is worse than being rejected.
Same concept as ‘smoke detector principle’.

Question 11

Error management theory may also explain analogous ‘commitment scepticism bias’ in women.

Answer 11

Perceiving commitment when NOT there is worse than being sceptical when it IS there (Buss, 2000).
Stronger in younger women than postmenopausal (Cyrus et al, 2001).

Question 12

• Commitment scepticism bias implies male deception about commitment.

Answer 12

Men are more likely than women to deceive about commitment.
What type of deception is most upsetting to each sex?
Women: deception about commitment and resources.
Men: sexual deception.

Question 13

Sexual aggression -

Answer 13

Potentially imposes huge costs on women.
Women rate it the most upsetting male action (6.5 out of 7), worse than verbal/physical abuse (Buss 1989).
Men rate it 3.0 (infidelity 6.0, verbal/physical abuse 5.6).
Men believe women would rate it 5.8 - underestimate.

Question 14

Male adaptation for specifically sexual aggression -

Answer 14

Controversial issue, in part because ‘adaptation’ label mistakenly seen as ‘validating’.
No good evidence for ‘rape adaptations’.
‘Mate deprivation’ hypothesis has found little support. - on contrary, men with more mating success are more likely to use coercive tactics (Ellis et al, 2009).

Question 15

infidelity

Answer 15

Both sexes use mate retention techniques to deter infidelity and abandonment.
Men are more likely to mate guard when partner is ovulation (Haselton & Ganestad, 2006).
However, infidelity poses different problems for each sex.

Question 16

Both sexes are threatened by both sexual and emotional infidelity, however:

Answer 16

Partners sexual infidelity is a bigger risk for men (paternity uncertainty).
Partner’s emotional infidelity a bigger risk for women (could lead to abandonment and loss in future) -PI.

Question 17

Buss test lists over 30 studies on effects of sexual vs emotional infidelity.
Cross-culturally:

Answer 17

Men: greater distress to imagined emotional infidelity
Women: greater distress to imagined emotional infidelity.
Data include self report, HR, frowning, skin conductance.

Question 18

Jealousy is domain-specific -

Answer 18

Discovery facilitated by evolutionary approach.
Sex differences had not been found with domain general jealousy, but were found with domain specific jealousy. (diffs between sexual and emotional).

Interesting cross-cultural variance in sexual jealousy -
Especially polygamous societies.
Jealousy does occur in these env’s, but the cost of jealousy is deemed to be worth the benefits.

Question 19

‘Partible paternity’

Answer 19

in amazonas (Bari).
The belief that children can have more than one father.
If the woman has sex with multiple males during her pregnancy, the belief is that the foetus is like a vessel that can be enhanced and improved in terms of its health and viability by sperm from diff males.
Usually there is a primary father.
Retains some male PI if one father dies prematurely.
Facilitated by lack of deception; allows men to calibrate PI to paternity certainty.
Able to do this because there is no deception - person who has had sex with her the most is the primary father, as there is more paternity certainty, and so on.

Question 20

In a dominance hierarchy, animals at the top have improved access to key resources.

Answer 20

Hierarchies are transitive (A > B > C)
Advantage to being submissive: avoid injury (and in socially complex species, avoid social costs).
Status signalled through physical gestures.
Including submissive grinning.
Dominance related colouration changes.
Dominant must constantly defend their positions, advertise formidability.
E.g. alpha chimps strut around, make nouse and make themselves look big.
Submissive chimps greet dominants with crouches, gifts, smiles and kisses - failure to display this may provoke retaliation.

Question 21

In a dominance hierarchy, animals at the top have improved access to key resources.

Answer 21

Hierarchies are transitive (A > B > C)
Advantage to being submissive: avoid injury (and in socially complex species, avoid social costs).
Status signalled through physical gestures.
Including submissive grinning.
Dominance related colouration changes.
Dominant must constantly defend their positions, advertise formidability.
E.g. alpha chimps strut around, make nouse and make themselves look big.
Submissive chimps greet dominants with crouches, gifts, smiles and kisses - failure to display this may provoke retaliation.

Question 22

Benefits of dominance are ultimately reproductive.

Answer 22

50-75% of chimp copulations involve the alpha, even with other males are in the colony.
During oestrus this percentage grows; subordinate sexual access is more likely outside of this.
DNA studies support the link between dominance mating and offspring in chimps and other primates.

Question 23

Primate hierarchies are dynamic and unstable.

