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The evolution of rape: The fitness benefits and costs of a forced-sex mating strategy in an evolutionary context

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... Men may follow a forced-sex mating strategy in order to circumvent individual or parental choice (Apostolou 2013b;Thornhill and Palmer 2000). Rape is found across preindustrial and postindustrial societies (Roze-Koker 1987), and it provides a way for individuals to exercise choice outside parental control. ...
... Finally, rape is one way for men to exercise choice independently of their parents' will. As rape can considerably undermine parental control over mating, parents take measures to prevent their daughters from being exposed to this danger, including chaperoning and segregation of sexes discussed above (Apostolou 2013b). It is surprising then that rape was found to be significantly more prevalent in the arranged marriage than in the rest of the societies. ...
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Evidence from the anthropological and historical records indicates that, in contemporary and ancestral preindustrial societies, mate choice is regulated with parents choosing spouses for their children. On the basis of this evidence, it has been argued that most of human evolution took place in a context where individuals had limited space in which to exercise choice. Nevertheless, even in this context, mate choice can still be exercised. Using evidence from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, the current study found that, in an arranged marriage setting, there is a considerable space for individuals to exercise mate choice in premarital relationships, in extramarital relationships, and in forced sex or rape. These patterns do not vary considerably between societies of different subsistence types. However, premarital relationships were less common and rape was more common in societies where arranged marriage was the dominant mode of long-term mating. The evolutionary implications of these findings are further discussed.
... A third way is for a man to force sex on a woman (Thornhill and Palmer 2000). In most pre-industrial societies, rape is reported to take place in times of peace (Apostolou 2013). Also, in many societies, wars and raids are organized against neighboring groups in an attempt to get their resources, one being women. ...
... For instance, among the Yanomamo hunters and gathers in South America, frequent raids are organized against neighboring groups with the objective to get or force sex on their women (Chagnon 1992). In later stages of human evolution, there were large scale wars with women being one of the spoils of wars (Apostolou 2013). As a consequence of this war effort, there were a considerable number of female slaves that were used not only for physical labor but also for sex. ...
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Successful sexual intercourse is a prerequisite for successful reproduction, a fact that translates into strong evolutionary pressures being exercised on mechanisms that regulate sexual functioning to work optimally. In effect, selection forces would remove from the gene pool any alleles that pre-dispose for sexual dysfunctions, limiting their prevalence to very low levels. But this did not happen with epidemiological studies indicating that sexual dysfunctions are common, with approximately one in three men facing such a difficulty. This raises the question why evolutionary forces have allowed such variation in sexual functioning given its importance in reproduction. The present paper attempts to address this question by applying three evolutionary models on anthropological and historical evidence that depicts the ancestral human condition. It is argued that the high prevalence of sexual dysfunctions in men is predominantly explained by the mismatch between ancestral and modern environments, with selection forces not having sufficient time to optimize sexual functioning mechanisms to the demands of modern conditions. The proposed evolutionary framework is employed to derive predictions which are examined against the available evidence on sexual dysfunctions.
... Human males are physically stronger than females which is argued to indicate a competition among males to gain access to females (Puts, 2010). In addition, males can force sex on females (Apostolou, 2013). Thereby, nonheterosexual females may have still reproduced. ...
... Smuts (1992) summarizing data from intercultural studies on male sexual violence concludes that societies where men rarely harass or rape women are rather an exception than a norm. Apostolou (2013) argued that forced sex is the outcome of an innate conditional strategy which enables men to circumvent parental and female choice. Hamilton (1964) proposed (corresponding to the kin altruism) the following form of the kin selection rule:R ⋅ B > C ; where: R-the genetic relatedness of the recipient to the actor; B-the additional reproductive benefit gained by the recipient of the altruistic act; C-the reproductive cost to the individual performing the act. ...
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The aim of this study was an analytical justification of the emergence and presence of the phenomenon of war among hominins, taking into account males’ genetic benefits gained through war in the natural environment. Based on chimpanzee behavior, the analytical model of the primary warrior balance was explored, comparing the risk of a war expedition with the genetic profits from war rape—“life and death balance”. On the profits side, genetic gains possible to obtain in terms of permanent attractiveness of females (warrior status and abductions of females) were also included. Kin cooperation, parochial altruism, and “partisan strategy” have been defined as psychological mechanisms that enable effective group violence. Male genetic benefit from a war rape could exceed the risk of a warrior’s death in the chimpanzee–human LCA species; transition from the herd to the patriarchal tribal social system could increase warrior’s genetic gains from war. At the root of war lie sexual limitations of cooperating males, induced by female sexual preferences and lack of the permanent female sexual drive. War rape allows reproductive success for dominated and thus sexually restricted males. Tendencies for group aggression to gain access to out-group females (the war gene) are common among sexually restricted men. Resource-rich areas favor increase in human population density, this affects group territoriality and promotes intergroup conflicts, and thus patriarchy. Roots of conventional patriarchal marriage are strongly combined with war—“the right to land entails the right to a female”.
