Evolutionary Psychology Quotes

“يتعين اعتبار تشارلز داروين كأول عالم نفس تطوري بسبب نبوءته في نهاية بحثه بعنوان "في أصل الأنواع 1859" حيث يقول:
أرى في المستقبل البعيد مجالات مفتوحة لأبحاث أكثر أهمية. وسيقوم علم النفس على أساس جديد يتمثل في ضرورة اكتساب كل قوة عقلية وكل كفاءة بالتدريج.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“In a fascinating study, Barrett (1999) demonstrated that children as young as three
years of age have a sophisticated cognitive understanding of predator-prey encounters. Children from both an industrialized culture and a traditional hunter-horticulturalist culture were
able to spontaneously describe the flow of events in a predator-prey encounter in an ecologically accurate way. Moreover, they understood that after a lion kills a prey, the prey is no longer alive, can no longer eat, and can no longer run and that the dead state is permanent.
This sophisticated understanding of death from encounters with predators appears to be developed by age three to four.”
― David Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Selection favors mechanisms that cause individuals to seek niches in which the competition is less intense. Mating provides some clear examples. If most women pursue the man with the highest status or greatest resources, then some women would do well by seeking men outside the arenas in which competition is keenest. In a mating system in which both polygyny and monogamy are possible, for example, a woman might be better off securing all of the resources of a lower-status monogamous man rather than settling for a fraction of the resources of a high-status polygynous man.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Psychologists Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991) propose that a father’s presence or absence early in a child’s life can calibrate the kind of sexual strategy he or she adopts later in life. Individuals growing up in fatherless homes during the first 5 to 7 years of life, according to this theory, develop the expectations that parental resources will not be reliably or predictably provided and that adult pair bonds will not be enduring. These individuals adopt a sexual strategy marked by early sexual maturation, early sexual initiation, and frequent partner switching—a strategy designed to produce a large number of offspring, with little investment in each. Extraverted and impulsive personality traits might accompany this strategy. Other individuals are perceived as untrustworthy, relationships as transitory. Resources sought from brief sexual liaisons are opportunistically attained. Individuals who have a reliably investing father during their first 5 to 7 years of life, according to this theory, develop a different set of expectations about the nature and trustworthiness of others. People are seen as reliable and trustworthy, and relationships are expected to be enduring. These early environmental experiences channel individuals toward a long-term mating strategy—delayed sexual maturation, later onset of sexual activity, a search for securely attached long-term adult relationships, and heavy investment in children.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“First, intelligence is indeed correlated with how long individuals live. One study found that each additional IQ point, such as 107 versus 106, was linked with a 1 percent reduction in the relative risk of death (O’Toole & Stankov, 1992). This means that having an IQ 15 points above average (115 as opposed to 100) would decrease your mortality risk by 15 percent. Second, IQ is also linked with sublethal injuries, which themselves can hurt an individual’s inclusive fitness. In the modern world, those with lower IQs are more likely to drown; get into bicycle, motorcycle, and car accidents; become injured through explosions, falling objects, and knives; and even be hit by lightning (Gottfredson, 2007). Although no individual cause, considered alone, is strongly linked with IQ, when you add them all up, they cumulate to an increased risk of injury and death.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Evolutionary biologist John Hartung asks us to consider people who are stuck in a position that they might otherwise perceive as unfair or beneath their station (Hartung, 1987). Consider a man who holds a job that he knows does not take full advantage of his talents or a wife who knows that she is more intelligent than her husband. Acting as though your job or your spouse is beneath you could put your employment or your marriage in jeopardy. Your boss might fire you for insubordination. Your spouse might seek someone with whom he or she feels more comfortable and less threatened. The adaptive solution that Hartung proposes is called deceiving down. Deceiving down is not “playing dumb” or pretending to be less than you are. Instead, it involves an actual reduction in self-confidence to facilitate acting in a submissive, subordinate manner.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Evolutionary psychologists have also hypothesized that men seeking short-term sex would prioritize women’s bodies, since a body cues provide possibly the most powerful cues to her fertility (Confer et al., 2010; Currie & Little, 2009; see Chapter 5 on WHR, BMI, and other bodily cues to fertility). In one experiment, participants viewed an image of an opposite-sex individual whose face was occluded by a “face box” and whose body was occluded by a “body box” (Confer et al., 2010). Participants then were instructed to imagine themselves having either a one-night stand or a committed relationship with the person and were then asked to decide on which box they would remove to inform their decision—they could only remove one box (see Figure 6.3). Compared to the long-term mating context in which men prioritized facial information, men considering casual sex shifted significantly in the direction of prioritizing body information—a finding also discovered by Currie and Little (2009) using a different methodology. Women, in contrast, do not show this shift and tend to prioritize a man’s face in both short-term and long-term mating contexts. