Are women monogamous by nature?

[Joshua Chasseur]

I was wondering, are they?

[DrKrettin]

It's the old argument about survival of genes. A man can transmit his genes most effectively by mating as widely as possible and producing as many offspring as possible. A woman is restricted to producing one per year, so her strategy has to be to make sure that each child has the best chance of survival. This involves having a male mate who will protect them. This would make women more monogamous than men. etc.

[DrmDoc]

I know of no factor in our genes that compels monogamy among humans, which suggests that monogamy among women is more of a choice rather an compulsion by nature--in my opinion.

[John Cuthber]

What does "by nature" mean in the context of human behaviour?

[StringJunky]

What does "by nature" mean in the context of human behaviour?

Hard-wired, as with any other organism.

[CharonY]

Regardless of the biological benefits it appears that there is a choice involved, which makes it not hard-wired. It is often a fallacy to assume something is just so by nature since it kind of makes biological sense, especially when dealing with complex organisms. After all, they react to environmental cues (which includes learning) and can have a wide range of responses.

[StringJunky]

Regardless of the biological benefits it appears that there is a choice involved, which makes it not hard-wired. It is often a fallacy to assume something is just so by nature since it kind of makes biological sense, especially when dealing with complex organisms. After all, they react to environmental cues (which includes learning) and can have a wide range of responses.

Choice in whether to actually to do something about it but not so much in the initial emotional/physical response - the hard-wired bit.. A gorgeous man/woman walks passed, you don't think: "No, I'm not going to think carnal thoughts about this person... Mmm... yeah." We are still animals but with a manual override evolved in us.

Edited August 10, 2016 by StringJunky

[disarray]

Choice in whether to actually to do something about it but not so much in the initial emotional/physical response - the hard-wired bit.. A gorgeous man/woman walks passed, you don't think: "No, I'm not going to think carnal thoughts about this person... Mmm... yeah." We are still animals but with a manual override evolved in us.

 

I think that there are extremes in the nature/nurture question. At one end you have people such as Sartre who will tell you that people are 100% free to think and do whatever people choose regardless of upbringing, social roles, education, etc. On the other extreme you have people such as Skinner who think that people are 100% conditioned by a combination of their genes and their environment so that they have no free choice at all.

 

Psychological observations tend to suggest that our hard-wired desires often trick us (our prefrontal cortex thought processes) into thinking that we are really choosing what these desires wanted us to choose all along via such things as rationalizations, denial, repression, etc. Indeed, scientific studies show that we make the vast majority of decisions as to what to believe and do on a subconscious level, and only assume that we have made these decisions on a conscious level.

 

It's the old argument about survival of genes. A man can transmit his genes most effectively by mating as widely as possible and producing as many offspring as possible. A woman is restricted to producing one per year, so her strategy has to be to make sure that each child has the best chance of survival. This involves having a male mate who will protect them. This would make women more monogamous than men. etc.

 

This is an argument made by evolutionary psychologists that no doubt has a grain of truth to it, but I think that the prevailing scientific opinion is that both men and women are hard-wired to be both monogamous and polygamous, given certain chronological and environmental triggers, e.g., women are more open to "casual relations" with rugged men in certain stages of their cycle, men produce less testosterone once they get married and get into family mode, etc. etc.

 

Also, the social "etiquette" whereby men are expected to initiate courting apparently, according to studies, means that women will be choosier. In the study, women go around choosing men and the men can only either accept or reject the women's initiatory moves....In this scenario it was found that men became much choosier.

 

But in general, patriarchal societies have perpetuated a series of beliefs about women's lack of desire in comparison to men, the age at which desire peaks, the frequency with which they experience desires, the number of men that they can be attracted even while being in a monagamous relationship, etc. Again, imo, science tends to be dismantling these myths in favor of an approach that finds greater equality and similarity between men and women. For one thing, male and female organs are homologous.

 

 

Many (e.g., psychologists, anthropologists) claim that the degree to which a particular hominid might be said to be monogamous or polygamous can be ascertained with a reasonable degree of confidence by measuring such things as dimorphism (difference in male/female body build), size of testes, shape of sperm, etc.

 

The very fact that the question of this thread is to ask whether women are monogamous by nature rather than to ask whether men are monogamous by nature seems to reflect widespread social assumptions that there is a significant difference in this regard.

