THE SCARLET LETTER
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HEY, I'M GOING TO EXCERPT A FEW PAGES FROM DAVID BUSS'S BOOKS ABOUT MATE VALUE (DESIRABILITY); WHY SOME MATES ARE MORE DESIRABLE THAN OTHERS. IT'S GOING TO EXPLAIN WHY PEOPLE (BOTH MALE AND FEMALE) WITH LOW MATE VALUE ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE JEALOUSY TOWARDS THEIR HIGHER MATE VALUE PARTNER, USE JEALOUSY INDUCED BEHAVIORAL TACTICS TO RETAIN THEIR HIGHER MATE VALUE PARTNER, AND OFTEN LOSE THEIR HIGHER MATE VALUE PARTNER TO RIVALS OF HIGHER MATE VALUE? MAKE SENSE? IT WILL ONCE I POST THESE EXCERPTS. (IF YOU SEE A FEMALE 8 WITH A MALE 6, THE MALE 6 WILL TYPICALLY JEALOUSY GUARD HIS FEMALE 8 PARTNER FROM RIVALS BECAUSE HE KNOWS THE LIKELIHOOD OF ACQUIRING ANOTHER FEMALE 8 PARTNER (IF HE WERE TO LOSE HIS CURRENT FEMALE 8) WOULD BE LOW.)
LOSER!
"Baby, Show 'Em What You're Worth!" - Katy "Refrigerator" Perry
Another mystery centers around the psychology of mate value. Considerable evidence now suggests that men and women higher in overall desirability are more discriminating and impose higher standards in their mate selection preferences than those lower in desirability. Evolutionary psychologist Norman Li has developed an ingenious "budget allocation" method whereby he can vary the number of "mating dollars" each person has; in other words, he varies (albeit artificially) their level of desirability. When mating budgets are tight, that is, when one's level of desirability is relatively low, people tend to go for what Li calls the "necessities" of mating. For women, intelligence, financial resources, work ethic, and sense of humor top the list of necessities. For men physical attractiveness is a necessity. When budgets get larger, that is, when one's mate value increases, more "luxuries" of mating come into play. After certain levels of the necessities are reached in intelligence, attractiveness, and resources, people spend their "surplus" mating dollars on obtaining mates who are especially creative or who have interesting personalities.
We now know the relatively obvious implications of individual differences in market value. The "8s" and the "10s" can be more exacting and are better able to pursue the sexual strategies they prefer. The "4s" and the "6s" have plenty of potential mates available, but they must settle for less. Future work will focus on the more subtle implications of mate value: Does a woman's mate value vary predictably as a function of her ovulation cycle, peaking near ovulation and dipping thereafter? Do women show more monthly variability in mate value than do men, corresponding to intuitions about good and bad hair days, since women are in fact more reproductively valuable when ovulating than when not ovulating? Over long time periods, do men show more dramatic oscillations in mate value, corresponding to spectacular public success and catastrophic falls in social status? Within mating relationships, how do these daily, monthly, and longer-term fluctuations affect the relative balance of power, feelings of love, and sexual fantasies about others? These questions cry out for exploration, and undoubtedly will be answered within the next decade.
The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating. Buss, 284-285.
A more accurate self-assessment of their own desirability is another potential benefit that women gain from casual sex. In human evolutionary history, reproductive penalties would have been imposed on women and men who failed to assess their own value accurately. Underestimates would have been especially detrimental. A woman who settled for a less desirable mate because she underestimated her own value would have secured fewer resources, less parental investment, and perhaps inferior genes to pass on to her children. A woman who overestimated her own value also suffered costs on the mating market. By setting her standards too high, she ensured that fewer men would reach her threshold, and those who did might not desire her because they could obtain more desirable women. If a woman's excessive self-estimate persisted too long, her actual mating value would decline as she aged. By engaging in brief affairs with several men, either simultaneously or sequentially, a woman can more accurately assess her own mating value. She obtains valuable information about the quality of the men she can potentially attract.
The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating. Buss, p. 88-89
"A Billion Bitch That What I'm Worth...High Maintenance...Hoes Better Recognize I'm Sum Greatness!" - Ralo Tha PiiiiiimP!
