"EVOLUTION OF DESIRE, THE." (DAVID BUSS).   Term Paper ID:28783 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analysis of book of study on the psychological mechanisms of why & how people choose, keep & disregard their mates. Author's use of evolutionary theory.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analysis of book of study on the psychological mechanisms of why & how people choose, keep & disregard their mates. Author's use of evolutionary theory. Paper Introduction: Introduction In The Evolution of Desire, (BasicBooks, 1994), David Buss presents us with the results of a study involving over 10,000 people from 37 cultures and uses evolutionary theory to explain the psychological mechanisms behind how and why people choose, keep, and discard their mates. The result is a mixture of common sense and science, although certainly other perspectives could be invoked to explain his findings. Mating, according to Buss, is not a sentimental activity: it is, rather, as competitive and manipulative on the human level as it is among the insects. To provide for themselves and their offspring, women seek good providers -– men with money, power, maturity, ambition, stability, commitment, health, and cooperative natures. Men, for similar reasons, invest their time, resources, and sperm in young Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Buss's argument is essentially, fundamentally agendered one, as it must be, given the mechanics of human biology andreproduction. However, as is trueof most sociobiological research, Buss tends to ignore or minimize thoseareas of human behavior that his theory cannot easily explain. Brehm's perspective on the conflicts that occur in intimaterelationships, and especially those conflicts severe enough to causedissolution of the relationship, is again more broad-based than Buss's andfocuses on a wide-range of experiences and goals that the people involvedhave. It would also seem to contradict Buss's evolutionarymodel, in which having two parents around to help raise children should bea behavioral pattern that is selected for. Most of us must settle for someone who has less than the full complement of desirable characteristics. It is noteworthy that Brehm's description of attractiveness is gender-neutral, or at least potentially so. Because ancestral men desired youth and health in potential mates, women have revolved motivation to appear young and beautiful (p. That mechanism is sexual jealousy (p. 218). Brehm defines jealousy as "the emotional reaction to a perceivedthreat to an existing relationship" (p. 294). Humans have evolved their own special strategies for mate keeping. Buss gives us detailed analysis of various forms of mating ritualsconsidered in broad anthropological and biological contexts to explainadaptive techniques for attracting and keeping mates and what happens whenthey get out of hand, such as when ancestral instincts becoming destructive(in the cases of abuse and rape). 69).The idea that men choose beauty while women choose other attributes may infact be merely a part of the way people are socialized and the biases aboutthemselves that they accept from their culture rather than a reflection ofimmutable biological forces. Basics Books,1994.Brehm, Sharon. Success hinges on providing signals that you will deliver the benefits desired by a member of the opposite sex. Brehm,like Buss, notes that the desire for a relationship of sexual exclusivitywith one's partner is quite often a very large element of jealousy,although she ties this to culture more than gender. To provide for themselves and their offspring, women seek goodproviders -- men with money, power, maturity, ambition, stability,commitment, health, and cooperative natures. 68) at least in one study "women were actually influenced atleast as much as men by their partner's physical attractiveness (p. 218). People are more likely toblame their partners for negative events the longer they have been together(p. When a person showers us with attention and encouragement, we enjoy these rewarding behaviors. If it is not and they expend time in raising it, not only are theytaking away time from their own (biological) offspring and thus limitingtheir own genetic success, but they are also contributing to the geneticsuccess of a rival. Brehm, like Buss, also finds that while both men and women experiencesexual jealousy, they do so in different ways and for different reasons,with men tending to react "in an active, angry, competitive way" and womentending to "exhibit dependency and self-punishing reactions" (p. Under evolutionary theory, this isbecause the two sexes have different reproductive biologies and roles. People in a relationship come into conflict, Brehm, argues, for manyreasons, but the four most important of these are their gender, theduration of their relationship, the presence or absence of children and thestrains creating by competing demands from work and family (p. Intimate Relationships. Gender clearly affects the kinds and degree of conflict, with women'sin general being more sensitive to conflict within a relationship and moreunlikely to be unhappy with it. Thelonger people know each other before they marry, the longer they are likelyto remain married. Men, for similar reasons,invest their time, resources, and sperm in young, beautiful, and fertilewomen who will give them heirs and status. However, the picture