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The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives
on Sexual Psychology
Volume 2: Male Sexual Adaptations
The interface of sexual behavior and evolutionary psychology is a

rapidly growing domain, rich in psychological theories and data, as
well as controversies and applications. With nearly eighty chapters by
leading researchers from around the world, and combining theoretical
and empirical perspectives, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary
Perspectives on Sexual Psychology is the most comprehensive and up-
to-date reference work in the field. Providing a broad yet in-depth
overview of the various evolutionary principles that influence all types
of sexual behaviors, the handbook takes an inclusive approach that
draws on a number of disciplines and covers nonhuman and human
psychology. It is an essential resource for both established researchers
and students in psychology, biology, anthropology, medicine, and
criminology, among other fields. Volume 2: Male Sexual Adaptations
addresses theory and research focused on sexual adaptations in
human males.
todd k. shackelford is Distinguished Professor and Chair in the

Department of Psychology and Director of the Center for
Evolutionary Psychological Science at Oakland University in
Michigan, USA.
Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Cambridge Handbook of
Evolutionary Perspectives
on Sexual Psychology
Volume 2: Male Sexual Adaptations
Edited by
Todd K. Shackelford
Oakland University, Michigan

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Title: The Cambridge handbook of evolutionary perspectives on sexual psychology / edited by
Todd K. Shackelford.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press,
2022. | Series: Cambridge handbooks in psychology | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Contents: volume 1. Foundations of evolutionary perspectives on sexual
psychology – volume 2. Male sexual adaptations – volume 3. Female sexual adaptations –
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Contents
List of Contributors page vii

Preface ix
Part I. Precopulatory Adaptations 1

1 Men’s Sexual Preferences
daniel j. miller and ryan c. anderson 3
2 Men’s Extra-Pair Sexual Interest
adam c. davis, steven arnocky, megan mackinnon,
and larissa mckelvie 24
3 Male Sexual Attraction Tactics
mitch brown, kaitlyn boykin, kelsey m. drea, alicia
l. macchione, mary m. medlin, and donald f. sacco 57
4 Men’s Intrasexual Competition
karlijn massar 84
5 Competitiveness and Fatherhood as Overarching Domains
of Female Choice in Human Evolution
gregory gorelik 111
6 Sexual Coercion and Rape
andrew m. holub and gavin vance 144
7 Mate Poaching by Men
t. joel wade and maryanne l. fisher 165
Part II. Copulatory Adaptations 195

8 Sexual Fantasy
mariana a. saramago and ricardo ventura baúto 197
9 Ejaculation Latency
rosa angélica lucio, alonso fernández-guasti,
and maria reyna fuentes-morales 215

vi Contents
10 Copulatory Thrusting in Males

anders ågmo and gabriela moralı́ 237
11 Men’s Provisioning of Oral Sex
gavin vance 271
12 Inducing Female Orgasm
tara delecce 294
13 Copulatory Urgency
arial bloshinsky and valerie g. starratt 312
Part III. Postcopulatory Adaptations 323

14 Postejaculatory Adaptations to Self-Semen Displacement
gordon g. gallup, jr., and steven m. platek 325
15 Male Mate Retention
bruna s. nascimento, katia c. vione, and renan
p. monteiro 343
16 Shifts in Partner Attractiveness: Evolutionary and
Social Factors
rebecca l. burch, maryanne l. fisher, james b. moran,
catherine a. salmon, t. joel wade, and
david r. widman 363
17 Emotional Commitment in Men
elizabeth g. pillsworth 391
18 Sexual Jealousy in Males: The Evolution of a Specific
Mechanism for Sexual Jealousy
tsukasa kato 426
19 Men’s Attachment-Related Needs in the Sexual Arena
moran mizrahi 451
20 Paternal Care
ryan schacht 476
21 Paternal Filicide
vibeke ottesen 489
Index 517

Contributors
anders ågmo, University of Tromsø, Norway

ryan c. anderson, Monash University, Australia
steven arnocky, Nipissing University, Canada
arial bloshinsky, Nova Southeastern University, USA
kaitlyn boykin, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
mitch brown, University of Arkansas, USA
rebecca l. burch, State University of New York at Oswego, USA
adam c. davis, University of Ottawa, Canada
tara delecce, Oakland University, USA
kelsey m. drea, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
alonso fernández-guasti, CINVESTAV–Sede Sur, Mexico
maryanne l. fisher, Saint Mary’s University, Canada
maria reyna fuentes-morales, National Autonomous University of Mexico,
Mexico
gordon g. gallup, Jr., State University of New York at Albany, USA
gregory gorelik, independent scholar, USA
andrew m. holub, Oakland University, USA
tsukasa kato, Toyo University, Japan
rosa angélica lucio, Autonomous University of Tlaxcala, Mexico
alicia l. macchione, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
megan mackinnon, Nipissing University, Canada
karlijn massar, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
larissa mckelvie, Nipissing University, Canada
vii

viii List of Contributors
mary m. medlin, University of Southern Mississippi, USA

daniel j. miller, James Cook University, Australia
moran mizrahi, Ariel University, Israel
renan p. monteiro, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil
gabriela moralı́, Medical Research Unit in Pharmacology, Mexico
james b. moran, Tulane University, USA
bruna s. nascimento, Brunel University, UK
vibeke ottesen, University of Oslo, Norway
elizabeth g. pillsworth, California State University, USA
donald f. sacco, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
catherine a. salmon, University of Redlands, USA
mariana a. saramago, Portugal
ryan schacht, East Carolina University, USA
valerie g. starratt, Nova Southeastern University, USA
gavin vance, Oakland University, USA
ricardo ventura baúto, IUEM – Egas Moniz University Institute, Portugal
katia c. vione, Derby University, UK
t. joel wade, Bucknell University, USA
david r. widman, Juniata College, USA

Preface
A few previous handbooks have addressed the interface of sexual behavior

and evolutionary psychology, but none have been as comprehensive as The
Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology.
These previous handbooks focused on the links between sexual psychology
and behavior within a single domain of the evolutionary psychological litera-
ture, such as the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence,
Homicide, and War (published in 2012, edited by Shackelford and Weekes-
Shackelford) and the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology
(published in 2011, edited by Salmon and Shackelford). Weekes-Shackelford
and Shackelford about a decade ago co-edited Evolutionary Perspectives on
Human Sexual Psychology and Behavior (2012, published by Springer
Nature). In addition to being somewhat outdated, that volume focused on
humans, whereas the current volume includes work on nonhumans.
Furthermore, the Weekes-Shackelford and Shackelford volume included just
twenty chapters in a single volume, whereas the current volume boasts nearly
eighty chapters across four volumes and, therefore, is more comprehensive.
The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual
Psychology comprises four volumes of around twenty chapters each.
Chapters in Volume 1: Foundations address foundational theories and meth-
odological approaches. Chapters in Volume 2: Male Sexual Adaptations
address theory and research focused on sexual adaptations in human males.
Chapters in Volume 3: Female Sexual Adaptations address theory and research
focused on sexual adaptations in human females. Finally, chapters in Volume
4: Controversies, Applications, and Nonhuman Primate Extensions address
controversies and unresolved issues; applications to health, law, and pornog-
raphy; and nonhuman primate evolved sexual psychology.
Evolutionary psychology is a vital area of the modern discipline of psych-
ology and, indeed, of the social, life, and behavioral sciences. The Cambridge
Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology is the most
comprehensive modern handbook for the field that addresses sexual psych-
ology and behavior. The four volumes provide a rich overview of the most
important theoretical and empirical work in the field. This handbook is
directed primarily to researchers and graduate students, but it will also be
useful for advanced undergraduates. It provides a comprehensive overview of
ix
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

x Preface
the state of the art in evolutionary perspectives on sexual psychology that

affords both established researchers and students a rich and current under-
standing of the discipline.
Unlike most previous volumes in this area, which have been relatively
narrow in coverage, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives
on Sexual Psychology is broad and inclusive. In addition to the research
groups pioneering the field of evolutionary psychology in the Western world
(e.g., Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States), there is rapidly
growing interest in this field in other parts of the world. For example, there
has been a substantial increase in the contributions of Asian and South
American scholars to evolutionary psychology in recent years. The
Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology
provides these new scholars with a wide-ranging summary of this exciting
and ever-expanding field.
The selection of chapters and contributors for the handbook was deter-
mined by focusing on the breadth of the literature while attempting to maxi-
mize the international appeal of this work. Chapters are sufficiently lengthy to
afford detailed reviews of the relevant topics, but contributors also were
encouraged to avoid excessive description of individual studies. In addition,
contributors were instructed to include reference to work conducted by
scholars outside of North America and Europe in order to increase the
breadth of coverage and to generate additional interest in the handbook and
the field among scholars from other parts of the world. Where research from
other countries or cultures was not available, contributors were asked to
provide their professional evaluation of potential cultural influences on avail-
able empirical findings and to outline the degree to which available findings
are likely to generalize cross-culturally.
I hope readers find the four volumes of The Cambridge Handbook of
Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology as exciting to read as it was
for me to organize and edit. I am grateful to each of the several dozen
contributors from around the world for their time, attention, and commitment
to this unique resource, and to the editorial staff at Cambridge University
Press.

PART I
Precopulatory Adaptations

1 Men’s Sexual Preferences
Daniel J. Miller and Ryan C. Anderson
As originally articulated by Darwin (1871), sexual selection, as distinct from

natural selection, refers to the evolution of characteristics that provide a
reproductive advantage to an organism over a rival. The survival of an
organism is important insofar as longevity affords opportunities for reproduc-
tion (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), hence any characteristic that positively affects the
survival of an organism is indirectly enhancing its reproductive ability.
Darwin (1871) applied sexual selection to instances in which organisms
evolved characteristics whose functions were deleterious to the survival of
the organism but improved its mating success relative to rivals (such as the
oft-cited example of the peacock’s cumbersome tail).
Nearly all individuals exhibit sexual preferences and individuals of the
opposite sex are typically motivated to behave in ways that embody such
preferences. Indeed, indiscriminate mating is not a documented feature of any
human society (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). One can consider sexual preferences to
be the product of psychological mechanisms that offer appropriate solutions
to recurring evolutionary problems associated with reproduction (Buss &
Schmitt, 1993).
These preferences are seldom consciously articulated in humans, but more
often expressed as a series of emotions that impel or repel an individual
toward or away from another without their conscious awareness (Buss &
Schmitt, 1993). The relevant questions then become “What problems do
mating or sexual preferences solve?” and “How do they solve these prob-
lems?” However, theories of human mating often assume a single process
determining who will mate with whom and sometimes consider that male
and female mating is identically motivated, precluding the formulation of
sex-differentiated predictions (Buss & Schmitt, 1993).
There is considerable overlap in the recurring adaptive problems in the
domains of mating faced by men and women, and thus we might expect
men and women to display similar preferences in many respects (DeKay &
Buss, 1992). However, there are some aspects of mating in which men and
women differ and for that reason we expect to see some differences in men’s
and women’s mating strategies and sexual preferences. For example, there is a
sexual asymmetry in the minimum parental investment required to produce a
child (Trivers, 1972). Women bear the tasks of gestation and lactation, both of

4 daniel j. miller and ryan c. anderson
which are physically demanding and effectively preclude one from having
other offspring at the same time. Conversely, men’s minimum parental invest-
ment is the act of intercourse and the cost of a single ejaculate. The asymmetry
is present even before conception. Female sex cells are larger and more
biologically/metabolically valuable than male sex cells, which are relatively
small, abundant, and less costly to produce (Bateman & Bennett, 2006). One
implication of this asymmetry is that men should show a relative preference
for engaging in short-term mating opportunities with a variety of partners and
display greater vigor in pursuing such opportunities. This is not to say that
women are not interested, or do not engage, in short-term mating, nor that
men do not also engage in long-term mating (for a discussion of the adaptive
functions of women’s short-term mating and men’s long-term mating, see Buss
& Schmitt, 2019). In fact, humans stand out in the degree to which they engage
in long-term pair-bonding and biparenting (Buss & Schmitt, 2016). Instead,
the claim is that men will show greater preference for casual sex and partner
variety relative to women (e.g., Buss & Schmitt, 1993, 2019).
Pursuing a short-term mating strategy results in a number of problems that
need to be overcome. As set out by Buss and Schmitt (1993), for men, these
include (a) the problem of partner number, (b) the problem of identifying
which women are sexually accessible, (c) the problem of identifying which
women are fertile, and (d) the problem of minimizing investment in short-term
partners. In response to these problems, men evolved specific sexual prefer-
ences. For example, men report a preference for markers of sexual accessibility
(such as sexual experience) in short-term mates more so than in long-term
mates (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), which addresses the problem of partner
accessibility.
Another important way in which men and women differ is around parental
confidence. A mother can be more confident of her maternity than a father can
be of his paternity. Unwitting investment in genetically unrelated offspring
following a partner’s infidelity carries substantial costs (in terms of time,
energy, resources, and alternative mating opportunities; Kaighobadi,
Shackelford, & Goetz, 2009). Given these significant costs, we should expect
men to have evolved specific preferences to avoid partner infidelity – for
example, valuing fidelity and sexual inexperience in long-term partners (how-
ever, if a man is also pursuing short-term mating, the problem of identifying
sexually accessible women may outweigh these concerns; Buss & Schmitt,
2019). Indeed, a number of behavioral and psychological adaptations to
mitigate sperm competition (attributable to female partner infidelity) have
been observed (see Pham & Shackelford, 2014). For example, time spent apart
since last copulation is positively associated with men’s perceptions of their
partner’s attractiveness and a desire to copulate (which would have the effect
of placing one’s sperm in competition with that of a potential rival;
Shackelford et al., 2002) and men at greater risk of sperm competition are
more likely to engage in sexual behaviors that displace rival semen that may

