Thursday, September 2, 2010

Two findings pertinent to evolutionary psychology

Finding 1

Male Abusers Often Sabotage Birth Control With Partners


The evolutionary psychologists must like this phenomenon, since they frequently claim that male partner violence is an extreme form of mate-guarding, and the goal of mate-guarding is to exploit the female's reproductive resources, and the goal of that is getting your genes into the next generation...


Finding 2


At this summer's meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (in Boston), the symposium on evolutionary psychology found that there are geographical areas of the world where men are more (slightly more) interested in monogamy and committed relationships than are women.  The primary area where reversal of the more common gender pattern happens currently is subsaharan Africa, mainly because women are relatively open to mon-monogamy and apparently more aware of the disadvantages of being tied to one partner.  This goes against all those evo psych people who say women must be more needy of pair bonding because they need male resources.  So what's different in Africa -- women are often economically self-sufficient; and males have few opportunities to be the sole provider for a family; or put differently, there isn't a large disparity in income/resource potential between genders.

What is out in that big world anyways?