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Description
Flashcards by Ellie Harvey, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Ellie Harvey
about 2 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is sexual selection? | An evolutionary explanation of partner preference. Attributes or behaviours that increase reproductive success are passed on and may become exaggerated over succeeding generations of offspring. |
| What is human reproductive behaviour? | Any behaviours which relate to opportunities to reproduce and thereby increase the survival chances of our genes. This includes the evolutionary mechanisms underlying our partner preference, such as mate choice or mate competition |
| What is anisogamy? | This is the difference between male and female sex cells (gametes) |
| How are male and female gametes different? | - Male gametes are extremely small, highly mobile, created continuously in high numbers from puberty into old age and don't require large expenditure of energy to produce - However, female gametes are relatively large, static, produced in intervals for a limited amount of time and requires large investment of energy. |
| What is a consequence of anisogamy? | There is no shortage of fertile males but a limited number of fertile females making them a "rare" resource |
| What are the two types of sexual selection that arise due to anisogamy? | - Inter-sexual selection - Intra-sexual selection |
| What is inter sexual selection? | - This is where there is competition between the sexes |
| What gender prefers inter-sexual selection? Why? | - Females prefer this strategy - According to Trivers (1972) females make a greater investment of time, commitment and other resources before, during and after the birth of offspring. This means women are more likely to lose more and therefore need to be more choosy. |
| What are females more inclined to choose in a partner during inter-sexual selection? | - Females are more likely to select a genetically fit male who is able and willing to provide resources. |
| What is a result of inter-sexual selection? | - Fisher described the runway process with his sexy son hypothesis - When female partner preference is based on a certain characteristic its prevalence in the male would increase as well as the number of female offspring with this preference. |
| What is intra-sexual selection? | This is competition between members of the same sex |
| What gender prefers intra-sexual selection? Why? | - This is the male preferred strategy (quantity over quality) - They are able to reproduce much more frequently with less investment, they don't have to be as choosy because they have more opportunity and the only limit to how many offspring, they have is the limited number of fertile women |
| What happens when a male wins this competition? | The winner gets to reproduce and pass on his genes - passing on the characteristics that enabled his victory |
| What is a result of intra-sexual selection? | - Dimorphism - This is the obvious differences in size between males and female. - This occurs because the physical competition for partners will be won by the larger thus stronger men. - This means they are going to be more likely to pass on this characteristic, whereas women who don't compete have no reason to be larger |
| What are the behavioural and psychological consequences of intra-sexual selection? | - A psychological consequence is thinking and behaving in a more aggressive way, to protect females from competing males - A behavioural consequence may be a preference for youth and a sensitivity to indicators of youth and fertility |
| One evaluation of sexual selection (Research support for inter-sexual) | A strength is that there is support from research done by Clark and Hatfield (1989) which illustrates the reality of female choosiness in heterosexual relationships. They asked male and female psychology students to approach other students and ask them several questions. The final one was "would you go to bed with me tonight?". They found that while 75% of men said yes immediately NONE of the women approached did. This supports the evolutionary theory which suggests that females are choosier than males when selecting sexual partners and that males have adopted a different strategy for ensuring reproductive success. This is a strength because it gives validity to the claims made by the evolutionary theory. |
| One evaluation of sexual selection (Support from lonely hearts research) | A strength is that research done by Waynforth and Dunbar (1995). They studied lonely hearts ads in American newspapers where men (normally) would describe characteristics they desired in potential partners as well as describing themselves. They found that women were more likely to offer up physical attractiveness and indicators of youth while men were more likely you offer resources, and they sought youth and physical attractiveness. This supports the idea offered by intra-sexual selection that a behavioural consequence of intra-sexual selection was a sensitivity to youth and fertility, it also supports the idea women wanting a partner who is able to provide for them and their offspring. |
| One evaluation of sexual selection (Ignores social and cultural influences) | A limitation of these explanations is that they are largely ethnocentric and fail to recognise who preferences change according to social norms change. Partner preference as seen in research has changed considerably and much faster than an evolutionary timescale may suggest. For example, women's greater role in the workplace means they're no longer financially dependent on men and Bereczkei et al (1997) argues that this social change means women are less resource orientated. As well as this research suggests cultural differences in partner preference. Chang et al (2011) compared preferences in China over 25 years and found that some had changed, and others had remained the same which corresponded with the huge social changes at the time. This suggests that actually preferences are due to a combination of evolutionary and cultural differences and that the explanation's failure to account for these, reducing it to one limits it as an explanation |
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