Evolutionary Explanations for Partner Preferences

Question 1

What is Natural Selection?

Answer 1

Process where inherited characteristics becomes more or less common in a population as they provide environmental advantages

Question 2

How do different characteristics evolve?

Answer 2

Sexual Dimorphism

Question 3

How are mates selected?

Answer 3

Through secondary sexual characteristics

Question 4

What is sexual selection?

Answer 4

The display of desirable characteristics to increase an individual’s chance if securing a mate for sexual reproduction

Question 5

What is Inter-sexual selection?

Answer 5

Act of selecting a mate, due to preferences for certain desirable qualities in the other sex.

Members of one sex are more likely to choose their mate based on these qualities and the likelihood of passing on their desirable genes.

Women predominantly engage in Inter-sexual selection (quality over quantity) due to their limited reproductive possibilities.

Question 6

What is Intra-sexual selection?

Answer 6

Where members of the same sex compete with another to gain access to the opposite sex.

Men predominantly engage in Intra-sexual selection as they show off their ability to provide and protect (through fighting other potential mates) to be selected by women.

Men have numerous reproductive possibilities (quantity over quality)

Question 7

Who is more biologically motivated to invest care into their offspring?

Answer 7

Women

Question 8

Who is less biologically motivated to invest care into their offering?

Answer 8

Men

Question 9

What motivates men?

Answer 9

To compete to be selected by numerous fertile mates (sex with women)

Question 10

What motivates women?

Answer 10

To carefully select an ideal mate to pass on ideal “selfish” genes (a strong genetic man)

Question 11

What is Long Term Courtship?

Answer 11

For men, long term relationships are advantageous as they retain access to one fertile woman
For females, long term relationships means increased investment of resources from men, reducing the chance of later the child and themselves being abandoned

Question 12

What is Mate Guarding?

Answer 12

Couples monitoring each other to ensure potential partners know they’re taken.

Question 13

What are One Night Stands and Sneak Copulation?

Answer 13

For men, they’re advantageous as they enable them to increase their reproductive possibilities without having to invest in the woman or offspring.
For men, they provide access to a wider gene pool to maximise the chance of their offspring reaching sexual maturity and pass on the selfish gene.

Question 14

1. Supporting evidence for the role of sexual selection in partner preferences…

Answer 14

(P) Convincing evidence for the role of sexual selection in partner preference comes from
(E) Buss (1989)
(E) who, in a cross-cultural study of 10,000 participants across 33 countries, found that men sought physically attractive and younger women, whilst women looked for a male’s financial capacity by seeking financial success or ambition.
(L) This shows that, due to a woman’s limited reproductive opportunities, they choose a partner that can best provide for her and her offspring, whilst men, due to their numerous reproductive opportunities, choose a partner whose youth and fertility will best lead to reproduction.

Question 15

2. Supporting evidence for the role of sexual selection in partner preferences…

Answer 15

(P) Supporting research evidence for the role of sexual selection in partner preference from
(E) Gross (2001) and Singh (1993)
(E) who found a male’s shoulder to waist ratio of 0.85-0.9 was the most attractive to women, but a women’s shoulder to waist ration of 0.7 was the most attractive to men.
(L) This shows men prefer a partner with features that indicate child baring ability, and women find protective large men the most attractive.

Question 16

Supporting evidence for the role of sexual selection in human reproductive behaviour

Answer 16

(P) Stark evidence for the role of sexual selection in human reproductive behaviour comes from
(E) Clark and Hatfield (1989)
(E) who used confeds. to offer casual sex to men and women. 75% of the male participants agreeds to the request, yet no women agreed.
(L) This suggests that as men compete to be selected by numerous female partners, they’re more likely to agree to an opportunity to reproduce. Whereas, women are less likely due to a certain risk factor, so they’re more selective and careful.

Question 17

Biologically determinist

Answer 17

(P) Another limitation of these theories is that they are biologically determinist,
(E) which is when a theory suggests that our free choice is limited by internal, biological factors.
(E) This is because evolutionary explanations suggest that human reproductive behaviour is constrained by evolved, genetic characteristics, over which we have no control.
(L) This limits our free will and ability to choose our partner or not to have children. For similar reasons evolutionary explanations do not explain homosexuality in humans. Indeed, the theories would predict that homosexuals have no need to form relationships as they cannot reproduce. Nonetheless, homosexual relationships are common in moder society