Men’s Sexual Preferences 5
be present in a long-term partner’s reproductive tract (e.g., frequent thrusting

during intercourse; Goetz et al., 2005).
In the remainder of this chapter, we review evidence for men’s sexual
preferences (e.g., self-reports of attitudes toward casual sex, the contents of
sexual fantasies, the results of field studies). Where appropriate, we remark on
whether these findings support predictions derived from evolutionary theories.
1.1 Physical Attributes Men Find Attractive

A considerable literature has described the importance of physical
attractiveness for female mate value (Buss, 1989; Eastwick & Finkel, 2008;
Singh, 1993). For women, physical attractiveness has been described as a
“single ornament of mate value” (Fink & Penton-Voak, 2002, p. 158) and is
thought to be a reliable and honest indicator of genetic quality (indicating the
likely robustness of any offspring produced; Thornhill & Grammer, 1999). But
which physical attributes do men find attractive? This section reviews some of
these findings. Most men are attracted to women, with those reporting pre-
dominately same-sex attraction comprising fewer than 5 percent of respond-
ents in most surveys (Bailey et al., 2016). Accordingly, this discussion focuses
on the physical attributes men find attractive in women.
Fertility refers to a woman’s present ability to reproduce (Buss & Schmitt,
1993). Compared to men, women’s fertility is more sharply age-graded (Buss &
Schmitt, 2016), peaking around the early to mid-twenties before declining there-
after until menopause (O’Connor, Holman, & Wood, 1998). Accordingly, men
can go some way to solving the problem of determining female fertility
by expressing a mating preference for women who are young and healthy
(evidence suggests that men do show a preference for younger partners; see
Buss & Schmitt, 2019). Some physical indicators of youth and health include a
small nose, small feet, hairless skin (Barber, 1995), full lips, lustrous hair, and
good muscle tone. Behavioral manifestations such as physical enthusiasm, high
activity level, and a spritely gait also reliably correlate with youth and health
(Buss & Barnes, 1986).
A woman’s body fat distribution is a reliable correlate of her youthfulness
and likely long-term health (Singh, 1993). Of special importance appears to be
waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Pubertal development triggers the expansion of the
pelvic bone and distribution of fat to the gluteofemoral region (thighs and
buttocks), resulting in a decreased WHR. Conversely, following menopause
more adipose tissue is distributed in the abdomen, resulting in an increased
WHR (Björkelund, Lissner, Andersson, Lapidus, & Bengtsson, 1996).
Accordingly, a lower WHR signals the period during which a woman is
typically fertile. Additionally, a lower WHR appears to be linked to higher
levels of estrogen and progesterone, which are both associated with fecundity
(Jasieńska, Ziomkiewicz, Ellison, Lipson, & Thune, 2004).

A number of studies have reported a male preference for a WHR of around

0.70 (Braun & Bryan, 2006; Henss, 2000; Singh, 1994; Singh & Young, 1995),
although the universality of this finding has been challenged. For example,
Marlowe and Wetsman (2001) found that men in a foraging society preferred
a higher WHR. The authors explain this preference by suggesting that it has
arisen in a society where there is essentially no risk of obesity. While body
mass index (BMI) and WHR are positively associated, work by Singh,
Dixson, Jessop, Morgan, and Dixson (2010) suggests that the preference for
a low WHR ratio does not simply reflect a preference for a lower BMI. They
tested this by showing participants before and after images of women who had
undergone a cosmetic surgical procedure in which fat was removed from the
abdomen and placed in the buttocks (thereby lowering the WHR without
impacting BMI). The cross-cultural sample rated the postoperative pictures as
more attractive.
Breasts also factor into men’s perception of female attractiveness. For
example, one eye-tracking study found that men were more likely to fixate
on the breast and waist areas than on the face or legs when looking at
digitally manipulated photographs of a forward-facing nude woman (Dixson,
Grimshaw, Linklater, & Dixson, 2011). The study also found that participants
looked at the breast area for longer and more frequently than the waist area
(although WHR manipulations had a stronger influence on ratings of attract-
iveness than did breast size manipulation). As with the gluteofemoral region,
the onset of puberty causes adipose tissue to be deposited in the breasts
(Dixson, Grimshaw, et al., 2011). Much like a lower WHR, larger breasts
are associated with higher estrogen and progesterone levels (Jasieńska et al.,
2004).
While Western cultural stereotypes posit that men prefer large breasts, the
literature on breast size preference is inconsistent. For example, some studies
indicate that men prefer large breasts, while others indicate a preference for
medium-sized or smaller breasts (for an overview, see Dixson, Vasey, et al.,
2011). One cross-cultural study found that men in Brazil, the Czech Republic,
and Namibia preferred medium-sized breasts, while men in Cameroon showed
a preference for large breasts (Havlíček et al., 2017). Interestingly, all four
samples showed a clear preference for firm, as compared to pendulous,
breasts, which the authors argue may act as a marker of residual reproductive
value (an individual’s expected reproductive output into the future). Other
factors such as breast symmetry (Dixson, Vasey, et al., 2011) or areolar
pigmentation (Dixson, Duncan, & Dixson, 2015) may interact with size to
influence men’s perceptions of breast attractiveness.
While breasts are highly sexualized (at least in Western cultures), so are the
buttocks. One small study of Argentinian men asked participants to indicate,
along one continuous scale, the importance they place on breasts and buttocks
when assessing attractiveness (with the mid-point on the scale indicating that
they weighted breasts and buttocks equally when assessing attractiveness).

They found a bimodal distribution, with a slight skew toward buttocks

(Dagnino, Navajas, & Sigman, 2012). Another study comparing Brazilian
and Czech men found that, while all the men surveyed preferred medium to
large breasts and buttocks, the Brazilian men preferred larger breasts and
buttocks than the Czech men (although the groups did not differ in terms of
preferred WHR; Valentova, Bártová, Štěrbová, & Varella, 2017). A woman’s
stance may also play a role in how the buttocks are perceived. One study
presented participants with computer-generated images of female bodies in
which the back curvature was altered (direction of the curvature was toward
the belly button). It was found that increasing the arch of the back increased
perceptions of attractiveness, with participants also looking longer and fixat-
ing more on the hip region of the female image (Pazhoohi, Doyle, Macedo, &
Arantes, 2018). The authors note that this arched pose signals sexual procep-
tivity in other species and that it may cause the buttocks to appear fuller.
1.2 Attitudes Toward, and Desire for, Casual Sex and

Sexual Variety
We now turn our attention from the physical characteristics of women
that men find attractive to men’s attitudes toward sex. As stated above, given
the asymmetry in minimum parental investment, we would expect men to
pursue short-term mating more vigorously than women. As evidence of this,
we may expect men to have a more permissive attitude toward, and show a
greater desire for, casual sex. In response to the problem of partner number
associated with adopting a short-term mating strategy, we may expect men to
desire more sexual partners.
Men do have more permissive attitudes toward casual sex. Petersen and
Hyde (2010) conducted a meta-analysis of over 800 studies (published between
1993 and 2007) reporting on sexual attitudes and behaviors to investigate the
“gender similarities hypothesis” (which posits that “males and females are
similar on most, but not all, psychological variables,” Hyde, 2005, p. 581).
They also analyzed seven large nationally representative data sets. Studies
were analyzed in terms of gender differences across fourteen sexual behaviors
and sixteen sexual attitudes, with Cohen’s d values computed to demonstrate
the magnitude of these differences. Of the sixteen sexual behaviors that were
assessed, the largest difference that was observed was for attitudes toward
engaging in casual sex, with men being more permissive than women in this
regard (d = 0.45).1
1 For reference, Cohen (1988) suggests that d values of 0.20, 0.50, and 0.80 can be considered to
represent small, medium, and large differences, respectively. Cohen’s d values are reported
where possible to give the reader a sense of the magnitude of the differences being discussed.

More recently, the Third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles
(NATSAL-3), a large probability survey conducted in Britain (data collected
from 2010 to 2012), also indicated that men have more permissive attitudes
toward casual sex, with 26% of men, but only 15% of women, categorizing
one-night stands as rarely wrong/not wrong at all (Clifton, Fuller, & Philo,
n.d., Table 81). Interestingly, the magnitude of this difference was largest
among people aged sixteen to twenty-four years (34% of men vs. 17% of
women) and smallest among people aged forty-five to fifty-four years (26%
of men vs. 21% of women).
Men’s mating effort is more directed toward engaging in casual sex than is
women’s. Male Tinder users report being more motivated to use Tinder for
casual sex than female Tinder users (Sevi, Aral, & Eskenazi, 2018; Sumter,
Vandenbosch, & Ligtenberg, 2017). Compared to women, men more fre-
quently report sex as a primary motivation for engaging in friends with
benefits relationships (Lehmiller, VanderDrift, & Kelly, 2011; Stein,
Mongeau, Posteher, & Veluscek, 2019) and men perceive sexual activity as
a goal of first dates to a greater extent (Mongeau, Serewicz, & Therrien,
2004).
In terms of desire for sexual variety, Schmitt (2003) investigated this topic
among samples drawn from fifty-two nations across ten world regions (North
America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe,
the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia).
Participants were asked how many different sex partners they would like to
have over different time intervals (e.g., in the next month, next thirty years).
Across all time intervals, men desired more sexual partners than women (d =
0.40–0.49). Additionally, compared to women, men in all world regions
desired more sexual partners within the next month (d = 0.37–0.53).2 These
differences held across all levels of relationship status and sexual orientation.
Across all world regions, men were more likely to consent to sex after knowing
someone for only a month (d = 0.48–1.20) and men were more likely to be
actively seeking short-term mates (d = 0.31–0.67).
Hughes, Aung, Harrison, LaFayette, and Gallup (2021) employed an
experimental methodology to investigate sex differences in desire for sexual
variety. Participants were presented with a mating opportunity task in which
they were shown ten facial photographs of opposite-sex individuals and given
ten hypothetical copulation opportunities to distribute as they saw fit (e.g.,
they could have sex with the same person ten times, have sex with ten different
people, have sex with two people five times, etc.). Different conditions were
2 It has been observed that sampling distributions in number of desired sex partners tend to be
highly skewed and that this may affect comparisons of mean level differences (as these types of
comparisons tend to be influenced by outlying values; Pedersen, Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatula,
& Yang, 2002). For this reason, Schmitt (2003) also carried out nonparametric tests of median
level differences, with a similar pattern of findings observed.

created with different photograph compositions (e.g., in one condition all ten
photographs were of younger attractive individuals; in another there was a
mix of attractive, average, and unattractive individuals). Across all conditions,
men distributed their mating opportunities more widely than women did (d =
0.38–0.98). In a second experiment, participants were presented with pairs of
faces and asked which individual they would prefer to have sex with. The
images presented were manipulated such that some faces were presented
multiple times, while others were novel. Compared to women, men selected
a higher proportion of novel faces (d = 0.65). Finally, participants were asked
their opinion on romantic partners changing their physical appearance (e.g.,
dyeing hair). Men found romantic partners frequently altering their appear-
ance to be more appealing (d = 0.37).
1.3 Number of Sexual Partners Reported