is not entirely a rosy one, foroften people grow farther apart, in many cases because each of them changesover the course of the years spent together. One of the most important is continuing to fulfill the desires of one's mate - the desires that led to the mate selection to begin with. Buss's explanation of the fundamental conflicts that occur when peopletry to find mates relies both on sociobiological concepts as well as basicprinciples of supply and demand in economics: "An unpleasant fact of humanmating is that desirable partners are always outnumbered by those whodesire them" (p. 66-7). Introduction In The Evolution of Desire, (BasicBooks, 1994), David Buss presents uswith the results of a study involving over 1 , people from 37 culturesand uses evolutionary theory to explain the psychological mechanisms behindhow and why people choose, keep, and discard their mates. The more of these rewards that a person provides for us, the more we should be attracted to that individual (p. When a person is witty and intelligent, we take pleasure in these rewarding characteristics. Thescience in these books builds a platform for rather conventional (if oftentrue) ideas. Brehm's perspective focuses much less directly onreproduction and more on the entire complex span of human relationships,and so her explanatory framework is both broader and less gender specific. 265), giving us the kind of broad-based, gender-neutral definition that she uses throughout the book. It is no doubt true that there arewithin any given culture differences along gender lines over what kind ofattention is appropriate and welcome, for example, but an essential part ofBrehm's argument is that both men and women (and gay and straight people)both want attention. At the same time they retain aprimitive ability for casual sex as well -- a sexual mechanism that is lessselective and can be satisfied in more primitive ways such as fantasy,homosexuality, and incest. It is also true that having children enter into a family tends toincrease the degree of conflict, with more children producing more conflict(as well as, and not coincidentally more work). WhileBuss is clearly interested in convincing us that his evolutionarypsychology perspective is the correct one, Brehm seems more interested inproffering a variety of points of view and allowing us to decide whichperspective best helps explain the world to us. However, in the end I find Brehm's more culturally sensitive andculturally-centered analyses more convincing. While other arenas of humanbehavior (such as the creation of art, for example, or the way people plantornamental gardens) may be relatively sheltered from the effects ofevolutionary pressures by "culture" (that great force conveniently set upin debates in opposition to biology, although in fact of course the two arelinked in complex and iterative ways), the choice of a mate should begoverned by evolutionary pressures. Brehm points out that thesefindings contradict "many cherished beliefs about home and family" as wellas "the expectations of most couples who are thinking about havingchildren" (p. Selecting a mate is the area of human behavior (andthis of course applies to all species) in which evolutionary pressuresshould be most evident, as it is in the selection of a mate that the chancefor the "right" genes to get together occurs. 97). These stark facts create competition and conflict within each sex that can be avoided only by opting out of the mating game entirely (p. The result is amixture of common sense and science, although certainly other perspectivescould be invoked to explain his findings. Ancestral humans needed a psychological mechanism specifically designed to alert them to potential threats from the outside, a mechanism that would regulate when to swing into action in deploying mate- guarding strategies. Of course, he would argue that culture doesn't matter since he'slooking at bedrock biology, at what we bring into the world before webecome cultured beings. Sexual jealousy maywell be "essentially a cultural phenomenon, only occurring in societiesthat connect a sense of pride to the exclusivity of a sexual relationship"(p. She also notes that while men "are much more likely than women toemphasize their interest in having a physically attractive romanticpartner" (p. 295). For example, in terms of attracting a mate, Buss provides thisexplanation: Knowing what you desire in a mate provides non guarantee that you will succeed in getting what you want. 279).Women tend to feel jealous when they are afraid that they will not be ableto enter another equally rewarding relationship, Brehm writes, while mentend to become jealous when their own self-esteem is tightly linked totheir partner's judgements about them (p. 3 ). The combined qualities of kindness, intelligence, dependability, athleticism, looks, and economic prospects occur in the same person only rarely. While scientifically rigorous, the study,on ahuman level, often seems overly abstract and buried in statistical (75societies reported infertility as a cause of conjugal dissolution); themost compelling details are found in the descriptions of non-human animals,as in a lurid but admittedly fascinating scene of mating between scorpionflies. However, as Brehm notes, thesecond shift of work that women have, in which they are responsible fordomestic labor as well as earning an income, is made unbearable for manywhen the care of children is added to their already full plates. 