Mate Choice Strategies argue against special creation

Evolutionary psychology has a bad rap for a myriad of reasons. One of the most common arguments I am confronted with is the power of culture to modify behavior. People always try and say that the phenomenon we are discovering is actually culturally derived and that culture is the fundamental defining aspect of human psychology. One of my favorite counter arguments is to cite the research being done in mating strategies. These are highly refined mechanisms of mate choice that really have no cultural counter point. But I didn’t want to talk about cultural vs. evolutionary causes per se. I was thinking the other day that these same studies that I use in arguments with cultural determinist also need answering from anyone who believes in direct creation.So lets try a relatively simple one to start off with:Women's Preferences for Male Behavioral Displays Change Across the Menstrual Cycle. Gangestad, Steven W.; Simpson, Jeffry A.; Cousins, Alita J.; Psychological Science, Vol 15(3), May 2004. pp. 203-206.This study is one that took place at my university last year, I am participating in a follow up study this year and basically what is being discovered is that there is a strong cycle effect on what women find attractive. During the peak fertility phase of the cycle women prefer men that have signals of high testosterone and symmetry. These can range from hormonal signals on the face, to shoulder to hip ratio, to behavioral traits like strong intra sexual competition. But they only prefer these men for short term mating prospects and not long-term partners. During extended periods of the cycle, or non-fertile points, women have a dislike for the above traits in men and prefer men that show signals of higher estrogen ratios. Add in one final ingredient that when women decide to cheat on a long term partner there is a very strong tendency for this to take place during the high fertility phase of the cycle and with these highly testosteronized males.This behavior can fit very nicely with in an evolutionary frame work. Men with high testosterone have good genes (this is related to the fact that testosterone is an immuno suppressant so having the signals show you handicapped yourself and still perform well). But these men usually have more sexual partners and invest far less in women then their more estroginized cohorts. Women are faced with a difficult choice, sleep with men with good genes and get good genes for your children, but get little to no investment from the father. Get the much larger investment in your children from more estroginzed men but risk getting inferior genes. The above study shows that women have tried to get around this trade off by finding high investing males more attractive for long term relationships and finding good gene males attractive only during peak fertility points in the cycle, and only as short term mates. Basically try and get the good genes from one guy and get the good investment from the other.There are many studies that show these results have a lot of robustness and there are many other mechanisms (such as scent preference across the cycle) that show that the cycle effect is very real. It’s not an experimental artifact. So evolution has their theory for the origin of cycle effects, what is the creationist theory? How does this sort of draconian fitness maximization tactic fit into special creation? I don’t see how this could really be blamed on the sin in general, it is all completely unconscious and operating at the most basic levels. With minimum hand waving and God/Satan dun its, do creationist have a way to explain this phenomenon?

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Very interesting study! We're so fond of saying, "yeah, that's how animals do things but not us humans!" We're not exempt from biology, either, though.

I am betting my future on this fact. If humans are exempt from biology and evolutionary history then my graduate work is a farce!

You should really read 'The Blank State' by Steven Pinker and 'The Agile Gene' by Matt Ridley if you haven't already. They essentially back up everything you have proposed here.

I'd say the answer might be a bit more simple. During the peak fertility phase, a woman is bound to be a bit more, pardon my language, but horny. Naturally, they would go for a male of high testosterone b/c these will tend to be the rugged, athletic, attractive type. Type of men that a woman would lust for while not necessarily desiring a longterm relationship. So from a purely, physical sense they will be looking for a more attractive person to sleep with. During the less "horny" times, obviously a woman will want to be with someone that is caring, sweet, attentive to her needs which would fit your men with higher estrogen ratios. These men are likely more "marriage" material. This would also explain your reference to women being more likely to cheat during the peak fertility phase. They're horny, perhaps they're not getting the attention they would like at home, so they get with the rugged, athletic, attractive male.

O_o i can't belive someone came up with the same belife as me! i'm startin to like this fourm lottsa smart people who think on the same plain as me... exept i'm still in high school and am being hindered by MASLOW >_< !!but in all women desire two things:
Genes:
physical appearence
-facial structure
-muscular development
-age
-hair
-other exterior charictaristics
personality
-aggression
-compassion
-skill
ect...andRescourceslimited objects
MONEY!!!
transport
-cars
-plane
-boat
POWER (influence)
time (availability)
ect...you cannot get all of them from one male so marrie rich and have sex with the pool boy ^_^(there are more LOTS MORE as i said below, i just didn't add them)
SO DO NOT TELL ME I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE >_<
...thouse dating sims are valid simulatorsThis message has been edited by PerfectDeath, 12-12-2004 05:33 PMThis message has been edited by PerfectDeath, 12-12-2004 05:34 PM

Did it occur to you that it might just be a little overreaching to make sweeping statements about what all women want? That, perhaps, they might not exactly appreciate your insights when delivered with such an air of certainty?Just a thought before you get totally reamed by the very intelligent women of EvC.

