Perhaps it has something to with ensuring genetic diversity. "Cheating" is common among other primates. Females who are basically claimed by the alpha-male will sneak off and bang lesser males and vice versa. I would think that if most of the next generation of young are all descended from a single patriarch (or matriarch) to a high degree it would pretty much guarantee incest sooner or later.

I think it is wrong to say that all women seek stable, lasting relationships. Many (perhaps most) do, but some just want to get laid and then not be bothered by guys. So you can expect most women to seek more than sex out of a relationship, but then those aren't the women who are banging other womens' huspands.

Also some women do seek meaningful relationships, but still want sexual excitement from other men who are not their partner. Wouldn't a woman have the best of both worlds if she had a caring breadwinner who would give her all the benefits of a stable relationship and a guy on the side who did nothing besides sexually please her? If a woman had a caring man (or perhaps just a wealthy man she can get money and nice things from) who was bad in bed, she could stay with him for the benefits of having a huspand and cheat on the side for the benefits of having a man who is good at sex.

This, I think is a major factor, if not the only reason. Remember DDA that you are assuming that women that fuck married men don't think that he'll ever leave his wife. But in movies you often hear the mistress say: " You promised me you'd leave her once your kids went to college/you settled your deal at the firm/et.c. "

I think a smart (and coldhearted) man can string along a mistress for years with empty promises of "something more" in the future.

Then there's the simple issue of falling in love.

We don't fall in love based on conscious calculations of what will be "beneficial" to our genes. We just fall for the people excibiting positive traits.

A hunky, rich man might well attract a mistress, even if he doesn't ever spends any of his money on her. She just falls for him, because he flaunts alfa-male qualities, and even though she never benefits from these qualities, her emotions are allready won over.

And this is only when talking about long-term mistresses. A one-night stand is alot easier to explain away. Firstly, a married man on the prowl for a one-night stand probably doesn't say he's married to the women he hits on, but even if he does, it only takes a woman who is sufficiently horny for him that one night, and doesn't have quite as many scrubles about it as you or I might have.

After all, if she's never going to see him again, it's not that hard to just say: "It's not my problem"

For the same reason that it's easier to find a job if you already have a job:  If someone else wants/has you must have good qualities. 

Well that's only if you consider biology and socio-cultural factors two different things...

You're right, it is complicated. But if you read my post you'll notice that I too take the "socio-cultural" approach.

I'm not a biologist, and anyway, I'm more interested in people and their interactions. So I get what you're saying. But be careful you don't set up a false discotomy. It's not an either/or thing with our biology and our social behavior. The second is an expression of the first.

That said, our social interactions are so intricate, and so complex as to varant a field of study of their own, and one that I am generally alot more interested in than biology.

But it doesn't hurt to look at a problem through the biological lense regardless. It can only imform and clarify the socio-cultural understanding.

What Kevin said...

Really, the thing is: love, while caused by and powered by our biology, can still lead us to do some profoundly stupid things, both seen from a emotionless, calculating objective standpoint, and a common sense, adult, why-don't-you-protect-your-own-emotions standpoint.

You are seeing human beings as simple robots DDA. They aren't: they are extremely complex robots

I'd have answered sooner but I've been huddling in a corner with only my cat and six layers of blanket to get me through the blizzard of 09.

What Science Says About Human Sexuality

There's your ancient essay.  It's less than a year old, though, so I suppose you can be forgiven, Allah style.  If you can dig yourself out from being buried up to your armpits -- while being pummeled with rocks from all sides, and then escape -- through the crowd of at least a hundred onlookers -- and somehow make it to safety, it is Allah's judgment that you are innocent of all charges.

Because the optimum female mating strategy in humans is to marry a man who will stay with you through thick and thin (in other words, marry slightly below your own station) and reproduce with someone who has better genes (older, successful, rich men, in this instance.)

Consider the hypothetical reduction of all mating qualities to a single score of 1 to 100.  Regardless of where a female falls on the continuum, she has three options:

1) Marry exactly at her level.

2) Marry below her level

3) Marry above her level.

In such a simple game, we might expect to see a lot of people marry exactly at their level, particularly if they got to experiment before committing.  In real life, of course, there are thousands of potential scales, so we never see "real" exact matches, so we're left with marrying up or marrying down.

If a woman marries up, her man will provide her with better genes, comparatively, but this comes at a cost.  Either the man is unaware of his own superiority, or for some other reason, has chosen to marry down.  Regardless, if he becomes successful, or gets better self esteem, or just ends up in front of a lot of women at any time in his married life, he's likely to get offers from women better than his current wife.  In other words, if a woman marries up, she's likely to lose her man.  Before the days of contraception (and in many cases, after them) this almost automatically meant she'd be left holding the bag and the children.  (Men appear to have a disposition to invest most heavily in very young children, and then play a calculated gamble when they are old enough that the woman can likely raise them well enough alone.)

