Browsing by Subject "Evolutionary psychology"
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Item The benefits of advertising status : what conspicuous consumption buys women(2012-05) Cloud, Jaime Marie; Buss, David M.; Loving, Timothy J.; Meston, Cindy M.; Raghunathan, Raj; Tucker-Drob, Elliot M.The primary objectives of the current research were to (1) test the effectiveness of conspicuous consumption as a status-enhancement tactic and (2) examine access to material resources as an interpersonal benefit that incentivizes status striving behavior. The studies that follow investigated the status striving motivations of both men and women; however, this research endeavor was primarily designed to address the paucity of research on female status. In Study 1, a nation-wide sample of participants perceived target women to be higher status when they were depicted conspicuously consuming than when not. Several individual difference variables that predict conspicuous consumption were also identified, many of which related to the attainment of high status. In Studies 2 and 3, conspicuous consumption was shown to increase perceptions of status in face-to-face interactions, further supporting the status signaling function of conspicuous consumption. Study 3 utilized a Dictator Game methodology to test the prediction that participants would share more of a monetary allotment with confederates who were conspicuously consuming than with those who were not. Results indicated that conspicuous consumption did not increase generosity except in male participants who shared more of a monetary allotment with conspicuous consumers, particularly those of the same sex. This sex-specific result is discussed in light of the possibility that conspicuous consumption signals a type of status that is particularly relevant to men (i.e., economic status). In conclusion, I consider the different pathways by which high status individuals receive increased access to resources.Item The evolution of disgust : theoretical and empirical explorations(2014-12) Al-Shawaf, Laith; Buss, David M.This dissertation consists of four manuscripts on the emotion of disgust, all of which are published or in press. These papers report studies linking the emotion of disgust with areas of psychology to which it has seldom been connected. Paper 1 reports findings linking disgust with stress and satiation, providing support for an a priori hypothesis generated on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis of how these inputs should affect disease avoidance behavior. Paper 2 reports the first findings linking disgust with mating strategy, two important areas of psychology that have theoretical relevance for one another but whose connection has yet to be explored. Paper 3 presents the first solid empirical evidence that disgust sensitivity predicts food neophobia. This work also found a theoretically interesting, but unpredicted, connection between food neophobia and mating strategy. Paper 4 pans back, presenting a broader evolutionary framework on the emotions and providing a variety of novel empirical hypotheses for both disgust and sexual arousal. The dissertation then concludes by presenting important questions for future research and describing experiments currently underway to answer questions emerging from this line of research. As a whole, this dissertation and research program aim to a) build bridges between disgust and other domains of psychology such as stress and human mating, b) make methodological contributions to research on disgust, and c) present an evolutionary framework that carries conceptual and empirical implications for disgust and for a broad array of other emotions.Item Evolution, computer simulation, and human mate selection(2016-08) Conroy-Beam, Daniel Thomas Theodore; Buss, David M.; Legare, Cristine H.; Cormack, Lawrence K.; Holahan, Charles J.; Loving, Timothy J.Prior research has amassed an impressive catalog of human mate preferences. These include universal preferences for features such as kindness, intelligence, and dependability; sex-differentiated attributes such as youth; and physical features such as bodily symmetry and degree of lumbar curvature. However, psychologists lack understanding of what these many preferences do. This dissertation presents three sets of studies that form the foundation of a broader research program exploring the effects of mate preferences on mating outcomes and implications of these effects for the study of preferences. Chapter 2 presents three studies that use agent-based modeling to determine whether people’s stated mate preferences drive their mate choices at all. These studies suggest that mate preferences do guide mate selection, but their effects are not intuitively obvious because of the complex dynamics inherent to realistic mating markets. Three studies in Chapter 3 compare several algorithms for how our mate selection psychology could translate our many individual preferences into mating decisions. Data from agent-based models and real human couples suggest that human mate preferences are integrated into feelings of attraction according to a Euclidean algorithm that represents preferences and potential mates as points within a multidimensional preference space. This multidimensionality has many potential implications for the study of mate preferences; Chapter 4 explores one such implication: how to accurately quantify sex differences in mate preferences. Altogether this dissertation presents a novel perspective on the role of human mate preferences in mating outcomes and new tools for studying mate preferences and human mate choice.Item Individual differences and universal condition-dependent mechanisms(2013-05) Lewis, David Michael; Buss, David M.This study investigated the hypothesis that universal psychological adaptations produce personality variation when individuals differentially face adaptive problems that shifted the cost-benefit tradeoffs of alternative personality strategies in ancestral environments. The current research tested the hypothesis that psychological adaptations