Ouch. Not much experience with real women hun? Lets see, the only things on your list that would come near to making MY list would be compassion and time.I'll admit that physical appearance might make me turn my head, but intellegence, humor, personality will keep my vote any time.I suggest that you listen to our good buddy the frog (see ^ above) and not make such sweeping generalizations about a topic you are obviously too young to know anything about. edited in the requisite spelling errorsThis message has been edited by Asgara, 12-12-2004 04:46 PM

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com
http://perditionsgate.bravepages.com

*points at ect...*
i didn't put them ALL on there that would have taken too long... i just put down the ones that came off the top of my head... but there are more , lots more i'm just lazy and that one is not very desirable ^_^

Please use the little red reply button at the bottom of the posts you are replying too. (Actually button wit little red arrow and reply next to it).This allows others to follow the thread, give instant links to the post replied to and those replying and, for some, sends them an email to say there is a message waiting.

In language studies, we define between "online" and "offline" behavior. "Online" behavior is where somebody doesn't take the time to think and re-think a decision, they just "do"; "offline" is the opposite.I think the term "mate choice" is folded over two things that can be, and usefully "should" be, separated. One is a "online" choice of a sexual partner, the kind of judgement that "which one of these is more attractive" would work off of. The other is an "offline" choice, the kind of judgement about what kind of person we would marry. This judgement changes (in my unscientific thinking on the subject) due to culture, experience, and .. "offline thinking."So, I'd like to make two points:1. I'm not sure that your study is addressing this; I think you might be focused purely on what I call the "online" type of mate selection. If so, then I think some of the posts in this thread are wandering away from it. If not, then I think it's an important distinction to bring up.2. Do you have any findings that span across culture? I didn't really catch how your study teased apart culturally "defined" values vs. "evolutionary" values. Since "cultural values" seemingly would be an evolutionarily selective pressure (thinking that those who typify cultural values will be "desirable," and thus reproduce more than those who do not typify cultural values, and then are pushed to the outside), I'm not even sure there's a big difference between the two.

What you are describing would be what are called proximate causative factors. There are thing operating in the life time of the individual that are proxmiate causes. These can be anything from genes to the bar you chose. But just because there are proximate factors involved doesnt mean that an ultimate causation (in this case natural selection) is not resonable. In fact the two work toghther. Women use a range of cues to assesses what they attracted to, these change across the cycle and emphasize different traits. It fits very nicely with patterns we have not only seen cross culturally but cross species. People recognize a mating strategy like this in birds as an evolved adaptation but find trouble calling it so in humans. But thats exactly what it is.This message has been edited by Parsimonious_Razor, 12-12-2004 07:31 PM

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The main drive home message is this stuff is occurring with out conscious thought. That’s the whole point, its not that they aren't taking time to think about it, it’s that it is invisible at the conscious level beyond the most pedestrian sense.There is a study going on at the moment that has found a homologous brain structure between female mice and female humans. In mice the structure is used when assessing mates during estrous. They are running FMRI studies now on women and showing the area lighting up in the same way on women. The study is being run now and hasn’t been published so I am not inclined to start offering grand conclusions but its this kind of stuff slowly leaking in that shows HUGE areas of our brain that date back 100s of thousands of years or even 100s of millions of years are directly affecting our decision making faculties right now. Actually yes. There are lots of studies in this area, and this particular kind of study was also performed in Dominca, West Indies and found the exact same results. A more broad study includes the Buss study a few years back (I don’t have the reference off hand but if you want I will get it) that very similar mate trait desires across 37 different countries. And any differences were explained easily by proximate factors such as parasite load. Areas with higher parasite load rated attractiveness higher than low parasite load cultures. But in general humans everywhere assign the same importance to traits depending on gender and whether for short or long term.The other piece though is how do you explain cultural influences on something that has no cultural component to the message. What cultural input makes people prefer the scent of others with different MHC genes, or makes women prefer the scent of symmetrical males only during their estrus period and not during extended sexuality. There is no way cultural learning can explain stuff working on that level.This message has been edited by Parsimonious_Razor, 12-12-2004 07:31 PM

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P_R, That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. I think the sub-thread started by DarkStar was leaning quite a bit to the conscious direction, so I wanted to check. No doubt about it. In this speech titled "The Biology of Our Uniqueness", Robert Sapolsky goes to great lengths to talk about where the uniqueness of humans lies. He argues that, in some important sense, it is not in the biology; it's in how we uniquely use it. As a prospective graduate student in cognitive science, I'm really interested in how comparative neurology can constrain the problem of "solving" "the human condition."Actually yes. There are lots of studies in this area, and this particular kind of study was also performed in Dominca, West Indies and found the exact same results. I'm sorry if it's a bother... if you can find it without too much trouble, I'd love to have it. I'm not very knowledgeable on these subjects, and it's an area I want to increase my knowledge on. A good quesiton, and similar to one that I'm ...kind of... grappling with in the domain of language and culture. Once again, as an unknowledgeable pedestrian, I would motivate the thought like this:Culture is built off of our unconscious biases. I would model culture as a feedback system between our unconscious biases and the selection pressure that the culture exerts. Because culture DOES have a conscious component to it, then I think it's reasonable to see conscious shift in culture propogated down to the biological level. Of course, with population sizes and thing s changing as they do these days, that's unreasonable. But with smaller population sizes and more stable cultures, it's a possibility that I'm interested to at least entertain ... until I educate myself more on the subject.Thanks for the response!Ben