Do we pick the most similar or the most attractive mates?
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Alexander from Date Psych reviews a new study on mate selection in the Himba pastoralist community in Africa. The study tests two hypotheses: the biological market model and the aspirational mate choice model. It finds that while people state preferences for the most desirable mates (aspirational model), actual mate choices align more with individuals of similar desirability (biological market model). The study’s findings, which align with Western data, suggest that evolutionary psychology theories on mate selection may have cross-cultural validity. Alexander emphasizes the importance of understanding these dynamics and welcomes new viewers from a fellow channel, Cognitive Primate.
Takeaways
- 😀 The study on mate selection and desirability focuses on an indigenous population in Africa called the Himba.
- 🧪 The Himba are often studied in evolutionary psychology and anthropology for insights into early human behavior.
- 📊 The study measures real-world mate choice with ecological validity, involving around 300 individuals with a larger number of ratings.
- 🌍 Despite being a unique population, the study's findings parallel those of Western populations, confirming some evolutionary psychology theories.
- 👫 Two main hypotheses are tested: the Biological Market Model and the Aspirational Mate Choice Model.
- 📉 The Biological Market Model suggests that more desirable individuals are more selective in their mate choices.
- 🏆 The Aspirational Mate Choice Model posits that people aim for the highest value mates they can attract.
- 💔 Results show that while people state preferences for highly desirable partners, actual mate choices align more with the Biological Market Model.
- 🔬 There is a strong correlation between similar mate value and longer relationship durations, supporting assortative mating.
- 👥 The study provides cross-cultural validation of evolutionary psychology hypotheses, showing consistent trends in mate selection behavior across different populations.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the new study discussed in the video?
-The main focus of the new study is mate selection, mate value, and desirability, particularly examining real-world mate choices in an indigenous population in Africa called the Himba.
What is unique about the Himba population in the context of this study?
-The Himba are pastoral and semi-nomadic people often studied in evolutionary psychology and anthropology because their lifestyle may closely resemble early human behavior, providing insights into historical mate selection and desirability.
How does the study improve upon previous research on attractiveness and mate selection?
-The study improves upon previous research by measuring actual mate choice in the real world with high ecological validity, rather than relying solely on survey-based stated partner preferences.
What are the two main theoretical constructs tested in the study?
-The two main theoretical constructs tested are the Biological Market Model and the Aspirational Mate Choice Model.
What does the Biological Market Model hypothesize?
-The Biological Market Model hypothesizes that individuals adapt their mate choices based on the mate market environment, where more desirable individuals tend to be more selective.
What does the Aspirational Mate Choice Model propose?
-The Aspirational Mate Choice Model proposes that individuals select the highest value mates they can, aiming for partners with traits that are better than their own.
How does the study measure mate desirability within the Himba community?
-The study measures mate desirability by having community members rate the desirability of others within the community, including those they have had relationships with or passed up as potential mates.
What did the study find regarding the hierarchy of desirability for men and women?
-The study found that the hierarchy of desirability is steeper for men, with a smaller percentage of men being rated as highly attractive, similar to findings in Western populations.
How do the study's results support both the Biological Market Model and the Aspirational Mate Choice Model?
-The study supports the Biological Market Model through actual mate choices, where more desirable individuals are more selective and tend to pair with similarly rated individuals. The Aspirational Mate Choice Model is supported by stated preferences, where people express a desire for the most attractive partners.
What correlation did the study find between mate value disparity and relationship outcomes?
-The study found that greater disparity in mate value between partners predicted shorter relationship durations, with relationships lasting longer when partners were similar in mate value.
Outlines
📚 Introduction and Channel Welcome
Alexander from Date Psych welcomes new viewers, particularly those referred by 'Thinking Ape Cognitive Primate.' He apologizes for the hot weather and his sweaty appearance. Alexander expresses his commitment to providing valuable content, including study reviews that might challenge existing beliefs. He emphasizes the importance of ecological validity in studies and introduces a new study on mate selection within the Himba population in Africa.
