The Evolution of Desire
2010-10-19
I finished David Buss' The Evolution of Desire a while back, but I have been to lazy to post thoughts. It's a more scientific look at human mating strategies and their evolutionary/adaptive roots - a The Game backed by evidence, if you will. I will only share two quotes here.
The first one is amusing:
Feigning homosexuality so as not to incur the suspicion of the dominant man and then attempting to have sex with the woman when the dominant man is not around is a rare tactic among humans. Nonetheless, it is interesting that a few college men reported having observed this strategy.
Really? People pretend to be gay to get girls? And it works? Interesting.
The second one is also amusing (emphasis mine):
[The researchers] asked college women how upset they would feel if a man they did not know, whose occupational status varied from low to high, persisted in asking them out on a date despite repeated refusals, in a relatively modest form of harassment. On a 7-point scale, women would be most upset by advances for construction workers (4.04), garbage collectors (4.32), cleaning men (4.19), and gas station attendants (4.13), and least upset by persistent advances by premedical students (2.65), graduate students (2.80), or successful rock stars (2.71)... The same acts of harassment from men who different in status are not equally upsetting.
Score!