Why do men prefer younger women? Why are women attracted to powerful men? Why is fashion a billion-dollar industry?
Traditional psychology and sociology has few satisfactory answers to these questions, if any. Nor does either discipline have an underlying paradigm which can be extended to explain such apparently diverse questions. But a relatively new perspective on human nature and social institutions, christened "evolutionary psychology", is providing cogent and convincing answers to many aspects of human life.
Evolutionary psychology was developed by anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides. This approach welds two relatively recent scientific revolutions: the advances in cognitive science in the 1950s and 60s, and the evolutionary biology of the 1960s and 70s. The former explains the mechanics of thought and emotion and computation, while the latter explains the design of living things in terms of adaptation through natural selection. Together, these two approaches form a powerful tool for understanding many aspects of human behaviour. Cognitive science helps us see how a mind is possible and what kind of mind we have, while evolutionary biology helps us understand why our minds are the way they are.
The way evolutionary psychology does this is through an approach called "reverse engineering." Reverse engineering is the principle of taking a clock apart to see how it works. With an understanding of the basic principles of mechanics and time-keeping, any sufficiently intelligent person can figure out why the clock is designed in a particular way.
Evolutionary psychology assumes that the major features of our bodies and brains have developed the way they have for specific purposes. But those purposes all developed from one fundamental drive: the overriding command of our genes to replicate themselves.
Now this does not mean that all human beings want to pass on their genes more than anything else in life. The purpose of our genes is not necessarily our purpose. To understand this seeming contradiction, you have to remember that genes do not have thoughts and emotions. All they have is a biological imperative to reproduce themselves. But, in the course of evolution, more and more complex organisms developed and the replicating process likewise became more and more complex. Dogs go on heat; birds do fancy dances; chimpanzees show the insides of their mouths. Human beings put on deodorant, wine down at fetes, and wear lipstick: we may be more complex animals, but animals we are. But it is this same complexity which allows us to override our genetic commands, if we choose to do so. That is why we can use condoms, once we aren't Catholic.
Over the past two million years or so, when the first human-like creature appeared on the planet, natural selection has continually determined what kind of animal humankind would become today. Modern humans first appeared between 45,000 to 12,000 years ago in Africa (contrary to misinformation given by Express columnist Rajnie Ramlakhan, who believes that Africans were the last group to become "fully human.") Genetically, there is no significant difference between those prehistoric humans and twentieth century homo sapiens. To understand ourselves, we have to understand the environment our ancestors developed in, and how our present environment differs from that one. But first we have to consider the process which determined our nature: natural selection.
Simply put, natural selection decides that an organism which is best suited to its environment will come to dominate that environment by having more offspring than its weaker rivals. Thus, the faster deer will live longer and have more mates and more little deer. The stronger quenk will beat off all rivals and mate more often and thus have more small quenks than weaker quenks. And the same goes for the frog with the more attractive croak, the chicken hawk who sees farther, and so on.
The likelihood is that these individuals will pass on their genetic advantages to their offspring, who will in turn pass it on to their offspring. Eventually, the genes of the original individual will come to dominate the species. Scientists calculate that an individual who has just one percent more offspring than its rivals can increase its representation in a given population from 0.1 percent to 99.9 percent in just 4,000 generations. If the advantage is significant enough, an entirely new species may be the result.
I do not intend to deal with the mechanics of evolution in this essay. Suffice to say that these processes resulted in the organism we call homo sapien sapiens and that certain characteristics of our ancient ancestors ensured that, contrary to what ethnocentric academics and feminists would like us to believe, most human beings in every culture have the same basic outlook on the fundamental things of life.
Take, for example, the issue of men liking younger women. As I said, the fundamental imperative of our genes is to replicate. Therefore, our psychological outlook will be geared towards maximizing reproduction. A younger woman has more reproductive years than an older one. Hence, even if a man simply wants the woman for reasons of prestige - as with an octogenarian millionaire marrying a 20-year-old model - the innate and unconscious reproductive impulse is what determines his preference.
It is for a similar reason that younger women would prefer slightly older men as a general rule. Since a male maximizes his reproductive value by impregnating as many females as possible, he need not look beyond the superficial signs of fertility: psychologist Devendra Singh found that a waist-to-hip ratio of .70 or below is considered ideal in every culture he studied. (This ratio is usually a sign of fertility.) Absence of deformities, healthy hair, clear eyes, unblemished skin and intact teeth are also universally attractive.
But a female's reproductive value is maximized by different factors: she has to ensure that she is protected during her vulnerable period of pregnancy and nursing and that her children are taken care of during their formative years. Thus, a female does not choose a male solely on the basis of his looks, but also on his ability to protect her and her offspring. In prehistoric times, such a choice would have been made on the basis of a man being a good hunter and fighter. So when women in modern times choose men who are wealthy or have status or say they want a husband who is ambitious, they are not being mercenary: they are obeying an age-old biological imperative to maximize their survival.
It is this imperative which directs both sexes to emphasize their sexual attractiveness as much as possible. The make-up women wear is designed to heighten the sexual signals of fertility: colourful mouths (lipstick), healthy hair (perms), left-right body symmetry (through use of eye-liner and blush), youthful breasts (push-up bras) and smooth, firm legs (stockings).
But since it is not looks which primarily attract women, men have to rely on other techniques. The accumulation of wealth is driven by the desire to attract a fertile woman. Top-class sportsmen always have women running them down because, in past times, these men would have been the best hunters. (Remember, we are genetically prehistoric people living in an advanced world.) Males, especially adolescent ones, will do foolish and dangerous things - from smoking cigarettes to committing armed robbery - to demonstrate their sexual fitness to females. But the most popular option for both sexes is fashion.
Readers will have realized by now that genetic survival is an intense competition. And, as in any battlefield, the groups with authority (i.e. status) will try to distinguish themselves. In human cultures, decoration is the means by which high-status groups most obviously separate themselves from those below them. Hence, in modern Western culture, high fashion is a billion-dollar industry because the wealthy want to look different from the hoi polloi. What happens, though, is that the group of people (Group B) just below the highest status group (Group A) begins imitating them in appearance, and the group below Group B (Group C) begins imitating Group B and so on down the line.
Thus, Group A has to change its style, and this is why fashion is cyclic. It is also why individuals from even the poorer levels of society spend scarce funds on nice clothes: because by looking as though they belong to a higher-status group, they increase their chances for genetic replication. And this is a sensible strategy: not only do women like men who "dress well", but a good appearance increases one's chances of getting a job and of being promoted. Superficial as it might seem, looks do matter. But so do intelligence and kindness and understanding: in a survey carried out by psychologist David Buss, 10,000 men and women in 37 countries on six continents and five islands listed these qualities as the most important ones in a mate.
Even our primitive ancestors, it seems, were probably romantics.
Copyright ©1997, Kevin Baldeosingh