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that men prioritize cues to fertility in short-term sex partners.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Another clue to the evolutionary existence of casual mating comes from variations in sperm production and insemination (Baker & Bellis, 1995). In a study to determine the effect on sperm production of separating mates from each other, 35 couples agreed to provide ejaculates resulting from sexual intercourse from condoms. The partners in each couple had been separated for varying intervals of time. Men’s sperm count went up dramatically with the increasing amount of time the couple had been apart since their last sexual encounter. The more time spent apart, the more sperm the husbands inseminated in their wives when they finally did have sex. When the couples spent 100 percent of their time together, men inseminated 389 million sperm per ejaculate, on average. But when the couples spent only 5 percent of their time together, men inseminated 712 million sperm per ejaculate, almost double the amount. The number of sperm inseminated, according to the authors of the study, increases when other men’s sperm might be inside the wife’s reproductive tract at the same time due to the opportunity provided for extramarital sex. The increase in sperm insemination upon being reunited did not depend on the time since the man’s last ejaculation. Even when the man had masturbated to orgasm while away from his wife, he still inseminated more sperm on being reunited if he had been away from her a long time. The increase in sperm inseminated by the husband after prolonged separation ensures that his sperm will stand a greater chance in the race to the egg by crowding out or displacing a possible interloper’s sperm.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“According to the sex role and structural powerlessness hypothesis, women who have a lot of personal access to resources are predicted not to value resources in a mate as much as women lacking resources. This hypothesis receives no support from the existing empirical data, however. Indeed, women with high incomes value a potential mate’s income and education more, not less, than women with lower incomes.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Darwin hat a wonderful scientific habit of noticing facts that seemed inconsistent with his theories.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Humans have undoubtedly evolved mechanisms that assess their own mate value relative to others in their social environment. Ancestral environments were populated with relatively small groups of people containing around 50 to 150 individuals. Assessments of relative mate value were probably fairly accurate. One function of accurate assessments would have been to focus attraction tactics on potential mates within their own mate value range. In our current environment, however, the population is substantially larger, and the images to which individuals are exposed through television and the internet show an unprecedented comparison standard. Fashion models and actresses, for example, are often highly physically attractive. Extremely attractive women are a tiny fraction of the population, yet images of these women are presented at a misleadingly high frequency. This might have the effect of artificially lowering women’s judgments of their value as a potential mate relative to competitors in the local pool of potential mates. This, in turn, might escalate intrasexual competition between women or cause them to take drastic measures to try to increase their attractiveness—a possible cause of body image problems, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, or depression (Faer et al., 2005).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Another example of reactive heritability centers on the trait of extraversion, which is highly correlated with both physical strength and physical attractiveness (Lukaszewski & Roney, 2011; see also Lukaszewski et al., 2015). Strength and attractiveness apparently facilitate the success of extraverted social strategies, which involve initiating multiple social relationships, broadcasting desired qualities to others, ascending the status hierarchy, and pursuing multiple sex partners. These examples illustrate that personality can be condition dependent—an approach that is gaining increasing attention in the field (Lewis, 2015; Lewis et al., 2015).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Most people feel that crimes such as murder, rape, incest, and child abuse are morally wrong. But what causes us to have these moral views? Historical approaches to morality have been dominated by “rationalist” theories, whereby people arrive at a moral judgment through moral reasoning (Haidt, 2001, 2012). By logic and rationality, we are presumed to weigh the issues of right and wrong, harm and misdeed, justice and fairness, and arrive at the morally correct answer. Psychologist Jon Haidt has challenged this view, arguing instead that humans have evolved moral emotions that produce quick automatic evaluations. Only subsequently, when we are forced to explain or rationalize our moral stances, do we grasp for the straws of reasoning that we hope will support a judgment we’ve already made.