TH EDITION
EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCHOLOGY,
5
Chapter x
David Buss
Chapter 11
Conflict Between the Sexes
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Sexual Conflict
• Sexual conflict
– “a conflict between the evolutionary interests
of individuals of the two sexes” (Parker, 2006,
p. 235)
– “Evolutionary interests” =“genetic interests”
• When the genetic interests of a male and
a female diverge, sexual conflict can
ensue
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Sexual Conflict
• Examples of sexual conflict:
– Vladimir wants to have sex at the end of the
first date, whereas his date, Mashenka,
prefers to wait (conflict about sexual access)
– Silvio gets Maria drunk and forces her to have
sex while she is incapacitated (male rape that
conflicts with female choice)
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Sexual Conflict
– Yolanda deceives Cesar about the number of
previous sexual partners she has had
(deception about a critical cue to future
fidelity)
– Sue wants to go to a party without her
husband Marc to check out whether there
might be a better mate for her, whereas Marc
wants to keep Sue at home to prevent her
from interacting with other men (conflict
between freedom of mate choice and mate
guarding)
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Strategic Interference Theory
• Strategic Interference
– Blocking the strategies and violating the
desires of someone else
• Traced to evolved differences in sexual strategies
discussed in Chapters 4, 5, and 6
• The sexes cannot simultaneously fulfill their
conflicting sexual desires
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Strategic Interference Theory
– Strategic interference occurs when a person
employs a particular strategy to achieve a
goal and another person blocks the
successful enactment of that strategy
• Two main postulates:
– Strategic interference is predicted to occur
whenever members of one sex violate the
desires of members of the opposite sex
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Strategic Interference Theory
• Such interference would have prevented our
forebears from successfully carrying out a
preferred sexual strategy and hence would have
reduced their reproductive success
– “Negative” emotions such as anger, rage,
and distress represent evolved solutions to
the problems of strategic interference
• Alert people to the sources of interference and
prompt action designed to counteract it
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Conflict about the Occurrence and
Timing of Sex
• Inferences about Sexual Intent
– Men sometimes infer sexual interest on the
part of a woman when it does not exist
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Conflict over Sexual Access
• Inferences about Sexual Intent
– Men sometimes infer sexual interest on the
part of a woman when it does not exist
• Deception about Commitment
– Men report intentionally deceiving women
about emotional commitment
• Cognitive Biases in Sexual Mind Reading
– Sexual overperception bias minimizes the
costs of missed sexual opportunities
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Conflict over Sexual Access
– Commitment skepticism bias
• Women have evolved an inferential bias designed
to underestimate men’s actual level of romantic
commitment to her early in courtship
• Sexual Withholding
– Men consistently complain about women’s
sexual withholding, defined by such acts as
being sexually teasing, saying no to
intercourse, and leading a man on and then
stopping him
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Conflict over Sexual Access
• On a seven-point scale, men judged sexual
withholding to be 5.03, whereas women judged it
4.29 (Buss, 1989b). Both sexes are bothered by
sexual withholding, but men are significantly more
bothered by this than women
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Sexual Aggression and Evolved
Defenses Against Sexual Aggression
• Sexual Harassment
– “unwanted and unsolicited sexual attention
from other individuals in the workplace”
(Terpstra & Cook, 1985)
– Victims of sexual harassment are typically
women
• Complaints filed with the Illinois Department of
Human Rights over a two-year period
– women filed seventy-six complaints
– men filed five
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Sexual Aggression and Evolved
Defenses Against Sexual Aggression
• Study of 10,644 federal government employees
– 42 percent of the women experienced sexual harassment
– 15 percent of the men experienced sexual harassment
– When men and women were asked how they
would feel if a coworker of the opposite sex
asked them to have sex
• 63 percent of the women said they would be
insulted
• 17 percent of the women said they would feel
flattered
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Sexual Aggression and Evolved
Defenses Against Sexual Aggression
• 15 percent of men said they would be insulted
• 67 percent of men said they would feel flattered
• Sexual aggressiveness is one strategy
men use to minimize the costs they incur
for sexual access
– Exemplified by the man’s demanding or
forcing sexual intimacy, failing to get mutual
agreement for sex, and touching a woman’s
body without her permission
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Sexual Aggression and Evolved
Defenses Against Sexual Aggression
– This strategy carries costs in the form of
retaliation and damage to reputation
• College women were asked to evaluate
147 potentially upsetting actions that men
could do to them on a scale ranging from 1
(not at all upsetting) to 7 (extremely
upsetting) (Buss, 1989b)
– Women rated sexual aggression on average
to be 6.5
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Sexual Aggression and Evolved
Defenses Against Sexual Aggression
– Contrary to the view held by some men,
women do not want forced sex
• Men seem considerably less bothered if a
woman is sexually aggressive
– Men rated sexually aggressive acts to be 3.02
when performed by a woman
• Do Men Have Evolved Rape Adaptations?
