New Book Release: The Gap - The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals

The Gap : The Science of What Separates US from Other Animals
Thomas Suddendorf; Publication Date: November 12, 2013

Women's Mate Preferences - The Preference for Culturally Successful Men:

David C. Geary; Male, Female - The Evolution of Human Sex Differences; 2010:

Because preferences cannot always put into practice, a woman's preferred marriage partner and her actual marriage partner are not typically the same. Social psychological studies of explicit and implicit preferences -  for instance, preference for an attractive face without conscious awareness of why it is attractive - are thus an important adjunct to research on actual marriage choices. These preferences are less constrained by the competing interests of other people and capture the processes associated with the social and psychological mechanisms that can influence reproductive decisions and behaviors (Kenrick, Sadalla, Groth, & Trost, 1990). Preferences can nevertheless be influenced by social and sexual dynamics in the local community (Kenrick, N. P. Li, & Butner, 2003), by wider economic and social conditions, and by the individual woman's attractiveness as a mate; attractive women demand more from their mates (Pawlowski & Jasienska, 2008). To complicate matters further, not all preferences are equal; some are necessities and others are luxuries (N. P. Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier, 2002). To examine this further, I begin with a discussion of the sex difference in preference for a culturally successful mate and then turn to mate-choice trade-offs and wider influences.

Culturally Successful Men. Women throughout the world indicate that men's cultural success or attributes that are likely to lead to success (e.g. ambition) are necessities when it comes to their preferred marriage partners (D. M. Buss, 1989; N. P. Li et al., 2002). One of the largest studies ever conducted on women's and men's preferences included more than 10,000 people in 37 cultures across six continents and five islands (D. M. Buss, 1989). Women rated "good financial prospect" higher than did men in all cultures. ... The magnitude of the sex difference was smallest in Eastern Europe, but even here two out of three women rated good financial prospect as more important in a prospective marriage partner than did the average man. For the remaining regions of the world, from three out of four to five out of six women rated good financial prospect more highly than did the average man. In 29 samples, the "ambition and industriousness" of a prospective mate were more important for women than for men , presumably because these traits are indicators of his ability to eventually achieve cultural success. In only one sample were men's ratings significantly higher than those of women, the Zulu of South Africa; this may reflect the high level of physical labor (e.g., house building) expected of Zulu women.

Hatfield and Sprecher (1995) found the same pattern for college students in the United States, Japan, and Russia. In each of this nations, women valued a prospective mate's potential for success, earnings, status, and social position more highly than did men. A meta-analysis of research published from 1965 to 1986 revealed the same sex difference (Feingold, 1992). Across studies, three out of four women rated socioeconomic status as more important in a prospective marriage partner than did the average man. Studies conducted prior to 1965 showed the same pattern (e.g., Hill, 1945), as did a survey of a nationally representative sample of unmarried adults in the United States (Sprecher, Sullivan, & Hatfield, 1994). Across age, ethnic status, and socioeconomic status, women preferred husbands who were better educated than they were and who earned more money than they did. Buunk, Dijkstra, Fetchenhauer, and Kenrick (2002) found the same pattern for women ranging in age from 20s to 60s.

Women's preference for culturally successful men is also found in studies of singles ads and popular fiction novels. In a study of 1,000 "lonely hearts" ads, Greenlees and McGrew (1994) found that British women were 3 times more likely than British men to seek financial security in a prospective marriage partner. Oda (2001) found that Japanese women were 31 times more likely than Japanese men to seek financial security and social status in a long-term partner. Muslim women sought educated and financially secure partners who were tall, emotionally sincere, and socially skilled (Badahdah & Tiemann, 2005). Young women (younger than 40 years) in Spain wanted both financial success and physical attractiveness in a prospective mate (Gil-Burmann, Pelaez, & Sanchez, 2002); older women retained their desire for financial success but valued physical attractiveness less highly than did younger women. Whissell (1996) found the same themes across 25 contemporary romance novels and 6 classic novels that have traditionally appealed to women more than men, including two stories of the Old Testament written about 3,000 years ago. In these stories, the male protagonist is almost always an older, socially dominant, and wealthy man who ultimately marries the woman.

As in traditional societies, marriage to a culturally successful man can have reproductive consequences for a woman in modern societies. Bereczkei and Csanaky (1996) studied more than 1,800 Hungarian men and women who were 35 years of age or older and thus not likely to have more children. They found that women who had married men who were older and better educated than themselves had, on average, more children, were less likely to get divorced, and reported higher levels of marital satisfaction than did women who married younger and / or less educated men.