calibrate individual differences in neuroticism as a functional response to social exclusion. If psychological adaptations produce neuroticism in response to social exclusion, and heritable components of individuals' social partner value influence their likelihood of being excluded, then individual differences in social partner value should yield heritable differences in neuroticism. Three conceptually distinct sub-studies tested hypotheses derived from this conceptual framework. Sub-study 1 tested the relationship between individuals' mate value, social exclusion, and neuroticism. Individuals' mate value exhibited both a direct effect on neuroticism and an indirect effect through the experience of social exclusion. Sub-study 2 investigated sexual jealousy as a specialized class of neuroticism in response to infidelity. As predicted, individuals' mate value predicted the likelihood of their partners' infidelity and their own mate guarding behavior. Sub-study 3 manipulated the threat of infidelity to test for functional shifts in neuroticism in response to relationship exclusion. Participants read vignettes describing their mates' certain fidelity, uncertain fidelity, and certain infidelity, and wrote what they would think, feel, say, and do in response to each scenario. An independent sample assessed participants' personalities based on these cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. As predicted, participants' neuroticism tracked relationship exclusion; participants' neuroticism levels increased with infidelity threat. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that a universal psychological mechanism adaptively calibrates neuroticism levels in response to relationship exclusion; the certain absence or presence of the adaptive problem of relationship exclusion should deactivate or activate anti-exclusion mechanisms in all individuals. Above this situational effect, under conditions of uncertain infidelity -- in which the threat of infidelity would have ancestrally varied with men's (but not women's) mate value -- men's mate value predicted their neuroticism. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that humans possess psychological adaptations that functionally calibrate neuroticism levels. More broadly, they highlight the heuristic value of an evolutionary adaptationist framework for the study of personality and individual differences.Item Individual differences in perceptions of the benefits and costs of short-term mating(2012-08) Easton, Judith Ann; Buss, David M.; Josephs, Robert A.; Tucker-Drob, Elliot M.; Loving, Timothy J.; Neff, Lisa A.Short-term mating mechanisms should be activated only under conditions in which, ancestrally, the benefits were recurrently greater and the costs were recurrently lower than those of other potential mating strategies. The purpose of this dissertation was twofold: 1) to identify benefits and costs of short-term mating to men and women and to rank them based on magnitude, 2) and to identify how sex-specific adaptive individual differences previously known to affect mating success shift perceptions of the magnitude of, and likelihood of receiving, potential benefits and costs. To identify and rank potential benefits and costs, participants listed up to ten potential benefits and costs men and women may experience when engaging in short-term mating. A second group of participants rated the benefits and costs for how beneficial and how costly they are. A second study examined how sex-specific adaptive individual differences shift perceptions of the magnitude of, and likelihood of receiving, the nominated benefits and costs. Participants completed several questionnaires designed to measure relevant demographics and family history, personality, and previous and current mating experiences. Participants also provided their perceptions of the magnitude of each of the benefits and costs, and the perceived likelihood someone could receive each outcome. Results indicated women’s perceptions did not differ as a function of their self-perceived mate value, exposure to early environmental stress, relationship status or satisfaction, but did differ as a function of their feelings of sexual regret. Similarly, men’s self-perceived mate value, relationship status and satisfaction did not influence perceptions of short-term mating, but the amount of effort currently invested into mating and feelings of sexual regret did. Overall, this dissertation contributes a novel extension of previous research on short-term mating. This is the first study to examine the costs to women, and the benefits and costs to men of short-term mating, and the first study to examine how individual differences may shift perceptions of those benefits and costs. Findings from the current set of studies provide a more thorough understanding of men’s and women’s evolved mating psychology and highlight fruitful avenues for future research.Item Love me true : deception, affection, and evolutionary strategies of human mating(2015-05) Redlick, Madeleine H.; Vangelisti, Anita L.; Dailey, ReneGiving and receiving affection is a key part of the human experience, particularly in close relationships. Affectionate messages may take on many forms, both those that are genuine and those that are deceptive in nature. A deceptive affectionate message is defined in this study as the intentional communication of a positively-valenced message, in which the intensity of the feeling is greater than that which is truly felt by the sender at that time (Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2013). This study employed theoretical perspectives from evolutionary psychology in an attempt to explore what might motivate romantic partners to communicate a deceptive affectionate message (DAM). This study claims that DAMs may be seen as adaptive and strategically chosen mate-retention behaviors, which might be selected in the case that they can satisfy the needs of both the sender and receiver of the message. Broader questions about conceptualizing the nature of deception in close relationships are also raised and pursued.