🔍 Biological Market and Aspirational Mate Choice Models
Alexander discusses two competing hypotheses: the Biological Market Model and the Aspirational Mate Choice Model. The Biological Market Model suggests mate choices are influenced by the environment and individuals' desirability. The Aspirational Mate Choice Model posits that people aim for the highest value mates possible. Alexander explains how these models relate to sex ratio and selectivity in mate choice, with more desirable individuals being more selective.
🌍 Study Population and Methodology
The study focuses on the Himba, a semi-nomadic, pastoralist population in Africa. This population offers insights into early human behavior and mate selection. The study involved 300 individuals from the community, with ratings collected from a larger sample. Participants rated the desirability of others in their community, revealing patterns in mate choice and desirability. The findings showed a higher hierarchy of desirability for men, aligning with previous research on mate value distribution.
📊 Hierarchy of Desirability and Mate Selection
The study examined the hierarchy of desirability, finding that men were more clustered at the low end of attractiveness. This pattern mirrored findings from Western populations, supporting the Biological Market Hypothesis. More desirable individuals, especially men, were choosier in mate selection. This was evident in the ratings given by individuals within the community, with men rating fewer high-desirability individuals due to having more mate options.
💔 Mate Value Disparity and Relationship Outcomes
The study analyzed the impact of mate value disparity on relationship outcomes. It found that the further apart partners were in mate value, the shorter their relationships lasted. Higher mate value disparity also correlated with less contact and higher perceptions of infidelity. Despite perceptions, actual promiscuity did not significantly differ based on attractiveness. The results supported the Biological Market Hypothesis, showing assortative mating in actual relationships.
🌐 Cross-Cultural Consistency and Evolutionary Psychology
Alexander reflects on the cross-cultural consistency of the study's findings, which align with previous research in evolutionary psychology. He emphasizes the importance of studying diverse populations to validate theories about human behavior and mate selection. The study's replication of findings across cultures supports the idea that certain traits may be universal and genetically influenced. Alexander concludes by inviting viewers to engage with the content and suggest future topics.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Ecological Validity
💡Biological Market Model
💡Aspirational Mate Choice Model
💡Assortative Mating
💡Mate Poaching
💡Sex Ratio
💡Evolutionary Psychology
💡Non-Monogamous Culture
💡Hypergamy
💡Mate Value
Highlights
Introduction and shoutout to Cognitive Primate for endorsing the channel, emphasizing the importance of high-quality study reviews and audience engagement.
Explanation of the study's focus on mate selection, mate value, and desirability, and the importance of real-world ecological validity in research.
Description of the Himba population in Africa, a semi-nomadic, pastoralist, and partially hunter-gatherer society, providing insights into early human behavior.
Discussion on the study's methodology, including a large sample size of about 300 individuals and a broader community rating system, leading to high ecological validity.
Mention of the study's limitation in studying an indigenous population but highlighting the parallel findings with Western populations.
Introduction of two main theoretical constructs: the biological market model and the aspirational mate choice model, and their relevance to mate selection.
Explanation of the biological market model, which suggests that mate choices are influenced by the environment and desirability, leading to selective behavior.
Introduction of the aspirational mate choice model, which proposes that individuals aim for the highest value mates they can obtain.
Comparison of the two models, noting that they can coexist and apply to different behaviors under various circumstances.
Presentation of the study's findings, showing a higher hierarchy of desirability for men in the Himba population, similar to findings in Western populations.
Confirmation of the biological market hypothesis, showing that more desirable individuals are more selective in their mate choices.
Support for the aspirational mate choice hypothesis, indicating that people aim for the most desirable partners on paper.
Analysis of relationship outcomes, showing that couples with similar mate values have longer-lasting relationships and more contact.
Discussion on social desirability bias, indicating that self-reported data on promiscuity in the Himba population is likely accurate due to cultural acceptance.