... According to Thornhill and Thornhill (1983), predatory rapists are mostly males of lower status and class who have low probabilities to gain legitimate access to women. Likewise, Apostolou (2013) found historical and anthropological evidence that rape is an outcome that allows men to evade female and parental choice when experiencing disadvantage in the reproductive competition. ...
Article
Previous macro-level studies of rape have only examined the relationship between gender inequality or socioeconomic status and possible exposure to rapists. The current study overcomes the limitations of previous research by using Social Disorganization Theory, Evolutionary Psychology, and Backlash Hypothesis to simultaneously measure the three key components of RAT. Our analysis predicts victim/offender disaggregated rape counts in U.S. counties using the U.S. Census data and the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Our findings reveal the following: (1) Evolutionary Psychology and Backlash Hypothesis variables were not significant as individual predictors for most of the tested models, (2) Social Disorganization variables were positive and significant in most models, and (3) the Evolutionary Psychology-RAT framework was a poor predictor of all types of rape. Our findings reveal the strength of the Backlash Hypothesis as a predictor of rape, as well as the importance of measuring the components of RAT fully and simultaneously.
... Researchers have begun to investigate counteradaptations in victims that are designed to minimize the negative fitness costs of sexual coercion, such as vaginal morphology to prevent forced insemination in ducks (Brennan et al., 2007) and psychological antirape adaptations in women (Bröder & Hohmann, 2003;Buss, 2021;McKibbin & Shackelford, 2011;Prokop, 2013). In humans, sexual coercion is a traumatic event that inflicts heavy psychological, physical, emotional, and social costs on victims (Apostolou, 2013;Burgess & Holmstrom, 1974;Perilloux et al., 2012;Resick, 1993). Moral condemnation of sexual coercion is one potential adaptive solution to the problem of rape. ...
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Despite the increase in the scientific study of morality over the past decade, one important domain remains relatively underexplored—sexual morality. The current article begins to fill this gap by exploring its multidimensionality and testing several evolution-based hypotheses about sex differences in moralizing distinct components of sexual morality, including incest, sexual coercion, sexual infidelity, and short-term mating. Study 1 (N = 920) and Study 2 (N = 543) tested predictions derived from evolutionary psychological hypotheses and used factor analysis to identify seven core factors of sexual morality separately for male and female actors: infidelity, short-term sex, sexual coercion, outgroup sex, long-term mating, same-sex sexuality, and paraphilic sex. Study 3 (N = 380) provided an independent test of the evolution-based hypotheses and factor structure. Results strongly support sex-differentiated predictions about short-term sex, but not sexual coercion or incest (possibly owing to ceiling effects). Discussion centers around sexual morality as a complex domain not readily explained by more domain-general theories of morality and the necessity of comprehensive theories of morality to include sex-differentiated components in their formulations.
... Una tercera vertiente teórica es la evolucionista, que explica la agresión sexual en términos de sus funciones biológicas y su desarrollo histórico. En esta línea, Apostolou (2013) sostiene que la violencia sexual es ejercida por ciertos hombres y bajo determinadas circunstancias como una estrategia para sobreponerse a las decisiones de la mujer y su familia y explotar oportunidades reproductivas de bajo costo. Cabe señalar, sin embargo, que estas perspectivas y modelos han sido desarrollados con el objetivo de explicar la agresión sexual sobre todo en adultos, por lo que sus esquemas no necesariamente se aplican a adolescentes. ...