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“McGuire and Raleigh also studied 48 students in a university fraternity, including officers and regular members. They discovered that the officers’ serotonin levels were 25 percent higher than those of the regular members. In an amusing small-sample test, the researchers then analyzed their own serotonin levels and found that McGuire (the lab director) had 50 percent more serotonin than Raleigh (the research assistant). In sum, the neurotransmitter serotonin joins T as one of the brain chemicals responsible for mediating one’s position in the status hierarchy.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Evolutionary scientists Michael McGuire and Michael Raleigh conducted experiments on vervet monkeys and found that males with high social rank had almost twice as much serotonin in their blood as did the low-ranking monkeys (McGuire & Troisi, 1998). As with T, however, the causal paths can run in both directions. When alpha males were overthrown, their serotonin levels plummeted. When a lower-ranking male ascended to power, his serotonin levels rose. McGuire and Raleigh discovered that they could dramatically reduce the serotonin levels of an alpha male simply by keeping him behind a one-way mirror so that the other monkeys could not see him and thus they did not perform the submissive displays. Apparently, the alpha males interpret the failure of others to submit as a sign of lost status, so their serotonin levels plummet.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“One of the keys to prestige signaling is that others have to be aware of the individual’s signals in order to accord prestige. In one experiment, participants were given an opportunity to contribute to a charity to help needy people either anonymously or in the presence of others in their group (Bereczkei, Birkas, & Kerekes, 2007). Subsequently, changes in social reputation (e.g., how much others respected the individual) were examined as a function of whether the individual offered or did not offer charity and whether the behavior was observed by others or anonymous (see Figure 12.1). Those who chose to contribute to the charity experienced a dramatic boost in prestige in the eyes of others, but only if the contributions were made publicly.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Women also engage in aggression, and their victims are also typically members of their own sex. In studies of verbal aggression through derogation of competitors, for example, women slander the physical appearance of their rivals (Buss & Dedden, 1990; Campbell, 1993, 1999). In the modern world of the internet, women are more likely than men to denigrate and cyber-bully other women by commenting negatively about their physical appearance and promiscuous sexual conduct (Wyckoff et al., in press). The forms of aggression committed by women, however, are typically less violent and hence less risky than those committed by men—facts that are accounted for by the theory of parental investment and sexual selection (see Campbell, 1995). Indeed, selection may operate against women who take the large physical risks entailed by aggression. Evolutionary psychologist Anne Campbell argues that women need to place a higher value on their own lives than do men on theirs, given the fact that infants depend on maternal care more than on paternal care (Campbell, 1999). Women’s evolved psychology, therefore, should reflect greater fearfulness of situations that pose a physical threat of bodily injury—a prediction that is well supported by the empirical findings (Campbell, 1999, 2002).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Roney (2003) hypothesized that mere exposure to attractive women would activate cognitive adaptations in men designed to embody the qualities that women want in a mate. Specifically, he predicted that exposure to young attractive women would (1) increase the importance men place on their own financial success, (2) experience feeling more ambitious, and (3) produce self-descriptions that correspond to what women want. Using a cover story to disguise the purpose of the study, Roney had one group of men rate the effectiveness of advertisements containing young, attractive models and another group of men rate the effectiveness of ads containing older, less-attractive models. Following this exposure, the men responded to the key measures to test his hypotheses.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Iron is food for bacteria. They thrive on it. Humans have evolved a means of starving these bacteria. When a person gets an infection, the body produces a chemical (leukocyte endogenous mediator) that reduces blood levels of iron. At the same time, the infected person spontaneously reduces the consumption of iron-rich food such as ham and eggs, and the human body reduces the absorption of whatever iron is consumed (Nesse & Williams, 1994). These natural bodily reactions essentially starve the bacteria, paving the way to combat the infection for a quick recovery. Although this information has been available since the 1970s, apparently few physicians and pharmacists know about it (Kluger, 1991). They continue to recommend iron supplements, which interfere with our evolved means for combating the hostile force of infections.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“The hypothesized function of fainting in response to the sight of blood or a sharp weapon is that it helps warfare non-combatants, such as children, to “non-verbally communicate to… adversaries that one was not an immediate threat and could be safely ignored” (Bracha, 2004, p. 683). Thus, fainting might have increased the non-combatant’s chances of surviving violent conflicts that were likely to be common over human evolutionary history. If this hypothesis is correct, it follows that women and children would be more likely than men to faint at the sight of blood, and the evidence strongly supports this prediction (Bracha, 2004).