– Rape
• The use of force or the threat of force to obtain
sexual intercourse
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Sexual Aggression and Evolved
Defenses Against Sexual Aggression
• Researchers first sought to identify cues to
sexual exploitability—psychological cues,
incapacitation cues, and physical cues
• A study supported the hypothesis that
women who pursue short-term mating
strategies actually turn the tables on men
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Do Men Have Evolved Rape
Adaptations?
• Rape-as-adaptation theory
– Proposes that selection has favored ancestral
males who raped in certain circumstances
– Six specialized adaptations might have
evolved in the male mind (Thornhill & Palmer,
2000):
• Assessment of the vulnerability of potential rape
victims (e.g., during warfare or in nonwarfare
contexts in which a woman lacks the protection of
husband or kin)
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Do Men Have Evolved Rape
Adaptations?
• A context-sensitive “switch” that motivates rape in
men who lack sexual access to consenting
partners (e.g., “loser” males who cannot obtain
mates through regular channels of courtship)
• A preference for fertile rape victims
• An increase in sperm counts of rape ejaculates
compared with those occurring in consensual sex
• Sexual arousal to the use of force or to female
resistance to consensual sex
• Marital rape in circumstances in which sperm
competition might exist (e.g., when there is
evidence or suspicion of female infidelity)
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Do Men Have Evolved Rape
Adaptations?
• By-product theory of rape
– Rape is a nondesigned and nonselected-for
by-product of other evolved mechanisms
•
•
•
•
Male desire for sexual variety
Desire for sex without investment
Psychological sensitivity to sexual opportunities
General capacity to use physical aggression to
achieve a variety of goals
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Do Men Have Evolved Rape
Adaptations?
• Individual Differences in Rape Proclivity
– Men differ in their proclivity toward rape
• Men asked to imagine that they had the possibility
of forcing sex on a woman against her will when
there was no chance of being discovered
– 35 percent indicated a nonzero likelihood of rape
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Sexual Aggression
• Partner Rapists
– An estimated 10 to 26 percent of married
women experience rape from their husbands
(McKibbin et al., 2008)
– This form of rape represents an adaptation to
sperm competition
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Do Women Have Evolved Antirape
Adaptations?
• If rape has been a recurrent hazard for
women, what defenses might have
evolved to lower the odds of becoming a
victim?
– Several have been hypothesized:
• The formation of alliances with other males as
“special friends” for protection (Smuts, 1992)
• Mate selection based on qualities of men such as
physical size and social dominance that deter
other men from sexual aggression—the
“bodyguard hypothesis” (Wilson & Mesnick, 1997)
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Do Women Have Evolved Antirape
Adaptations?
