mating intelligence

so i'm half way through this book mating intelligent-sex relationships, and the mind's reproductive system, a collection of reviewish articles on the emerging concept of mating intelligence, meant to be used as a psychology text book on human mating behaviour, especially the decision making process involved. i have never read a psychology book before, so this is was particularly interesting for me. (also because of my inherent interest in mating and sexual behaviuor in general, but you already knew that.)

the editors glenn geher and geoffrey miller want to bring home the point that intelligence in mating, as in optimisation of mating related decisions, should really be studied as an intelligence that stands on its own right alongside general intelligence and emotional intelligence¹. this book looks at two things. first how intelligence affects the decisions people make in mating. second how sexual selection of intelligence happens. so far i'm still reading about the cognitive ability of handling mating, i.e. the former.

whether or not we agree that mating intelligence could be coined as a novel concept, a few things were quite interesting to know (in addition to the obvious, that men prefer young and attractive women, and women prefer rich and powerful men):


1) a big portion of several articles talk about the relationship between mate choice and mate tactic for long and or short term matings. penke et al especially interestingly discussed the role of self assessment in mating tactics, the so called mate value sociometer². turns out, males are more affected by mate value sociometer, i.e they are more sensitive to their own mating value. the logic goes as follows: females are always choosy, because they are the limiting factor in this whole mating thing. because of the risk of pregnancy, females prefer long term mating to short term mating, and because of the higher risk involved in short term mating, they might have even higher condition preference for short term mating. males when given the opportunity will like to do variety short term matings. but because of the selectivity females have for short term mating partners, trying to engage a female for short term mating becomes a socially risky behaviour due to costly rejections. so only very few males with very high mating values should attempt it and the others will form avoidance behaviour. it is here where the ability to judge his own mating value and behaving adaptively becomes extremely important for males, but not females.

2) norman p. li brought up a point (a very side point): testosterone impairs the immune system, which if compromised in development results in a lack of bilateral facial symmetry, therefore women look for men who exhibit both masculinity and facial symmetry, indicating the presence of exceptional genes despite the presence of large amounts of testosterone³. i searched for primary literature, only to find roden et al (2004)⁴ reporting in increase in t cell activity with removal of androgen by castration in male mice. didn't find anything more significant. nevertheless it's an interesting thing to think about.

3) another interesting thing norm li talked about (i think this is more of the main point of the article) is that although physical attractiveness in females and status in males are the primary attractive traits to the opposite sex, they both exhibit typical diminishing-marginal-return pattern from an economics point of view, i.e. "going from below average to average increases acceptability more than going from average to above average did", and these are the only traits that exhibit such patterns, among many other desirable traits. the thing is that each sex sizes up one of these two traits in the opposite sex first, then they consider other factors. when the mating budget given to one is low (such as low mating value of oneself) then one is likely to put high priority on physical attractiveness in a female or status in a male. but when budge is high, one adaptively puts higher priorities on other traits. in this way physical attractiveness and status are used in mate selection much like gre scores in grad school admissions. high scores don't help as much as low scores hurt.

4) the article written by maureen o'sullivan on deception describes roles of deception in long term and short term mating. she descries romantic love as not only a cognitive construct but a form of self-deception to keep a long term pair bond going⁵. i quote:
"for example, murray and her colleagues (murray, holmes, bellavia, griffin & dolderman, 2002) demonstrated that people in enduring relationships saw their partners as more similar to themselves than they actually were. they termed this mismatch "egocentrism'. another name for it might be self-deception, believing that ones partner is a soul mate allows one to feel understood, which leads to satisfaction in the relationship which leads to its continuation."
it's refreshing to hear it from a theoretical point of view, although i have long suspected so about the make-believe nature of the construct of soul mates. o'sullivan also talks about the willingness of the lied to partner to believe in the lies, quoting geoffrey miller (2006, personal communication)⁶ "there may be an adaptive binary switchh from total trust to totaly mistrust, with no finess paoff for being in an in-between-state of semi-trust" between partners.

5) possibly altruism evolved in the same way other useless things did, such as artistic ability and sense of humor, designed as traits to attract mates, much like the ostensibly invested in but not practical in any sense peacock's tail. ?

that's it so far.

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works cited

1. geher, miller and murphy. mating intelligence: toward an evolutionarily informed construct. 2008.

2. penke, todd, lenton and fasolo. how self-assessment can guide human mating decisions. 2008.

3. li. intelligent priorities: adaptive long- and short-term mating preferences. 2008.

4. roden et. al. augmentation of t cell levels and responses induced by androgen deprivation. 2004.

5. o'sullivan. deception and self-deception as strategies in short and long-term
mating. 2008.

6. miller. personal communications. 2006.