The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating [Paperback]

David M. Buss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 1995

How we choose—and lose—our mates has always been a source of fascination. This controversial book is the first to present a unified theory of human mating behavior. The Evolution of Desire is based on the most massive study of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 peoples of all ages from thirty-seven cultures worldwide. If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question, we must look into our evolutionary past, according to David M. Buss. For in attracting, keeping, and even breaking up with our mates, we are closer to our ancestral forebears than many of us think.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the pursuit of a mate, women prefer men who possess money, resources, power and high social status, while men tend to seek attractive, youthful women who will remain sexually faithful. This finding emerged from a global survey by Buss and colleagues of 10,047 persons in 37 cultures, from Australia to Zambia. Women and men are often at cross-purposes in mate selection, sexual relations and affairs. In a provocative study, Buss, a University of Michigan psychology professor, attributes these differences to ingrained psychological mechanisms which he argues are universal across cultures and rooted in each gender's adaptive responses over millennia of human evolution. One area, however, where Buss finds common ground between men and women is in their ruthless use of deception, sexual display and denigration of rivals in the pursuit of a partner.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 26, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465021433
• ISBN-13: 978-0465021437
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #883,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After completing his doctorate in 1981 at the University of California, Berkeley, David Buss spent four years as Assistant Professor at Harvard University. In 1985, he migrated to the University of Michigan, where he taught for 11 years before accepting his current position at the University of Texas in 1996. His primary interests include the evolutionary psychology of human mating strategies; conflict between the sexes; prestige, status, and social reputation; the emotion of jealousy; homicide; anti-homicide defenses; and stalking.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

268 of 302 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but misleading, October 5, 2003

By 

Bob Fancher (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Evolution Of Desire - Revised Edition 4 (Paperback)

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.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A pretty good book: sex for humans, January 16, 2000

By 

Martian Bachelor (Feminacentric America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating (Paperback)

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.

88 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as Buss's "Evolutionary Psychology" textbook, September 3, 2003

By 

Thomas D. Kehoe (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Evolution Of Desire - Revised Edition 4 (Paperback)

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"