PSYCH 1F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Maternal Sensitivity, Mate Choice, Paternal Care
22 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Evolutionary adaptation should act to increase the number of offspring an individual has, or to increase the quality of offspring so that they are more likely to survive and to reproduce themselves. A high quality mate can increase your reproductive success by being fertile or by providing good genes or parental care to your offspring. Humans spend a lot of time in courtship. Adaptive strategy: in evolutionary terms, it would be a good strategy for individuals to be extremely sensitive to cues of fertility before initiating courtship. Detecting cues of fertility in potential mates seems to be more important for men than for women. Female fertility drops off faster than fertilizing of males. Producing a baby is more physically demanding for females than males. Men tend to find young and healthy women to be attractive. Physical traits, such as clear smooth skin, shiny, non-graying hair, toned muscles. Specific distribution of body fat: waist to hip ratio.