Final thoughts on the study's relevance to Western populations, emphasizing the importance of cross-cultural research in validating evolutionary psychology hypotheses.
Transcripts
what's up guys alexander here with date
psych
i want to share a new study with you
guys today
first i want to apologize it's very hot
here i'm already sweaty so you're going
to have to deal
with the sweaty
shirt unfortunately and i want to shout
out guys to uh
thinking ape cognitive primate a lot of
you guys probably just came here from
his channel
he endorsed me on his channel and i
don't want to let you guys down i don't
want to disappoint you so i hope that
all of you who came over here who were
recommended to come here
i hope you enjoy the content i hope you
guys learn a lot of things
i'm going to do a lot of study reviews
here you may not agree with the findings
some of the findings may contradict past
findings and that's just
just the way it is but agree disagree
however your your take is i hope you
guys find some value in the content
anyway and welcome everybody and i'm
really glad that you came
and a big thanks to
our friend the cognitive primate for for
recommending the channel it's kind of
kind of surreal to see that and it makes
me feel really good it makes me really
happy
so anyway let me tell you about the
study that i want to share with you guys
today this is a new study
and
i'm trying to pick studies that stand
out to me as being
well designed and this is again this is
a study on mate selection
on mate value on desirability
something i have mentioned in past
videos i'll go over this again here is
that a lot of the research that we have
on attractiveness
if it's research on mate selection if
it's research on physical attractiveness
it comes down to stated partner
preferences it's basically survey
research where they ask someone maybe
they'll show a photo a picture like how
attractive is this man one through five
or something like that
so
these designs have a lot of limitations
in that they don't measure actual mate
choice in the real world
this is a study that does measure mate
choice in the real world and it does it
in a way that has a lot of
what is called ecological validity it
applies very closely to real-world
outcomes
for the individuals
a limitation of this study although
perhaps not as big a limitation as it
may seem and we'll cover that in a
little bit
is that this is a study of an indigenous
population in africa called the himba
these are pastoral people a semi-nomadic
people and this is a population that is
often studied in evolutionary psychology
and in anthropology because it gives a
really good idea
of what
early human behavior may have been like
of what hunter-gatherer behavior because
this is also
uh conjoined with a hunter-gatherer
group they're kind of partially
pastoralists partially hunter-gatherers
so it gives a good good idea of what the
early human environment might have
looked like and thus how applicable
evolutionary psychological theories are
to mate selection from that point of
view as insofar as are these things
biological or not are they genetic or
not and so on so anyway this is kind of
a unique population that the study is
derived from
but as we'll see from the results it
actually parallels western populations
at least in far as far as the findings
go
pretty well
let me explain the the methodology and
the study design for you so this is a
medium to large size sample in
psychology it's looking at about 300
individuals within the community but the
measures are actually much wider
this is taking uh
large samples from the community beyond
that and having them rate other
individuals within the community so we
get primarily large amount of ratings
many more than the 300 in count of the
study for individuals in the community
that these people may have selected
as mates and we're seeing a very large
number of ratings of individuals from
the community as insofar as how
desirable the individuals included in
the study are
so we see for example
very strong validity in that we're
talking about people within the
population actually rating the mate
value or the mate desirability of people
that they know and people that they
potentially could
or choose or reject as
romantic partners or mates so to sum up
real quick they're taking a large sample
of himba pastoralists they're going
around and they're asking them rate all
of these people in your community great
people that you have had sex with great
people that you have passed up tell us
how desirable they are as mates and so
we get ratings as well from dyads which
are pairs we have about 9 000 dyads or
essentially people that have hooked up
with other people people who have been
married to other people because this is
a very open non-monogamous culture as
well guys that's something that should
be understood this is a a culture that
is
not especially rigid
and so people have a lot of liberty to
freely choose the mates that they want
to be with it is a monogamous i should
say it is a semi-monogamous
semi-polygamous kind of arrangement the
men and the women are both typically
free perhaps more so or perhaps
equivalent to the kind of freedom that
we see in a western population insofar
as people choose the mates they want to