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Los delitos sexuales constituyen en el Perú una importante causa de sanción e internamiento de menores en Centros Juveniles de Diagnóstico y Rehabilitación (CJDR). Con el fin de mejorar la comprensión de esta problemática, se realizó un estudio de casos y controles para identificar los factores de riesgo asociados con delitos sexuales en jóvenes varones de CJDR. Se aplicó un cuestionario ad hoc a 300 jóvenes internos en los CJDR de Lima (250) y Cusco (50), de entre quienes 111 constituyeron los casos y 189 los controles. El análisis se efectuó aplicando técnicas de estadística descriptiva e inferencial. Los factores de riesgo se determinaron mediante el cálculo de la razón de momios (OR) con un intervalo de confianza al 95%; se ajustó modelos de regresión logística, considerándose las variables con coeficientes significativos (p<0.05); y finalmente se obtuvo la tabla de clasificación de cada modelo. En el análisis descriptivo se identificó, en primer lugar, una importante diferenciación interna en el grupo de jóvenes internos por delitos sexuales, definida por la presencia o ausencia de antecedentes delictivos: quienes no reportaron tener problemas legales previos (66 casos) mostraron un perfil en muchos aspectos similar al de otros jóvenes de la población general; y en marcado contraste, quienes declararon tener antecedentes delictivos (45 casos) presentaron un extenso rango de complicaciones y singularidades en sus características individuales, psicológicas, familiares, sociales, sexuales y de sus contextos de vida más amplios. Considerando esta diferencia, se procedió con el análisis estadístico de los factores de riesgo no solo en función del eje delitos sexuales/otros delitos, sino realizando pruebas adicionales para cada uno de los dos segmentos identificados en el grupo de casos. En un primer modelo logístico, para delitos sexuales vs. otros delitos, aparecieron como factores de riesgo: tener fantasías sexuales con niños o niñas (OR= 4.484; IC 95%: 1.639 – 12.273), reportar lesiones autoinfligidas (OR= 2.512; IC 95%: 1.268 – 4.978) y sentimientos de soledad o desamparo (OR= 1.824; IC 95%: 1.028 – 3.234) antes del internamiento, haber experimentado violencia física en la familia después de los 12 años de edad (OR= 1.915; IC 95%: 3.341 - 63.0) y entender o hablar alguna lengua indígena (OR= 2.581; IC 95%: 1.291 – 5.162). Luego, en un segundo modelo de regresión, aplicado solo al segmento con antecedentes delictivos, surgieron como factores de riesgo: lesiones autoinfligidas (OR= 3.418; IC 95%: 1.583 – 7.378), fantasías sexuales con niños o niñas (OR= 4.892; IC 95%: 1.726 – 13.866), violencia física en la familia antes de los 12 años (OR= 2.493; IC 95%: 1.282 – 4.848), tener madres más jóvenes (edad<=40 años: OR= 1.116; IC 95%: 1.012 – 1.230), tener madres menos educadas, cuya escolaridad no supera el nivel primario (OR= 2.628; IC 95%: 1.239 – 5.574) y hablar alguna lengua indígena (OR= 2.714; IC 95%: 1.155 – 6.378). El tercer modelo, aplicado al segmento sin antecedentes delictivos, arrojó como único factor de riesgo la co-residencia con una madrastra o la pareja del padre (OR= 20.273; IC 95%: 0.670 – 613.346). Se concluye, en primer lugar, que existe una gran diferenciación interna en el grupo de jóvenes de CJDR sancionados por delitos sexuales, para la cual el criterio de los antecedentes delictivos constituye tan solo un indicador de muchas otras diferencias; y en segundo lugar, que los factores de riesgo para delitos sexuales entre estos jóvenes son diversos e involucran la violencia familiar, los estados emocionales y psicológicos, la estructura familiar (particularmente en relación con las madres) y aspectos culturales. Estos y otros hallazgos del estudio tienen implicancias para la definición y puesta en práctica de estrategias de tratamiento y rehabilitación de jóvenes que han cometido delitos sexuales, así como para las acciones y políticas de prevención de la violencia sexual.
... According to this view, rape is an option in the reproductive behaviour by which men can circumvent obstacles in gaining access to females with high mating value (indicated by youth and physical attractiveness). However, it represents a high-cost mating strategy because most societies impose sanctions on rape, such as prison sentences and social stigma, which ultimately restrict a man's reproductive opportunities even further (Apostolou, 2013). Moreover, the chances of conception from a single sexual act under force are lower than from repeated sexual contacts with a consenting partner. ...
... In particular, it has been argued that women may have evolved to be sexually responsive in sexual context-dependent situations in order to avoid genital injury (Rieger et al. 2016). More specifically, there are reasons to believe that forced copulation has been present during most of the period of human evolution (Thornhill and Thornhill 1983 see also Apostolou 2013). Forced copulation can lead to genital trauma (Slaughter et al. 1997); therefore, the female response to any sexual stimuli could have evolved in part to mitigate this risk. ...
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The notion that female sexuality is fluid, meaning that women can experience attractions for either men or women depending on the circumstances, has been widely accepted by the academic community. Accordingly, scholars have attempted to develop evolutionary models that could explain why selection forces have favored sexual fluidity in women. The present paper reviews longitudinal studies on sexual attraction which indicate that the great majority of women do not have a fluid sexuality, but have instead stable attractions over time. Moreover, the current paper reviews studies on arousal, in order to demonstrate that they indicate a weak correlation between sexual arousal and sexual attraction in women, and not that women are attracted to both sexes. The evolutionary implications of the findings on female sexuality are further explored.
... Such a competition is apparent in wars and raids, in which groups of men are formed to attack other groups in order to get their resources-one being women (see, for instance, the Yanomamo; Chagnon, 1992). Following the agropastoral revolution, large-scale wars became more common, with women being one of the spoils of war (Apostolou 2013b). These wars also resulted in large number of female slaves, which were used as sexual outlets (Meltzer, 1993). ...
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Divergence from exclusive heterosexual orientation is commonly observed in women. Understanding this phenomenon requires exploring it from an evolutionary perspective, which in turn entails knowledge of human evolutionary history, particularly with respect to mating patterns. The anthropological and historical records indicate that during most of the human evolutionary time, mate choice was regulated, with parental and social control being directed predominantly toward women. Strong control over mating, along with less emphasis placed on intimacy, male–male competition, and male tolerance toward female same-sex attractions, result in weak selection pressures exercised on alleles that predispose for deviations from exclusive heterosexual orientation. These pressures are weak over small deviations, but become increasingly stronger when such deviations tend toward exclusive homosexual orientation. As a consequence, a distribution of sexual orientation arises with many women having nonexclusive heterosexual orientation, and few women having bisexual and homosexual orientation. Further predictions are derived from this hypothesis, which are matched to available evidence.
... Because women's life-time reproductive span is shorter than that of men, one would expect women to experience more negative emotions than men when investing time in genetically unrelated children. Circumventing female choice may have high reproductive costs for women (see Apostolou, 2013, for a discussion of rape), but this has not, to our knowledge, been studied in humans. One of the aims of the present study is to address sex differences in parenting-related emotions and decisions in scenarios where genetic relatedness with the offspring is manipulated (Buss and Malamuth, 1996). ...
Article
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Paternal uncertainty has shaped human behavior both in evolutionary and cultural terms. There has been much research investigating parenting as a function of genetic relatedness to the child, with a focus on male behavior, but the nature of these sex differences is hard to evaluate. We devised a hypothetical scenario that was as similar as possible for men and women to test whether, even in such a scenario, sex differences would remain strong. Participants were presented with the discovery that a child that s/he believed to be theirs was not carrying their own genes. Irrespective of sex, participants (N=1007) were more upset when the baby was not genetically related to them than when the child was genetically related but the sex gamete was not from a chosen donor. Women were more upset than men in both scenarios, but were more likely to want to keep the baby. The results are discussed with reference to evolved and rational mechanisms affecting parenting.
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The interface of sexual behavior and evolutionary psychology is a rapidly growing domain, rich in psychological theories and data as well as controversies and applications. With nearly eighty chapters by leading researchers from around the world, and combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology is the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work in the field. Providing a broad yet in-depth overview of the various evolutionary principles that influence all types of sexual behaviors, the handbook takes an inclusive approach that draws on a number of disciplines and covers nonhuman and human psychology. It is an essential resource for both established researchers and students in psychology, biology, anthropology, medicine, and criminology, among other fields. Volume 4: Controversies, Applications, and Nonhuman Primate Extensions addresses controversies and unresolved issues; applications to health, law, and pornography; and non-human primate evolved sexual psychology.
