1. What is the book about?
Evolutionary psychology
2. What problem was the author trying to solve?
The problems of surviving, mating, parenting, criminality etc. that can be better understood with evolutionary psychology
3. What are the main arguments? Do I agree?
I agree with the basics and more. Natural selection has three basics: variation, inheritance and differential reproductive success. Intrasexual competition – competition between members of one sex. Intersexual selection – preferential mate choice or female choice. Inclusive fitness: including the gene’s eye thinking. If you were a gene, what would facilitate your replication? First survive, then replicate then protect your offspring. The milestones in the origins of modern humans etc.
4. Which three facts, ideas or principles do I want to remember the most?
• Aggressive behavior so common to males are linked to sexual access
• Males are more likely to get involved in dangerous activities and take more risk
• Tit for tat is the best strategy, but always start nice
• Hamiltons rule: c < r*b
cost < relatedness * benefit
5. Which of my beliefs were challenged?
Some ideas moderated and some ideas get stronger support
6. How did my life change by reading this book?
Thinking in evolutionary terms, explaining behaviour
7. What are three action items I learned that I need to implement as soon as possible?
• Biases are important. Things might not be as they seem.
• Tit for tat
• Body posture and mindset are likely ways to create change in state
8. What were the most memorable quotes?
“The scientific study of mating over the course of the twentieth century has focused nearly exclusively on marriage. Human anatomy, physiology, and psychology, however, betray an ancestral past filled with affairs and short-term mating. The obvious reproductive advantages of short-term mating to men may have blinded scientists to their benefits to women.” P.189
“For altruism to evolve, the cost to the actor must be less than the benefits provided, multiplied by the genetic relatedness between the actor and the recipient.” P.250
• Men have 7 times the testosterone compared to women
• Problems of survival, mating, parenting, aiding genetic relatives and altruism vs selfishness
• Phobias: fear of snakes, spiders, heights, disease, separation anxiety etc.
• Women's long term mating strategies (WLTMS): Preference for good financial prospects in a marriage partner
• WLTMS: Preference for social status in a marriage partner
• WLTMS: Age differences prefered: women - older men (+4-5 years). Men - younger women (-6-7 years)
• WLTMS: ambition, industriousness, dependability, stability, height, athletic prowess, good health (symmetry, masculinity), commitment, investing in children, similarity., etc.
• MLTMS: Youth, evolved standards of physical beauty (cues: full lips, clear skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, long hair, facial femininity, feminine voice, low WHR etc.)
• MLTMS: body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, BMI: WHR = 0,7 most attractive
• A man can have 1000 children, a woman 10
• Paternity uncertainty: a male cannot be 100% sure that the child is his, a woman can be 100% sure. Given long time and many incremental changes this will have big effects.
• Relationship status can lower Testosterone: Parent (250)• Short term strategies: men have desire for variety of sex partners
• STS: probability of consent increases with time, but differently for the sexes
• 20-50% affair rate for married women, men estimated 50%
• Increased risk for abuse with one step-parent vs two natural parents: 26 times (0,5 compared to 13 per 1000 children)
• Women invest more time and energy in children
• Men can technically find another woman and so have less risk associated with pregnancy
• Grandmother might invest most: MoMo is 100% certain of genetic relatedness
• If you help a relative or your will can be predicted by evolutionary psychology: it has to do exactly what percentage of genes you share
• The dark side of families: the inteterst of the individual members can be in conflict about food and resources; between spouses, between parents and children and between children; in fact it is guaranteed
• Reciprocal altruism - altruism where i scratch your back and you scratch mine
• “Tit for tat” stable winning strategy
• Our brains are more adapted to be social and detect and punish cheaters compared to logical problems; so formulating logical problems in social terms is clever
• Fair weather friends vs true friends
• Warfare: only male humans and some other primate do it (chimpanzees)
• Males get killed by males
• Competition between members of the same sex
• Status gained from succeeding in warfare
• Strategic interference between the sexes: different strategies for example inferences about sexual intent; men are biased in favour of inferring sexual intent because it was reproductively costly to miss an opportunity
• Jealousy more common in men; the subconscious fear of cuckoldry
• Strong jealousy more common when the woman is young and attractive
• 1/5 males in northwestern Ireland likely to be a descendant of a single ruler
• Genghis Khan effect: 16 million likely descendants
• Competition and dominance important for boys and nurturance and social skills
• Winners show elevated T levels, losers depressed T levels
• Serotonin :"when alpha males were overthrown, their serotonin levels plummeted. When a lower-ranking male ascended to power, his serotonin level rose."
• Dominance hierarchy: some individuals within a group reliably gain greater access to key resources - resources that contribute to survival or reproduction. Selection has likely favored the evolution of greater motivation for status striving in men than in women. The more polygynous the mating system, the more it has paid in reproductive success for men compared to women to take risks to ascend the status hierarchy.
• Benefit to men from commitment and marriage: 1) increase in the quality of the woman given that there is a wider range of women to choose from with this attitude, 2) men who failed to commit might have failed to attract any women at all, 3) increase in odds that the man is the father of the children a woman bears by repeated sex, 4) increase in the survival of the children with two parents, 5) increase in status 6) added coalitional allies 7) increased reproductive success of children
• Six defenses against acute attack:
1 freeze
2 flight
3 fight
4 submit
5 fright
6 faint
Summary: we are the descendants of those humans that succeeded in combating "the hostile forces of nature" (Darwin) and who were reproductively successful. We have evolved certain adaptations and decision rules that explain why we are both altruistic and selfish, why we seek the mating strategies we seek and how we treat stranger’s vs family. We prefer environments like the savanna because it houses large terrestrial animals, vegetation for grazing and a wide-open landscape suitable to a nomadic lifestyle. Also during the night we prefer to be closer to the door. We have adaptive biases to recognize potential threats very fast, like snakes and spiders. It is likely our common spices are used to kill microorganisms. We have selfish genes and our bodies are survival machines for our genes. Therefore we tend to act in a way to propagate them. It makes sense that we have evolved adaptations that make the propagation of those genes more likely ranging from the simple to the sophisticated, to the VERY sophisticated. It's not just a small group either. All over the world and in every known culture we have these common denominators how we choose mates, how we chase status and prestige and how we create wars and share resources. Bottom line: nature, more often than not, has the last say. Very often we do something without thinking and it turns out there is an evolutionary explanation for that specific behaviour or class of behaviors and the associated thinking processes. Survival and reproduction and variation; not everybody makes it but those who do are subtly different.