Conflict over perceived desirability, where one person feels resentment because the other ignores him or her as a potential mate, is often where the first battle line is drawn. People with higher desirability have more resources to offer and so can attract a mate with a higher value. Those with a low value must settle for less. Sometimes, however, a person may feel that he or she is worthy of consideration, and yet the other person disagrees.
I'VE NEVER REFERRED TO A GIRL AS A BITCH IN MY LIFE! NOT NEVER LEANNE AND LATASHA! THAT'S THE TYPE OF WORD THOSE GUYS USE AND I'M NOT ONE OF THOSE GUYS!
The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating. Buss, p. 144
"SHE TRYNA PUT A TIME LIMIT ON THE COCK LIKE A NIGGA AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH TO HIT THE TWAT!" - Alpha Beta Bossalini
Jealousy is often triggered by circumstances that signal a real threat to a relationship, such as differences in the desirability of the partners, as illustrated by the following case. The man was 35 years old, working as a foreman, when he was referred to a psychiatrist and diagnosed with "morbid jealousy." He had married at age 20 a woman of 16 whom he deeply loved. During their first two years of marriage, he was stationed in military service in England. During this two-year separation, he received several anonymous letters saying that his wife was carrying on an affair. When he returned to America to rejoin her, he questioned her intensely about the allegations, but she denied them. Their own sexual relations proved disappointing. He became obsessed with the earlier time in their marriage, repeatedly accused his wife of infidelity, and hit her from time to time, especially after a bout of drinking. He tried to strangle her twice, and several times he threatened to kill himself.
He openly admitted his problems to the psychiatrist: "I'm so jealous that when I see anyone near her I want to hurt her. I have always loved her but do not think she has returned my affection. This jealousy is something I feel in my stomach and when it comes out of me there is nothing I can do about it. That is why I behave so madly....My wife is always telling me that other men are stronger and can beat me...I'm not a big chap or handsome chap but my wife is so pretty and I don't think I come up to her standards." In other words, he perceived a difference in their level of desirability; she was attractive and alluring, and he saw himself as beneath her. When the psychiatrist questioned the wife in private, she admitted to meeting and having an affair with a married man. The affair was carried on in secret, and throughout the duration of her affair she insisted that her husband's jealousy was delusional. The affair began rougHly one year before the husband was referred to the psychiatrist to treat "his problem."
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Differences in desirability - when an "8" is married to a "10" - can heighten sensitivity to signals of infidelity in the partner who has fewer outside mating options. Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues at the University of Hawaii discovered that the more desirable partner in the couple in fact is more likely to stray. Those who have been in relationships with both more attractive and less attractive partners have an acute awareness of how jealousy is attuned to these differences. These differences represent one among many signs of actual or impending infidelity explored in depth later in the book.
"I'LL BEAT A BITCH ASS SO SHE RESPECT MY WORTH!" - Mr. Free
These fundamental sex-linked desires have enormous consequences for the triggers of jealousy in men and women, following the principle of co-evolution. Jealousy in each sex has evolved to mirror the mate preferences of the other sex. Since women desire professionally successful men, for example, men's should have evolved in tandem to be activated by a rival who excels professionally. And since men place a premium on youth and physical appearance, women's jealousy should have evolved to be especially sensitive to rivals who are younger or more physically alluring. The design of the jealousy defense, in short, should have been sculpted by generations of mate preferences imposed by the opposite sex.
The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. Buss, p. 23-24, 66.
Measures of desirability on the mating market are sometimes crudely translated into numbers, as when actress Bo Derek was referred to as a "10" in the movie 10. An "8" might turn down a "6," but in turn might be rebuffed by a "10." Individuals who differ in desirability, however, do sometimes become coupled. And when they do, problems can ensue. Moreover, nothing remains static over time. An initially equitable relationship may turn into one marked by gaping differences in desirability.