While men have a more positive attitude toward engaging in casual
sex, does this manifest in behavior? As Buss and Schmitt (2019) point out, a
behavioral preference is unlikely to evolve if it does not sometimes result in the
related behavior occurring. Multiple large nationally representative surveys
have found evidence that men have (or at least report having) more sexual
partners than women across their lifetimes. For example, the Second
Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR-2; data collected from
2012 to 2013) reports the median number of opposite-sex sexual partners over
the lifetime to be seven for men and four for women (Rissel et al., 2014).
Additionally, a higher percentage of male than female participants reported
having ten or more opposite-sex partners (37% vs. 20.1%). Similar sex differ-
ences were observed on the NATSAL-3, where the median number of
opposite-sex sexual partners over the lifetime was six for men and four for
women, with 33.9% of men reporting ten or more lifetime opposite-sex part-
ners compared to 19.9% of women (Mercer et al., 2013). The 2006–2008
National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG; data collected in the United
States) reports a median 5.1 lifetime opposite-sex partners for men and 3.2
for women, with 39.5% of men reporting seven or more lifetime partners
compared to 24.3% of women (Chandra, Mosher, Copen, & Sionean, 2011).
Petersen and Hyde’s (2010) aforementioned meta-analysis also indicates that
men have more sex partners than women (smaller studies: d = 0.36; large data
sets: d = 0.15), a greater incidence/frequency of casual sex (smaller studies: d =
0.38; large data sets: d = 0.18), and a greater incidence/frequency of extramar-
ital sex (smaller studies: d = 0.33; large data sets: d = 0.12).
In a way, these results are perplexing. In a closed heterosexual system
(putting aside, for now, instances of homosexuality), each new sex partner
for a man should be a new sex partner for a woman (see Wiederman, 1997).
There have been a number of hypotheses advanced to account for this logical

inconsistency. For example, it has been suggested that men systemically

exaggerate their reports upward, while women under-report, possibly as a
response to cultural double standards around engaging in casual sex (Hyde,
2014). It has also been suggested that men and women engage in different
accounting strategies when responding to questions of this nature (e.g., men
are more likely to estimate while women are more likely to precisely count)
and that men are more likely to report extreme values than women (Mitchell
et al., 2019). Rissel et al. (2014) note that men may be more inclined to access
the services of female sex workers (an assumption which seems to be borne out
by research; see Section 1.4), who, in turn, are less likely to be sampled on
surveys. They also posit that men may be more likely than women to engage in
casual sex while abroad (and given that these are national surveys, sex part-
ners from abroad would not be sampled).
Mitchell et al. (2019) used NATSAL-3 data to investigate some of these
proposed explanations. They found that capping responses at the ninety-ninth
percentile (to exclude the most extreme scores) and statistically adjusting for
accounting strategy (counting vs. estimating) and attitudes toward casual sex
accounted for some, but not all, of the gender difference in reported number of
lifetime partners. Specifically, these adjustments took the mean difference
between men’s and women’s reported lifetime opposite-sex partners from
7.02 to 2.63 (a two-thirds reduction).
Of course, if men show a greater preference for casual sex than women
do, we may expect gay men to, on average, have more sexual partners than
their heterosexual counterparts, given that gay men would not be con-
strained by female partners’ relative disinterest in casual sex. An advantage
of comparing number of sexual partners reported by gay and heterosexual
men is that it eliminates possible gender differences in responding to these
types of questions.3 The NATSAL-3 revealed that men who have sex
exclusively with women reported a median of six lifetime partners (with
37% of these participants reporting ten or more partners), compared to a
median of seventeen lifetime partners among men who have sex with men
(with 68% of these participants reporting ten or more partners; Mercer
et al., 2013). Self-identified gay men interviewed as part of the ASHR-2
had a median of twenty-two lifetime same-sex partners, with 69.5% of
these participants reporting ten or more same-sex partners (Grulich
et al., 2014). This is compared to a median of eight lifetime opposite-sex
partners among self-identified heterosexual men, with 44.7% of these par-
ticipants reporting more than ten lifetime opposite-sex partners (Rissel
et al., 2014).
3 Prah et al. (2016) note that the use of convenience samples of gay men (e.g., approaching
participants in gay venues) tends to overrepresent men who engage in risky sexual behaviors, so
we have therefore limited this discussion to nationally representative surveys.

1.4 Paying for Sex

Compared to women, men appear to be much more likely to pay for
sex, with a sizable minority of men reporting having done so. In Australia,
16.7% of men surveyed as part of the ASHR-2 reported having ever paid for
sex (2.3% had done so in the past year), compared to 0.3% of women (Richters
et al., 2014). In the UK, 10.8% of men reported having ever paid for opposite-
sex sex, compared to 0.1% of women (Mitchell et al., 2019), and 3.6% had
done so in the past five years (compared to 0.1% of women; Mercer et al.,
2013). Of US men surveyed as part of the NSFG, 4.3% indicated that their
most recent sexual activity was transactional (defined as sex with “someone
who paid me or gave me something for sex; someone who I paid or gave
something to for sex,”, p. 348), compared to just 0.8% of women (Herbenick
et al., 2010). Carael, Slaymaker, Lyerla, and Sarkar (2006) reviewed national
and city-based surveys of men’s patronage of sex workers from around the
world. They report the median percentage of men who had exchanged money
for sex in the last twelve months to be around 9–10% across all regions
(although large regional variations were noted).
1.5 Agreeing to Have Sex with a Stranger

Another way in which a greater interest in short-term mating might
behaviorally manifest is in responses to sexual propositions from strangers. In
their seminal field study, Clark and Hatfield (1989) had male and female
confederates approach opposite-sex individuals on the grounds of a Florida
university and ask them one of three questions:
• “Would you go out with me tonight?”

• “Will you come over to my apartment tonight?”
• “Would you go to bed with me tonight?”
Men and women were equally likely to comply with the request to go on a date
(roughly half of male and female participants agreed). However, very few
women agreed to go back to the male confederate’s apartment (6%) and zero
agreed to go to bed with him. Conversely, around two-thirds of male partici-
pants agreed to go back to the female confederate’s apartment and three-
quarters agreed to go to bed with her.
Hald and Høgh-Olesen (2010) conducted a replication of Clark and
Hatfield’s study in sexually liberal Denmark. While fewer participants overall
agreed to any of the requests, a similar pattern emerged in regard to gender
differences: Roughly the same number of men and women (30% of men, 20%
of women) agreed to the date, while significantly more men than women
agreed to go to the apartment (22% of men, 8% of women) and to have sex
(38% of men, 2% of women), with effect size measures indicating a very large

difference in relation to the sexual request. The gender difference in sexual

request compliance was even larger if considering only those participants who
were not currently in a relationship (59% of men, 0% of women). Interestingly,
the confederates’ attractiveness was predictive of consenting to the sexual
request for female, but not male, participants. This is somewhat inconsistent
with findings by Buss and Schmitt (1993) that men express a strong desire for
attractiveness in both short- and long-term partners (in fact, this preference
was stronger for short-term partners). This said, a desire for attractiveness in a
partner does not necessarily mean that unattractiveness will be a “deal
breaker” (i.e., all things being equal, men may desire their partners to be
attractive, while still being willing to have sex with less attractive partners).
Buss and Schmitt (1993) indicate that men seeking a short-term partner may
relax their standards in response to the problem of partner number (p. 209).
A further field study by Guéguen (2011) reports an even greater gender
difference in consent to the sexual offer among French participants when
propositioned by confederates of average attractiveness (60% of men, 0% of
women) and high attractiveness (83% of men, 3% of women).
Schützwohl, Fuchs, McKibbin, and Shackelford (2009) asked Italian, US,
and German participants to imagine how likely they would be to agree to the go
out, go to apartment, and go to bed requests if posed by members of the opposite
sex of varying levels of attractiveness. Again, men were more likely to accept the
sexual request than women (45.8% for men, 4.2% for women). While men’s
responses were not totally insensitive to the attractiveness of the asker (men
were more likely to agree to all three types of request if from a moderately or
exceptionally attractive woman), women’s responses were more closely related
to the asker’s attractiveness (especially in regard to the sexual request). No
national differences were found in terms of women’s likelihood of agreeing to
sex, whereas national differences were observed for men, with Italian men
(61%) having higher average likelihood ratings than US (43%) or German
men (29%),4 indicating a degree of cultural influence. Tappé, Bensman,
Hayashi, and Hatfield (2013) conducted a pencil-and-paper replication of
Clark and Hatfield’s study with Hawaiian university students, presenting them
with photos of attractive individuals and asking how certain they would be that
they would agree to each request type on a ten-point scale. Across three studies,
men were more likely to accept the sexual request. Shackelford, Goetz,
LaMunyon, Quintus, and Weekes-Shackelford (2004) asked participants how
likely they would be to have a one-night stand with someone they had just met
knowing that the person was (a) not in a relationship, (b) in a causal relation-
ship, or (c) married. Men were less inclined to pursue the one-night stand if the
imagined partner was in a relationship (which the authors point out is consistent
with the idea that men have evolved mate preferences to minimize sperm
4 These are not percentages of participants who agreed to the requests, but rather participants’
self-reported likelihood of accepting the request.

competition); however, compared to women, men were still more likely to agree
across all three levels of the partner’s relationship status.
While there are some minor disparities across these studies in terms of the
degree to which attractiveness of the requester impacts men’s responses, they
point to the same conclusion: Compared to women, men are more willing to
agree to casual sex with a stranger. While men displaying a greater preference
for casual sex is consistent with evolutionary frameworks that highlight men’s
proclivity for engaging in short-term mating opportunities, it should also be
acknowledged that part of this disparity may reflect women being more likely
to feel that they would be vulnerable to violence if they were to meet privately
with a stranger for sex. Notably, Tappé et al. (2013) did ask participants to
elaborate on their reasoning to refuse the sexual request. Qualitative analysis
was used to divide responses into a number of themes. For women, danger was
a commonly occurring theme (with seventeen women, but only five men,
identifying potential danger as part of their reasoning for rejecting the
request). However, the themes don’t know person/need to know better (identi-
fied by forty women and fifteen men) and immoral (identified by eighteen
women and five men) both occurred more frequently than danger.
1.6 The Content of Men’s Sexual Fantasies

Another method of assessing men’s sexual preferences is to analyze
the themes prevalent in their sexual fantasies. One advantage to assessing
sexual fantasies is that fantasies are not compromised by having to meet the
approval of a sexual partner, in the same way that sexual behavior is. For this
reason, we might consider fantasies to be “an undiluted assay of sexual
desires” (Salmon, Fisher, & Burch, 2019, p. 46).
Men sexually fantasize more frequently than women (Hicks & Leitenberg,
2001). They are also more inclined to focus on visual images when sexually
fantasizing, as well as the physical characteristics of the fantasized partner
(Ellis & Symons, 1990). Compared to women’s fantasies, men’s are more
sexually explicit and contain fewer emotional or romantic elements
(Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004). Men’s fantasies also get to sexual activity more
quickly (Ellis & Symons, 1990). More men than women report fantasies about
sex with someone other than their current partner, although extradyadic
fantasies are common among both men and women (98% of men and 80%
of women reported having them; Hicks & Leitenberg, 2001).
Lehmiller (2020) tested nonmonogamy-related fantasies in a large sample of
people in relationships. Participants were asked about their favorite sexual
fantasy and to respond to a list of fantasies about specific types of nonmono-
gamy. The most commonly occurring theme in men’s favorite sexual fantasy
was novelty, being present in 66.5% of men’s favorite fantasy (compared to
53.6% of women’s), followed by breaking a taboo (men: 63.5%; women:

53.6%), and sex with multiple partners (men: 56.4%; women: 34.3%).
Consistent with the notion that men are interested in sexual variety, most
men sampled had fantasized about most of the forms of nonmonogamy listed,
with men being more likely to fantasize about open relationships, polyamory,
swinging, being cuckolded (watching one’s partner have sex with someone
else), and infidelity. Women were more likely to fantasize about monogamy,
and no sex difference was observed for fantasies about cuckolding a partner
(having sex with someone else while one’s partner watches).
Binter et al. (2012) tested for sex differences in sexual fantasies directly
related to “evolutionary relevant objects.” A list of ten fantasies (e.g., sex with
an inexperienced partner) was generated based on evolutionary psychological
literature, with participants being asked if they engaged in these fantasies. As
predicted by the authors, men were more likely to fantasize about sex with
multiple opposite-sex partners (the authors reason this represents low invest-
ment but high sexual variety), sex with a younger partner (youth as an
indicator of high fertility, reduces paternity uncertainty), and sex with a
sexually inexperienced partner (reduces paternity uncertainty). Contrary to
the authors’ predictions, no sex differences were found for fantasizing about
sex with a stranger, sex with a famous person, an orgy with members of both
sexes, or sex with an older person. This is in contrast to an earlier study which
did find that, compared to women, men were more likely to fantasize about
group sex, but less likely to fantasize about sex with a famous person (Wilson,
1997). Zurbriggen and Yost (2004) similarly found that men were more likely
to fantasize about sex with multiple partners.
1.7 The Use and Contents of Pornography

Pornography use is common among men, with one systematic review
suggesting that most men have viewed pornography at some point (>80%)
and in the past year (40–70%), and that a sizable proportion of men (around
half of younger men) use pornography on a weekly basis (Miller, Raggatt, &
McBain, 2020). While women also consume pornography, men are more
likely to use pornography than women (Hald, 2006; Regnerus, Gordon, &
Price, 2016). Furthermore, women appear more likely to use pornography
with a sexual partner than men, who typically consume pornography alone
(Carroll, Busby, Willoughby, & Brown, 2017). In fact, of all the sexual
behaviors and attitudes assessed as part of Petersen and Hyde’s (2010) meta-
analysis, the greatest sex difference was observed for use of pornography,
followed by masturbation (which is closely connected to pornography use;
Miller, McBain, Li, & Raggatt, 2019). Men were found to use more pornog-
raphy in both the meta-analysis of smaller studies (d = 0.63) and large data
sets (d = 0.46). The results were similar for masturbation (smaller studies: d =
0.53; large data sets: d = 0.58).