 

 

Edited August 10, 2016 by disarray

[CharonY]

Choice in whether to actually to do something about it but not so much in the initial emotional/physical response - the hard-wired bit.. A gorgeous man/woman walks passed, you don't think: "No, I'm not going to think carnal thoughts about this person... Mmm... yeah." We are still animals but with a manual override evolved in us.

 

Not even then. Say you under stress do to some environmental factors, you will quite possibly not notice them. At least not that way. Hormonal status and imprinting also affects mate choice and hence, what you perceive as gorgeous. Same for other animals, btw. There is very little that is hard-wired in the strictest sense.

[sethoflagos]

The fact that the male generative organ is particularly well designed for the removal of previously deposited fluids from the vicinity of the female generative organ is a pretty good guide to the comings and goings of our ancestors.

 

Conspicuously different to the chimp strategy and seems weighted towards gaining maximum reproductive advantage from an infrequent opportunity. Make of that what you will.

 

Mind you, the shenanigans that went on half a million years ago are not necessarily a good guide to current practice.

Edited August 11, 2016 by sethoflagos

[disarray]

 

 

Not even then. Say you under stress do to some environmental factors, you will quite possibly not notice them. At least not that way. Hormonal status and imprinting also affects mate choice and hence, what you perceive as gorgeous. Same for other animals, btw. There is very little that is hard-wired in the strictest sense.

 

It appears that you are arguing both ways...on the one hand you are talking about the manner in which hormones and imprinting affect us, perhaps often in ways that we are not aware of. On the other you say that little is hard-wired in the strictest sense.

 

Perhaps you could qualify what you mean by "strictest sense." I realize that humans have certain biological-based, behavior patterns that may be mediated (triggered) by the presence of environmental cues, and otherwise lie dormant. I realize that our instincts are malleable and can take on different forms depending on the social/physical environment, but just where one draws the line between strict and lax hard wiring is up for grabs as far as I know. I could give a few examples as to the multifarious impact of instincts on the human psyche, but Steven Pinker has already done this for me by writing his book, "The Blank Slate."

[CharonY]

Well, and there are quite a few examples of polyandry in a range of animals (especially birds) so high-level evolutionary explanations won't suffice as explanation, either.

 

Edit:

Most people (as in this thread) use hard-wired as a stringent ,unalterable biological response, independent of individual experience (i.e. often in a kind of evolutionary sense). Something like a reflex.

However, imprinting for example, is part of the developmental learning process. You learn certain and subsequently affirm sexual preferences, for example. A different exposure would likely lead to a different outcome. Here, you seem to be using like a reflex that can be suppressed. E.g. women are naturally polygamous/monogamous but can use willpower (or equivalent) to suppress it.

 

What I propose, especially in the context of OP (i.e. mate selection and polyandry) is that the decision for or against monogamy is based only on a mix of biology (on a very low level) and a lot personal development (which, as all human actions, including e.g. "awareness" or "learning", is based on biological processes) .

But because of that drawing conclusions of individual actions based on rough "just so" evolutionary stories just does not make a lot of sense.

Edited August 11, 2016 by CharonY

[disarray]

Mind you, the shenanigans that went on half a million years ago are not necessarily a good guide to current practice.

 

Well yes, one hears a lot about the appropriateness of our (hunter-gatherer) instincts in modern society, and the need to either freely express or cautiously repress them, c.f., Freud's "Civilization and its Discontent."

Well, and there are quite a few examples of polyandry in a range of animals (especially birds) so high-level evolutionary explanations won't suffice as explanation, either.

Are you suggesting that we can't look to bonobos, oragutans, and gorillas in order to get clues about human sexual proclivities since other animals quite unlike us, such as some birds, also practice polyandry (not to mention monogamy)? Of course one can find all sorts of parallels and dissimilarities if one examines insects, fish, etc., but apes and earlier hominids with a high degree of genetic similarity are the best place to look to find out about our own instincts. From a strictly genetic/anthropological standpoint, I fail to follow your logic.

Edited August 11, 2016 by disarray

[CharonY]

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion? Obviously humans are much more likely to engage in monogamy than our closest relatives. Yet the sexual behaviour is still markedly different between different apes. Yet if the evolutionary history is sufficent to explain prefernces, it would not explain the wide-spread monogamy in humans. There are various models in which different levels of promiscuity can be stable strategies. This have been is mostly tested in nesting birds, though often the benefit of polyandry is still unclear (yet it clearly happens).