be with most second marriages are
marriages of love
people choose their relationships
basically so there are two main
theoretical constructs that are being
tested two hypotheses that are being
tested they're kind of portrayed as
competing hypotheses although they do
not necessarily conflict
and these are called the biological
market model and the aspirational mate
choice model the biological market model
hypothesizes that
people adapt to the market so to speak
the mate market that they're in to the
environment that they're in
and the environment will determine the
kind of mate choices and the decisions
that they make
so in this model for example people who
are more desirable
tend to be more selective in the mates
that they choose because they have more
power power and so they're more
selective in the biological market model
this is something that's influenced by
things like for example sex ratio if
there are
many more women than men men will have
an advantage if it's the other way
around
women would have an advantage under this
model
we see this supported in some past
research for example people who rate
themselves more highly as more desirable
mates as well as people who are rated as
more desirable mates in past research
tend to be more selective in the people
that they pick
maybe intuitive here more attractive
people
are going to be more picky and they're
going to pair up with more attractive
people
so this is also a model
that you might kind of guess from that
that is is kind of consistent with what
we see as far as assorted mating people
picking people often who are kind of
similar to their to their own level
people that have more options
being more selective the second model is
the aspirational partner model
and this is supported uh in research on
mate preference mostly if people say
what kind of mate they want and the idea
is that the mate choice is aspirational
people pick the highest value mates that
they can
you've heard of hypergamy for example
this is usually talked about in the
monosphere something that applies to
women but
you could say that there's hypergamous
behavior anytime a partner selects for
any trait that is better than what they
are essentially and most often we see
this
not in respect to physical
attractiveness as far as the research is
concerned i know that
maybe
not what some people have heard or but
that's typically what the research shows
where we really see hypergamy for
example is the tendency to select up and
across
income up and across status education
level
when we see
selection for looks and attractiveness
it tends to be more assortative people
pick people end up with partners who are
who are very similar to their own even
if they express
a
for example in this model an
aspirational
desire to be with the supermodel to be
with the gigachad or whatever it may be
people may aspire to that as far as if
those are actual the mate outcomes the
people they end up with
not so much but that's what we're
looking at here with the aspirational
model the idea that people go after the
best
mate you might wonder hearing the
aspirational model
why in the hell would anyone not go
after the best mate there's a lot of
reasons why people don't shoot way out
of their league
perhaps fear of rejection
because it's a riskier strategy and
so not just something like fear of
rejection it might be a riskier strategy
from an evolutionary point of view as
well this might explain why people
do tend to show
as i said there's actually conflicting
research on this aspirational hypothesis
sometimes people do show actual an
actual preference for people and why
might that be why don't people always
just go
for the stacey the gigachad the the
model etc these are people that have
more options they might leave you they
might abandon you you might not get a
chance to reproduce the relationship
might not last as long meaning that the
children produced in that relationship
and these are things that the results in
this study and others actually show
the relationship might not last as long
thus there might not be resources to
ensure the survival of any children
produced in that relationship
and so on so there are actually good
reasons why we might have evolved a
preference to be cautious about people
who are very out of our league
another example of this would be
a potential higher risk of infidelity
and we generally don't see a strong
association with attractiveness level
and infidelity
but we do see that people who are more
attractive are more prone to being
approached when in a relationship it's
called mate poaching you're with a
partner a boyfriend or a girlfriend and
other people are trying to steal you
away trying to steal your attractive
girlfriend away your attractive
boyfriend away whatever it may be it's
called mate poaching and this may be
more of a risk
in groups like the himba where
there's a very very high rate of extra
pair
parenting because i've mentioned in in
past videos and in some articles most of
the janet why i should say most
basically all of the genetic research
shows that global populations european
populations have a very very low rate of
extra pair parenting it's something like
one to three percent the vast majority
of children are produced by the person
by the father who thinks he is the