Multiple authors have used an evolutionary framework to understand sex

differences in pornography consumption, as well as the content of pornog-
raphy. For example, Malamuth (1996) points out the “uncanny correspond-
ence” (p. 20) between the problems associated with men’s short-term mating
(i.e., accessing multiple partners who are sexually available, identifying fertile
partners, and minimizing partner investment) and the themes in pornography:
Pornography depicts youthful and attractive women (attractiveness being
indicative of health and fertility), all of whom are eager to engage in casual
sex with no expectation of a long-term relationship.
Malamuth (1996) bases this summary of the contents of pornography on a
content analysis of pornographic films conducted by Brosius, Weaver, and
Staab (1993). More recent content analyses are consistent with this appraisal.
For example, in terms of pornography depicting casual sex, a content analysis
of highly rated videos taken from Pornhub.com and xVideos.com suggests
that pornography depicts casual sex far more frequently than it depicts sex
between partners in a long-term relationship (Rasmussen, Millar, &
Trenchuk, 2019). Sex partners were depicted as dating in 6.8 percent of scenes
and as married in only 1.1 percent of scenes. An analysis by one data
journalist (Millward, 2013) reports the top three most frequently occurring
female roles in pornographic film titles to be teen, MILF (discussed later), and
wife. However, in all instances, films with wife in the title involved the wife
engaging in sex with someone other than her spouse. Mainstream pornog-
raphy rarely depicts condom use or discussion of safe sex (Sun, Bridges,
Wosnitzer, Scharrer, & Liberman, 2008), which is consistent with the extreme
casualness of the sex it depicts. Finally, a recent review of content analytic
studies published since 2005 found that female characters in pornography
typically enthusiastically and indiscriminately engage in any, and all, sexual
requests, even if they are degrading or violent (Miller & McBain, 2021).
Analyzing over 800 scenes from bestselling pornographic films, McKee,
Albury, & Lumby (2008) confirm pornography’s orientation toward depicting
youthful women. Over 80% of the women depicted in these scenes appeared to
be aged between eighteen and thirty years old (as categorized by multiple
independent raters) and only 3% appeared to be aged forty years or older. This
emphasis on youthfulness was not as strong among male performers, with
only 49% appearing to be aged between eighteen and thirty years old. The
authors also found a strong tendency toward depicting women of a slim build
(65% of female performers) or average build (31%), with only 1% of women
being categorized as “bulked up” or unhealthily underweight. The authors
report a diversity of breast sizes among female performers, albeit with a slight
tendency toward large breasts (42% of female performers) as compared to
average-sized (39%) or small breasts (19%). Female performers most com-
monly have groomed pubic hair or have had their pubic hair removed
(Vannier, Currie, & O’Sullivan, 2014) – bodily hairlessness may also be a
cue to fertility (Barber, 1995). Malamuth (1996) suggests that female

magazine centerfolds typically have a low WHR (confirmed by Singh, 1993).

To our knowledge, no researchers have investigated the average WHR of
female performers in contemporary internet pornography.
The popularity of teen pornography as a genre indicates an orientation
toward youthfulness in pornography. Teen frequently makes it into
Pornhub’s list of the top ten most searched terms for the year (Miller &
McBain, 2021). Another term to make it onto these lists is MILF (i.e.,
“Mother I’d like to fuck”). Both of these genres appear to be consumed more
frequently by male pornography users. Hald and Štulhofer (2016) had hetero-
sexual male and female porn users indicate the extent to which they have
viewed twenty-seven different types of pornography (e.g., threesomes, les-
bian). Men and women differed in the extent to which they used nineteen of
twenty-seven types of pornography (with men consuming sixteen of these
types of pornography more than women). The greatest differences were
observed for use of MILF/mature (d = 1.46), big breast (d = 1.14), Lolita/teen
(d = 0.98), and amateur content (d = 0.87).
MILF pornography is a genre which features older women (who therefore
have lower reproductive value). Accordingly, the popularity of MILF porn-
ography is somewhat surprising, especially given that there is no shortage of
content featuring younger women. As stated above, Buss and Schmitt (1993)
do note that when adopting a short-term mating strategy, men may relax their
standards (in terms of partner fertility) in response to the problem of partner
access: “Although men seeking short-term mates, other things being equal,
might prefer fertile women in their early to mid-twenties, a wide range of ages
should be acceptable in short-term mates because of the relaxation of stand-
ards” (p. 209). It should also be noted that female performers in MILF
pornography are often still relatively young – thirty-three years of age, on
average, according to one analysis (Millward, 2013).
In their discussion of MILF pornography from an evolutionary perspective,
Salmon and Fisher (2018) present research to demonstrate that compared to
younger women, women in their thirties report a greater willingness to engage
in casual sex, and the authors suggest this may be a reason for the appeal of
MILF pornography. Content analytic research comparing MILF and teen
pornography found that female performers were more likely to initiate, and be
in control of, sex in MILF pornography, with the opposite being true of teen
pornography (Vannier et al., 2014). Therefore, the apparent popularity of
MILF pornography may reflect men’s interest in women who show sexual
accessibility cues (such as sexual experience) when pursuing short-term mating
opportunities. By that same token, the popularity of teen pornography may
reflect an interest in women who are fertile but sexually inexperienced (redu-
cing paternity uncertainty).
It seems likely that part of men’s attraction to pornography lies in the fact
that it allows consumers to engage in vicarious short-term mating (possibly
while simultaneously maintaining a real-world, long-term relationship), by

providing near-unlimited sexual access to novel partners (albeit virtual ones)

who are attractive, sexually accessible, and unconcerned with long-term com-
mitments. In this way, pornography might be described as providing super-
normal stimuli signaling short-term mating opportunities. Another possible
explanation for sex differences in pornography use is that men show a greater
response to visual sexual stimuli (see Rupp & Wallen, 2008).
1.8 Summary
This chapter sought to summarize various sources of evidence to
provide a picture of men’s sexual preferences. We have seen that men’s sexual
preferences are congruent with predictions of evolutionary sexual psychology.
For example, the physical attributes that most men find attractive in women –
waist and hips, breasts, buttocks, certain facial features – all connect to youth
(but also sexual maturity) and fecundity.
Evolutionary sexual psychology (e.g., Buss & Schmitt, 1993) predicts that,
as a result of sex differences in minimum parental investment, men will show
greater interest in short-term sexual relationships than will women. The
evidence outlined in this chapter supports this prediction. This evidence
includes sex differences in self-reported attitudes toward casual sex; sex differ-
ences in self-reported motivation to date/use dating applications to secure
causal sex; sex differences in desire for partner variety; sex differences in the
number of partners reported across the lifespan; differences between gay and
heterosexual men in the number of partners reported across the lifespan; men’s
patronage of sex workers; field studies assessing sex differences in willingness
to have sex with a stranger; sex differences in the contents of common sexual
fantasies (e.g., fantasies about engaging in sex with multiple partners); and
sex differences in the use of pornography, coupled with a consideration of
the contents of pornography (e.g., youthful and attractive women happily
engaging in casual sex).
Men’s concern about a long-term partner’s infidelity is predicted given
men’s lack of paternity certainty (Buss & Schmitt, 2019; Kaighobadi et al.,
2009). The contents of pornography and men’s sexual fantasies reflect a
preoccupation with infidelity – of the partners of others (e.g., pornogra-
phy’s depictions of cheating wives) and one’s own partner (e.g., sexual
fantasies of being cuckolded). Themes of cuckoldry and infidelity as prom-
inent components of sexual media may also reflect sperm competition
adaptations in which men experience arousal in response to suspected
infidelity/sperm competition (Pham & Shackelford, 2014). Men being more
likely to report fantasies of sex with young and inexperienced partners, and
their interest in teen pornography (in which female performers are less
likely to take charge during sex), may reflect adaptations to reducing
paternity uncertainty.

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2 Men’s Extra-Pair Sexual
Interest
Adam C. Davis, Steven Arnocky, Megan Mackinnon,
and Larissa McKelvie
2.1 Introduction
Infidelity is the act of having a secretive emotional, romantic, and/or
sexual relationship with someone other than one’s primary partner (Drigotas
& Barta, 2001). It is a ubiquitous part of human sexuality that is well exempli-
fied today by the success of websites and apps dedicated to extra-pair sex, such
as Ashley Madison and Tinder (18–25 percent of Tinder users report cheating;
Timmermans, De Caluwé, & Alexopoulos, 2018) – not to mention the count-
less magazines and popular news articles covering its occurrence and the
reasons why women and men cheat on their spouses (e.g., Brooks, 2017;
Weiss, 2017). Mirroring the public preoccupation with infidelity, there exists
an extensive scientific literature extending across interrelated disciplines on
the topic, variously labeled as cheating, adultery, extramarital affairs, extra-
dyadic involvement, and unfaithfulness (see Fincham & May, 2017, for
discussion).
As a species, human beings tend to form socially monogamous pair-bonds
that are accompanied by expectations of romantic and sexual exclusivity
(Buunk & Dijkstra, 2006a; Fletcher, Simpson, Campbell, & Overall, 2015;
Schacht & Kramer, 2019). Consequently, infidelity is commonly viewed as a
serious breach of trust and an emotionally painful experience that can damage
the integrity and longevity of romantic relationships (Buunk & Dijkstra,
2006a; Shackelford, Buss, & Bennett, 2002; Shrout & Weigel, 2018). Despite
the salient personal and interpersonal costs of being unfaithful, evidence
suggests that extra-pair mating is a cross-culturally and historically ubiquitous
phenomenon (Betzig, 1989; Fisher, 1992; Huber, Linhartova, & Cope, 2004;
Marlowe, 2000; Nowak et al., 2014; Scelza et al., 2020; Schmitt, 2004). An
evolutionary perspective can help yield insight into the functional reasons as
to why infidelity occurs, how it varies from person to person, and the social–
ecological parameters that influence extra-pair behavior. Research and theory
in evolutionary psychology also informs the sex-specific nature of extra-pair
mating dynamics, which manifest because of the unique evolutionary chal-
lenges (i.e., adaptive problems) faced by ancestral women and men (Buss,
2018; Buss & Schmitt, 1993, 2019; Buss & Shackelford, 1997a; Buunk &
Dijkstra, 2003; Shackelford et al., 2002; Stone, Goetz, & Shackelford, 2005).
24

Men’s Extra-Pair Sexual Interest 25
2.2 Human Mating and the Prevalence of Infidelity

Across Societies
Human mating systems encompass diverse practices that vary across
culture and history (Klug, 2018; Mogilski, Memering, Welling, &
Shackelford, 2017; Schacht & Kramer, 2019). Alongside this diversity are
consistent patterns that characterize mating behavior among hunter-gatherer,
industrialized, and contemporary societies. One evident pattern is the prac-
tice of social monogamy, the formation of long-term pair-bonds and/or
cohabitating of two individuals, which occurs infrequently among other
mammals (Kleiman, 1977; Lukas & Clutton-Brock, 2013). Social monog-
amy, however, does not describe sexual fidelity and exclusivity (i.e., genetic
monogamy), which implies the existence of extra-pair mating (i.e., courtship
and copulations taking place outside of the pair-bond). Evidence of extra-
pair copulations has been observed in a range of socially monogamous
animals, including various species of rodents (Goossens et al., 1998), birds
(Girndt, Chng, Burke, & Schroeder, 2018), and nonhuman primates
(Schülke, Kappeler, & Zischler, 2004). Humans face similar threats to their
mateships in the form of extra-pair mating and likely have throughout our
evolutionary history (Albert & Arnocky, 2016; Buunk & Dijkstra, 2006b).
The existence of jealousy (an aversive emotional response to a perceived
relationship threat) and mate retention tactics (behavior used to retain mates
and ward off rivals) across cultures suggests that infidelity has been a recur-
rent adaptive problem (Buss & Shackelford, 1997a; Buss, Shackelford,
et al., 1999; Davis, Desrochers, DiFilippo, Vaillancourt, & Arnocky, 2018;
Nascimento & Little, 2019).
Historically, infidelity appears to have been a common feature of ancient
Chinese, Greek, and Roman civilizations (Fisher, 1992). In modern samples,
30% to 70% of Americans have reported cheating on their current or previ-
ous partners (Allen & Baucom, 2006; Barta & Kiene, 2005; Brand, Markey,
Mills, & Hodges, 2007; Macauda, Erickson, Singer, & Santelices, 2011;
Starratt, Weekes-Shackelford, & Shackelford, 2017). In over half of the sixty
societies studied, Huber et al. (2004) stated that extramarital sex occurred at
a “moderate frequency” (i.e., was common) and only in a small percentage
of nations was the frequency of infidelity described as “very low” (i.e.,
uncommon). In a sample of African and Puerto Rican American young
adults, 48% of participants had either engaged in infidelity themselves, had
been cheated on by their partners, or both (Macauda et al., 2011). Other
recent research has shown that 13.8% of Turkish college students (Toplu-
Demirtaş & Fincham, 2018) and 25.5% of Portuguese young adults (Arantes,
Barros, & Oliveira, 2020) have engaged in extradyadic behavior. Specific to
marriage, in any given year, approximately 2–4% of Americans have
engaged in extramarital sex (Treas & Giesen, 2000; Whisman, Gordon, &
Chatav, 2007).