Several factors cause gaps in mate value to widen over time. Consider an initially well-matched couple in their mid-20s. The woman is intelligent, young, and attractive; the man intelligent, young, and at the entry stage of a successful career. Over time, the man's career soars. Although they both age chronologically at the same rate, aging sometimes takes a greater toll on the woman's attractiveness in a man's eyes. Simultaneously, the man's elevated status opens up sexual opportunities previously absent. The adulation he experiences by attractive young women starts to contrast sharply with that of his aging wife. The reverse can happen as well. When a woman's career takes off, she may grow disgruntled with a less successful husband, since she'll be able to command a higher-status man on the mating market. As Donald Symons notes, "a women is most likely to experience desire for extramarital sex when she perceives another man as somehow superior to her husband...her sexual desire may function primarily as part of the process by which women trade up in the husband market."
Although menopause has not been examined systematically as a trigger of jealousy in women, the clinical literature contains a number of cases that point to its importance. In one case, a woman was referred to a psychiatrist for her "delusions" that her husband had been carrying on numerous affairs: "Several years before her delusions, she had been mortified to hear her husband (who was her own age) express the opinion that men do well to marry women much younger than themselves. With the approach of the menopause, she became obsessed with the notion that her husband was bent on the seduction of every young woman with who he came into contact."
Another woman, age 44, suddenly began to accuse her husband of infidelity after many happy years of marriage. She started chain-smoking cigarettes and became temperamental and easily irritated. Intercourse with her husband was too infrequent, she complained, and she believed this to be caused by his affairs with other women. She became convinced that her husband "made signs" to other women on the street, using a handkerchief waved from their bedroom window.
The husband admitted to the psychiatrist that sexual intercourse with his wife had become less frequent, sometimes with many weeks in between sexual episodes. The wife found this decrease strange and suspicious. Prior to approaching menopause, the wife had never been jealous at all. As sex grew less frequent, however, she developed "feelings of inferiority," believing that she had grown old and ugly. She became convinced that her husband would run off with a "pretty young girl." The woman's jealous feelings reached a crescendo when the couple rented a room in their house to a young woman. The wife had to be hospitalized. During her stay at the psychiatric clinic, she improved substantially, but could never expunge her jealous thoughts, especially about the young renter.
In these cases, we cannot be sure whether the menopausal woman's suspicions of infidelity were delusional or accurate. As Clair Warga, author of Menopause and the Mind, notes, menopause is sometimes accompanied by changes in attention, memory, and a "fluctuating agility in prioritizing" thoughts. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to suggest that women respond to modern manifestations of ancestral cues that predicted a husband's wandering eye.
A woman's loss of physical attractiveness associated with aging is a related precipitator of extreme jealousy. Consider the following case of a woman diagnosed as having "excessive and irrational jealousy" that "defied...therapeutic efforts" to resolve it. Betty had reached the age of 50 when the jealous episodes began. She had been married for 30 years to her husband, George. They lived in harmony for many years, sharing a home with her husband's sister, and the three shared nearly all of their leisure time together. As she approached 50, however, she developed stomach problems, and became obsessed with her health and aging. Over time, she "she began to resent her graying hair, her failing eyesight, her wrinkles, her age spots." Seemingly "out of the blue" she developed a "towering jealousy" of her sister-in-law, and started to accuse George of having an affair with his sister. She started to eavesdrop on their phone conversations, snooped through letters, rifled through the husband's pockets, studied credit card receipts, suspiciously viewed any time they spent together, and vigilantly monitored all of their activities.
Oscar Wilde asserted: "Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!" He was probably wrong. It is not the level of physical attractiveness per se, but rather a divergence between spouses in desirability that triggers jealousy. A woman who is a "6" married to a man who is a "6" should be no more jealous than an "8" married to an "8." In fact, the theory predicts a counterintuitive result that goes against Oscar Wilde's proclamation; a woman who is an "8" married to a man who is a "10" will become more jealous than her less attractive counterpart who is a "6" but who is equitably married to a man who is a "6."
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Although the idea of desirability differences widening to the disadvantage of women is part of folk wisdom, the reverse can also occur. Consider a professional couple, both ambitious and devoted to their careers. The woman's career takes off, and her income starts to exceed her husband's. As she gets promotions, bonuses, and status from work, her husband's career starts to languish. He becomes depressed; she becomes dissatisfied. Over time, his attractiveness to other women languishes along with his career failures. Simultaneously, she develops self-confidence and verve, and starts to radiate a new-found attractiveness. Men begin to notice her, and although some become intimidated by her success, high-status confident men are turned on and find her radiant.