6 ). This is certainly Buss's perspective,and he certainly has some hard evidence to support it. Buss's work is based on traditional sociobiological and evolutionarypsychology lines, which means that he seeks to create a model forunderstanding the psychological framework and motivations for humanbehavior (in this case in the area of mating and love) that is based onDarwinian principles. But merely fulfilling there desires may not be enough if rivals are attempting the same thing. Still, it does a good job of making its case and laying thingsout clearly without pushing the idea too much farther than the data allow,though in some cases the lack of intelligent extrapolation is frustrating.Written at a level to be both readable by the neophyte in this area whilealso being informative to someone who's familiar with the topic, the bookwill be a disappointment to those who want to believe in the"essential mystery" of love and attraction rather than hearing that it'sall just biology. 296). The Evolution of Desire. McGraw-Hill, 1992. Being attracted to someone else involves a variety of factors, Brehmsuggests, perhaps the most important being that we like being with people"whose presence is rewarding to us" (p. 6 ). Just as conflict between members of the same sex occurs because eachindividual (according to Buss) is competing with all other individuals ofthat sex for the very limited number of people who would make idealpartners, it is also true that this kind of competition creates conflictwithin relationships as each individual is always constantly at least inpart on the lookout for a different partner who comes closer to the idealthan the partner one already has. As inother areas, there is some overlap in her findings and those of Buss (whichshould not be surprising given that they are both dealing with the same setof behaviors, even if from a different theoretical perspective). Brehm does not negate the importance of physical attractiveness in herdiscussion of interpersonal attraction, suggesting a number of reasons whywe seek out mates who are beautiful: Among these reasons the idea (or fact)that physically attractive people are more socially skilled (no doubt fromhaving been received well by other people when they were growing up and sohaving to come to expect that the world is full of people who will welcomethem and like them) and the pressure to conform to stereotypical sex roles(pp. This is a beautifully parsimonious explanation of Buss's overallevolutionary view on the dynamics of human relationships. Finally, there are differences in Buss's and Brehm's perspective onthe meaning and importance of jealousy. Mating, according to Buss, is not a sentimental activity: it is,rather, as competitive and manipulative on the human level as it is amongthe insects. Not the Only Game in Town While Buss's research provides one perspective (and a great deal ofdata) from which to try to understand human behavior, Sharon Brehm inIntimate Relationships (McGraw-Hill, 1992) offers a different perspective.In fact, her book offer a variety of perspectives, being intended as abroad introduction to a number of issues about human relationships. Because the mating needs of men and women are different, Buss argues,they tend to become jealous over different things. 125). 279) Conclusion Overall, Buss's book mostly lends scientific credence to what everyonealready knows (or thinks that they know): men and women generally pursuedifferent reproductive strategies. Men are more jealous ofany physical relationships that their female partners may have, where womenare more likely than men to be jealous over anything that takes time awayfrom the relationship, including work or friendships (even those of aclearly platonic nature). The capacity for multiple partners, casual sex,jealousy (a series of protective responses), and divorce are all adaptivemechanisms to help people -- though mostly men -- achieve theirreproductive potential. ReferencesBuss, David. But culture to -- or at least the capacity for it -- is as hardwired in our genes as our desire to reproduce, and must beacknowledged in greater depth than Buss has done. Because ancestral women desired high status in men, for example, men have evolved motivation for acquiring and displaying status. The duration of a relationship is also very important in predictinghow long it will last, and in many cases duration breeds duration. Brehm does notdirectly contradict Buss's research, but she does suggest that the pictureis a more complicated one that he describes. Buss argues that men are jealous ofwomen in large part because they have had (until DNA testing) no way todetermine if a child borne by their mate is genetically related to them ornot. And when a person is able to give us access to desired external rewards such as money or status, we are pleased with the opportunities presented. Buss offers few goodexplanations for homosexuality and declining birthrates in the First World(to pick two obvious examples) to be a fully sound theory in evolutionaryterms and his refusal to acknowledge wide cultural differences in sexualmore and reproductive patterns reduces substantially the credibility of hiswork. 271). Perhaps as a result of this, women are morelikely than are men to seek the end of a relationship (p. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.