father basically in the himba this is
kind of a standout exception of all the
populations in the world
extra pair parenting in this population
is about 50 guys about 50 of the
children are raised by fathers who are
not the biological father because this
is a population that is
very open uh sexually in that sense it's
polygamous for one
and both male and female
liaisons outside of the relationship are
kind of accepted they're also nomadic so
groups mix you may be with one group of
a thousand people one moment then half
of that group may break off and another
half may come in so people don't even
necessarily keep
close track of
all of the family member in their
immediate location so there's a lot of
circumstances that have contributed to
that and made
the himba very unique but kind of a
digression there
the point is that mate poaching may be a
higher risk for more attractive partners
so people may have evolved a little bit
of caution
to going with more attractive partners
in order to protect
the
lineage the parentage essentially their
genetic offspring in that that kind of a
way
so
there you have it these are two
hypotheses within evolutionary
psychology some of these they tend like
i said these tend to be thought of as
competing hypotheses and in some sense
they are but it's also valid
in psychology and evolutionary
psychology that you can have two things
that seem contradictory it's not the
bible guys it's not a religious dogma it
doesn't have to be right all the time
one hypothesis can apply to certain
kinds of behavior under certain
circumstances the other could apply to
others and that's what this kind of
experimentation this kind of observation
in research is designed to let us learn
and test
okay guys pretty long introduction there
going over the methodology but it's
important you have to understand those
things to understand the results we're
going to get into the results they
tested a few different things looked at
a few different correlations to test
these hypotheses to see which
were consistent and and which perhaps
were not which of these two competing
hypotheses
one of the first things that they looked
up is what's called the hierarchy of
desirability basically how steep is the
curve of desirability are is
desirability kind of flat which you
would see in a more flat distribution
and a more even distribution a more
normally distributed
bell curve basically
people are rated as desirable at more or
less the same rate or is there just a
sliver of men or women who are way more
desirable
and what we see in this research is that
the hierarchy of desirability is much
higher for men
okay
there's more of a skew for men meaning
that there's a smaller percentage of men
very very attractive there's also a
smaller number of men who are considered
very attractive if you look at the graph
that i have put up here
you can see that attractiveness ratings
for men bunch way up at the low end this
is a likert scale of just four so it's
asking attractiveness or mate value or
desirability one through four desirable
no
simple
look on the graph where everyone bunches
up guys
all of the men are at the very very end
in fact even the women aren't rated
especially highly in this there's almost
no one who gets like a really high
rating like oh yeah that's a really
really desirable partner
some of you may recognize this
distribution
it may seem very familiar to you because
this is a very similar distribution to
what was found in the very large okcupid
data set by christian rudder that was
published in the book dadaklism
i'll put that up as well and you can see
basically the same thing men were raided
by women as less attractive than men
rated women
men were all bunched up and women were
spread out a little bit more there was a
higher hierarchy of desirability for men
than there was for women
so i mentioned at the beginning
right we're looking at a african
population we're not looking at a
western population how generalizable is
this
well here we actually see something that
overlaps really really well with a
western population
and that's the kind of cross-cultural
research that confirms
evolutionary psychology hypotheses
fairly well because we're seeing a trend
as far as
how men and women are perceived by the
opposite sex
that is reflected now across cultures
and even very very diverse cultures and
in a culture that we think probably
resembles pretty closely the way people
lived in early civilization in early
human history
and so i mentioned the two models we're
looking at the biological market model
the aspirational model
a high hierarchy of desirability for one
or for both genders why actually say
just for one gender because we expect it
for just one gender due to a sex ratio
it would support the biological market
hypothesis that the environmental
conditions
essentially
attribute more desirability to one sex
over the other
so moving on to
the next point here and this is the
question
how does desirability
predict mate selection the biological
market hypothesis says that more
desirable individuals will be
more picky and since we have ratings of
these individuals from their partners we
have ratings of these individuals from
the entire community we can kind of
test that here we can see if that
