Hi,
a good place to start is this book. It's at my offfice, so I couldn't
get to it to give the exact reference. Therefore, I swiped this stuff
from Amazon.Com. From a constructionist perspective, Buss is pretty
reductionistic, especially in his narrow understanding of culture (but
the evolutionary perspective in general is impoverished in this respect).
It's good, however, to know how the other half lives even if you don't
necessarily agree with their position. Buss is probably the most active
evolutionary psychologist currently researching and writing.
Bye for now,
Russell Shuttleworth
The Evolution of Desire : Strategies of Human Mating
by David M. Buss
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Paperback - (February 1995)
272 pages
Reviews
From Booklist , January 1, 1994
Evolutionary psychology--or, in the vernacular,
"instinct"--rules the dating
and mating game, and this scientist's discoveries
are bound to clash with
theories of patriarchy that purport to account for
male dominance of
wealth. Buss' synthesis of many studies conforms
with popular wisdom:
Women want an older man with actual or potential
means; men want an
attractive, younger woman; and men have a much
greater proclivity for
promiscuity than do women. Why? The reasons reside
in vestigial "cues"
that favored reproduction in the pre-agricultural
epoch of human
development. Then, when a poor decision in mate
selection imposed
devastating material costs on the female, a
dialectic of attraction strategies
developed so that a desirable mate could be gained,
held, and defended
against interlopers. The ancestral origin, Buss
explains, is apparent in
courting techniques (such as his researchers
recorded in singles bars) or
in the emotion of jealousy, the actuator in alerting
and defeating rivals.
Libraries may be overrun by anecdotal accounts of
sex, even the good
ones like Sex: An Oral History by Harry Maurer . But
Buss steps back
from the mechanics and emotions of the matter and
insightfully
complements the multitude. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright© 1994, American Library Association. All
rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable
edition of this
title.
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Customer Comments
Average Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 3
[log in to unmask] from Rochester, NY , May
17, 1998
Should be required reading in sex education classes
Buss covers male and female mate selection criteria
and their effects on
society from an evolutionary prespective and in
several different contexts:
getting a mate, keeping a mate, what happens during
and after a breakup,
what happens as the two people age, and most
importantly, the
implications of "casual sex". Buss has apparently
has done a bunch of
original research in the field and has been cited by
Helen Fisher in The
Anatomy of Love and by Robert Wright in The Moral
Animal, but this
book is better than either of those books. My only
complaint is that Buss'
writing style, while very clear, is a bit dry.
--This text refers to an out of
print or unavailable edition of this title.
A reader, July 18, 1997
Venus and Darwin on a date
For the individualist, it's not easy to think of
human behavior as largely a
mass of strategies selected by evolution. Yet the
evidence from several
directions is impressive, if not entirely convincing
in all respects. _The
Evolution of Desire_ should play an important role
in the popular science
writing of our age, illustrating both the influence
and the boundaries of
evolutionary selection on human behavior. Both
readable and well
documented, _Evolution_ goes beyond simply
interpreting modern
behavior in terms of evolutionary stories. Buss also
synthesizes massive
amounts of data from far reaching and extensive
cross-cultural studies to
reveal the patterns in our attraction, mating, and
separation behaviors.
Notably, exceptions to the patterns are discussed at
length. This aspect
leaves the reader with a slightly better
understanding of the limitations of
strict evolutionary thinking than we find with the
similar and also excellent
"Anatomy of Love" by Helen Fisher. Human behavioral
flexibility is
emphasized, and our potential freedom from the
patterns of evolutuionary
selection, through knowledge of those patterns. Much
of _Evolution_ will
seem consistent with common experience, while some
will be remarkable
new food for thought. There is virtually no aspect
of intimate human
relationships that does not have some light, or at
least a new and
intriguing viewing angle, cast by the broad strokes
of evolutionary
psychology in David Buss' absorbing web of sexual
strategies and
counter-strategies.
A reader, November 7, 1996
A scientist's "How to Pick Up Girls"?
A clear exposition of the mating-strategy aspect of
evolutionary
psychology, backed up by impressive academic
studies. Don't you want
to know what the most effective tactics are for men
and women at singles
bars? They are quite different.
--Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New
Science of the
Meme
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