26 adam c. davis et al.
2.3 The Impact of Infidelity

Despite its pervasiveness, attitudes toward infidelity are largely nega-
tive across societies (Christensen, 1962, 1973; Negy, Plaza, Reig-Ferrer, &
Fernandez-Pascual, 2018; Widmer, Treas, & Newcomb, 1998). For example,
Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels (1994) found that 77% of
American participants believed that extramarital sex is always wrong. Using
data from the 2006 Sexuality Survey of China, Zhang, Parish, Huang, and Pan
(2012) reported that about 73% of Chinese adults viewed having an affair
outside of marriage to be “completely unacceptable.” Few cultures exist
within which attitudes toward infidelity are favorable and extradyadic involve-
ment is commonly regarded as a violation of important relationship norms
(Buunk & Dijkstra, 2006a). Evidence shows how being betrayed by one’s
partner via infidelity can be an emotionally distressful and painful experience
(Shrout & Weigel, 2018). Infidelity is a key source of marital distress and
dissatisfaction that often leads to relationship dissolution and divorce across
societies (Allen & Atkins, 2012; Betzig, 1989; Hall & Fincham, 2009;
Shackelford & Buss, 2000). Extra-pair behavior is also associated with an
increased risk of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases (Bertocchi & Dimico,
2019; Bowelo, Rakgoasi, & Keetile, 2020), in part because those who cheat are
less likely to engage in safe sexual practices (Conley, Matsick, Moors, Ziegler,
& Rubin, 2015). Furthermore, extradyadic involvement is associated with a
greater risk of domestic violence (Arnocky, Davis, Locke, Mckelvie, &
Vailllancourt, in press; Wilson & Daly, 1996). Unsurprisingly, infidelity is
one of the leading reasons why people seek out couples’ therapy (Atkins,
Marin, Lo, Klann, & Hahlweg, 2010).
Given that infidelity tends to be treated with condemnation across societies
and is associated with a range of adverse personal, relational, and familial
outcomes, why do people engage in extra-pair mating? Providing a functional
explanation to this question involves considering the specific trade-offs in the
adaptive costs and benefits associated with extradyadic behavior. Some of the
costs of infidelity for women and men, many of which were alluded to earlier,
include relationship dissolution, the opportunity cost of not being able to
pursue alternative partnerships, contracting sexually transmitted illnesses, the
misdirection of resources, reputation damage, and aggressive retaliation by a
jealous partner or a spouses’ family (Apostolou & Panayiotou, 2019; Arnocky
et al., in press; Nowak et al., 2014; Shackelford & Buss, 2000). In contrast,
women and men may benefit from infidelity if their current partner is infertile.
Extradyadic sex can also lead to producing offspring with increased genetic
diversity, which may provide a fitness boon in the form of greater collective
pathogen resistance among siblings. Other adaptive costs and benefits, how-
ever, vary in sex-specific ways because of the unique adaptive problems recur-
rently faced by women and men over evolutionary history (Buss, 2018; Buss &
Schmitt, 1993, 2019; Buunk & Dijkstra, 2003; Shackelford et al., 2002).

2.4 Sex Differences in Adaptative Problems for Mating

and Parenting
To help explain how selection has shaped sex differences in the trade-
offs of mating and parenting strategies across species, Trivers (1972) proposed
the theory of parental investment. From this perspective, the sex that invests
more time, energy, and resources into parental investment, in any form, will
evolve to be more selective when choosing mates. On the other hand, the sex
that invests less in their offspring tends to intensely compete for mates, more
often adopting short-term sexual strategies to benefit from pluralistic mating
to maximize possible copulations. Among humans, women have greater
obligatory parental investment in the form of producing larger and more
energetically expensive gametes (i.e., ova), becoming pregnant and gestating
offspring, and giving birth, as well as lactation and breastfeeding (Hayward &
Gillooly, 2011; Trivers, 1972). By comparison, men’s investment may be as
little as a single ejaculate in the production of offspring. In addition to
pregnancy and having fewer gametes, women’s fertility fluctuates across the
phases of the menstrual cycle (Jones, Hahn, & DeBruine, 2019) and they
experience an age-related cessation in reproductive function (i.e., menopause;
Wood, 1992), which collectively contribute to having lower potential lifetime
reproductive rates (i.e., the total number of offspring that can be produced per
unit time; Clutton-Brock & Vincent, 1991). This also means, however, that
men’s reproductive potential is more variable than women’s (Trivers, 1972).
Therefore, the costs of indiscriminate mating are posited to be larger for
women, who could not have significantly increased their reproductive output
by mating multiply over evolutionary time (Buss & Schmitt, 2019).
Several scholars, however, disagree with the primacy of obligatory parental
investment and potential lifetime reproductive rates in determining patterns of
parental investment (Kokko & Jennions, 2008; Oberzaucher, 2020). For
instance, parental investment not only involves gametic production and direct
nutrition (e.g., breastfeeding), but also indirect nutrition (e.g., hunting for
prey), protection, and postpartum care, which are not unanimously performed
by one sex across species (Oberzaucher, 2020). Of relevance here is the fact
that, among humans, evidence indicates that mothers engage in significantly
more postpartum care for their offspring than fathers, both in terms of time
and energy invested (Geary, 2010). Another important consideration is that
men suffer from greater adult mortality relative to women (Kruger & Nesse,
2004). This leads to an unequal adult sex ratio (ASR) whereby there are more
adult women than men competing for mates, which can favor the selection of
conventional sex roles in line with Trivers’ (1972) theory of parental invest-
ment (Arnocky, Woodruff, & Schmitt, 2016; Kokko & Jennions, 2008).
Taking into account the sex-specific asymmetries in obligatory parental
investment, postpartum care, lifetime reproductive potential, and the ASR,
selection may have favored adaptations for more long-term mating strategies

in women to secure an investing partner with resources, while favoring extra-

pair mating to secure genetic benefits for offspring, a better long-term partner
(i.e., mate switching), or to obtain direct material benefits (e.g., gifts; Buss,
Goetz, Duntley, Asao, & Conroy-Beam, 2017; Buss & Schmitt, 1993, 2019;
Gangestad & Simpson, 2000; Nowak et al., 2014; Stone et al., 2005). In
contrast, selection may have fashioned adaptations in men to encourage the
use of more short-term mating strategies and opportunistic extra-pair mating
to increase offspring quantity.
2.5 Adaptations for Men’s Short-Term Mating

If men’s reproductive success is strongly dependent upon their ability
to identify and access fertile and sexually available mates, then they may have
evolved psychological adaptations that promote the execution of short-term
mating strategies (Arnocky & Carré, 2016; Buss & Schmitt, 1993, 2019;
Schmitt, Shackelford, & Buss, 2001; Symons, 1979). Key perceptual, cogni-
tive, and affective adaptations that help to make sense of men’s stronger
orientation toward short-term mating in comparison to women include (a)
overperceiving sexual desire and intent in potential mates, (b) biases to divert
attention away from attractive relationship alternatives, (c) a stronger inclin-
ation toward sexual variety, (d) being more eager in consenting to have sex,
and (e) displaying a more pronounced desire for short-term casual sex.
Researchers have supported that men tend to overestimate the amount of
sexual interest expressed by women (e.g., Haselton, 2003; Perilloux, Easton, &
Buss, 2012). To explain this sexual overperception bias, Haselton and Buss
(2000) used error management theory to consider the sex-specific costs of
committing a false positive (i.e., misinterpreting friendliness as flirting) and a
false negative (i.e., misinterpreting flirting as friendly behavior). In compari-
son to ancestral women, it might have been more reproductively costly for
ancestral men to miss out on potential reproductive opportunities by under-
estimating sexual interest. Given a cost asymmetry between two errors, in the
face of apparent uncertainty, selection would favor decision-making biases
that led men toward the more beneficial error. Recent evidence suggests that
men’s overperception of sexual interest might be driven by individual differ-
ences in sociosexual orientation and a tendency to project their own sexual
interest onto others (Lee, Sidari, Murphy, Sherlock, & Zietsch, 2020).
Therefore, the sexual misperception bias may be the consequence of men
expressing a stronger interest in short-term mating and being more likely to
assume that others have a similar level of sexual interest to themselves rather
as a distinct sex-differentiated adaptation (see also Lemay & Wolf, 2016).
Men may also possess automatic attentional biases that serve to direct
attention away from attractive others, especially those of higher mate value
(Maner, Gailliot, & Miller, 2009), which, coupled with biases that devalue the
attractiveness of those alternatives, help to minimize the likelihood of infidelity

(McNulty, Meltzer, Makhanova, & Maner, 2018). In support of this, research-

ers have shown that those who reported attending more to sexual alternatives
and who visually did so in a laboratory task were less satisfied in their current
relationships and were more likely to have dissolved the relationship at two-
month follow-up (Miller, 1997). Disengaging attention from alternatives
appears to be motivated by the desire to maintain the existing relationship
(Maner, Rouby, & Gonzaga, 2008). McNulty et al. (2018) found that men with
a history of engaging in short-term casual sex were slower to disengage atten-
tion from attractive women and rated them more positively. Over time, both of
these processes were predictive of infidelity and relationship dissolution, sug-
gesting that attentional engagement and positive ratings of alternative mates
are social–cognitive processes complicit in predicting infidelity intent.
Both men and women report that men prefer to have more sex partners
across the lifespan (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Gray, Garcia, & Gesselman, 2019;
Schmitt, Shackelford, Duntley, Tooke, & Buss, 2001). Married men also
express stronger sexual variety-seeking than married women (Rafatmah,
Nazari, & Nasrollahi, 2011). Furthermore, men are more likely to report
being “open” to consensually nonmonogamous relationships (e.g., polyamor-
ous unions) than women (Levine, Herbenick, Martinez, Fu, & Dodge, 2018).
Men also recount having more sexual fantasies involving strangers and with
multiple partners (Ellis & Symons, 1990), and report consuming more porn-
ography depicting short-term sex (Malamuth, 1996). Moreover, seeking
sexual variety is a common motive reported by men who solicit prostitution
(Davis, Arnocky, & Vaillancourt, 2020). In a cross-cultural study spanning
fifty-two nations, Schmitt et al. (2003) found that men consistently expressed a
desire for a variety of sexual partners in comparison to women regardless of
relationship status and sexual orientation.
Several lines of evidence also converge to support the idea that men are more
eager to consent to sex than women (Schmitt, Shackelford, & Buss, 2001). Men
fall in love more quickly than women (Watkins et al., 2022), which seems to be
dependent on their overestimation of sexual interest (Galperin & Haselton,
2010). In their classic naturalistic study, Clark and Hatfield (1989) found that
75 percent of American college men consented to having sex when solicited by an
attractive opposite-sex experimental confederate, in comparison to 0 percent for
women. Clark (1990) later demonstrated that this sex difference was not attrib-
utable to safety concerns, although numerous demographic factors (e.g., age and
relationship status) influence these naturalistic findings (Voracek, Hofhansl, &
Fisher, 2005). Buss and Schmitt (1993) found that American college men were
more likely than women of the same age to consent to having sexual intercourse,
regardless of the length of time the two had known each other (e.g., one hour or
two years). Schmitt, Shackelford, Duntley, et al. (2001) replicated this finding in
American college students and community participants.
Several interrelated strands of evidence also support men’s greater interest
in and desire for short-term mates relative to women. Compared to women,
men more often report seeking short-term partners across the lifespan (Buss &

