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Does life after high school rule?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by David Sands: [QB] Tora, I'll try to respond to your queries as best I can. The exceptions you are thinking of Buss would say are the sexual behaviors of humans that come from non-evolutionary pressures. So, to speak, they are exceptions to the behaviors the theory predicts, but it would be better to say they are behaviors that are not exceptions, but rather results of other behavioral pressures (e.g. culture, past experience, location, interpersonal circumstances). This theory first got started in the early 1980s, so it's had about 20 years of research to support it or reject it. The verdict from psychologists on the cutting egdge is that Buss is definately onto something and his results are definately statistically significant. But they caution that his theory is only one part of many kinds of influences that impact our sexual behaviors. I would venture to say many think he's got it right, but that there are other things going on, so it's up to scientists to figure out how it all fits together. I'll admit when I first read his theories I thought they were sexist, but after reading the experimental evidence and talking with my professor about it, it must be understood that both his theories can be right and women can live equally meaningful and productive lives as men. Good question about the subconscious. I'm not sure even Buss knows for sure. It may be a genetically programed behavior to look for certain characteristics in the opposite sex or a conditioned set of biases. Buss conducted an experiment to tease apart these factors and got interesting results. He had a young child (less than a year old, I don't remember exactly how old) put in front of two televisions spaced apart so the child could crawl to each one and look at it without seeing the other television at the same time. On one television there was an attractive member of the opposite sex, on the other a relatively unattractive one. Buss measured to time the child spent gazing at each face and found children looked longer at attractive faces than unattractive faces. This experiment would indicate that there is some genetic programming for looking at attractive individuals over unattractive. The piece about the breasts I should articulated better. What he meant by well formed breasts are breasts that are not deformed in any way anatomically or by disease (which would most likely be measured by looking at skin blemishes; a big tumor on the breast would not be sexual turn on for a man). The valuing of intelligence isn't something that necessarily comes later or sooner for either sex. Rather, the timing of when people begin to look for it more probably is a result of their current goals in mating. Men or women who are looking for the simple experience of sexuality with little regard to marriage or extended child-bearing would not look for long-term characteristics in sexual partners. Hence, many people in situations where they have little intent of following up their sexual experience with a long-term relaitonship (e.g. high school, college, vacations) would not look for wealth-earning potential or intelligence as much as sexual potency. According to one of my professors, men are not necessarily more visually oriented. I think there may be some studies showing that across cultures showing that women in cultures where they are not socialized to be non-visual infomation gatherers show as much arousal to erotica as men. However, I will need to check up on this before I commit to it. Good point about the content analysis expeperiment! If I can ever get my hands on that experiment, I'll see if he tried in any way to control for the desperation factor (although I cna't think of any way right now; it ould just be an experimental flaw). The theory is definately not meant to be a predictive tool for [i]every sexual[/i] situation. Buss would probably say that the theory sounds so generalized precisely because it [i]is[/i] general to all members of the human species; deviation from the predictive behaviors would be a result of cultural factors or other factors mentioned above. Liam, I forgot to say that I hoped you would chime in too since I'm pretty sure that you would have been exposed to this theory too. Feel free to fill in any gaps in my explanations! [/QB][/QUOTE]
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