The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating - Hardcover

Buss, David M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465077501 ISBN 13: 9780465077502

Publisher: Basic Books, 1994

Synopsis

How we choose—and lose—our mates has always been a source of fascination. This controversial book is the first to present a unified theory of human mating behavior. The Evolution of Desire is based on the most massive study of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 peoples of all ages from thirty-seven cultures worldwide. If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question, we must look into our evolutionary past, according to David M. Buss. For in attracting, keeping, and even breaking up with our mates, we are closer to our ancestral forebears than many of us think.

About this title

About the Author

David M. Buss is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Reviews

In the pursuit of a mate, women prefer men who possess money, resources, power and high social status, while men tend to seek attractive, youthful women who will remain sexually faithful. This finding emerged from a global survey by Buss and colleagues of 10,047 persons in 37 cultures, from Australia to Zambia. Women and men are often at cross-purposes in mate selection, sexual relations and affairs. In a provocative study, Buss, a University of Michigan psychology professor, attributes these differences to ingrained psychological mechanisms which he argues are universal across cultures and rooted in each gender's adaptive responses over millennia of human evolution. One area, however, where Buss finds common ground between men and women is in their ruthless use of deception, sexual display and denigration of rivals in the pursuit of a partner.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In a study involving over 10,000 people from 37 cultures, Buss (Psychology/Univ. of Michigan) uses evolutionary theory to explain the psychological mechanisms behind how and why people choose, keep, and discard their mates. Mating, according to Buss, is not a sentimental or humane activity: it is, rather, as competitive, conflictual, and manipulative on the human level as it is among the insects. To provide for themselves and their offspring, women seek 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, beautiful, and fertile women who will give them heirs and status. At the same time they retain a primitive ability for casual sex as well--a sexual mechanism that is less selective and can be satisfied in more primitive ways such as fantasy, homosexuality, and incest. The capacity for multiple partners, casual sex, jealousy (a series of protective responses), and divorce are all adaptive mechanisms to help people--though mostly men--achieve their reproductive potential. Detailed analysis of various forms of mating rituals considered in large anthropological and biological contexts explain adaptive techniques for attracting and keeping mates and what happens when they get out of hand, ancestral instincts becoming destructive (abuse and rape). Scientifically rigorous, the study, on a human level, is abstract and statistical (75 societies reported infertility as a cause of conjugal dissolution); the detail is found on the animal level, as in a lurid scene of mating between scorpion flies. However incomplete sociobiology and evolutionary psychology may be in explaining human relationships, they clearly affirm the value of raising the instinctual to the level of consciousness and the miracle, as Buss eloquently concludes, of modern marriage as a ``crowning achievement of humankind.'' -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Evolutionary psychology--or, in the vernacular, "instinct"--rules the dating and mating game, and this scientist's discoveries are bound to clash with theories of patriarchy that purport to account for male dominance of wealth. Buss' synthesis of many studies conforms with popular wisdom: Women want an older man with actual or potential means; men want an attractive, younger woman; and men have a much greater proclivity for promiscuity than do women. Why? The reasons reside in vestigial "cues" that favored reproduction in the pre-agricultural epoch of human development. Then, when a poor decision in mate selection imposed devastating material costs on the female, a dialectic of attraction strategies developed so that a desirable mate could be gained, held, and defended against interlopers. The ancestral origin, Buss explains, is apparent in courting techniques (such as his researchers recorded in singles bars) or in the emotion of jealousy, the actuator in alerting and defeating rivals. Libraries may be overrun by anecdotal accounts of sex, even the good ones like Sex: An Oral History by Harry Maurer . But Buss steps back from the mechanics and emotions of the matter and insightfully complements the multitude. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465077501
• ISBN 13: 9780465077502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272