When she comes home after a day of flourishing success, she encounters a dour husband who has started to drink to drown his anguish. A chasm in desirability has opened that shows no signs of closing and she begins to notice other men.
Another change in desirability favoring women centers on health. Women live longer than men. At an earlier age men contract a wide variety of illness, from cancer to heart disease. A married couple initially well matched can suddenly experience a gap when the man falls ill since health is an important component of mate value. When the illness causes the man to be house-bound, with his wife free to venture into the world, jealousy and fears of defection can follow.
Although systematic large-scale studies of illness and jealousy have not yet been conducted, one study examined seven cases of "delusional jealousy" linked with failing health. In one case, a 77-year- old man had developed a severe case of osteoarthritis, which left him housebound. His wife was eight years his junior, in robust good health, and they had been married for 51 years. Although their marriage had been generally harmonious, it took a severe turn when he developed his disease. He began to look much older and considerably more frail than his wife, creating a difference in desirability where none previously existed. He started questioning her intensely whenever she left the house. He accused her of having an affair with a taxi driver, and these accusations were increasingly accompanied by threats of violence. The psychiatrist determined that the man was "cognitively intact" in every way, other than his delusions about his wife's infidelity.
Another case involves a man, age 73, whose delusions about his wife's infidelity started when he developed Parkinson's disease, which left him cooped up at home. His delusions were so extreme they resulted in visual hallucinations in which he literally imagined that he was witnessing his wife having sexual intercourse with other men. He questioned her whenever she was about to leave the house, and accused her of being a prostitute. Prior to Parkinson's disease, he was a successful butcher, and was described by others as a "well-mannered, courteous, charming man." After his Parkinson's, he aged in appearance noticeably, looking a full generation older than his wife. Although his basic cognitive functions were largely intact, with only minor short-term memory problems, his hallucinations and delusions grew worse over time. An initially well-matched couple, the husband's failing health had created a contrast in desirability.
A final case illustrates the modern manifestation of this ancient jealousy trigger. The man was an 83-year-old, who had been married for 43 years to a woman who was eight years younger. Their marriage had been harmonious until he had a cardiac pacemaker inserted, which caused his activities to be restricted mostly to his house. He began to look much older than his wife, who brimmed with robust health. He began to harass his wife with accusations of infidelity and asserted that her "shopping trips" were really secret liaisons with her lover. He hallucinated seeing her in bed with other men and believed that she denied her infidelities in order to make him appear to be mentally incompetent. Other than the "pathological jealousy" and its associated symptoms, however, the psychiatrist could find no mental deterioration other than minor problems with short-term memory.
The fact that men's health fails, on average, substantially sooner than women's creates desirability differences where none previously existed. In ancestral times, a man's aging and ill health would in fact lower his value to his wife, since health is a key component of mate value, ranking fifth in my cross-cultures studies. As his death begins to loom, it would make adaptive sense for a women to begin seeking an alternative mate, or at least begin to lay the groundwork for it.
Marriage vows frequently dictate remaining with a partner "in sickness and in health" and "for richer for poorer." Sickness and poverty are singled out for special precaution in marriage vows because they are key conditions that cause a person's desirability as a mate to plummet, triggering infidelity or divorce. Jealousy has evolved to defend against such defections, even though, like all defenses, it only works some of the time.
Those who are lower in desirability are more vulnerable to getting unceremoniously dumped. The person higher in mate value comes to feel "under-benefitted" in the relationship, sensing that there exist better possibilities elsewhere. People act on these feelings. In a study of 2,000 people, those who evaluated their partnerships as "balanced," in the sense of roughly equal in investments and rewards, had significantly fewer extramarital affairs than those who saw their relationship as "unbalanced." The people who believed that they were SUPERIOR in some way to their partner felt that they were "unlucky in marriage," and consequently felt justified in having affairs sooner and more frequently than those who felt "lucky" in marriage.