Trade-Offs. Women's preference for culturally successful partner is highlighted when they must make cost-benefit trade-offs between a partner's cultural success versus other important traits, such as physical attractiveness (N. P. Li, 2007; N. P. Li et al., 2002). When their "mate dollars", so to speak, are limited, women spend more of them on the social status and resources of a long-term partner than on other traits. When they have additional mate dollars, they spend proportionally less on status and resources and more on the peronality traits of this mate (e.g., his friendliness). ... Unmarried women on a tight budget allocate more mate dollars to the resources or social standing of a prospective mate than do men, but the magnitude of the sex difference declines as budgets becomes flush. In yet another study, college women reported the minimally acceptable earning potential of a prospective husband was the 70th percentile; on the basis of earning potential alone, 70% of men were eliminated from the pool of potential marriage partners. The corresponding figure for college men was the 40th percentile (Kenrick et al., 1990).

Once a prospective mate has achieved the minimal social standing, additional resources and status yield dimishing results. Kenrick, Sundie, Nicastle, and Stone (2001) found that desirability of man as marriage partner increased sharply as his income rose from low- to an upper-middle-class level (about 100,000$) and then leveled off. An increase in a man's income from $ 25,000 to $ 75,000 per year resulted in a substantial increase in his desirability, but increasing his income from $ 100,000 per year to $ 300,000 per year had little effect.

...

James Thompson on Earthquakes (2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08lZza5Ypkg

"It's almost as if the earthquake is testing the morality of a country..."

A Commentary:

I am skilled at reading, but unskilled at writing and speaking English. Nevertheless I will try to change my blogging style in the following months. So I am going to write more comments and publish some of my own thoughts. It's quite certain that those comments and thoughts will contain quite a few writing errors. I am sorry for that.

Sexual selection for indicators of intelligence

Sexual selection for indicators of intelligence
Geoffrey Miller; 2000
pages 260 (269) -> 275 (284)


Abstract

Many traits in many species have evolved through sexual selection specifically to function as ‘fitness indicators’ that reveal good genes and good health. Sexually selected fitness indicators typically show (1) higher coefficients of phenotypic and genetic variation than survival traits, (2) at least moderate genetic heritabilities and (3) positive correlations with many aspects of an animal’s general condition, including body size, body symmetry, parasite resistance, longevity and freedom from deleterious mutations. These diagnostic criteria also appear to describe human intelligence (the g factor). This paper argues that during human evolution, mate choice by both sexes focused increasingly on intelligence as a major heritable component of biological fitness. Many human-specific behaviours (such as conversation, music production, artistic ability and humour) may have evolved principally to advertise intelligence during courtship. Though these mental adaptations may be modular at the level of psychological functioning, their efficiencies may be tightly intercorrelated because they still tap into common genetic and neurophysiological variables associated with fittness itself. Although the g factor (like the superordinate factor of fitness itself) probably exists in all animal species, humans evolved an unusually high degree of interest in assessing each other’s intelligence during courtship and other social interactions and, consequently, a unique suite of highly g-loaded mental adaptations for advertising their intelligence to one another through linguistic and cultural interaction. This paper includes nine novel, testable predictions about human intelligence derived from sexual selection theory.

Relevance of education and intelligence at the national level for health: The case of HIV and AIDS

Relevance of education and intelligence at the national level for health: The case of HIV and AIDS
Heiner Rindermann and Gerhard Meisenberg; 2009


Abstract

Studies at the individual level have shown a negative effect of education and intelligence on risky behavior. The same has been demonstrated for risky sexual behavior and for HIV-infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa. In path analyses at the country data level, cognitive abilities (seen as depending on education) show a strong negative effect on HIV-infection rates, whereas gross domestic product and modernization each has a small positive effect. A higher proportion of Muslims in the population reduces the HIV-infection rate. Explanations for the effect of intelligence include a better understanding of causal relationships between one's behavior and health, greater awareness of future consequences, indirect intelligence effects, a general rationality effect, a civic embeddedness effect, and more competent management of the problem by governments, e.g. through public education programs about HIV transmission and AIDS.

African cognitive ability:

African cognitive ability: Research, results, divergences and recommendations
Heiner Rindermann; 2012 - Article in Press
Personality and Individual Differences


Abstract

In the past different researchers have come to diverging cognitive ability estimates for people in Africa and of African descent. The paper tries to check the validity of past results by comparing them with outcomes of two new psychometric test studies from East and South Africa; with results from student assessment studies; with predictions based on those variables which, outside Africa, correlate most strongly with intelligence; and by comparing them with further indicators of cognitive ability (descriptions of everyday life and human accomplishment). Integrating these cognitive ability measures with the application of several corrections (due to the higher age of students in Africa, lower African school enrollment, selectivity of samples and higher African secular IQ rise), the best guess for an African average is IQ 75. Finally, possible environmental and genetic (evolutionary, therefore past environmental) causes are discussed and suggestions are given how to enhance cognitive development in African countries.