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Flashcards by DauntlessAlpha, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by DauntlessAlpha
over 10 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is sexual selection? | Sexual selection is a process whereby individuals with a trait that increase reproductive success tend to survive and pass on these traits to their offspring. These advantageous traits will eventually be more exaggerated over evolutionary time as they are repeatedly selected |
| Why are these of interest to evolutionary psychologist? | Mate preferences are of interest to evolutionary psychologists as they demonstrate what sort of characteristics were preferred by previous ancestors and also demonstrate the current direction of sexual selection by letting us know the most desirable characteristics.However, despite the importance of mate preferences, little is known about which characteristics are valued by human males and females but there are 3 possible arguments that predict particular sex differences in mate preferences |
| How does Trivers (1972) explain "parental investment" to be a cause of desirable characteristics? | Triver (1972) stated desirable characteristics are affected by "parental investment" (how much time, effort, resources, risks etc that the parent contributes to the development of their offspring). |
| Who invests more in mammals and therefore what does this lead to in terms of "choosiness"? | In mammals, males make less investment because the female carries the baby - this greater investment means that females are likely to be more choosy when selecting a partner. They want one who can provide resources (such as food, shelter, territory and protection) that will enhance reproductive success. In modern times these resources can be translated to earnings, ambitions and industriousness |
| How does Symons (1979) explain "Reproductive Value" to be a cause of mate preferences? | Symons (1979) stated mate preferences were due to Reproductive Value. Females have greater limitations on fertility as it's affected by age therefore, pressure on males to identify a potentially fertile female is attached to external indicators about female's age/health. Symons cites that a youthful physical appearance like smooth skin, good muscle tone, lustrous hair, full lips as well as behavioral indicators like high energy levels give cues to this female's age and reproductive capacity. |
| What does William (1975) attribute attractiveness of Youth to? | Williams (1975) suggests youth is attractive but this is due to peak fertility rate rather than reproductive potential implying a 23 yr old female is more attractive due to peak fertility rate than a 13 yr old female with reproductive value |
| What does Daley et al (1982) suggest about the "Paternal Probability Theory"? | Daley et al (1982) who proposed the "Paternal Probability Theory" suggests that sexual jealousy in males is used to guard mate from other mates as it increases paternal probability. Chastity is a desirable female characteristic as females know the offspring is theirs but males can never be sure. |
| What did Buss want to investigate about evolutionary explanations and how do these link to the 3 ideas above? | The aims were to investigate whether the 3 evolutionary explainations for sex differences in mate preferences in human males and females are found globally in different cultures with varying ecologies, locations, ethnic compositions, religions and political inclinations. |
| Why are cross cultural studies ideal for this investigation? | A cross-cultural study was to be conducted as it offers an opportunity for testing evolution based hypotheses because we would expect behaviors that are innate to be the same across all cultures |
| How many samples, countries, continents, islands did Buss analyse and how big was his final sample size? | Buss analysed 37 samples from 33 countries located in 6 continents and 5 islands with 10047 being the total no. of participants |
| How did the sample sizes range and what was common of all the samples? What was the mean sample size? | The sample sizes ranged from 55 in Iran to 1491 in the US and apart from Iran, all samples exceeded 100 participants and the mean sample size was 272 participants |
| How did the ages range? | The ages ranged from 16.96 in new zealand to 28.71 in west germany with the mean age being 23.05 yrs. |
| How did the sampling techniques range? | The sampling techniques also varied widely across countries: in Estonia, 1 sub-sample consisted of couples applying for a marriage licence, in Venezuela, the sample consisted of every 5th household in a series of neighbourhoods with varying socioeconomic class, in South Africa the Zulu sample consisted of a rural population some of which had questions read out loud to them, in West Germany samples were selected through newspaper ads and in New Zealand the sample consisted of high school students taken from 3 schools. |
| Who collected the data and what was ensured of the research collaborators? | Research data was collected by native residents in most cases and research collaborators were unaware of the hypotheses of the investigation |
| Buss used questionnaires with 2 to assess respondent's views on mating preferences. What did part 1,2 and 3 consist of in the 1st instrument? | First instrument consisted of part 1 being Biographical data (age, sex, marital status, no. of siblings), part 2 being Mate preferences (age at which respondents preferred to marry, preferred age difference between self and spouse, who to be older and how many children desired) and part 3 being a rating scale where participants had to rate 18 characteristics on a 4 point scale from 3 (indispensable) to 0 (unimportant). |