• The cultivation of female–female coalitions for
protection (Smuts, 1992)
• The development of specialized fears that motivate
women to avoid situations in which they might be
in danger of rape (Chavanne & Gallup, 1998)
• The avoidance of risky activities during ovulation to
decrease the odds of sexual assault when they are
most likely to conceive (Chavanne & Gallup, 1998)
• Psychological pain from rape that motivates
women to avoid rape in the future (Thornhill &
Palmer, 2000)
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Jealous Conflict
• Evolutionary psychologists have
hypothesized that the cognitive/emotional
complex of jealousy, and behavioral output
of tactics of mate retention, have evolved
to deal with
– fending off mate poachers
– deterring a mate’s sexual infidelity
– retaining a mate for the long run
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Jealous Conflict
• Jealousy may
– sensitize a man to circumstances in which his
partner might be unfaithful, thus promoting
vigilance
– prompt actions designed to curtail his
partner’s contact with other men
– cause a man to increase his own efforts to
fulfill his partner’s desires so that she would
have less reason to stray
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Jealous Conflict
– prompt a man to threaten, or otherwise fend
off, rivals who show sexual interest in his
partner
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Jealous Conflict
• Sex Differences in Jealousy
– Himba of Namibia
• Men more than women were more distressed by
the sexual aspect of the infidelity when both forms
of infidelity occurred
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Sex Differences in Jealousy
• Men’s jealousy is especially attuned to
rivals who have status and resources
• Women’s jealousy is especially attuned to
rivals who are physically attractive (Buss
et al., 2000)
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From Vigilance to Violence: Tactics of
Mate Retention
• Sex Differences in the Use of MateRetention Tactics
– Men
• More likely to conceal a partner
• Insisting that she spend all of her free time with
him
• More likely to resort to threats and violence,
especially against rivals, such as threatening to hit
a man who was making moves on his partner or
picking a fight with a man interested in her
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From Vigilance to Violence: Tactics of
Mate Retention
• More likely to use resource display
– buying the partner jewelry, giving her gifts, and taking her
out to expensive restaurants
• Sex Differences in the Use of MateRetention Tactics
– Women
• Tend to enhance their appearance as a tactic of
mate retention
– making up their faces, wearing the latest fashions, and
making themselves “extra attractive” for their mates
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From Vigilance to Violence: Tactics of
Mate Retention
• Tend to induce jealousy in their partners
– flirting with other men in front of them
– showing interest in other men to make their partners
angry
– talking with other men to make their partners jealous
• Contexts Influencing the Intensity of MateRetention Tactics
– Youthfulness and physical attractiveness of
the wife will be positively linked with men’s
mate-guarding tactics
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From Vigilance to Violence: Tactics of
Mate Retention
– Men, particularly those low on good genes
indicators of mate value, will increase their
mate-retention efforts when their partners are
ovulating
– High income and status striving of the
husband will be linked with higher levels of
mate-retention tactics performed by women
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Contexts Influencing the Intensity of
Mate-Retention Tactics
• Reproductive Value of the Wife: Effects of
Age and Physical Attractiveness
• Ovulation Status of the Woman
– Men increase their mate-retention efforts at
precisely this time in their partner’s menstrual
cycle
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Contexts Influencing the Intensity of
Mate-Retention Tactics
• (Gangestad, Thornhill, & Garver-Apgar, 2005;
Haselton & Gangestad, 2006; Pillsworth &
Haselton, 2006)
– Women mated to men low on good genes
indicators, such as sexual attractiveness, had
partners who were especially keen on materetention efforts when the women were
ovulating
• Showering them with more love and attention at
this time
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Contexts Influencing the Intensity of
Mate-Retention Tactics
• Income and Status Striving of the
Husband
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Violence toward Partners
• Mate retention has an extremely
destructive side: The use of violence
against partners
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Violence toward Partners
• A fascinating study of the Tsimane
foragers of lowland Bolivia found strong
support for male sexual jealousy as a key
predictor of wife abuse, especially if the
wife was young
• Both wife’s infidelity and husband’s
infidelity appear to precipitate violence
toward wives
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Conflict Over Access to Resources
• Men often use resources to control or
influence women
• If men possess the resources that women
need, then men can use those resources
to control women
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