Considering that birds can have different mating strategies, which we would consider "normal" (which shifting frequencies which may reflect environmental change) it should be somewhat obvious that for humans a similar leeway is likely? And if so it would make the specific phrasing of OP rather unsuited.

[disarray]

 

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion? Obviously humans are much more likely to engage in monogamy than our closest relatives. Yet the sexual behaviour is still markedly different between different apes. Yet if the evolutionary history is sufficent to explain prefernces, it would not explain the wide-spread monogamy in humans. There are various models in which different levels of promiscuity can be stable strategies. This have been is mostly tested in nesting birds, though often the benefit of polyandry is still unclear (yet it clearly happens).

Considering that birds can have different mating strategies, which we would consider "normal" (which shifting frequencies which may reflect environmental change) it should be somewhat obvious that for humans a similar leeway is likely? And if so it would make the specific phrasing of OP rather unsuited.

 

I am not sure what conclusion of mine you are contesting? Of course, we can find similar social/physical parallels amongst much lower animals, e.g., ants have an elaborate system for gathering food and have different classes of workers. Ditto for bees. But I would think that it is pretty much a truism that the best place to look to attempt to understand human instincts and propensities is in our closest genetic relatives....are you disputing this??

 

I know that there is a range of variations between apes (Hominidae), but as I pointed out, evolutionary psychologists/biologists can extrapolate our own propensities by assessing a range of factors dealing with, as just one example, size and nature of sperm, genitals, and the body as a whole.

 

I certainly did not say that humans were naturally monogamous nor polygamous. Rather I said that they were flexible in this regard. It does seem rather obvious that civilization has largely suppressed, or attempted to suppress human "promiscuity." Most evolutionists, suggest that modern humans are, if one has to choose a label, serial monogamists. But even then, I suspect that humans tend to be fairly polygamous (with variations) when left to their own devices....e.g., in primitive societies, communes, etc.

 

But yes, I think that we should keep in mind that the topic question of this thread was whether women were monogamous, which, as I mentioned, seems to imply that the subtext question is whether (and perhaps why) women are more monogamous than men.

Edited August 11, 2016 by disarray

[CharonY]

But here is the thing, as humans have always been humans, how would you know what the baseline promiscuity is? You seem to think that the development has suppressed tendencies, but isn't it equally or even more likely that it may be increasing?

 

What we seem to be in agreement with is that environmental factors (resources, society etc.) may modulate mating behaviour. However, the difference appears to be that you seem to assume that there is a natural threshold that is abnormally influenced by civilization, whereas I maintain that the flexibility in itself is biological and modulated by circumstances, be it civilization, resources or other reasons.

Edited August 11, 2016 by CharonY

[disarray]

But here is the thing, as humans have always been humans, how would you know what the baseline promiscuity is? You seem to think that the development has suppressed tendencies, but isn't it equally or even more likely that it may be increasing?

If it is increasing, I would suggest, given the slowness with which genetic influence (e.g., mental hardwiring) would take place, that any changes are the result of changing and (less suppressing) social norms, though it is difficult to fully assess doing to what society says is the norm and what actually happens, e.g., now vs. Victorian England.

.......................

One can only deduce/extrapolate by examining physical and social characteristics if one is searching for some sort of "natural" baseline.

 

The go-to controversy here is that between Margaret Mead, who championed the role of the environment, and claimed that, in the natural social environment provided in Samoa at the time, women readily engaged in premarital sex and had a low degree of conflict with parents, judging from interviews with Samoan adolescent females.

 

Freeman, perhaps wishing to underscore the need for society to enforce the naturalness of monogamy (and thus lack of premarital/ promiscuous/casual sex), and the need for parents to continually keep rebellious children under control claimed that the adolescents had lied to her, and that Mead’s methods were flawed and that she told the opposite of what was really the case.