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Evolutionary psychology has been suggested to be a promising method to explain the incidence of sexual offending. We identify and discuss three major theoretical approaches to the explanation of sexual offending (specifically male rape). First, we discuss selectionist approaches, which position rape as a distinct outcome of evolutionary processes relating to mating and reproduction, either as a direct adaptation or an evolutionarily related by-product. Second, we discuss evolutionary-developmental approaches which discuss rape in relation to similar evolutionary functions (e.g. mating and reproduction) but with an emphasis on how rape develops over the lifespan. Third, we discuss Malamuth’s confluence model, which considers rape to be an outcome of a range of psychological and situational variables which fall on two broad explanatory pathways (hostile masculinity and sexual promiscuity). We suggest that while these perspectives all have clear merit, they generally lack specificity in relation to causal mechanisms and neglect proximate-level (immediate) explanations. We suggest a possible alternative approach to be one which applies evolutionary theory to the underlying psychological mechanisms which constitute rape directly, which we illustrate through the example of the integration of evolutionary accounts of emotion to the explanation of problematic sexual interests.
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Chapter
In the present chapter, I will summarize evidence from several studies, which indicates that men exhibit considerable tolerance to their opposite-sex partners’ same-sex attractions. This male tolerance facilitates the formation of heterosexual relationships for women who experience same-sex attractions, reducing in effect negative selection pressures on same-sex attraction. Moreover, men frequently employ a forced-sex or rape strategy in order to bypass female and parental choice. This strategy is found across different societies, and could result in reducing negative selection pressures on same-sex predispositions, because it imposes heterosexual sex on women independently of their attractions. Finally, men and women have evolved a desire to have children, which can also play a role in weakening negative selection pressures, because they would motivate people with same-sex attractions to have heterosexual sex in order to have children.
Chapter
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Chapter
In this chapter, the model of parental choice is applied to understanding the mating patterns in post-industrial societies. The model predicts that individual mate choice is the primary sexual selection force, with all other sexual selection forces being weak. It also predicts that, in terms of parental choice, female parents exercise more influence than male parents over mate choice. Consistent with these predictions, in post-industrial societies individuals choose their own mates. Parents still exercise influence, but they do so indirectly with the use of several manipulation tactics.
Chapter
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The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
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There is some evidence that women are less likely to be raped during the mid-portion of the menstrual cycle. In order to determine if women might be behaving in ways to decrease their chances of sexual assault when they are most likely to conceive, female college students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their activities during the past 24 hours and indicate the first day of their last menstruation. A statistically significant decrease in risk taking behavior during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle was obtained for respondents who were not taking birth control pills.
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Males of many animal taxa allocate resourceslargely to mate acquisition and defence, con-tributing little more than gametes to embryoproduction. In many insects, however, malestransfer large spermatophores or ejaculates tofemales during mating, and extragametic sub-stancesderivedfromthesepackagesareusedforsomaticmaintenanceandeggproductionbytherecipient females (e.g. Boggs 1981). Femalesreceiving multiple male contributions lay more(Ridley1988)andoftenlargereggs(Fox1993a)than do once-mated females, indicating largeeVectsofmale-derivednutrientsonfemalerepro-duction.Furthermore,largemalesproducelargerejaculates or spermatophores than small males(Fox et al. 1995), and females of some insectspreferentiallymatewithlargemales(ThornhillA but see Gwynne 1988). Here, weprovideevidencethatvariationamongmalesinbodysizehasadirecteVectonfemalereproductivesuccess(lifetimefecundityandeggsize)inaseedbeetle,
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This paper presents and discusses codes for the Murdock/White (1969) sample societies. The codes measure warfare frequencies (internal, external, and overall); land and nonland resources taken during war; individual and socially organized aggression (homicide, assault, theft, trespass, suicide); and unpredictable and pre dictable resource problems
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This . . . book is the first to present a unified theory of human mating behavior. [It] is based on the most massive study of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 people of all ages from thirty-seven cultures worldwide. If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question, we must look into our evolutionary past, according to David M. Buss. The book discusses casual sex and long-term relationships, sexual conflict, the elusive quest for harmony between the sexes, and much more. Buss's research leads to a radical shift from the standard view of men's and women's sexual psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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This chapter is reprinted from Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller (1975). Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Adler, Jung, Deutsch, Horney, Marx, and Engels were mostly silent on the topic of rape as a social reality. So it remained for the latter-day feminists, free at last from the strictures that forbade us to look at male sexuality, to discover the truth and meaning in our own victimization. Critical to our study is the recognition that rape has a history, and that through the tools of historical analysis we may learn what we need to know about our current condition. The subject of rape has not been, for zoologists, an important scientific question. No zoologist has ever observed that animals rape in their natural habitat, the wild. But we do know that human beings are different. Man's structural capacity to rape and woman's corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself. Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. Rape's critical function is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. A reflective comment, by Claire M. Renzetti, on this chapter appears at the end of the chapter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Prevailing evolutionary approaches to human mating have largely ignored the fact that mating decisions are heavily influenced by parents and other kin. This is significant because parents and children often have conflicting mate preferences. We provide a brief review of how parents have influenced their children's mating behavior across cultures and throughout history. Then, by drawing on evolutionary reasoning, we offer a hypothesis for why parents and offspring may have conflicting interests with respect to mate preferences. Specifically, parents may have a relatively stronger preference for children's mates with characteristics suggesting high parental investment and cooperation with the ingroup, whereas children may have a relatively stronger preference for mates with characteristics signaling heritable fitness. We review past research consistent with this hypothesis, and we report new results from an empirical study consisting of 768 participants from a variety of cultures that provided clear support for the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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This article describes a conceptual framework with which to study rape cross-societally. The model considers the powerful effects of social norms in condoning certain types of rape. It also distinguishes clearly between rape and sex by making the absence of female choice the fundamental factor in defining rape. Using this conceptual model as a guide, rape is examined in a random sample of 35 world societies. Rape is not a forbidden behavior; this research demonstrates the masking effects of social norms that tend to institutionalize rape within various social customs or rituals. The concept of a rape-free culture was not supported; rape was found in all the sample societies once the definition of rape was broadened to include socially condoned rapes. The presence of both normative (condoned) and nonnormative (uncondoned) rapes in a majority of the societies studied illustrates that rape is regulated rather than prohibited. Implications for defining and studying rape in the United States are discussed.
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Evidence that women are less likely to be raped near ovulation than at other times in the ovarian cycle may reflect behavioral adaptations against the risk of fertile insemination by rapists. Chavanne and Gallup [Evol. Hum. Behav. 19 (1998) 27] proposed that women selectively reduce behaviors that expose them to a risk of rape during the ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle, and reported supportive evidence. However, their study suffered from certain methodological shortcomings. In an improved test involving 51 subjects, repeated measurement, and an explicit distinction between risky and nonrisky activities, we confirmed all predictions: During the ovulatory phase, naturally cycling women reduced risky behaviors and increased nonrisky ones. Women using contraceptives causing hormonal suppression of ovulation showed neither effect.
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Females of many species have recurrently faced the adaptive problem of rape over the species' evolutionary history. In humans, rape of women by men has occurred throughout recorded history and across cultures, and exacts on women severe psychological, physical, and reproductive costs. Women therefore may have evolved psychological mechanisms that motivate rape avoidance behaviors. We provide an overview of recent theoretical and empirical research addressing women's rape avoidance psychology and behavior from an evolutionary perspective. This research indicates that women may possess evolved mechanisms that motivate rape avoidance. We conclude by highlighting several directions for research that may further clarify the design features of human female evolved mechanisms that motivate rape avoidance.
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Prompted by the lack of attention by sociologists and the challenge of materialist explanations of warfare in “precivilized” societies posed by Keeley (1996), this paper tests and finds support for two materialist hypotheses concerning the likelihood of warfare in preindustrial societies: specifically, that, as argued by ecological–evolutionary theory, dominant mode of subsistence is systematically related to rates of warfare; and that, within some levels of technological development, higher levels of “population pressure” are associated with a greater likelihood of warfare. Using warfare measures developed by Ember and Ember (1995), measures of subsistence technology originally developed by Lenski (1966, 1970), and the standard sample of societies developed by Murdock and White (1969), this study finds evidence that warfare is more likely in advanced horticultural and agrarian societies than it is in hunting–and–gathering and simple horticultural societies, and that it is also more likely in hunting–and–gathering and agrarian societies that have above–average population densities. These findings offer substantial support for ecological–evolutionary theory and qualified but intriguing support for “population pressure” as explanations of cross–cultural variation in the likelihood of warfare.
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In this paper I examine the idea that patriarchal family structure among elites in stratified societies originates as a form of parental investment favoring male children. Patriliny and restricted inheritance among 15th- and 16th-century Portuguese nobility are analyzed as reproductive strategies aimed at maximizing lineage survival and posterity in the face of high mortality. Demographic data derived from genealogies show that among the high nobility, males outreproduce females, whereas among the lower nobility, females outreproduce males, and that the tendency to concentrate investment in male offspring correspondingly increases with status. This family structural arrangement has the societal effect of generating intense competition among males for available titles, which results in increased warfare mortality among men and indirectly in the increased claustration of women.