Schmitt, 1993; Schmitt, Shackelford, Duntley, et al., 2001), and express an

elevated desire to have sex more often on a monthly basis (Gray et al., 2019).
Furthermore, men lower their mate preference standards for casual sexual
partners across a range of characteristics, such as kindness, intelligence, and
sexual history (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Li & Kenrick, 2006). If men purportedly
desire more short-term casual sex, as well as more sexual variety, then they
should presumably show a greater interest in having extramarital affairs than
women (Schmitt, Shackelford, & Buss, 2001). Thus, men may be particularly
likely to adhere to a mixed mating strategy, whereby a long-term romantic
partner is secured while opportunistically engaging in extra-pair mating to
enhance reproductive success (Buss & Schmitt, 2019; Nowak et al., 2014). In
further support of this idea, Hughes and Harrison (2019) showed how men
were more likely to conceal their relationship status from a hypothetical extra-
pair sexual mate, whereas women were more likely to reveal that they were
partnered. This may allow men to signal that they can commit and women to
signal the opportunity for short-term opportunistic mating.
2.6 Sex Differences in the Occurrence of Infidelity

In most empirical work on the topic, researchers tend to find that across
cultures men self-report engaging in infidelity more often than women (Arantes
et al., 2020; Starratt et al., 2017; Vail-Smith, Whetstone, & Knox, 2010;
Wiederman, 1997; Wiederman & Hurd, 1999; Weiser et al., 2018; Zhang et al.,
2012). For example, using a nationally representative sample included in the
American General Social Survey, Wiederman (1997) found that 22.7% of men
and 11.6% of women had ever engaged in extramarital sex. Vail-Smith et al.
(2010) similarly found that 27.2% of college men and 19.8% of college women
self-reported a history of being sexually unfaithful. Several studies involving
American married couples indicate that 20–40% of heterosexual men and
20–25% of heterosexual women have had an extramarital affair over the course
of their lives (Laumann et al., 1994; Laumann, Ellingson, Mahay, Paik, & Youm,
2004; Tafoya & Spitzberg, 2007). In a study of married couples from China,
Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Nowak et al. (2014)
reported that about 21% of wives and 31% of husbands reported that they found
some level of sexual fulfillment outside of the marriage. Using data from the
2006 Sexuality Survey of China, regarding both commercial (i.e., prostitution)
and noncommercial (i.e., traditional) infidelity, Zhang et al. (2012) showed that,
in the past year, 4.5% of women and 16.5% of men had been unfaithful. Weiser
et al. (2018) discovered that American undergraduate men were significantly
more likely to use the online dating application Tinder to engage in extradyadic
behavior, such as sending messages, being physically intimate, and having sex
with extra-pair partners met using the application.
Despite these results, differences between women and men in younger
generations appear to be getting smaller (Arantes et al., 2020; Fincham &

May, 2017; Wiederman, 1997), perhaps, in part, as a consequence of women’s

rising economic power and independence (Lammers, Stocker, Jordan,
Pollmann, & Stapel, 2011), which also provide more opportunities to commit
infidelity while working outside of the home (Drigotas & Barta, 2001). Several
researchers have also reported nonsignificant differences between women and
men in overall rates of cheating (e.g., Barta & Kiene, 2005; Hughes &
Harrison, 2019; Martins et al., 2016; Toplu-Demirtaş & Fincham, 2018). In
a study of American adults, Brand et al. (2007) found that women had cheated
more than men on their partners. Several related reasons have been provided
to explain these mixed findings.
Poor operationalization has been a consistent criticism of the literature on
infidelity, with varying imprecise definitions and ways of measuring the con-
struct (Brand et al., 2007; Nowak et al., 2014; Thompson, 1983; Wilson,
Mattingly, Clark, Weidler, & Bequette, 2011). This is important given that
people engage in a range of different acts that might constitute cheating, from
flirting to sexual intercourse and from sharing intimate secrets to receiving
material gifts and support (Buunk, 1980; Roscoe, Cavanaugh, & Kennedy,
1988). Previous work indicates that people see infidelity as falling into inter-
related classes of behavior, including sexual (e.g., oral sex), technological (e.g.,
sending nude photographs), emotional (e.g., calling when upset about a
relationship partner), and solitary (e.g., masturbating; Kruger et al., 2013,
Macauda et al., 2011; Negy et al., 2018; Thompson & O’Sullivan, 2017). This
research also suggests that explicit sexual behavior is more often judged as
representative of infidelity, whereas emotional and solitary acts are more often
perceived as ambiguous. In studying sex differences in distress and jealousy in
response to extradyadic involvement, evolutionary psychologists have long
advocated for distinguishing between infidelity that involves forming a deep
emotional bond with another (i.e., emotional infidelity) and behavior that is
more physical and sexual (i.e., sexual infidelity; Buss, 2018; Buss, Shackelford,
et al., 1999; Davis, Vaillancourt, & Arnocky, 2016; Shackelford & Buss,
2000).
Emotional versus Sexual Infidelity. When defined and measured broadly to
include both romantic and sexual acts, sex differences in infidelity appear to be
attenuated (Brand et al., 2007; Drigotas, Safstrom, & Gentilia, 1999;
Wiederman, 1997). Numerous scholars have found that men are more likely
to engage in sexual infidelity than women (Atkins, Baucom, & Jacobson,
2001; Martins et al., 2016; Petersen & Hyde, 2010; Starratt et al., 2017;
Thompson, 1983). And in some studies women have reported a greater
likelihood of having had an emotional affair than men (Leeker & Carlozzi,
2014; Thompson, 1983). In asking what kinds of behavior they believed
qualified as being “unfaithful” to a dating partner, Roscoe et al. (1988) found
that younger adult women more often indicated spending time with someone
and withholding secrets from their partners, whereas young adult men more
often reported sexual behavior. In a sample of Portuguese university students,
Martins et al. (2016) found no overall sex difference in extradyadic

involvement but noted that men committed significantly more traditional

(e.g., oral sex) and online (e.g., cybersex) sexual extradyadic behavior. No
differences between women and men emerged for emotional extradyadic
behavior (e.g., going on a romantic date). Among American young adults,
Starratt et al. (2017) showed that 34% of women and 49% of men reported
some level of intention to commit sexual infidelity, whereas 48% of women
and 55% of men expressed intentions to commit emotional infidelity. In
contrast, however, Brand et al. (2007) did not find any evidence that
American men engaged in significantly more sexual infidelity in comparison
to women.
Regardless of whether extra-pair mating is measured holistically or specif-
ically regarding emotional and sexual components, it is important not to
conflate sex differences in the prevalence of infidelity with the motivation to
cheat. Although self-evident, to engage in extra-pair mating, people require
opportunity (Drigotas & Barta, 2001). For example, Toplu-Demirtaş and
Fincham (2018) found no difference between Turkish young adult women
and men in committing infidelity; however, men expressed more favorable
attitudes toward infidelity and a stronger intention to be unfaithful. Other
scholars have similarly shown that men have more tolerant attitudes toward
committing infidelity in comparison to women (Martins et al., 2016; Petersen
& Hyde, 2010; Zhang et al., 2012). Women have been found to be more likely
to rate both romantic (e.g., “forming a deep emotional bond”) and sexual acts
(e.g., “watching a pornographic movie together”) as indicative of cheating
(Kruger et al., 2013). Men are also less likely than women to perceive decep-
tive actions such as lying and withholding information as evidence of cheating
(Mattingly et al., 2011). It is also informative to consider the incidence, rather
than the prevalence, of infidelity. For example, although Brand et al. (2007)
found mixed evidence for a sex difference in the prevalence of sexual infidelity,
men had significantly more cheating episodes relative to women. This result
suggests that only particularly desirable men may be able to effectively execute
sexual infidelity as a mating strategy (Brand et al., 2007; Starratt et al., 2017).
The purported reasons as to why people commit infidelity can also offer
insight into sex differences in extra-pair mating.
2.7 Sex Differences in Reasons for Committing Infidelity

In a study by Brand et al. (2007), one of the top reasons endorsed by
men as to why they cheated, at 32.1%, was that the “opportunity presented
itself.” In contrast, women reported cheating more often because they were
unhappy (53%) and because they were made to feel attractive by the extra-pair
mate (41%). This finding supports the idea that men may commit infidelity as
part of a “quantity-over-quality strategy” to mate with many different women,
whereas women may cheat as a consequence of mate-switching motives to

“trade-up” and find a better long-term mate (Brand et al., 2007). Mate
switching has been identified as a key adaptive benefit for women who execute
short-term mating strategies (Buss et al., 2017; Buss & Schmitt, 2019).
Similarly, in studying reported motivations for engaging in extra-pair mating,
Barta and Kiene (2005) found that a desire to have sex predicted men’s
extradyadic behavior, whereas women were motived to cheat because they
were dissatisfied with their current mates. Similarly, across five cultures,
finding alternative mates attractive was a key positive predictor of husbands,
but not wives, finding sexual fulfillment outside of the marriage (Nowak et al.,
2014). Mapfumo (2016) also found that married men believed that men
cheated primarily for sexual reasons (e.g., “pleasure without responsibility”),
whereas married women believed that women cheated due to relationship
dissatisfaction and to acquire a better partner who was more responsible,
investing, and financially stable.
2.8 Sex Differences in Cheater Detection and Reactions

to Infidelity
Given evolved sex differences in mating strategies (Buss & Schmitt,
2019), women and men may vary in their suspicion of a partner’s infidelity and
the probability of discovering their mate’s unfaithfulness (Brand et al., 2007;
Buss, 2017). Various forms of sexual conflict are apparent in women and men
who are entangled in an evolutionary “arms race” to continually develop
strategies to conceal their extra-pair mating, while developing counterstrate-
gies to detect infidelity (Buss, 2017). Drawing on Trivers’ (1972) theory of
parental investment, ancestral men, like other mammalian males, could never
have been certain of the genetic relation that they shared with their offspring, a
phenomenon labeled paternity uncertainty. This is because, like other mam-
malian females, internal fertilization of the sperm and ovum takes place within
women’s reproductive system. Therefore, women’s infidelity can lead to cuck-
oldry (i.e., extra-pair paternity) and the “unwitting investment in offspring to
whom a man is not genetically related” (Starratt et al., 2013, p. 59), although,
compared to other socially monogamous animals, rates of extra-pair paternity
among humans are relatively low (Schacht & Kramer, 2019). Whereas claims
of cuckoldry may be as high as 10–15% (Macintyre & Sooman, 1991), a large-
scale genetic study conducted by Larmuseau et al. (2013) involving Y-
chromosome data of Belgian participants to calculate rates of extra-pair
paternity identified a rate of approximately 0.91% in each generation.
Although sexual infidelity infrequently leads to extra-pair paternity, it is still
apparent across cultures. Furthermore, the reproductive costs of inaccurately
inferring paternity can be high, leading to either investing significant resources
in a rival’s offspring or failing to invest in one’s genetic progeny because of
paternity uncertainty (Andrews et al., 2008).

