PSYCH 3AC3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Parental Investment, Mate Choice
12 Jan 2016
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Document Summary
Evolutionary explanations of human mate choice and sexuality. Hard wired instructions for who to find attractive, how to: meaning of life reproduction with the vessel for your genes behave sexually being offspring that will survive to reproduce. Preferences will survive if they optimize reproductive success: the more vessels for our genes the more likely a given, if our preferences lead to failure (poor quality offspring/no preference will exist offspring), they will die. Parental investment theory (trivers, 1972): broad mating decisions people will make based on initial parental investment: in the first few years of life, who is investing the most, sperm is cheap limitless supply. The initial parental investment is low: eggs are expensive small limited supply. If an egg is fertilized they have a nine month pregnancy, birth, lactation etc. Once you have donated the egg and it is fertilized, you have cost yourself a lot of energy. Parental investment has an effect on mating cost.