Answer 23

Social intelligence can be crucial to ascending this ladder.
In species that can form alliances to unseat alphas, abilities to enlist allies can rival physical size in importance (Cummins, 2005). - social intelligence.

Question 24

Humans form status hierarchies quickly and easily.

Answer 24

Among human strangers, clear hierarchies emerge within minutes (Fisek and Ofshe, 1970).
People can predict their own place within it after only seeing members’ faces (kalma, 1991).
Human status competitions in some ways are similar to other species.

Question 25

As in other species, there is a strong link between power and size.

Answer 25

Cross culturally, size is often used as a metaphor for power.
Higher status men are misperceived as taller; taller men are advantages in leadership positions, salaries (Gillis, 1982).
Indivs in more powerful contexts - e.g. with a weapon or allies are misperceived as larger.

Human status signals are also similar to other species.
Stance, clothing, stronger.

Humans may also use smiles as submissive signals
Professional fighters who smiles more in prefight photo were more likely to lose.

Question 26

Status inequality is also linked to reproductive inequality.

Answer 26

Implies that hunter gatherer societies are not as egalitarian as sometimes perceives.
Classifies by political anthropologists as egalitarian societies (Fried, 1967).
However, status and reproductive competition appears to be universal.

Question 27

Status also entails reproductive succes, especially in males (Chagnon, 1988).

Answer 27

Higher status men in small scale societies have more, and younger, wives/ mates and more surviving offspring.
These men are more attractive to women, intimidating to rivals, popular in arranged marriages.
Magnets for all kinds of shared and gifted resources (material and social).

Question 28

Diff payoffs in status competitions for men and women may have led to some sex diffs in status triving.

Answer 28

Related to theory of sexual seleciton.

From an early age, males seem more interested in egoistic status, females more ‘prosocial’ status.

Question 29

Leary et al’s (1998) Sociometer Theory.

Answer 29

Self esteem as indicator of your own status (inclusions and acceptance from others).

Similarly, self esteem may track own mate value
Women downgrade their own mate value after seeing attractive women, men after seeing dominant men.
Suggests male self perceived mate value is more sensitive to self perceived status.

Question 30

Compared to most other species, human status competitions vary in at least four important ways.

Answer 30

mportant ways.
How humans compete for status varies greatly by community.
These competitions are often much less violent than other species.
People frequently use cooperative counter dominance strategies to prevent indivs from becoming too powerful.
Dominance is not the only route to status in human societies, another is prestige.
Dominance = Status based on ability to harm.
Prestige = Status based on ability to benefit.

Question 31

EEA may also explain biases in leadership preferences.

Answer 31

In HG societies, dominance based leadership tends to be attenuated.
Usually nomadic foraging societies; easier to escape overly dominant leaders, so leadership is more prestige based.
In contrast, leadership in industrialised societies are likely to involve both.

There are no predetermined HG offices, if you attract followers, then you are a leader.
Attract followers because they offer some benefit.
This lack of fixed hierarchy is what political anthropologists actually meant by egalitarian societies.
Suggests that preferred leaders in EEA tended to be voluntarily followed, based on their ability to benefit.
E.g. for the most effective leadership, you must let your followers choose their own leader.
Essence of democracy.
People voluntarily comply less with leaders that have been imposed on them by experimenters, instead of;
Leaders chosen by them
Leaders who have volunteered to lead.
E.g. biases towards attractive, tall, formidable leaders may reflect preferences in a violent, highly physical HG world.
Other biases remain more relevant - intelligence and communication skills.

Question 32

Cross-culturally, what constitutes ‘good’ leadership?

Answer 32

GLOBE list of universally valued leadership traits:
Across 61 cultures, people prefer leaders who indicate willingness and ability to provide benefits to followers.
Willingness - trustworthiness, fairness
Ability - intelligence, competence.

Question 33

Service-for-prestige theory (Price, et al., 2014).

Answer 33

Consistent with GLOBE results, ‘good’ leadership involves mutually beneficial service-for-prestige transaction between leaders and followers.
Leaders and followers both benefit, and both incur costs to benefit each other (elaborated form of reciprocal altruism).
Bad leadership is one sided: selfish, exploitative, parasitic.
mistrust of people who aspire to lead when leadership is unnecessary (e.g. small groups).

Service for prestige theory also implies that provisioning a good leader with status is a collective action problem.
S-f-p also explains degradation from prestige based reciprocity to dominance based coercion.
Even among HG societies, this degradation is observed when members go from low dependence on leaders, and good exit options, to high dependence on leaders and poor exit options.
Even to the extent to which 7-15% of communities have slave status - no escape.