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“According to the antimicrobial hypothesis, spices kill or inhibit the growth of microorganisms and prevent the production of toxins in the foods we eat and so help humans to solve a critical problem of survival: avoiding being made ill or poisoned by the foods we eat (Sherman & Flaxman, 2001). Several sources of evidence support this hypothesis. First, of the 30 spices for which we have solid data, all killed many of the species of foodborne bacteria on which they were tested. Can you guess which spices are most powerful in killing bacteria? They are onion, garlic, allspice, and oregano. Second, more spices, and more potent spices, tend to be used in hotter climates, where unrefrigerated food spoils more quickly, promoting the rapid proliferation of dangerous microorganisms. In the hot climate of India, for example, the typical meat dish recipe calls for nine spices, whereas in the colder climate of Norway, fewer than two spices are used per meat dish on average. Third, more spices tend to be used in meat dishes than in vegetable dishes (Sherman & Hash, 2001). This is presumably because dangerous microorganisms proliferate more on unrefrigerated meat; dead plants, in contrast, contain their own physical and chemical defenses and so are better protected from bacterial invasion. In short, the use of spices in foods is one means that humans have used to combat the dangers carried on the foods we eat. The authors of the antimicrobial hypothesis are not proposing that humans have a specialized evolved adaptation for the use of spices, although they do not rule out this possibility. Rather, it is more likely that eating certain spices was discovered through accident or experimentation; people discovered that they were less likely to feel sick after eating leftovers cooked with aromatic plant products. Use of those antimicrobial spices then likely spread through cultural transmission—by imitation or verbal instruction.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“molecular genetic studies show that there has been an acceleration of human adaptive evolution over the past 40,000 years, and especially during the past 10,000 years”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Before we conclude that human cognitive mechanisms are riddled with biases and errors of judgment, we need to ask which adaptive problems human cognitive mechanisms evolved to solve and what would be “sound judgment” or “successful reasoning” from an evolutionary perspective. If humans have trouble locating their cars by color at night in parking lots illuminated with sodium vapor lamps, we would not conclude that our visual system is riddled with errors. Our eyes were designed to perceive the color of objects under natural, not artificial, light (Shepard, 1992). Many of the research programs that have documented “biases” in judgment, it turns out, have used artificial, evolutionarily unprecedented experimental stimuli that are analogous to sodium vapor lamps. Many, for example, require subjects to make probability judgments based on a single event (Gigerenzer, 1991, 1998). “Reliable numerical statements about the probability of a single event were rare or nonexistent in the Pleistocene—a conclusion reinforced by the relative poverty of number terms in modern band level societies” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1998 p. 40). A specific woman cannot have a 35 percent chance of being pregnant; she either is pregnant or is not, so probabilities hardly make sense when applied to a single case.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Experiments have explored the link between physical and social stature (Wilson, 1968). In one study, the same man was introduced to different audiences but was identified to each audience as having a different rank—professor, graduate student, and so on. The audiences were subsequently asked to estimate the height of the man. Audiences to whom the man was described as being high in status recalled him as being taller than audiences to whom the man was described as being lower in status. Even with people we know personally, our mental image of their height is exaggerated if we know them to be high in social status (Dannenmaier & Thumin, 1964). High-status people, in short, are conceptualized as being large in size—they “loom large” in our eyes (Holbrook, Fessler, & Navarrete, 2016).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“In the most direct test of the effects of status on social reasoning, Cummins had subjects test for the rule “if someone was assigned to lead a study session, that person was required to tape record the session” (Cummins, 1998, p. 41). The reasoner’s task was to test for compliance with the rule by selecting which study session records to inspect. Here was the crucial manipulation: Half the participants were told to adopt the perspective of the high-ranking individual, in this case a dormitory resident assistant, and to check on the students under their care. The other half were told to adopt the perspective of a student (low-ranking) and to check on possible violations by the dormitory resident assistant. The results showed a compelling link between status and social reasoning: 65 percent looked for potential rule violations when they were checking on people lower in status than themselves, whereas only 20 percent looked for potential rule violations when they were checking on people of equal status or higher status than themselves.