Customer Reviews

The Evolution Of Desire - Revised Edition 4

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I teach evolutionary psychology in college, organizing my classes around the "logic of inquiry." I use this book to illustrate cross-cultural investigation, including the pragmatic difficulties of getting good data from massive studies. For that purpose, the book has its uses.

However, unless you are a critical, already-knowledgeable reader, this book may not be a good choice. The book exemplifies neither the state of the art nor a model of how to think soundly about the questions.

Buss's hypotheses tend to be very vague. Indeed, he often says things like, "Evolutionary psychology explains this constellation of traits," as if there were some one hypothesis held by all evolutionary psychologists. He rarely, if ever, presents alternative hypotheses from within evolutionary studies.

He presents little, if any, contradictory or complicating data, never shows what would be involved in falsifying his hypotheses, and never shows why his theory is better supported than others' views of evolution. You get no sense from this book of the vigorous, usually exciting debates on mating *within* evolutionary circles.

You get litle or no sense from this book that problems of sexual adaptivity do not occur alone. You would never know that for humans, copulation has less to do with reproduction than in nearly any other species-and that this complicates immensely understanding our evolved mating habits.

You would never know that across the animal kingdom problems of mate selection depend heavily on what we eat and how we attain it. You would never know that across the animal kingdom mating habits depend on social structure. You get no sense that evolutionary psychology must grapple with the difficult questions of how other essential-and extremely odd-characteristics of human life set limits or biases on mating. In general, you would think from reading Buss that mating has exclusively to do with reproduction or survival of offspring.

Indeed, if the logic of Buss's inquiry were correct, there would be no reason for species to differ sexually. He presents his arguments as if human mating patterns follow directly from the differential investments of males and females. But that difference exists in all species! Why, then, do species differ so? Buss doesn't even let you know (if he has even recognized) that this is a fundamental question.

You would never know from reading Buss the commonplace that motivation need not resemble function. That is, a behavior (or traits) may be pursued for motives that have nothing to do with why it is reproductively advantageous. For purpose of natural selection, why an organism prefers a behavior is of no moment. Though he obviously knows this, and mentions it in passing a couple of places, he writes as if the function were the cause of the behavior. In many, if not most, cases, we are caused to do something for reasons-e.g., how much fun it is-that have nothing to do with why it is naturally selected. This complicates understanding what's selected and why--especially since motivational systems have evolutionary and cultural histories of their own.

As others have noted, Buss's original work relies altogether too heavily on self-reports and "what if" questionnaires.

Now, we know fairly well (though Buss never tells you) that self-reports tend to reflect both cultural norms and a bias toward presenting one's self favorably (even, oddly enough, in anonymous questionnaires.) We can improve and cross-check self-reports, but the methods are cumbersome (requiring a great deal of time with each subject, generating massive amounts of data, and requiring extremely powerful statistical analyses) and expensive. This book gives little evidence that much of Buss's data has been appropriately cross-checked. And in fact, other researchers have shown that even with some of the same populations as Buss studied, more extensive testing shows results very different from Buss's.

However, we cannot cross-check answers to hypotheticals! For instance, a question like, "How many sexual partners would you have in the next year, if you could?" cannot possibly be checked for accuracy.

However, you can do things like correlating answers to that question with other variables. But it is not at all clear that Buss, suffering from a very simple-minded theory to guide his research, has tested for and analyzed the right variables. For instance, some researchers have shown that men suffering ambivalence and anxiety about sex tend to offer inflated numbers on questions like that-and that when data is analyzed controlling for psychopathology, men and women differ on the question far less than Buss claims.

Similarly, you'd never know from Buss the difficulties of identifying which of our traits are selected, and whether they are naturally or sexually selected. Generally, you need to know what to explain before you start explaining it.

Buss's writing style misleads, too. Though he does not overtly misrepresent his data, he places far more emphasis on ways that men and women disagree than agree, even though in fact his data show that the range of agreement vastly exceeds disagreement-and remains equally stable over time.

Generally, I think this book reflects more energy and ambition than insight and imagination. Buss's data matter, precisely because they cover so many subjects in so many locations. But the book also shows the danger of collecting massive amounts of data without an adequate theory to guide what you study.

The reason I structure my classes as I do is that, in fact, nobody knows yet just which elements of human life are accurately explained as naturally selected (or why or when), sexually selected (or why or when), cultural, geographical, and so forth. I emphasize to my students that these questions matter deeply (and why), that we know the standard social science model to be false, and that we are just beginning to develop a reliable science of human evolution. I want my students to be able to participate in the emerging inquiries, to know how to think correctly about data and about alternate candidates to explain the data.

To read Buss, you would think my design is all wrong-you'd think that the data are great, the answers are settled for all but the muddle-headed and stubborn, and that there are no alternative explanations. And if, having read Buss, you thought those things, you would be wrong.

That's another reason I use this book. It shows how much of what passes for truth needs much more scrutiny, proving my point that understanding the logic of inquiry matters most.

Like a reviewer below me says, this book mostly lends scientific credence to what everyone already knows: men and women generally pursue different reproductive strategies. Under evolutionary theory, this is because the two sexes have different reproductive biologies and roles. The many ramifications and implications are then explored.

This is a science book which builds the data platform for rather conventional (if often true) ideas. A minor gripe is that it relies too much on questionnaires and self-reporting (subject to lying and self-deception), though it also uses observed behavior (which is much more reliable). It's not nearly as interesting as the Bottings' book "Sex Appeal" -- in fact it's drained of much of the fascination we associate with this subject. And it's not extremely daring, so it doesn't probe to the depths like Ridley's "The Red Queen". It's less broad than Batten's "Sexual Strategies", with which it probably overlaps the most (though Batten has a distinctly feminist slant).

Still, it does a good job of making its case and laying things out clearly without pushing the idea too much farther than the data allow, though in some cases the lack of intelligent extrapolation seemed too conservative. The book is written at a level to be both readable by the neophyte in this area while also being informative to someone who's familiar with the topic. It might be a disappointment to those who want to believe in the "essential mystery" of love and attraction rather than that it's just biology. I agree with the reviewer who said we'd all probably be better off if the ideas presented in the book (or similar ones) had wider currency.

I've read almost all the evolutionary psychology books, and the best (by far) is "Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind," by David M. Buss. It's a college textbook but not dry or boring. The writing is clear and easy to understand. Every topic in the field is covered, including men's and women's mating strategies, parenting and kinship, cooperation, conflict, etc.

"The Evolution of Desire" is not as good. It seems out of date, as if the original edition 1994 edition were just updated here and there to produce new 2003 edition. A political agenda or bias is seen "between the lines," that isn't in "Evolutionary Psychology." And the writing is confused and haphazard.

In "The Evolution of Desire," Buss presumes that men and women are fundamentally different. This view was popular in early 1990s as "backlash" against 1970s feminists saying that men and women are the same. However, current thinking (e.g., "Sex, Time, and Power," by Leonard Shlain) takes the transpersonal view that each of us has a masculine and a feminine side, and a mature, balanced individual can use one or the other situations change.

Buss believes that men want to have sex with many women, and that women want men to give them economic resources. Buss uses the inaccurate Kinsey research on sexual behavior instead of the accurate University of Chicago research. The latter found that the vast majority of Americans are in monogamous, committed relationships, and that these individuals are happier than individuals with more than one sexual partner.

Buss's bias is apparant in the section that attempts -- and fails -- to explain why women engage in casual sex. Buss ignores the research identifying the reason women become promiscuous: stress. E.g., teenage girls in abusive families are more likely to have sex. The evolutionary perspective is obvious: women who used casual sex to survive famine, war, or other life-threatening situations survived and became our ancestral mothers.This research came out mostly after 1994, so Buss didn't include it in the original edition. That may have been OK then, but leaving it out of the 2003 edition is misguided.

That women want men to give them economic resources is a central theme of "The Evolution of Desire." But Buss ignores the fact that in hunter-gatherer societies (which comprise more than 99% of human evolution) no one owned more than he or she could carry. Buss notes that women prefer men with social status, but then says that this is because high-status men give women more economic resources. Buss fails to mention the "gene's eye view" reason explaining why women prefer high-status men. In polygynous societies (almost all human societies are, including our own "serial monogamous" society), high-status men father more children. In many societies, only the sons of leaders can become leaders. E.g., the 2000 presidential election was between the son of a president, the son of a senator, the son and grandson of four-star Navy admirals, and the son of a wealthy banker. A woman who marries a leader and produces the son who becomes the next leader will have a disproportionate number of grandchildren.

"The Evolution of Desire" discusses only the evolution of human behavior, and never mentions that human bodies and brains also evolved. Buss draws no connections between our bodies, brains, and behavior. E.g., his section on how women's sexual behaviors vary over their menstrual cycles never mentions that hormones (including estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) contribute to these behavioral changes.

Buss never mentions that humans have a unique, difficult-to-explain anatomical feature: a huge cerebral cortex. This brain area enables us to think in abstractions, use language, and, perhaps most important for sexual strategies, to lie to each other. Buss sometimes mentions lying as a sexual strategy, and even notes the "evolutionary arms race" of men and women deceiving each other, and catching each others' deception. But he never connects the dots that sexual lying (and catching sexual lies) may have driven our ancestors to evolve huge brains.

Buss notes in passing that love is the number one quality women desire in a partner. But his view that love consists of solely of commitment, kindness, and sincerity is inadequate.

Buss erroneously states that similarity attracts. He correctly notes that most studies finding similarity between couples looked at factors that facilitate meeting, e.g., living in the same neighborhood. But he supports his view by quoting studies finding 25-50% correlation in values, personality types, etc., between couples. But 25-50% is poor correlation, in other words, couples are more dissimilar than similar on these measures. If couples were more similar than dissimilar, the correlations would be 50-100%.

The chapter about couples staying together as they age opens with a fine quotation from Marjorie Shostak about how love changes from the fiery passion of youth to the warm and dependable love of middle age. But this chapter is about jealousy, emotional manipulation, and "keeping competitors at bay." Buss doesn't acknowledge the existence of love, so he can't write about how love changes through the stages of life.

My last criticism of "The Evolution of Desire" is that Buss never discusses differences between monogamous and polygamous societies. This becomes apparent in the section about the "feminist viewpoint" that men "tend to control resources worldwide" and "oppress women" and try to "control women's sexuality and reproduction." But most societies aren't patriarchal, as Buss believes, rather are instead kyriarchical: a few men control everybody else ("kyri" is the Greek word for overlord). Such societies are polygynous, and the median woman is better off than the median man. Such societies are mostly run by the Grand Pooh-bah's senior wives. And these hierarchical societies were created by women selecting to mate with certain men and not others.

Review by Thomas David Kehoe, author of "Hearts and Minds: How Our Brains Are Hardwired for Relationships"

David M. Buss' Evolution of Desire is both brilliant and frustrating. The brilliance is that he has taken such a vast amount of data and managed to find some solid patterns in human mating behavior. The frustrating part is that the text borders slightly on both platitude and tautology. His main point is that males and females have different (and therefore incompatible) sexual strategies: men like variety, women like stability. This, however, has been known at least since the days of the Kinsey Report, and one might argue that it has been known for several thousand years. Buss also claims to explain sexuality by means of "evolutionary psychology." One might think that Buss is thereby challenging the behaviorists, the Skinnerians, by claiming that human behavior has a strong genetic (innate) factor, that the mind is not a tabula rasa at birth. But no, it turns out that that is not what Buss is saying. On the contrary, he believes that "human action is inexorably a mixture of both" (p. 17). Well, okay, that's fair enough. It would even be fair to say that present-day neurology is not sophisticated enough to separate the two. But if Buss is taking a stance that is neither "culture" nor "chromosome," then he is merely describing, not explaining. I am also leery of any book that ends by hitting the bull's eye with political correctness, which in 1994 (the book's pub date) was that fooling around is common and perhaps inevitable, but that a genuine and stable marriage is always the ideal (as opposed to the ten or twenty other political correctnesses of the late twentieth century). Having said all that, I do not mean to damn with faint praise by reiterating that the vast scope of his material makes the book both informative and entertaining. This book, like Matt Ridley's The Red Queen and Richard A. Posner's Sex and Reason, should by read by every serious student of human behavior.

I've been tearing through books about genes and behavior. Matt Ridley's _The Red Queen_ and _Genome_ are particularly interesting. This one is not. While data sources are widely cited, a large fraction of the data for universal human behavior comes from surveys conducted among American college students in singles bars. This is supplemented by scoring personals ads for content.

The results are unsurprising--women pursue men somewhat older who are better off than they are. Men pursue women for youth and attractiveness. The evopsych underpinnings are asserted without qualification or any indication that the assertions are in the least bit contoversial.

For example, in discussion about the role of concealed ovulation, the author tells one common evopsych story--that women don't go into heat because it means men will hang around more to keep other men away.

In Jared Diamond's _The Third Chimpanzee_, he cites and attributes six stories that purport to explain why people don't know when women are fertile.

When you're writing about controversial science, it's important to let your readers know when you are speculating. This book fails to do so.

One must give Buss credit for the remarkable scope of his surveys and the success of having 10,000 people world wide participate. But what has been said about these results outside this book were actually more interesting than the book itself.

First -- the world over, men and women valued kindness and intelligence in their mates. This book however focuses on the differences between men and women -- the values they desire after kindness and intelligence, but then is rather light-handed in discussing how even these sex differences were highly influenced by culture.

Second -- I thought his discussion of men, women and sexual fantasies had some wrongheaded conclusions. Between 41-49% (that is, less than half) of women focus on only one partner per fantasy, fantasize about someone they know, and think about feelings rather than visuals, yet he declares that "women emphasize tenderness and romance." How does a figure of less than 50% lead one to such a generalization? The reason he comes to this conclusion is because more women than men report these details about their fantasies. Are we going to define women by how the majority of women actually behave, or by how women compare to men? Also, how does he know the "feelings" women report relate to "emotion" rather than to sensation? Obnoxiously, while only 33% of men report fantasies of group sex, he goes on to provide us with descriptions of group sex fantasies, referring to them as "typical."

I also disliked how his chapter on Casual Sex lumped a one-night-stand between strangers, a one friendly one nighter, a fling, a short term relationship and an affair in the same category, which he referred to as a "dark and shrouded region of human sexuality." Though this chapter was not nearly as bad as it could be, considering how strangely conservative other authors on the topic of evo-psycho are, in fact it was far more thoughtful and grounded in reality than other discussions I've read.

But, all in all Buss presents some interesting data which reflects our evolution as human animals. I agree that it's a good intro to the field.

There are certain things that we may be better off not knowing. The fact that there is no such thing as Santa Claus is probably something we should know. The fact that there is no such thing as "romantic love", however, is something else.

According to this book, romantic love is the result of a simple calculation regarding a person's worth as a mate. In other words, your husband or wife loves you not because you are a good person, but because you have an adequate level of worth on the mating market. Buss says that men judge women's worth as mates by their "youth" (defined broadly) and (expected) fidelity. Women, argues Buss, judge men's worth according to their resources (ability to share money) and social status.

It is intuitive that youthful women attract many men, and that men who are rich (or are likely to be) attract many women. The only difficulty with this idea, though, is that according to Buss, these criteria are pretty much it. Although he pays some lip service to "compatibility" and other factors, it is clear that at most, he would award them an honorable mention.

He gives an anecdotal example to illustrate his argument: a group of women are sitting at a restaurant, lamenting the absence of available good men. All around them, however, are unmarried men working as waiters. The conclusion is that these waiters weren't attractive to the women as potential mates because they lacked "resources" and high social status. That they may have been kind, decent, funny and interesting didn't register on the radar.

Maybe you will conclude that Buss oversimplifies the process by which people attract, and are attracted to, others. But if you read the book, I think you will find that it is hard to criticize. The Evolution of Desire is very well-written and persuasive.

Although this is an excellent book, you still may not want to read it. At least not if you wish that you still believed in Santa Claus.

I gave this book a 5 rating because it is provocative and challenges a lot of society's assumptions about sexual behavior. While I realize the book has some shortcomings, it does shed a lot of light on human mating strategy.

I thought the author's notion of long term and short term mating strategies in both sexes was fascinating. It makes logical sense and it seemed to make sense with my experience of people in American culture. I also found the examples and references he used to back up his arguments interesting.