prediction actually comes out to be true
and
simply what we see is yes that the more
desirable the individual the more choosy
they were we can also see this in the
ratings given by the individuals in this
case if you look at the graph here
you'll see this actually only came out
for men and remember this is a
population where men are in the minority
so this is also consistent with the
biological market hypothesis
basically
that
men give fewer high ratings men are more
attractive and so men are giving
or i should say excuse me not men
overall are more attractive you can see
that's not the case from the first
uh image rather that the most desirable
men
are
giving
fewer high ratings
because they have a much wider range of
mate choice
on the flip side you can look
on the left side of the graph which is
for women and you can see that the
relationships are pretty pretty flat
women are giving similar
ratings regardless
of their own rating
for the next test
of these two hypotheses
we want to see if there's a discrepancy
between how people rate themselves and
their matches or i should say how people
are rated by the community and how their
matches are rated by the community
basically do we see people that actually
have the same level of mate value
mating are they actually picking
people of similar value as partners that
would be the fundamental test or
observation that would confirm the
biological market hypothesis
on the flip side if people are selecting
partners who are
very buried in attractiveness that's
something else and i should mention
first right now we're going to look at
ratings of attractiveness on paper who
people say is the most desirable partner
not who they're actually ending up with
but we will also look at who they're
actually ending up with
and what we see as far as who people say
is the most desirable partner
does not match up with the ratings of
individuals
people pick the most desirable partners
on paper
so here we have confirmation for the
aspirational mate choice hypothesis
people if they can
if they could they would select mates
that are more attractive that are more
desirable mates
if you look at the graphs here the first
two top
are examples of how
the distribution would look given one
hypothesis or the other
given the aspirational hypothesis or the
biological market hypothesis and the
third one is how it actually came out
and you can see that it matches up with
the aspirational hypothesis
moving on to the next point we're going
to look at relationship outcomes
basically what we're seeing is do
relationships have a better outcome
which is measured in this case by how
long they stay together
if the mates are more
similar in mate value or dissimilar
inmate value
and we're looking at measures of mate
quality as well how much contact they
had with their partners and we're
talking about physical contact as well
as non-physical contact communication
telephone calls and we'll also look at
because remember this is a community
where people keep other partners on the
side both men and women we're looking at
how many partners people thought their
partner had
and what we see here is that the further
people are and make value from one
another
the more disparity there is between the
mate value of a man and a woman the less
contact they're having with each other
which would indicate perhaps one of them
doesn't desire the other quite as much
as far as perceptions of having the the
side partner the side chick the informal
partner if your partner is more
attractive in this study
you would have been more likely to say
yeah they have other hookups for sure
if the partner is less attractive they
would have said
no i don't think so so people perceive
their partners as being essentially more
promiscuous the more attractive they are
however the results show that that
wasn't actually the case when the
partners themselves reported how many
partners they had and so a quick
digression here we talk about social
desirability bias are people under
reporting the partners that they had in
this case probably not because it's not
a stigma in this culture
i think this is probably an example
where the self-report people say no i'm
not having that much sex it's probably
true especially since it's consistent
for men and for women as well
and this is actually consistent with a
lot of other research some that i have
covered before that basically shows
people probably aren't as promiscuous as
they're perceived to be we regularly
overestimate the promiscuity of other
individuals but when we ask people to
report their own promiscuity most people
report less than what other people think
except for a few high reporters in the
top top 10 percent
and we can move on now to like
who was actually having sex so of course
they asked all these people to report
their sexual partners in the community
this came out to something like 9 000
dyads so a lot of pairs of people that
that reported having sex with each other
basically and what they found was that
the further away two individuals were in
mate desirability the less likely they
were to have had sex with one another
the less likely they were to be married
as well or to be in a relationship so
both formal or married partners as well
as informal partners a very strong
correlation between female and male make