If, however, a woman marries a man below her own level, she is quite likely to get to keep him.  He is no dummy.  He realizes that he's done better than he ought to be able to do, and will likely forgive a multitude of sins if he gets to keep his prize.  He will be loyal.

Given these two choices, even though it seems counterintuitive at first, it makes sense that women would choose a lesser mate who would be faithful, and then actually reproduce with a greater mate, leaving the duped husband to raise someone else's offspring.  (This happens a LOT in swallows, whose cultural arrangement is disturbingly similar to humans'.)

The whole thing revolves around two concepts, one evolutionary and one mythological:

1) The Selfish Gene theory, which predicts that our behavior is programmed by genes which are unmoved by morality except as it is a benefit to them.  Typically, they will find the most optimal strategy.  The reason this is so shocking to us humans is that we believe:

2) Humans are monogamous.

Of course, #2, is a myth.  In fact, Richard Dawkins' latest effort has an interesting snippet about this, which I just read last night, by candle light, while shivering:

This backs up things I've already said:

By the same logic, a woman "knows" (whether genetically or consciously -- I suspect more genetically) that she cannot keep a suitor who is sufficiently superior to her social standing, but her genes can still benefit by reproducing with him.

If she is to keep her unwitting dupe of a husband, it's not a matter of deciding to just walk away.  It's important that the man she mates with doesn't want to stay.  Wealthier married men fit the bill.  They won't bother calling in the middle of the night and startling her husband.

*The Devil's Chaplain, pg 33.

I was just thinking about "the Selfish Gene" and thought that she could be tricking her husband into raising someone elses kids because the man she cheated with might produce better offspring. Just a thought I figured I'd leave it here.

We are looking at just one dynamic of extra marital interaction. The Single gal with the married guy was much more the standard years ago, before women were able to emancipate their sexuality...& openly (& effectively) express their libido....Today it is documented that married *women* are almost as likely to have a clandestine affair behind the back of their husbands.

There are websites dedicated to offering married people of both sexes who have come to realize that "Happily ever After" wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and who are looking for like minded would be cheaters.

AshleyMadison.com is such a website, and it boasts over 3 million members who pay a nice chunk of change to have the opportunity to engage in carnal knowledge with someone other than their spouse...The male to female ratio is virtually equal.

Hey Hamby...always a pleasure. E-mail me on my site so I can send you something...I was trying to PM you..but typically, I am fucking clueless.

Hamby, I'm wondering why you're not considering the fact that women look for men who would be good providers, and thus the allure of the married man lies in the evidence that he has provider experience and skills? 

On an unrelated topic, since you are a mod, can you get my badge reactivated, since PM's are now limited to subscribers?  I'm not sure how it got removed, but I know Sapient's cashing my checks every month.

Did you not read the rest of the post? The answer is very plain:

From a genetic perspective, a good move is to find a 'partner' (not a partner in the contemporary sense; remember that your genetic insticts do not and cannot take contemporary variables into account. They just want you to propagate) who has demonstrable success as a suitor.

To use an analogy: if you were to go to the track and bet on a horse, would you rather bet on one that has an appreciable record for winning or one that hasn't much of a record at all?

The 'through thick and thin' comment is odd, as there is no such thing as someone who will stay faithful with their partner regardless of any circumstances. This is a myth; love and attachment are finite experiences (though, granted, on some occassions the length of one's attachment to another person may equal their own lifespan).

Given that our genes have had more than enough time to pick-up on that particular fact, it's hardly plausible that we would be instinctively programmed to see promiscuity as a weakness of a mate (and I don't believe there is any evidence that supports such a notion)

No, it does not. It demonstrates that the optimum strategy, from a genetic standpoint, is for a female to marry a rung or two 'below' their status level - and this is because women are the selectors. The higher up you make your choice, the more offers your mate is likely to later recieve from other females, at least some of which may be a rung or two 'above' you*.

I do not see why you constantly claim to have trouble grasping this concept. It is not particularly difficult to understand. Perhaps it's because you find it threatening, in which case I offer the following:

*: 'above' and 'below' are used strictly as illustrative words. There is not an absolute, empirical standard where one can point to a person and say, "Better," or "Worse," - every selector varies in the weights they attach to various attributes, and our genes themselves are hardly infallible.

Biology also is simply stating the most likely facts regarding how we behave - it is not stating that, because this is how our genes work, this is the way things are just 'meant to be'. I think that most biologists (I know that Dr. Dawkins certainly does) happily agree that our genes do a pretty shitty job when it comes to making our lives better and that our evolutionary baggage tends to be hazardous more often than it is helpful - but this is, in my opinion, why learning about and accepting what the branches of science have to say about human behavior is important.

If we don't even understand why it is we do certain stupid things in the first place, how can we possibly hope to correct our behavior?

I understand what you are saying and I understand the genetics of why you make that case. But it doesn't jive with what we see happen in the real world.

