harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (05/14/88)
The following are the abstracts of two target articles to appear in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS). All BBS articles are accompanied by "open peer commentary" from across disciplines and around the world. To recommend commentators for this article, or for information about qualifications for serving as a commentator, send email to: harnad@mind.princeton.edu or write to BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542 [tel: 609-921-7771]. Specialists in the following areas are encouraged to contribute: psychology, anthropology, sociology, sociobiology, reproductive biology, primatology, endocrinology, neurobiology, population genetics, cross-cultural psychology, philosophy of biology, game theory, economics, history, political science. Please indicate in your reply which article you are referring to: I. Buss/Mate-Preferences II. Caporael et al/Selfishness ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences: Evolutionary Hypotheses Tested in 37 Countries David Buss Psychology Department Unversity of Michigan EMAIL: david_buss@um.cc.umich.edu Contemporary mate preferences among humans can provide important clues to the reproductive history of our species. Little is known about which characteristics people value in prospective mates. Five predictions were made about sex differences in human mate preferences based on factors such as parental investment and sexual selection, knowledge about reproductive capacity, and the uncertainty of paternity versus maternity. The predictions concerned how each sex values earning capacity, ambition-industriousness, youth, physical attractiveness, and chastity. These were tested in questionnaires given to 37 independent samples drawn from 33 countries located on six continents and five islands. For a subset it was also possible to compare some of the questionnaire performance with actual demographic statistics. Females were found to value cues about resource acquisition in potential mates more highly than males, whereas cues about reproductive capacity are valued more by males. These cross-cultural sex differences may reflect different evolutionary selection pressures on human males and females; they are among the most robust cross-cultural evidence of contemporary sex differences in reproductive strategy. The discussion focusses on proximate mechanisms underlying mate preferences and consequences for human intrasexual competition as well as the methodological limitations of this study. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- II. Selfishness Examined: Cooperation in the Absence of Egoistic Incentives Linnda R. Caporael Dept. of Science and Technology Studies Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Robyn M. Dawes Department of Decision and Social Sciences Carnegie-Mellon University John M. Orbell Department of Political Science University of Oregon Alphons J. C. van de Kragt Department of Public Policy University of Manitoba Social Dilemmas result when the individual pursuit of self-interest leads to suboptimal collective outcomes. "Economic man" and "selfish gene" theories predict that such dilemmas are unsolvable without appeals to egoistic incentives. The prediction was NOT supported in a series of noniterative, single-choice, public-good-provision games. These experimental results are consistent with the evolutionary social cognitivist position that cognitive/affective mechanisms underlying human behavior were shaped in the evolutionary past by selective pressures within small groups, and that these mechanisms are extended to new problem-solving domains. --------------------------------------------------------------- -- Stevan Harnad ARPANET: harnad@mind.princeton.edu or harnad%princeton.mind.edu@princeton.edu UUCP: princeton!mind!harnad CSNET: harnad%mind.princeton.edu@relay.cs.net BITNET: harnad%mind.princeton.edu@pucc.bitnet