While this isn't a perfect book from a research perspective, it is excellent for what it is... a trade paperback written for a general audience. I recommend it to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of human sexual behavior.

Also... a lot of the information in this book is redundant with the content in the same author's book on jealousy. You may want to get one or the other first and get the other one later depending upon how big a fan you are of his approach to these topics.

Buss has taken the story of human evolution a significant step forward with this comprehensive study. As with the other mammals, human mating behaviour is a compelling subject of study. In this comprehensive account, Buss ranges over the many aspects we associate with mating, from conflict through pain to legislation. Mating practices, whether human or other animal, are the product of evolutionary pressures. Until we recognize those roots, Buss argues, we will never fully understand many elements affecting our lives. One of the first elements to consider is that both men and women have short- and long-term mating strategies. These "programs" must be taken in account when dealing with relationship issues.

Buss is forthright about the study of evolutionary psychology and human social activities. He asserts that many roles, under attack by some people in our society, are deeply rooted in our background. We will never legislate them away nor be able to ignore them. There are inherent differences between the sexes, and these must be recognized for what they are. Society has attempted to smother some of these differences, and failure to stifle natural urges have likely led to more social suffering than any other single cause.

Buss goes further than simply calling for more attention to the basis for our mating behaviour. He notes some surprising aspects of our relationships. The "henpecked husband" is more prevalent than even our comedians would expect. Males, especially in a long-term relationship Buss argues, will become more submissive than females. They will change or accept demands more than those just entering a liaison. This certainly refutes the long-held stereotype of submissive women. On the assumption readers will seek out his chapter on rape, there are no end of surprises here. Although few would argue ape is an adapted evolutionary strategy, the demographics of rape do show a relation with normal patterns of male sexual behaviour.

This book is the result of a massive amount of research undertaken over many human societies. Not simply a quick snapshot of a few people from the Western world, the information here has been gleaned over many years and many cultures. The patterns Buss describes are universals of the human population. Nor is this simply a dry academic study. Buss is aware of social issues, personal and gender prejudices and legal considerations. He is careful to note that evolutionary roots are not "genetic determinism" and men and women are not "doomed" to follow particular behaviours. As he puts it, "understanding why sexual
strategies have developed and what functions they were designed to serve provides a powerful fulcrum of changing behaviour." His candid approach, combined with a style designed to impart information without overwhelming his readers, makes this a valuable book. More teachers, legislators and counselors should read and apply Buss' findings. His work should eliminate many prejudices if properly applied.

Humans are very complex creatures, and one of their most puzzling aspects is the way they choose their mates, keep them and sometimes lose them. As David M. Buss observes, mating behaviour is seen by people as something mystical, that can't be fully comprehended.

What's the de facto image of a relationship nowadays? Work hard, get a nice job and you'll meet your soul mate and live happily ever after. That's what society instills in out minds from the beginning to the end of our lives.
And yet...an alarming number of marriages end in divorce, infidelity is becoming a problem more than ever, promiscuity seems to have increased and someone seems to have switched the promised 'love and understanding' package with a 'conflict' one.

These are not statistics, they're not numbers on some piece of paper, you and I have seen them in our daily lives. There are reasons for all these problems, they don't materialize from thin air; and when you know them it gives you the power to act.

If you want to understand the deep mechanisms that stand at the basis of human mating GET THIS BOOK. And while it will help you in your relationship with others, do keep the following paraghraphs in mind:

1. If you are the kind of person that believes in pure never ending love and soul mates, you are going to be disillusioned. Remember the time when you found out there was no Santa Claus? Now you are going to find out that human mating is a ruthless game of economics. But there's hope...read on!

2. This is the reason I rated the book just 4 stars. You see, like I've said before, humans are complex. "Evolution of desire" explains choices and actions at the most basic of levels, that of instincts, forged by evolution to help us survive. Well, there's more to us than that, there's reason, there's beliefs, there's feelings. You can override the instincts, but to do that you first have to know how they work (hint: it's in this book), and I can't remember the author mentioning this. Maybe that is why so many people dislike the book, it is like a disenchantment to them.