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Cummins marshals several forms of evidence to support the dominance theory. The first pertains to the early emergence in a child’s life of reasoning about rights and obligations, called deontic reasoning. Deontic reasoning is reasoning about what a person is permitted, obligated, or forbidden to do (e.g., Am I old enough to be allowed to drink alcoholic beverages?). This form of reasoning contrasts with indicative reasoning, which is reasoning about what is true or false (e.g., Is there really a tiger hiding behind that tree?). A number of studies find that when humans reason about deontic rules, they spontaneously adopt a strategy of seeking rule violators. For example, when evaluating the deontic rule “all those who drink alcohol must be twenty-one years old or older,” people spontaneously look for others with alcoholic drinks in their hands who might be underage. In marked contrast, when people evaluate indicative rules, they spontaneously look for confirming instances of the rule. For example, when evaluating the indicative rule “all polar bears have white fur,” people spontaneously look for instances of white-furred polar bears rather than instances of bears that might not have white fur. In short, people adopt two different reasoning strategies, depending on whether they are evaluating a deontic or an indicative rule. For deontic rules, people seek out rule violations; for indicative rules, people seek out instances that conform to the rule. These distinct forms of reasoning have been documented in children as young as 3, suggesting that reasoning emerges reliably early in life (Cummins, 1998). Perhaps not coincidentally, at age 3, children organize themselves into transitive dominance hierarchies. Moreover, young children also can reason about transitive dominance hierarchies earlier in life than they can reason transitively about other stimuli (Cummins, 1998).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“Genetic analyses have confirmed the effects of status, power, and position on reproductive outcomes. Blood samples from 16 populations from around the former Mongolian empire revealed that 8 percent of the men bore a chromosomal “signature” characteristic of the Mongol rulers (Zerjal et al., 2003). The most prominent ruler, Genghis Khan, established large territories for his sons who had many wives and large harems. An astonishing 16 million men in that region are likely descendants of the ruler Genghis Khan, warranting the label “Genghis Khan effect.” Similar genetic results have been discovered in Ireland, where roughly one out of every five males in northwestern Ireland is likely to be a descendant of a single ruler (Moore, McEvoy, Cape, Simms, & Bradley, 2006).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“A major source of conflict is that men sometimes infer sexual interest on the part of a woman when it does not exist. A series of experiments has documented this phenomenon (Abbey, 1982; Lindgren, George, & Shoda, 2007). In one study, 98 male and 102 female college students viewed a 10-minute videotape of a conversation in which a female student visits a male professor’s office to ask for more time to complete a term paper. The actors in the film were a female drama student and a professor in the theater department. Neither the student nor the professor acted flirtatious or overtly sexual, although both were instructed to behave in a friendly manner. People who witnessed the tape then rated the likely intentions of the woman using a seven-point scale. Women watching the interaction were more likely to say that she was trying to be friendly, with an average rating of 6.45, and not sexy (2.00) or seductive (1.89). Men, also perceiving friendliness (6.09), were significantly more likely than women to infer seductive (3.38) and sexual intentions (3.84). A speed-dating laboratory procedure had men rate women’s sexual interest in them a er a brief interaction and compared those ratings to women’s self-reported sexual interest in each of the men (Perilloux et al., 2012). Again, men exhibited a sexual misperception bias, perceiving women as significantly more interested in them than women actually were. Men high in self-perceived attractiveness and female-evaluated mate value are especially vulnerable to the sexual over-perception bias (Kohl & Robertson, 2014; Perilloux et al., 2012). And men who pursue a short-term mating strategy are also more prone to the sexual over-perception bias (Perilloux et al., 2012), likely because this bias facilitates more frequent attempts to initiate sexual overtures.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“It might seem that women rarely inflict violent aggression against men. In reports of spousal abuse, such as slapping, spitting, hitting, and calling nasty names, however, the percentages of male and female victims often are roughly the same (e.g., Buss, 1989b; Dobash, Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 1992).”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

“First, killers and victims often share similar characteristics, such as being unemployed and unmarried. In a study of Detroit homicides in 1982, for example, although only 11 percent of the adult men in Detroit were unemployed that year, 43 percent of the victims and 41 percent of the perpetrators were unemployed (Wilson & Daly, 1985). The same study revealed that 73 percent of the male perpetrators and 69 percent of the male victims were unmarried, contrasted with only 43 percent of the same-age men in the Detroit area. Thus, lacking resources and being unable to attract a long-term mate appear to be contexts linked with male–male homicides.”
― David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind