Long-Term Mating Orientation in Men: The Role of Socioeconomic Status, Protection Skills, and Parenthood Disposition

The role of exogenous testosterone and social environment on the expression of sociosexuality and status-seeking behaviors in young Chilean men

Testosterone plays an important role as a social hormone. Current evidence suggests that testosterone is positively related to sociosexuality increasing the psychological attitudes toward investing in short-term versus long-term mating and promotes status-seeking behaviors both by dominance and prestige. In addition, the social environment may play an important role in the expression of mating effort through changes in sociosexuality and status-seeking behaviors. However, the causal relationships among the mentioned variables are still debated. We employed a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-individual design, in order to test and integrate the proposed causal relationships between testosterone and social environment over short-term and long-term mating orientation and dominant and prestigious status-seeking behaviors in a sample of 95 young Chilean men. We did not find evidence that the administration of exogenous testosterone increased short-term or decreased long-term mating orientation as expected. Moreover, exogenous testosterone did not affect either aggressive or cooperative behavior failing to support the social status hypothesis. We also did not find any relationship between short or long-term mating orientation with status-seeking behaviors. Finally, we found support for the effect of social environment on sociosexual attitudes but not over status-seeking behaviors. Thus, men reported higher levels of short-term mating orientation in the presence of a woman compared to a man and no differences were found for long-term mating orientation. We argue that sociosexuality may be expressed flexibly, but contextual factors such as the presence of women seem more important than changes in testosterone levels.

Darwin Versus Wallace: Esthetic Evolution and Preferential Mate Choice

Dominant theorizing and research surrounding the operation of intersexual selection in evolutionary psychology tends to be guided by an adaptationist framework and aligned with models of sexual selection involving direct benefits (e.g., parental care) and indirect “good gene” and condition-dependent benefits. In this way, evolutionary psychologists more often espouse Alfred Russel Wallaces’ utilitarian viewpoint that traits become attractive because they honestly signal vigor and vitality, which gives priority to natural selection. In doing so, Darwin’s esthetic perspective originally articulated in The Descent of Man and alternative models of sexual selection (e.g., Fisherian runaway), are given less consideration. This is despite some informative reviews on the topic in evolutionary psychology. In the current conceptual analysis, we discuss the potential of Prum’s Lande-Kirkpatrick (LK) null model of sexual selection to help make sense of some of the mixed evidence regarding the links between attractive traits and purported markers of phenotypic and genetic condition. We then consider how the implications of the LK null model can help to shift theoretical assumptions and guide future work in evolutionary psychology on intersexual selection.