The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature Kindle Edition

Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind is one of the best books on human psychology ever written--on my list, he comes just after Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and Pinker's How the Mind Works. This is more than just a book about the psychology of sex. Beneath his thesis that sex drove the evolution of human intelligence, Miller's makes a more fundamental contribution to the understanding of human behavior: that so much of what we do, we do in order to show off. Whether we're mainly showing off to sexual mates, strategic allies, or some other category is largely secondary. This range over which this idea applies is enormous:

Art--Good art is whatever is hard to make.

Charity--Miller describes being told by a socialite that she knew many anonymous donors.

Language--The selfish nature of evolution would normally to lead us to expect a world where everyone is eager to hear information from other people, but reluctant to disclose it. But of course, we're usually eager to have other people hear what we have to say, an urge that only makes sense in light of a desire to show off.

These are just some short samples--Miller will change how you view almot everything you see people around you doing. I'm a graduate student in philosophy, and for me one of the pleasures of the book is that Miller even manages to influence the way I look at some of the big names in the history of Western thought, particularly Aristotle and Nietzche.

To get the most out of Miller's book, I recommend reading it as a companion to Robin Hanson's work on signaling. Indeed, if you want to know if you'll like Miller, go check out Hanson's website [...]right now--they're NOT interchangable thinkers, but if you like Hanson, I can almost guarantee you'll like Miller.

This book was thought provoking, written in a humble and engaging style and continually brought insights to light regarding human nature and the ways it might have developed. I honestly feel like this book will enrich my experience of being human. I recommend Sapiens and Red Queen for more reading on this subject.

This book was recommended to me by a friend studying evolutionary psychology, a branch of study I never even knew existed. It is filled with intriguing ideas and lively observations. Anyone interested in what makes us human would enjoy this book.

Although this book doesn't directly deal with marital problems per se, reading it helps to gain understanding of both what is, and what is NOT particularly "natural" in man-woman relations (mating behavior).

As other reviewers have indicated, the main thrust of the book is to chronicle the thinking of evolutionary scientists as to the nature of non-directly survival oriented selection, i.e. selection outside the realm of the conventional "natural selection" of traits needed to survive to reproductive age. For this purpose, traits that may indicate overall offspring strength and health tend to be sexually selected for, based on the traits' difficulty to fake and conspicuous costliness. For example if a peacock can be so strong as to survive with such a heavy colorful predator attracting tail, well, he surely must be a strong peacock and, as such, quite sexy. The analog to the peacock tail for humans is, in general, extensive human intelligence.

But beyond detailing the various theses of sexual selection and its related evolutionary processes, the book also covers mating behavior of pre-civilization (Pleistocene) humans. Furthermore it notes that the amount of time civilization has existed, measured in reproductive generations, is so small that hardly an iota of genetic difference exists between civilized humans and pre-Neolithic hunter gatherers. (Some of the latter are still in existence today.) As such there can be no doubt that our basic genetic human nature is that of the hunter gatherer. Moreover, there is a material consistency in sexual/mating behavior of hunter gatherers, behavior that could be described as "natural". It's not prostitution, at least to the extent that hunter gatherers don't have/use money. It's not polygamy, this appearing as a kind of corollary to skewed distributions of power and wealth that occur in civilization. And finally it's not ultra long-term monogamy (marriage), also an outcome of civilization invented to deal with legal and economic matters concerning property, inheritance, education in child rearing, etc. Nope. The "natural", hunter gatherer way is described in the book a something akin to "serial monogamy", which across diverse hunter gatherer societies yields quite consistent observation of fairly strong temporary monogamous bonds, at least through to pregnancy. Such bonds may even extend through child birth and early baby care, but little continues after that. Half siblings and multiple lifetime lovers are more the rules than the exceptions.

With this sort of knowledge and understanding of both the evolutionary purpose and the more natural norms of human mating behavior, it seems possible that marriage counselors and their clients might be better prepared to come up with more apt solutions to marital difficulties. And I also suspect there's an important policy implication from this book for social and legal planners: invent renewable, one to five year term marriages.

I found this book fascinating. Miller's theories behind the evolution of the human mind are novel and well argued. He delves into the lesser known side of Darwin's work to help explain how human's and other animals can develop complicated organs/appendages before they produce any real survival benefit. A great book, and an important read if one wants to better understand the intricacies of the human mind.