If heterosexual men have faced stronger selection pressures to be aware of

and detect sexual infidelity in their mates, perhaps they have evolved to be
more suspicious of its occurrence and more acutely sensitive to detecting
sexual unfaithfulness in comparison to women (Andrews et al., 2008; Brand
et al., 2007; Goetz & Causey, 2009). In contrast, if women face threats of cost-
inflicting sperm competition (e.g., forced copulations) and mate retention
tactics (e.g., intimate partner violence), perhaps they have evolved to be better
at concealing their extra-pair mating in comparison to men. Goetz and Causey
(2009) found that men overestimated their partner’s sexual unfaithfulness in
comparison to women. When defining infidelity to include emotional and
sexual components, Brand et al. (2007) found mixed evidence that coupled
men were more suspicious of and capable of detecting infidelity their mates. In
contrast, Andrews et al. (2008) showed that coupled men were more likely to
make false positive errors and were more accurate in their inferences about
their partner’s extra-pair copulations.
A large body of empirical work shows how men express more distress and
jealousy over a partner’s sexual infidelity, whereas women express more
distress than men over a mate being emotionally unfaithful (Buss, 2018). In
line with this research, Shackelford et al. (2002) showed that, in comparison to
women, men were less forgiving of a mate’s sexual infidelity than of emotional
infidelity and were more likely to terminate a relationship in response to their
partner’s sexual infidelity. Similarly, when asked how they would react to a
mate’s sexual infidelity, Mapfumo (2016) reported that married men would be
more likely to end a marriage in comparison to married women. Scholars have
also emphasized how men are more likely to respond with intimate partner
aggression over suspected and actual infidelity (e.g., Arnocky et al., in press;
Wilson & Daly, 1996), whereas women appear to create distance between
themselves and their partners when learning that a mate has been unfaithful
(Jankowiak, Nell, & Buckmaster, 2002).
Group-level sex differences in short-term mating, cheater detection, and
reactions to infidelity are informative, but they mask the significant degree of
interindividual variability among men in the motivation and desire to cheat.
In the next section, we highlight the importance of individual differences in
studying men’s extra-pair mating.
2.9 Individual Differences

The most consistent positive predictor of engaging in infidelity is
whether an individual has been unfaithful in the past. For example,
Feldman and Cauffman (1999) found that 80 percent of college-age men that
cheated once went on to do so again. Similarly, Knopp et al. (2017) followed
people over the course of two consecutive romantic relationships and found
that 45 percent of those who had previously engaged in sexual infidelity were

also unfaithful with their second partner. This suggests that there are import-
ant individual differences that help to determine why some people are prone to
and successful in engaging in extra-pair mating, while others are not.
Sociosexual Orientation. Sociosexuality captures variability in the degree to
which people require love and intimacy prior to having sex, as well as
preferences for casual sex and sexual variety (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991).
Those expressing more unrestricted sociosexuality display a tendency toward
short-term, pluralistic mating with little commitment, whereas individuals
with restricted sociosexuality show a preference for sex within the context of
committed long-term unions. In support of the idea that men have been under
stronger selection pressures for adaptations to facilitate short-term mating, on
average across cultures men express a more unrestricted sociosexual orienta-
tion than women (Schmitt, 2005; Schmitt et al., 2003). Nevertheless, men
differ from one another in their sociosexuality and these differences have been
linked to extra-pair mating.
Seal, Agostinelli, and Hannett (1994) asked romantically partnered individ-
uals to imagine they had won a free date with someone desirable through a
dating company. Across self-report and behavioral measures, men with more
unrestricted sociosexuality showed a greater willingness to pursue an extra-
dyadic dating opportunity. Similarly, in cross-sectional research, men with a
more unrestricted orientation were less committed to their current romantic
partners and were more likely to engage in infidelity (Mattingly et al., 2011).
Among users of an online dating website marketed toward romantically
involved individuals, men with unrestricted sociosexuality were lower in rela-
tional commitment and were more likely to have previously engaged in sexual
infidelity (Rodrigues, Lopes, & Pereira, 2017). Similarly, unrestricted men
using the popular dating application Tinder were more likely to meet someone
through the application and have sex with them while in a romantic relation-
ship (Weiser et al., 2018). It appears that the driving force behind the link
between unrestricted sociosexuality and infidelity is sexual motivation, as
opposed to other reasons for engaging in infidelity such as dissatisfaction,
neglect, or anger (Barta & Kiene, 2005).
Higher-Order Factors of Personality. Dimensions of personality are often
characterized within the Five Factor Model (FFM) framework, which
includes openness (creativity/desire for new experiences), conscientiousness
(hardworking/ambitious), agreeableness (sympathetic/cooperative), neuroti-
cism (insecurity/worry), and extraversion (sociality/excitement; Goldberg,
1990). In a meta-analysis conducted by Allen and Walter (2018), indices of
sexual activity (e.g., lifetime sexual partners), including sexual infidelity, were
positively predicted by men’s extraversion, whereas being sexually unfaithful
was negatively predicted by agreeableness and conscientiousness. Men higher
in extraversion have a greater desire for social interaction, are less inhibited,
and engage in riskier sexual behavior (e.g., having unprotected sex), which
could explain their penchant for casual sex and extradyadic involvement

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2. Placoid Scale.[45]
3. Ctenoid Scale; as sole or

perch.[46]
4. Cycloid Scale; as herring.[47]
1. Heterocercal.
The heterocercal fish, it will be seen, are unequally lobed, that is,
the spinal vertebræ are prolonged into the upper lobe of the tail, as
seen in the shark, and of which our own dog-fish is an example;
while the homocercal fish are equally lobed, and the spine does not
extend into either.
The fossil fish of the old red sandstone belong almost, if not
entirely, to the classes of fish that have ganoid or placoid scales, and
heterocercal tails; and of these fish we will now say a few words of
the four most remarkable specimens of the one thousand and
upwards fossil species that have been discovered, and which can only
be known familiarly by accomplished geologists in the ichthyolite
department.
1. Here is a drawing of the Cephalaspis,[48] or buckler-headed fish.
What an extraordinary looking creature this is! Like the crescent
shape of a saddler’s knife without
the handle—broad and flat, with
points on each side running
down, ever fixed in warlike
attitude against its enemies—it
reminds one of an extinct
trilobite, and of a living sole or
ray, at the same time; and one
can easily fancy how hard it must
have been for its ancient foes to
swallow down so singular and so
knife-like looking a creature. This
is one of the curious organisms of
old life discovered in Cromarty,
Herefordshire, and in Russia, the
original of which, restored in the
2. Homocercal. drawing, seldom if ever exceeded
seven inches.
Let us look now at another
curiosity from the same quarter.
2. Here is a drawing of the
Coccosteus,[49] or berry-boned
fish. This creature is equally
singular with his long extinct
neighbour. Hugh Miller’s
description is the best, and as he
was its discoverer, let us give it.
“The figure of the Coccosteus I
would compare to a boy’s kite;
there is a rounded head, a
triangular body, a long tail 3. Homocercal.
attached to the apex of the
triangle, and arms thin and
rounded where they attach to the body, and spreading out towards
their termination, like the ancient one-sided shovel which we see
sculptured on old tombstones, or the rudder of an ancient galley. A
ring of plates, like the ring-stones of an arch, runs along what we
may call the hoop of the kite. The form of the key-stone plate is
perfect; the shapes of the others
are elegantly varied, as if for
ornament; and what would be
otherwise the opening of the arch
is filled up with one large plate of
an outline singularly elegant.”[50]
3. Above is the Pterichthys,[51] or winged fish. We have here a fish
more strikingly different to any existing species than either of the
other two just passed under review. “Imagine,” says Miller, “the
figure of a man rudely drawn in black on a grey ground; the head cut
off by the shoulders; the arms spread at full, as in the attitude of
swimming; the body rather long than otherwise, and narrowing from
the chest downwards; one of the legs cut away at the hip-joint; the
other, as if to preserve the balance, placed directly in the centre of
the figure, which it seems to support. Such, at the first glance, is the
appearance of the fossil.”[52]
We will now turn to the fourth and last of the singular fishes of this
formation.
4. The Osteolepis,[53] or bony scaled fish. Here we have in the old
red sandstone the first perfect specimen of a fish with pectoral,
abdominal, and caudal fins, ending as the others do in the
heterocercal tail. The vertebral column seems to have run on to well-
nigh the extremity of the caudal fin, which we find developed chiefly
on the under side. The tail was a one-sided tail. Take into account
with these peculiarities such as the naked skull, jaws, and operculum,
[54]
the naked and thickly set rays, and the unequally lobed condition
of tail, a body covered with scales that glitter like sheets of mica, and
assume, according to their position, the parallelogramical,
rhomboidal, angular, or polygonal form, a lateral line raised, not
depressed, a raised bar on the inner or bony side of the scales, which,
like the doubled up end of a tile, seems to have served the purpose of
fastening them in their places, a general clustering of alternate fins
towards the tail—and the tout ensemble must surely impart to the
reader the idea of a very singular little fish.[55]
Most hasty and superficial is this glance through the wonders of
the old red sandstone. On the economic uses of this formation, as
tile-stones and paving-stones, we need not dwell; apart from this,
these singular inhabitants of the seas of past ages, the mud of which,
elevated and hardened, has become solid rock, tell us stories of that
long since ancient time to which no poetry could do justice. Carried
away from the present into those remote eras, our minds revel in the
realization of scenery and inhabitants, of which now we possess only
the fossil pictures. At the British Museum, we gaze with feelings
approaching to repulsion on the stiff and unnatural forms of
Egyptian mummies, but with what feelings of profound wonder do
we look on these small fishes, so numerous that the relics of them,
found in the Orkneys, may be carried away by cartloads! No number
of creations can exhaust God, for in Him all fulness dwelleth. The
God in whom we now live, and move, and have our being, is the same
God who gave to these pre-Adamite fish their marvellous structures,
minutely but fearfully and wonderfully made, and who, when their
joy of life and functions of life had ceased, consigned them to a calm
and peaceful grave. He is the same God who now upholds all things
by the word of his power, and whom we desire to honour by the
attentive and reverent perusal of his manifold works. We are
tautologists; we say and do the same thing over and over again. God
never repeats himself: each successive creation—and how many,
extending through countless ages, does geology disclose!—only
reveals some new aspect of wisdom, love, and beneficence. To the
mind that cannot repose in God, we say, Study God, in his works and
in his word; yea, come back to this remote sandstone era and ask of
the “fishes, and they shall declare unto thee” the might and majesty,
the skill and contrivance of the Almighty; and though you and I were
not there, nor had Adam yet trod this blessed earth,—
“Think not, though men were none,
That heaven could want spectators, God want praise;
Millions of spiritual creatures walked the earth,
And these with ceaseless praise His works beheld.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM.
“As for the earth, out of it cometh bread, and under it is turned up as it were
fire.”—Job.
Suppose this lump of coal could speak, what would it say? Would it
not say something like this: “To get me up out of the earth involves
dirt, danger, slush, and much tallow-candle; but now you have me,
let me tell you my story, for though black I am comely, and but for
me—but I anticipate. Now and then I make a dust in your libraries,
and inadvertently shoot out sparks and firestones, but nevertheless I
am of more use to man than the old granite or the proudest Parian
marble; you may get a long way in philosophy, but you will never get
beyond coal. I am the real Koh-i-noor of the British empire; and
though I can’t, like my namesake, put on a white dress, I am
nevertheless worth the soiling of your whitest gloves. Chemistry
makes no discoveries without me: I light the fire of the laboratory,
and furnish man with the means of every crucial test. Civilization
wants me every day on land and sea, and though in one sense my
labours end in smoke, in another they end in commerce, progress,
national brotherhood, and interchanging productions of every clime.
The poor student needs me, for I light his lamp, warm his feet, and
cook his food while he is doing sweat-of-brain work for others. And
best of all, the poor man is a rich man when he has me; he knows
that next of kin to good food is good fuel, and man by my help is
making such progress, that the day will come when every man will sit
by his own blazing fire, instead of seeking joy elsewhere amidst false
and pernicious excitements.”
Something like this our friend Coal would be sure to say; and that
Coal may not complain of any aloofness on our parts, let us proceed
to an examination of the carboniferous system.
“’Tis very pregnant,
The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it,
Because we see it; but what we do not see,
We tread upon, and never think of it.”
Measure for Measure.
The carboniferous system is not all coal; underlying, and often

overlying, the coal measures, for the most part, is the mountain
limestone, a formation pre-eminently rich in marine fossils. During
the tremendous convulsions experienced by the earth immediately
after the deposition of the old red sandstone, a vast sea of lime, thick,
muddy, and hot, seems to have been poured out over a large portion
of the British islands and elsewhere. This flow of liquid lime covered
and encased many then existing animals, and we now find it full of
fossils of the crinoidean family, a few molluscs, and traces of fish. We
shall not, however, stay to examine these now, as we shall meet with
them again in the Oolite; our attention will be limited to that part of
the carboniferous system which includes only the coal measures,
properly so called.
Coal is a vegetable that, by chemical change and by mechanical
pressure, has become a bituminous mineral; and this will render it
needful to say a word or two on the ancient vegetable kingdom. The
vast quantities[56] of remains of leaves, ferns, and stems of trees,
found in the coal measures, are not in themselves evidence sufficient
of the vegetable origin of coal; we arrive at that conclusion in
consequence of the researches of modern philosophers, who having
applied the powers of the microscope to the internal structure of
coal, have discovered the cellular and reticular construction of
vegetable life beautifully preserved, and thus previous convictions
have become certainties. The examination of the ancient vegetable
kingdom is, however, attended with much difficulty, in consequence
of the total destruction in most cases of the stems and trunks of the
plants, and the entire absence, in consequence of pressure, of all
fructification on the fronds of the ferns. If we take an existing species
of fern, say the rare and delicate “maiden-hair fern,”[57] one of the
smallest and most elegant ferns of England, we find the fructification
very distinct on the under side, and the different methods in which
this fructification is arranged is now the principal guide in the
classification of ferns. But if we take a fossil fern, say the pecopteris,
found in the coal measures, we shall see that there has been so much
dislocation and crushing, that all appearance of seed-vessels has
disappeared. The following sketch will explain this.
EXTINCT FERN, AND MAIDEN-HAIR FERN.
“Nothing,” says Professor Ansted, “however, is more certain than

