PSYCH 3AC3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Ovulation, David Buss, Virginity
Thursday 9th February 2017
Lecture 14
Marriage
• If you don’t have special claim on her she can have sex with anyone else.
• If you can detect ovulation and marry her, then you know she is yours.
• Marriage is a public joining.
• It says to everyone that this person is my exclusive property.
• It says you cannot interfere these people will be working towards each other’s
reproductive success.
• People have been killed for violating the sanctity of marriage.
• It is a serious thing to violate.
• It is a very significant signal to everyone.
• It is a signal of commitment.
• If you are married to someone you can guard them a lot more easily.
• If she is ovulating, you can be the one watching her.
• This guarding is a lot easier when you are married.
• You may also be able to sense when they are being unfaithful.
• You know their patterns, you know their smell and their behavior, if something is up you
know.
• Marriage has this benefit as well.
• You also have consistent sexual access; you are more likely to be able to have sex with
them when they are ovulating.
• If you are selecting someone as a long term mate, you are saying I am willing to dedicate
all of my resources energy and financially in you and your offspring.
• You have decided that you will maximally invest in the children.
• If you choose a long-term mate who will have children with someone else you are
screwed.
• So you have to make good decision, you have to be choosy if you are a male and getting
ready to settle.
• You need to be investing in your offspring.
Sexual unfaithfulness
• Major problem when it comes to long term mating.
• One of the things you should do is try to gage the likelihood that they will be sexually
unfaithful versus unfaithful.
• Sexual faithfulness is extremely important to me.
• Buss did a study on the importance of sexual fidelity.
• For men sexual fidelity is the most important of the characteristics.
• Sexual faithfulness and loyalty is the most important.
• The least desirable trait is sexual unfaithfulness.
• If you think about cultural images, tones of our cultural images are about sexual
faithfulness.
• Men have a fear of being sexually cheated on.
Solutions
• One has to do with selecting for character.
• Before you marry them you select character trait that think will boost her fidelity.
• There are also emotional and behavioral things you can do to endure faithfulness.
Character
• Historically there has been a preference for premarital chastity.
• This is because if she wasn’t she may come into the marriage pregnant.
• People also thinks it signals something about her whole approach to sex.
• It is a stable trait.
• She is a virgin; she will not sleep around with other men.
• This may not be that great a cue.
• On the other hand, it is a great cue that she is not already pregnant.
• There is a preference which varies across time and culture.
• In the 30’s this was the 10th most valued quality, it then fell to 17th.
• Over 60 years it went from relatively important to not important.
• Buss’s data showed cross cultural levels.
• There are all sorts of extremes, some cultures think it is important and some think it is
not important.
• Places like Sweden, believe that virginity is largely irrelevant.
• We have found differences in the important of chastity in 62% of cultures studied.
• We don’t find gender difference but men prefer it a little more.
• In Sweden they have this nice socialist democracy where the government really takes
care of offspring.
• They have this system where the government is the investing parent.
• The value of a husband has gone down.
• Women can do what they want, they do not need to worry about resources.
• Now men have to take what they can get, what they can’t get is a virgin.
• This makes sense if you don’t need an investing male.
• This is the country where you see a preference for attractiveness over resources.
• There is a lot of variability in this preference.
• Maybe this is not a great cue, maybe there is a better cue.
Promiscuity
• Virginity tells you whether she is already pregnant, maybe it is a stable trait pre
martially.
Document Summary
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