Do you ever see a tall, handsome man with money go after a fat, ugly woman? I see that these women would be will to have sex or a relationship with these men if they pursue them. The difference with men is that we select in about 1 millisecond if we want to pursue a women. Women can take months or years to select. 

And if what you're saying is true, then all the feminist rhetoric is false about women being repressed and forced into being sex slaves and arranged marriages. No they have all the power, men just go along with whatever they choose. And if a man cheats on his wife or remains faithful, how is he not being a selector?

You're right there is a genetic bias toward women being selectors, especially when they are young, fertile and childless. But I think environmental factors level the playing field. Women play this game of not having sex unless you're monogamous/married and making the man pay for things, so men have to decide if they want to make that trade-off. Also money is the great equalizer and men make more of it(women spend more of it). If you walk into a brothel with cash in hand, the man is the selector, no doubt about it.

It's not that different than an economic transaction, both the buyer and seller are 'selectors'. Women spend all the time, money on making themselves attractive. High heel shoes would not exist if women were the 'selectors'.

I also think you have a North American bias. In large parts of the world, women are still treated like slave/property, so the culture in these places prevents them from being 'selectors'.

What I don't like is this 'genetics explains everything' dogma. It's like 'the bible explains everything' dogma that one must accept even if it doesn't line up with what I observe in the real world.

 Good luck Balkoth.  I, and several others, have explained this to him repeatedly, but he knows better than science because it's his opinion, dammit, and it makes sense to him.

...You're right, of course.

Who am I, a lowly member of the rabble, to question the wisdom of a Republican, afterall?

I imagine I can find more productive ways of spending my time.

Remember that our instincts very often do not match our conscious thoughts, and our conscious thoughts do not always (often?) match the reality of the situation.  I don't deny that many women might secretly hope that their newfound married genetic prize might change his tune and fall madly in love with them.  This isn't really germane to the conversation, though.  DamnDirtyApe wanted to know the genetic explanation for why females would think such a thing in the first place!

Put another way, our emotions are genes' way of getting us to do what they "want."  Genes, being devoid of purpose or consciousness, simply propogate when they have produced a successful effect.  They don't check that desirable effect against the "will" of the organism or the "reality" of the situation.  A woman who hopes a man will leave his wife, and so has sex with him to try to induce him to change, is still doing exactly what the genes have programmed -- getting superior genes while retaining a loyal provider.  It matters not a whit that she believes she is trying to do something else.   (After all, does it matter at all that millions of Christians believe God has answered their prayer?)

You've never laid out what facts would lead one to this conclusion. Just that men and women look for different things in the selection process and go about it differently.

These 'scientists' are making conclusions that grab headlines but don't reflect the data or reality. They get more money and fame when they make conclusions like this. It's sad to see how a 'Rational Responder' gets suckered into science based on sensationalism.

PS. I'm not a Republican, I just don't live in a fantasy world where an economy and society can be sustained where people are not rewarded according to their contribution but instead by how much they whine and threaten violence. This is another myth you believe not supported by the facts.

Good work, EXC.  That's certainly more thorough than say, getting a degree in evolutionary biology.

EXC, female selection isn't the purveyance of anthropology.  It's biology.  What you still do not seem to grasp is that when we say females are the selectors, we mean that one sex has more resource investment in offspring than another, and for that reason, it is a mathematical principle that mate choice will be more important for one sex than the other.  The one for which it is most important must be more selective.  It's that simple.

Female sexual selection was not invented in the 70s.  Darwin covered it in Origin.  He wasn't the first to think of it, either.  Sexual selection was more interesting to Darwin that natural selection.  (He viewed them as two separate processes, though we realize today that sexual selection is a subset of natural selection.)  Fisher, in the 1930s, noted the relationship of female selection to the size and prominence of male ornaments.  Hamilton, drawing from the work of these and other biologists, published in the 1960s, and E.O. Wilson published "Sociobiology," the synthesis of all of these scientists' work (and others) in 1975.

The thing is, it's only been in the last half century that scientists have been completely willing to look at humans as apes, and it's only been in the last half century that we've gotten reliable data from primate studies.

Nobody here that I've seen has debated the fact that within primate culture, there are elements of male selection, nor has anyone suggested that women walk around pointing to men they want and taking them home.  You keep making strawmen out of this and pointing to left wing conspiracies.  EXC, there was no left wing to make the conspiracy when sexual selection was discovered.

By the way, in reading those nice little quote mines you found, I notice that you've even foiled yourself.  Nobody here has suggested that females make direct mate choice.  But then, you wouldn't know to notice that little technicality, would you?

Like the feminized Christian church. Their business is selling women the myth that with religion, men will be faithful husbands. Men need the fear of Hell, it is the only antidote for our natural desire to be promiscuous. Apparently the only way a Christian women can keep a husband from cheating on her.