that all coal was once vegetable; for in most cases the woody
structure may be detected under the microscope, and this, if not in
the coal in its ordinary state, at least in the burnt ashes which remain
after it has been exposed to the action of heat, and has lost its
bituminous and semi-crystalline character. This has been too well
and too frequently proved by actual experiment to require more than
the mere statement of the fact.” And here let us say a few words,
which to a few perhaps may have the charm of novelty, about the
economic history of coal; for as Cowper says that the first curse,
“labour,” has, by God’s blessing on it, been “softened into mercy,” so
do we add also, in his words, heartily subscribing to their truth,—
“Thus studied, used, and consecrated thus,
On earth what is, seems formed indeed for us;
Not as the plaything of a froward child,
Fretful unless diverted and beguiled;
But as scale, by which the soul ascends
From mighty means to more important ends;
Securely, though by steps but rarely trod,
Mounts from inferior beings up to God;
And sees, by no fallacious light or dim,
Earth made for man, and man himself for Him.”
How long coal has been known and used, we cannot certainly tell,
but a writer in Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædia states that the first
mention of coal is in the pages of one Theophrastus, who was, it
seems, a pupil of Aristotle. He says, “Those fossil substances that are
called coals,” (Greek, ἄνθραξ) “and are broken for use, are earthy;
they kindle, however, and burn like wood coals; they are found in
Liguria and in the way to Olympias over the mountains, and are used
by the smiths.” Cæsar, although he speaks of the metals of the British
isles, does not once mention its coal; but it seems more than likely
that it was both known and used by the Romans during their
occupation of Britain. Horsley, in his “Britannia Romana,” says of
Benwell, a village near Newcastle-on-Tyne, “There was a coalry not
far from this place, which is judged by those who are best skilled in
such affairs to have been wrought by the Romans; and, in digging up
the foundations of one of the Roman walled cities, coal cinders very
large were dug up, which glowed in the fire like other coal cinders,
and were not to be known from them when taken up.”
During the time of the Saxons, we find ourselves on less doubtful
ground. In a grant made to the monks of Peterborough Abbey for one
night’s annual entertainment, those good old souls had, we find, “ten
vessels of Welsh ale, two vessels of common ale, sixty cartloads of
wood, and twelve cartloads of fossil coal,” (carbonum fossilium.)
The Danes had so much fighting on hand, that they troubled
themselves neither with coal nor civilization; and we know little of
our English diamond until we come to Henry the Third’s reign,
when, in 1239, a charter was granted to the inhabitants of Newcastle-
on-Tyne to dig coals, and we find the coal called for the first time
“carbo maris,” or sea-coal, a term retained through all the
succeeding centuries. About this time chimneys came into fashion.
As long as people burnt wood they scarcely needed chimneys, but
coal introduced chimneys, to say nothing of steamboats and
railroads. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who at that time used to
reside alternately at Croydon and at Lambeth, had by royal
permission thirty cartloads of “sea-borne coal” annually delivered at
his archiepiscopal palace, because, says the historian, “for his own
private use in his own chamber he now had the convenience of
chimneys.”
The smoke nuisance of that day deserves a passing notice. Smoke
was then with many a grand luxury. Old Hollingshed says, “Now we
have many chimneys, yet our tenderlings do complain of rheums,
and catarrhs, and poses. Once we had nought but rere-doses,[58] and
our heads did never ake. For the smoke of those days was a good
hardening for the house, and a far better medicine to keep the good
man and his family from the quack or the pose, with which then very
few were acquainted. There are old men yet dwelling in the village
where I remain, who have noted how the multitude of chimneys do
increase, whereas in their young days, there was not above two or
three, if so many, in some uplandish towns of the realm, and
peradventure in the manor places of some great lords; but each one
made his fire against a rere-dose in the hall, where he dined and
dressed his meat. But when our houses were built of willow, then we
had oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men
are not only become willow, but a great many altogether men of
straw, which is a sore alteration.”
Leaving this digression, let us try and get a bird’s-eye view of the
coal-fields of the British Isles. If we commence in Devonshire, we
find there the Devonian culms, or Bovey Tracey coal, lying near the
surface of the ground, and of little except local use. Crossing over the
Bristol Channel, we come into Pembrokeshire, to the Welsh basin,
remarkable because thence we mostly get our anthracite coal. Thence
we pass on to the Derbyshire coal-fields, that go with little
interruption into Scotland, averaging 200 miles in length, and about
40 in width,—once mighty tropical swamps, jungles, and forests, now
become chief minerals of commerce. Included in this last immense
field is the great Newcastle coal district, the most celebrated of any,
supplying almost all the south of England, and nearly all London,
with their best coals; and the Scotch carboniferous system,
celebrated for its numerous fossils, and for its general base of old red
sandstone. In addition to which there is the Irish carboniferous
system, occupying as much as 1,000 square miles, but of an inferior
quality, and not likely to be of any great economical importance.
In the words of Professor Ansted, we add: “This account of the
coal-beds gives a very imperfect notion of the quantity of vegetable
matter required to form them; and, on the other hand, the rate of
increase of vegetables, and the quantity annually brought down by
some great rivers both of the eastern and western continents, is
beyond all measure greater than is the case in our drier and colder
climates. Certain kinds of trees which contributed largely to the
formation of the coal, seem to have been almost entirely succulent,[59]
and capable of being squeezed into a small compass during partial
decomposition. This squeezing process must have been conducted on
a grand scale, and each bed in succession was probably soon covered
up by muddy and sandy accumulations, now alternating with the
coal in the form of shale and gritstone. Sometimes the trunks of trees
caught in the mud would be retained in a slanting or nearly vertical
position, while the sands were accumulating around them;
sometimes the whole would be quietly buried, and soon cease to
exhibit any external marks of vegetable origin.”[60]
There are various kinds of coal on which we may bestow a few
words. There is anthracite, or non-bituminous coal, and which,
therefore, burns without flame or smoke, and is extensively used in
malting; and sea-coal, which is highly bituminous, and which gives
forth so much flame and smoke, that in the good old times of 1306,
Parliament forbad its use in London by fine and by demolition of all
furnaces in which it was burnt, because “this coal did corrupt the air
with its great smoke and stink;” and cannel-coal, the etymology of
which, they say, is firm the word candle, because in many parts of
Lancashire the poor use it in place of oil or tallow for lights; and jet,
sometimes called black amber, which in France employs about 1,200
men in one district, in making earrings, rosaries, and other
ornaments; and last of all, there is wood passing into coal called
lignite, found only in the Devonshire culms.
Having thus glanced at the natural history and varieties of coal, we
may here try and realize the flora of the carboniferous era. An
examination of the fossils of this period enables us to come to
undoubted conclusions concerning the trees and plants of that era,
so that it is no mere dream to look upon a picture like the following,
and see in it a landscape of the coal-forming time of the British
islands.
FLORA OF THE COAL MEASURES RESTORED.
The sun then poured down his golden beams of heat and light, and
a tropical climate prevailed in our now cold and humid England. The
mountain tops were gilded with his rays; a vast ocean studded with
islands, and these crowned with gigantic palms and ferns, then
covered our northern hemisphere. In that ocean but few fish were to
be found, though many rare molluscous animals swam to and fro,
enjoying their brief term of life, and discharging all their appropriate
functions. Mountain streams discharged their muddy waters into
this ocean, leaving along their margin course broken trees,
vegetables, grasses and ferns. The giant Lepidodendron looked like a
monarch of the ancient world, while around him smaller ferns, vying
with each other in beauty and grace, grew, “first the blade” and then
the ripened frond, until, in obedience to the great law of organic life,
they died and decayed, and became material for the coming man’s
future use. But amidst all this prodigal luxuriousness of the vegetable
world, there appears to have been neither bird nor beast to break the
monotony of the scene; all was silent as the grave—rank, moist
verdure below; magnificent ferns and palms above, and the stillness
of death on every side.[61]
Let us, however, glance at the principal ferns, whose fossil remains
we have often found at the mouth of many a coalpit thrown out
among the waste. The uncouth names given to them, uncouth only in
appearance, must not deter the reader from his acquaintance with
their peculiarities; for are not the names of botanical science almost,
if not quite, as repellent at first? This star-shaped beauty, (1) the
asterophyllite, (from aster, a star, and phyllon, a leaf,) was a
common one; this (2) is the sphenopteris (from sphēn, a wedge, and
pteron, a wing), so named from a fancied resemblance of the petals
of the frond to a wedge; the next (3) is the pecopteris (from pekos, a
comb, and pteron, a wing), from a resemblance of the frond to the
teeth of a comb; the next (4) is the odontopteris (from odous, a
tooth, and pteron, a wing), and in this the frond is something like the
jaws of a shark bound together by a central stem, from which they
diverge; and the last (5), our favourite, is the neuropteris (from
neuros, a nerve, and pteron, a wing), on account of the exquisite
beauty with which the fibres, like nerves, distribute themselves.
“Besides the ferns, then growing to a great size, there were other
plants whose modern representatives are uniformly small; but as the
resemblance in this case is simply one of general form, and the great
majority of other trees seem to possess no living type to which they
can be referred, it is by no means impossible that these also may be
completely lost. One example of them is seen in a plant, fragments of
which are extremely common in the coal measures, and which has
been called calamite.[62] The remains of calamites consist of jointed
fragments, which were originally cylindrical, but are now almost
always crushed and flattened. They resemble very closely in general
appearance the common jointed reed, growing in marshes, and
called equisetum, or mare’s tail; but instead of being confined to a
small size, they would seem to have formed trees, having a stem
more than a foot in diameter, and jointed branches and leaves of
similar gigantic proportions. They were evidently soft and succulent,
and very easily crushed. They seem to have grown in great
multitudes near the place where the coal is now accumulated; and
though often broken, they seldom bear marks of having being
transported from a distance.”[63] The fossils of the carboniferous
system here figured we found not long since in the neighbourhood of
Stockport.
CALAMITES.
CALAMITE.
STIGMARIA FICOIDES.
This chapter on the carboniferous system must not be further

lengthened. We do not aspire to teach the science of geology; we aim
only to impart such a taste for it as shall lead the reader to consult
our master works on this subject, and if we succeed in this humble
but useful aim, our purpose will be fully answered. Only in reference
to the economic uses of coal, we will quote the following, copied, we
believe, from the “Athenæum” some time since, but unfortunately
copied without reference to its original; a lesson for common-place-
book keepers. The writer in speaking of coal-gas says: “The
consumption of gas is enormous. The following statistics give us an
insight into the extent which this branch of industry has attained. In
England 6,000,000 tons of coals are annually employed for the

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The Cambridge Handbook of

Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual

The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on

The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology

The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Training

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science Todd

The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology 2nd

The Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies

The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact Volume 1

The interface of sexual behavior and evolutionary psychology is a

todd k. shackelford is Distinguished Professor and Chair in the

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

List of Contributors page vii

Part I. Precopulatory Adaptations 1

Part II. Copulatory Adaptations 195

Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Copulatory Thrusting in Males

Part III. Postcopulatory Adaptations 323

Published online by Cambridge University Press

anders ågmo, University of Tromsø, Norway

Published online by Cambridge University Press

mary m. medlin, University of Southern Mississippi, USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press

A few previous handbooks have addressed the interface of sexual behavior

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

the state of the art in evolutionary perspectives on sexual psychology that

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

As originally articulated by Darwin (1871), sexual selection, as distinct from

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

be present in a long-term partner’s reproductive tract (e.g., frequent thrusting

1.1 Physical Attributes Men Find Attractive

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A number of studies have reported a male preference for a WHR of around

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

They found a bimodal distribution, with a slight skew toward buttocks

1.2 Attitudes Toward, and Desire for, Casual Sex and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1.3 Number of Sexual Partners Reported

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108943543.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

inconsistency. For example, it has been suggested that men systemically

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1.4 Paying for Sex

1.5 Agreeing to Have Sex with a Stranger

• “Would you go out with me tonight?”

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difference in relation to the sexual request. The gender difference in sexual

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1.6 The Content of Men’s Sexual Fantasies

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1.7 The Use and Contents of Pornography

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Multiple authors have used an evolutionary framework to understand sex

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magazine centerfolds typically have a low WHR (conﬁrmed by Singh, 1993).

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providing near-unlimited sexual access to novel partners (albeit virtual ones)