PSYCO104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Sexual Coercion, Sexual Selection, Sperm Competition

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO104
• Professor: Geoff Hollis

Document Summary

Within a given species, there tends to be one gender that invests more resources in nurturing offspring than the other. Differential investment in offspring creates situations where optimal mating behavior for females and males is different. The gender that invests the most in offspring would benefit from being most conservative about sexual partners. i. e. , females benefit more from having choice , males benefit more from having. In most species, it is the female that invests the most resources into offspring. As such, we should expect females to benefit most from being choosy over sexual partners. Note, this is not something specifically about gender. However, we will describe it in terms of gender as a convenient shorthand. Forced copulation is a behavioral strategy that benefits male opportunities at choice. the expense of female choice. In situations where forced copulation is prevalent, we might expect selection for female adaptations that preserve.