value the lowest
male and female mates were more likely
to have hooked up should be permanent
partners or informal partners the
highest as well
you can see this on the graph a very
very clear linear correlation between
the two positive going up and if you
look at the side as well that's an
example of what what it would look like
in gray if it were a
model with random dyads you can see no
correlation it could be in any direction
but basically flat now this pairing up
with other people who have a similar
level of attractiveness would be
supported by
or i should say would support
the market logical mate hypothesis
so
this is also very consistent with
basically all of the past research on
assortative mating when we see who
people are actually having sex with
when we see who people are actually
getting into relationships with who they
are actually marrying people more often
than not are pretty similar in
attractiveness
but when we ask people
who they want on paper they shoot for
the stars
and a final result here i'll put the
graph up on the table but
a desirability gap predicted shorter
relationships
basically the further two people were
away in mate value one person high made
value the other person low mate value
the shorter their relationship would
last the relationships that lasted a
long time were people that were very
very close in mate value and you can see
this on the graph that at the bottom is
mate value increases
on the left you can see that the
duration of the relationship decreases
it's right at the beginning clustered up
where people are close in mate value and
relationships last a really long time so
summing up the results what do we find
when we look at this we see that
aspirational
model the aspirational model is
supported by stated preferences that's
what people say they want
but the biological market hypothesis is
supported by actual mate choice what
people do
now there's a saying
in the manosphere that says watch what
women do not what they say and so that
might be something to keep in mind with
these results just some final thoughts
here
and remember i have mentioned a few
times already you already know this is a
non-western population so some of you
are probably wondering like how relevant
is this
kind of different
himba pastoralist population going to be
to your own life
in the west well
what we see here is that this study has
replicated
consistent findings in evolutionary
psychology that have been found in
western populations and you can read the
paper and go back and see all of the
citations and and past studies that this
has basically replicated and what this
has done is it has replicated it in a
non-western sample which is very very
important in psychology they're trying
to encourage that a lot more especially
if you're in a field like evolutionary
psychology some maybe something like
behavioral genetics and the reason is
because if you believe that a trait
is biological if you believe that
evolution has selected for this trait
more or less universally across human
populations for tens of thousands
hundreds of thousands of years or
however long
it may be if you believe that this trait
is genetic
then it's a problem if it emerges
only culturally if it's something only
emerges in western populations for
example
then maybe it's a cultural thing if it's
something that emerges in all
populations even ones with very very
different cultures
then you can start to think ah yeah this
is kind of an actual human nature thing
maybe this is something that perhaps is
an evolved trait that is consistent
across human beings and that has
relationship to genetic fitness or to
sexual selection for that matter to
natural selection
and a quick thought someone asked in the
comments
yesterday evening about sex ratios and
how they may
influence populations and this
biological market hypothesis that turns
out actually directly related to that
and we see this in the himba for example
that
the sliver of elite men
have even more purchasing power in the
market so to speak in part because of
that sex ratio in part because they men
in general do outnumber
women in the population and that's
something to think about as far as sex
ratios go i guess even if you're someone
that that wants to date and you're
struggling that might even be something
that you could apply in the sense of
like
uh like geo maxing like oh i'm gonna go
to a country with a with a better sex
ratio i mean i don't know i'm just
throwing ideas
out there for you it's not really the
point of the video
the point is that we see
once again replication of these two
hypotheses in their respective domains
the biological market hypothesis and
assortative mating for actual mate
choice and aspirational
mating for mate preferences but not
actual mate selection
so anyway guys i hope you enjoyed the
video i hope that you learned some
things if you have comments
questions put them in the comments like
the video subscribe to the channel if
you want more like this guys if you have
ideas for new topics that you would like
to see on the channel let me know as
well and i'll try to get around to
looking at those also in the future so
it's been good and i'll talk to you guys
very soon
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