| What were the 4 target variables among the 18 characteristics? | Among the 18 characteristics were 4 target variables: good financial prospects; good looks; chastity and ambition/industriousness |
| What did the 2nd instrument consist of and what were the 2 target variables? | The second instrument was ranking where participants ranked 13 characteristics based on someone they might want to marry with rank 1 being most desirable and rank 13 being least desirable. Interspersed were 2 target variables: good earning capacity and physical attractiveness |
| What were the jobs of the 3 bilingual speakers that the research collaborators had the task of employing? | Research collaborators also had the task of employing 3 bilingual speaker: 1 of them translated from English to the native language, the 2nd translated answers back to English and the third resolved any discrepancies. |
| What did translators have to ensure about all the terms? | The translators had to ensure that all terms had to be sex neutral e.g physically attractive not handsome/beautiful. |
| How were cultural differences dealt with in the questionnaire? | Amendments were made to the questionnaire to relect cultural differences - e.g. in Sweden, many couples just live together and in Nigeria polygyny is practiced so questionnaires were adjusted to account for these differences |
| How were "good financial prospects" valued? | In 36/37 samples, females valued "good financial prospects" in a mate more highly than males did. |
| How did Spain differ? | The sole exception was Spain where there was a difference in the predicted direction but it was not significant |
| What do the overall findings about "good financial prospects" support? | Overall findings support the parental investment and sexual selection theory (Trivers 1972) and the hypothesis that women seek cues related to resources |
| How were "ambition and industriousness" valued? What does it support? | In 34/37 sample, females expressed a higher valuation for "ambition and industriousness" in a mate than males did. In 29 of these, these differences was significant at the 0.5 level (i.e a possibility that these results occurs by chance) providing moderate support for this hypothesized sex difference - this again supports the idea of women seeking cues related to resources |
| What was common among all males across all 37 samples? | In all 37 samples, males preferred mates who were younger and the mean age difference preferred by males was 2.66 yrs and the mean age at which males prefer to marry is 27.49 yrs therefore suggesting that the ideal marriage age for females is 24.83 which is closer to peak fertility that peak female reproductive value |
| What did males value more than females and what hypothesis did this support? | All samples of males also valued good looks more than females and this difference was significant at the 0.05 level in 34/37 of the samples. Males valued physical attractiveness and relative youth more than females did supporting the hypothesis that males seek cues related to high reproductive capacity |
| What finding falsified Symond's view? | The fact that males sought parners around the age of 25 suggests they look for cues related to fertility rather than reproductive value falsifying Symond's view that reproductive value was more important. |
| What suggests that non-evolutionary factors may also be involved? | The fact that the age preference was several years beyond peak fertility suggests that other non-evolutionary factors may also be involved, such as compatibility and maturity |
| What did females across all countries prefer? | Females preferred males who were older |
| What was the mean desirable age difference in men, preferred mean marriage age in women and therefore the ideal male age? What does this support? | The mean desirable age difference was 3.42yrs and the mean preferable marriage age for women is 25.39 years therefore the ideal male age is 28.81 yrs - this supports the importance of resources because older men are likely to have greater resources. |
| What was found in cultures where polygyny was substantial? (Nigeria and Zambia) | Male preference for being older was at its largest 6.45 and 7.38 respectively. This could be because males tend to be older when they acquire wives in polygamous systems compared monogamous mating systems |
| What were the findings for chastity? | In 23 (62%) of the samples, males preferred chastity in their males whereas the was no significance in the remaining 14 samples. China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel and Taiwan attached a high value to chastity in a potential mate. Chastity was viewed as "irrelevant/unimportant" in most of Western European samples. Males valued chastity more than females supporting the importance of the Paternal Probability (although only modestly as a large no. of samples showed no difference). These less impressive results could be because chastity is less directly observable |
| What did Buss conclude? | Buss concluded that his findings support evolutionary explanations of human behaviour; specifically that mating behaviour should differ according to gender, reflecting the the differences in the reproductive capacities of males and females. |
| What do his findings show about female choosiness and cultural influences? | Buss also concluded that these findings show that mate preferences are not simply about female choosiness - both males and females express preferences. There are also cultural influences in play as show for example, by the variability of chastity as a factor in male choice |