These circumstances trigger jealousy in the less desirable partner. Simultaneously, the more attractive partner becomes less jealous, knowing that better opportunities are right around the corner. The less attractive partner, in contrast, feels lucky to hold on to the current one.
The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. Buss, p. 87-93
According to Helen Fisher, several ancestral conditions set the stage for the evolution of women's psychology of trading up. First, a woman's partner may decline in mate value due to injury or disease. Second, a woman's own value may have increased over time as she became more proficient at gathering, extending her political alliances, or proved to be especially fecund. Third, in ancestral times, contact with a new tribe may have increased exposure to more desirable partners.
There are several other circumstances that might have caused a woman to trade up. Her regular mate might have become emotionally or physically abusive, inflicting costs that were not apparent when she selected him. One modern woman described her affair in these terms, implicitly implicating her abusive husband as a reason: "Yes, I'm not as afraid to say what I want to say. I don't think I kowtow to my husband as much as I used to, I don't let him hurt my feelings as easily as I used to 'cause I silently think that someone else loves me. And if this man, my husband, is getting mad and raging at me, ridiculing me, then I don't bow and paw as much as I used to."
Some husbands become "slackers" over time, failing to provide resources that they formerly provided. A man could start affairs with other women, diverting a portion of his resources to his affair partners and their children. He could prove infertile, rendering the relationship reproductively barren. For all these reasons, selection may have fashioned a female sexual psychology of mate switching.
To test the trading-up hypothesis, Heidi Greiling and I examined the desires women express for affair partners, and contrasted them with desires women express for one-night stand partners and long-term mates. If an important function of affairs is to evaluate the affair partner as a potential long-term mate, then a woman's desires for an affair partner should be similar to what she wants in a spouse, but different from those expressed for a one-night stand partner. Women in our study supported this idea. In both an affair partner and a husband, women wanted men who were above the 70th percentile on the following qualities: dependable, affectionate, successful, emotionally stable, easygoing, intelligent, mature, faithful, honest, open-minded, and unselfish. In sharp contrast, women's minimum thresholds for nearly all of these qualities in a one-night stand partner dipped below the 50th percentile.
Our studies of women's perceptions of the benefits of affairs and the circumstances that impel them also supported the trading up function. One woman told us that her affair made it easier to break up with her husband. Another revealed that her affair made her realize that she could find someone more compatible with her than her husband. A third said that she married young, and the affair made her realize that she did not have to settle for a man who failed to meet her standards.
Mate switching is the result of two related conditions: being stuck with a regular mate who fails to bring in economic resources, thus violating her desire for provisioning; and meeting someone who can better provide those resources. Each women in our study evaluated three crucial circumstances as predisposing her to have an affair: When her current partner can't hold down a job, when she meets someone who has better financial prospects than her current partner and who seems interested in her, and when she meets someone who is more successful than her current partner.
The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. Buss, p. 167-168
I WISH YOU WOULD ALL READ MR. BUSS'S BOOKS, ESPECIALLY THE EVOLUTION OF DESIRE AND THE DANGEROUS PASSION. THEY'D HELP YOU MAKE SO MUCH SENSE OF YOUR SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS (WHY FEMALES DO WHAT THEY DO, WHY MALES DO WHAT THEY DO; WHAT FEMALES ARE EVOLVED TO LOOK FOR IN A MALE MATE, WHAT MALES ARE EVOLVED TO LOOK FOR IN A FEMALE MATE) AND THEY'D HELP YOUR REALIZE THAT THE MATING STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN ARE IN COFLICT WITH ONE ANOTHER AND HOW THIS CONFLICT HAS LED TO AN EVOLUTIONARY ARMS RACE BETWEEN THE SEXES IN REGARD TO THESE MATING STRATEGIES (EACH SEX IS TRYING TO MANIPULATE THE OTHER THROUGH DECEPTIVE MEANS FOR ITS OWN REPRODUCTIVE BENEFIT).
MORE ABOUT MATE VALUE TO COME FROM THE BOOK THE SCIENCE OF LOVE BY ROBIN DUNBAR!
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