 

Wiki article seems reasonable here, and suggests that Freeman had unduly criticized Mead:

 

“Adolescents are likely to be rebellious only in industrialized societies practicing neolocal residence patterns (in which young adults must move their residence away from their parents). Neolocal residence patterns result from young adults living in industrial societies who move to take new jobs or in similar geographically mobile populations. Thus, Mead's analysis of adolescent conflict is upheld in the comparative literature on societies worldwide...While many Samoan women would admit in public that it is ideal to remain a virgin, in practice they engaged in high levels of premarital sex and boasted about their sexual affairs among themselves”

A book on the controversy was published: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4614.htm

In any case, it is difficult to find a baseline given the plethora of confounding factors: family dynamics, rebellion, poverty, welfare, isolation, tradition, patriarchy, honor, etc. etc.

Edited August 11, 2016 by disarray

[iNow]

Are brunettes monogamous by nature? What about short people, or folks with swishy noses and dangly earlobes, or people who require reading glasses?

 

The underlying premise here, and the seemingly countless threads accepting that premise as given, somehow foundationally true, is tiresome.

Edited August 11, 2016 by iNow

[disarray]

Are brunettes monogamous by nature? What about short people, or folks with swishy noses and dangly earlobes, or people who require reading glasses?

 

The underlying premise here, and the seemingly countless threads accepting that premise as given, somehow foundationally true, is tiresome.

In short, the topic question may have what some would describe as sexist overtones. I reminded of the book, "Your Wife: The Effect of Female Promiscuity on American Culture and Human Morality'" in this regard, in which, according to the jacket, "the reader is left with deep introspection about staying the course or advocating reform."

 

One can only wonder whether or not the person who originally posted this question supports female monogamy........ or why the issue of female monogamy was singled out from that of, as you say, brunettes, short people, etc.

Edited August 11, 2016 by disarray

[iNow]

*squishy

[disarray]

What we seem to be in agreement with is that environmental factors (resources, society etc.) may modulate mating behaviour. However, the difference appears to be that you seem to assume that there is a natural threshold that is abnormally influenced by civilization, whereas I maintain that the flexibility in itself is biological and modulated by circumstances, be it civilization, resources or other reasons.

 

So you don't think social environment affects mating behavior....are you serious?

[iNow]

I think you should read once more what CharonY actually wrote and request clarification if needed.

[swansont]

How much does the K type reproductive strategy affect any tendency toward monogamy? Also the small amount of sexual dimorphism. I was under the impression that there were some correlations there.

 

So you don't think social environment affects mating behavior....are you serious?

 

How did you read that and come to this conclusion?

[DrmDoc]

In short, the topic question may have what some would describe as sexist overtones. I reminded of the book, "Your Wife: The Effect of Female Promiscuity on American Culture and Human Morality'" in this regard, in which, according to the jacket, "the reader is left with deep introspection about staying the course or advocating reform."

 

One can only wonder whether or not the person who originally posted this question supports female monogamy........ or why the issue of female monogamy was singled out from that of, as you say, brunettes, short people, etc.

 

The OP has posted questions elsewhere that appear to reference the Islamic teachings or doctrine he has received relative to these types of topics. It's clear, from his questions, that he is interested in the truth of what he's being taught. In my opinion, what he's being taught is highly influenced by religious doctrine rather than science. Therefore, this is likely our opportunity to enlighten a budding analytical mind against oppressive, uninformed instruction.

Edited August 11, 2016 by DrmDoc

[disarray]

What we seem to be in agreement with is that environmental factors (resources, society etc.) may modulate mating behaviour. However, the difference appears to be that you seem to assume that there is a natural threshold that is abnormally influenced by civilization, whereas I maintain that the flexibility in itself is biological and modulated by circumstances, be it civilization, resources or other reasons.

 

 

Ok, I guess I misread this when I posted about it recently. My understanding is that we can gain a better understanding of human behavior by examining that of apes in general than we can by examining, say, the behavior of rodents.

 

Having said that, I don't think that there is any hominid template that is set and fixed so that we can't diverge from, so I also agree with your statement that genes are readily influenced by environment....though some behaviors may be more resilient and resistant to change than others.

 

The degree to which things are hard-wired is really a matter of emphasis and definition.

 

But the literature is replete with discussions about the significance of male/female dimorphism, etc. and with comparisons between humans and apes.

 

I would suggest that percentages of, say, homosexuality and bisexuality, are fairly constant throughout history (e.g., last 3000 years), despite being generally repressed by societies, suggesting some sort of biological baseline.

Edited August 12, 2016 by disarray