| What was the advantage of two questionnaires being used? | Buss used two questionnaires which produce lots of quantitative data (approximately 10000 were used) which is comparable and because two questionnaires were used answers can be compared to check for consistency which gives it split half reliability. |
| What is a disadvantage of closed questions in the questionnaire in Buss's study? | However closed questions (rank options preset by Buss) in a questionnaire means answers are preset by the researcher and so doesn’t let the participant elaborate on their responses so qualitative data can’t be gained. |
| What's a disadvantage of the self-report questionnaire employed by Buss in reference to his research? | the questionnaire was self-report which means participants could’ve lied due to the social desirability bias (may only give answers which are socially acceptable and may be too embarrassed to say what traits they value more than others) which decreases accuracy of findings and therefore lowering internal validity too. |
| How were demand characteristics controlled? | However, research collaborators were unaware of the aims of the study which means demand characteristics don’t affect results therefore increasing internal validity |
| How did control measures and translations increase internal validity? | . Internal validity is also increased by the control measures which were undertaken such as using terms in the questionnaire that were applicable to both sexes (e.g physically attractive) and translations were also used so they could be understood by people around the world. |
| Why does Buss's study have high population validity? | External validity is very high as there were 37 samples with over 10000 participants from 33 countries were used – this means results can be generalized to a variety of cultures which increases population validity |
| How was high mundane realism and therefor high ecological validity attained? | Validity checks were also carried out using demographic data from 27 out of the 33 countries to find similar marriage ages for the actual population which means it has mundane realism (as analysis of real-life data is consistent with research findings) and therefore a high ecological validity and reliability (due to consistency). |
| What is the advantage of both the self-selected and opportunity sample being used by Buss? | The opportunity sample and self-selected sample are a strength as it’s fair (opportunity sample is random) but also representative (self-selected sample ensures that luck/chance doesn’t affect the sample diversity). However some countries may have been under represented as equal proportions didn’t participate from each country – e.g Iran |
| How were ethical guidelines approached in Buss's research? | Ethics were considered very carefully by Buss as all participants were aware of the aims of the study and gave informed consent so there was no deception. No ethical guidelines were broken as confidentiality of participants was maintained through anonymous questionnaires which also saves participants from becoming embarrassed or distressed and increasing the likelihood of them giving honest answers as well. |
| What did Singh (1993) find about waist to hip ratio? | waist to hip ratio (WHR) related to attractiveness across many cultures men prefer women who had low WHR (0.7) which reflects fertility (child bearing hips, no bump = no pregnancy) and health |
| How do Singh's (1993) findings on WHR support Buss? | suggests that female indicators of fertility (WHR) attractive to males, refines research by suggesting it is not youthfulness per se that is attractive to men but indicators of fertility |
| What were the findings of Dunbar's (1995) from gay personnel ads? | looked at gay personal ads and found heterosexual women were 3 times more likely to seek resources and states than lesbians and gay men offered resources about half as often as heterosexual men |
| How does Dunbar's (1995) exp address the limitations of Buss's research and develop it? | provides evidence for a limitation of Buss’s study (focused exclusively on heterosexual relationships) and it supports the evolutionary explanation because we wouldn’t expect lesbian and gay mate choice to be related to reproductive criteria – it provides an explanation of why homosexuals deviate from qualities favored by sexual selection |
| What were Berezckei el al's (1997) findings about female mate preferences? | found that females in recent times placed greater desirability for men who are family orientated as well as financially secure |
| How do Berezckei el al's (1997) findings develop Buss's research? | Suggests good financial prospects aren't necessarily all the females are looking for as they have economic security themselves in this time period but their general desire for resources ensures survival of offspring. A “caring and sharing” partner makes evolutionary sense over just one with resources as this kind of partner should increase reproductive success. |
| What were Grammer and Thornhill's (1994) findings about female attraction towards males? | found females are still attracted to males specifically those with masculine facial characteristics such as large jaw and prominent cheek bones |
| How do Grammer and Thornhill's (1994) findings contradict Buss's findings? | Contradicts Buss' assumption that females have a predisposition to place less importance on physical attractiveness and relative youth. Also contradicts the idea that they are completely resource oriented as a younger male who may not be financially sound is likely to have the above features. |
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