EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATIONS FOR RELATIONSHIPS

Question 1

Natural selection

Answer 1

natural selection is the process where characteristics that make an individula more likely to reproduce and pass on genes are more prevalent in a population.

Question 2

sexual selection

Answer 2

sexual selection is a form of natural selection specially characteristics that increases reproductive success.

Question 3

inter sexual selection ( mate choice)

Answer 3

• strategy of one sex mostly females due to high investment cost and maternal certainty of children, picking the highest quality mate according to attractive features including good genes.

Question 4

intra sexual selection ( mate competition)

Answer 4

• strategy of one sex mostly male due to low invetsment cost and lack of parental certainty., competing between each other for access to a large quantity of members of other sex.

Question 5

anisogamy

Answer 5

differences between male and femal gametes.

Question 6

types of sexual selection

Answer 6

inter sexual and intra sexual

Question 7

sexy sons hypothesis

Answer 7

• lined with intersexual selection
• where female mates with a man who has desirable characteristics and this sexy trait is inherited by her son which increases the likelihood that successive generations of females will mate with her son.

Question 8

research support for preferences related to anisogamy

Answer 8

BUSS (1989)
- he used questionnaires to collect data from over 10000 people from 37 different countries which covered demographic information and preferences for variables like marriage, age gap etc. bus found that females valued variables associated with gaining resources and male valued variables associated with reproductive success.

Question 9

link of buss research to evolutionary explanations

Answer 9

this supports the idea of evolutionary explanations which stated that females are more attracted to resources and males being more attracted to females with reproductive success.

Question 10

research support for inter sexual selection

Answer 10

• CLARK AND HATFIELD (1989)
• males and femal researchers asked student on a campus one of these three questions
  1. will you go out on a date with me today
  2. will you go to my apartment
  3. will yiu have sex with me
• they found that 50% of both genders agreed to go on a date whereas 0% females agreed to have sex compared to 75% males.
• supports the idea of both intersexual and intrasexual selection that males will attempt to sleep with many women as possible whereas females are more selective.

Question 11

lonely heart research by DUNBAR AND WAYNFORTH (1995)

Answer 11

• used a content analysis method of 900 personal dating ads across 4 usa newspapers.
• 42% males found to be lookin for youthful partners compared to 25% females.
• mens more liekly to emphasize economical status and females more likely to emphasize their looks.

Question 12

another research for evolutionary explanations

Answer 12

• singhs waist to hip ratio study
• 0.7 waist to hip ratio prefeered by males as this honestly signifies that the female is capable of producing fertile offspring and isnot pregnant.

Question 13

limitations of evolutionary explanations

Answer 13

• ignores cultural differences
• lots of research comes from animal studies so cannot be generalised to humans.