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Rick Rosner is a friend. We discuss a broad range of topics. One of interest is evolutionary theory and the implications for mating behavior. We aren’t experts but are having a fun conversation between friends, and so decided to conduct some recorded sessions about this in a series on mating strategies. Here is session one, just for you.
Rick Rosner: In earlier sessions, we were talking about dominance behavior in species. It started when I saw a finch or a sparrow in a park in New York. I decided that that bird’s consciousness was less focused on that individual bird’s position in bird society than humans are on their positions in human society.
I did a little reading and found out that my offhand theory is not true to the degree that I thought it was. There are dominance hierarchies and pecking orders in many, many species. The potential for dominance hierarchies to form may be present in most species.
Dominance hierarchies provide efficiencies that limit animals from spending too much energy fighting amongst themselves by giving them social structure. Some fighting takes place initially, and eventually, everyone decides they’re cool with where they are in the pecking order.
You don’t have members of the species constantly battling with each other. This saves energy for other aspects of survival.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You don’t need much extra to put more towards cognitive and behavioral flexibility. Also, estrus is year-round for our species.
Rosner: Things get weird when you look at a hyper-fit species, as humans are. The natural world is not much of a threat to the survival of individual members of a very well-adapted species, such as humans, as it is for most other species.
Most humans survive to reproductive age, and many of our displays of dominance aren’t directly related to reproductive fitness. Things with humans are more complicated, more baroque. Displays of fitness and dominance hierarchies in humans are weirder and less straightforward than they are for many other species.
Within my lifetime, I have seen displays of fitness and dominance change from what can be seen as direct and basic demonstrations of physical vitality to what can be seen as demonstrations of hipness. When I was growing up, things felt more straightforwardly like jocks vs, nerds with jocks being cool and nerds being uncool.
Muscularity and fitness became more explicit in 1976, when Pumping Iron came out, making Arnold Schwarzenegger a star and weight training no longer a niche activity, but a widely accepted activity in America. People strived for trim and muscular V-shaped torsos. Clothing was tight with shirts tucked in.
That was 40 years ago. Now, physical fitness is de-emphasized compared to that era. People have the bodies they have. Clothes aren’t tight. For demonstrations of dominance, I think more in terms of Brooklyn hipsters.
The comforting stereotype that I was told growing up was “You’re a nerd in high school and junior high, but when you grow up you’ll be in charge. Everyone who was cool and a jock will be working in gas stations.”
Jacobsen: That sounds fantastically optimistic.
Rosner: It’s among the things you tell the unpopular kid who plays tuba in the band. You say, “Other kids are jealous and don’t like you,” to make an unpopular kid feel better. I think that tuba thing came from a 1980 movie called The Hollywood Nights. It was about nerds trying to get laid. The tuba player’s mom was trying to comfort him.
But our entire culture has gone nerdy, though you still have bro-types striving for physical perfection as a sexual dominance strategy. You’ve got Guido culture, which can involve hair mousse and lifting and hitting clubs at night, and aggressively be trying to hook up with women who also emphasize displays of sexual attractiveness.
Jacobsen: There are two aspects to that. One is traditional masculine with men as the head of the household. The other is bro culture which is drinking, smoking, not wearing sunscreen, riding dirt bikes and motorcycles, and focusing on hitting on women.
But beyond bros, there are strategies to appear dominant in ways that appear more awkward, less Rambo-ish and less cool than before.
Rosner: There is fragmentation – not everyone follows the same strategy. I never read John Nash, but I saw his movie biography, A Beautiful Mind. He says that if you’re trying to find a mate, then one strategy is to eliminate the most desirable females from consideration and then choose from among the best remaining females.
You look for the best deal with reduced competition. You find the females that have the most competition for them, and then you ignore them and look for the best options based on relatively ignored females.
In A Beautiful Mind. there’s a scene in a bar in which many guys are hitting on a blonde. Nash says to ignore the blonde and consider a nearby brunette. A stereotypically less attractive female becomes more attractive because there is less competition for her.
So, in a super-successful species where you’re not struggling directly with nature or physically confronting rivals for mates, in that species there is going to be the potential for niche forming – for a number of different strategies for finding and attracting mates.
People will aggregate themselves to maximize reproductive potential by forming groups where their individual attributes can be manifest to best advantage; biggish guys who like to bench press will form bro culture, which gives an advantage to people who are best at being bros and broettes.
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Read (Part 2) by clicking here.
Read (Part 3) by clicking here.
Read (Part 4) by clicking here.
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