Do we pick the most similar or the most attractive mates?

Summary

In 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

00:00

📚 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.

05:01

🔍 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.

10:02

🌍 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.

15:04

📊 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.

20:04

💔 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.

25:05

🌐 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.

Keywords

💡Ecological Validity

Ecological validity refers to the extent to which research findings accurately represent real-world settings. In the video, Alexander highlights the importance of ecological validity by mentioning that the study on mate selection and desirability among the Himba people closely mirrors real-world outcomes, enhancing the reliability and applicability of the findings.

💡Biological Market Model

The Biological Market Model suggests that individuals adapt their mate selection strategies based on the 'market' or environment they are in, adjusting their choices according to their own desirability and the availability of desirable partners. The video discusses how this model explains why more desirable individuals are more selective in their mate choices, as seen in both the Himba population and in Western contexts.

💡Aspirational Mate Choice Model

The Aspirational Mate Choice Model posits that individuals aim to select the highest value mates they can attract, often aspiring for partners who are more desirable than themselves. Alexander explains that while people may state preferences for highly attractive partners, their actual choices tend to be more realistic, reflecting a compromise between aspiration and attainability.

💡Assortative Mating

Assortative mating refers to the tendency of individuals to pair with others who are similar to themselves in various traits, such as attractiveness, education, and income. The video highlights that actual mate choices among the Himba show a strong correlation between the mate values of partners, supporting the concept of assortative mating.

💡Mate Poaching

Mate poaching is the act of attempting to attract someone who is already in a relationship. Alexander mentions that more attractive individuals are often targets of mate poaching, which can affect the stability of relationships. This concept helps explain why individuals might be cautious about selecting highly attractive partners.

💡Sex Ratio

Sex ratio refers to the proportion of males to females in a given population. In the video, Alexander discusses how the sex ratio within the Himba population influences mate selection dynamics, with a skewed ratio giving certain individuals more 'market power' in selecting mates.

💡Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is the study of how evolutionary principles shape human behavior and preferences. The video delves into this field by examining how mate selection among the Himba provides insights into human evolutionary behaviors, supporting theories about biological influences on mate choice.

💡Non-Monogamous Culture

A non-monogamous culture is one where individuals have multiple romantic or sexual partners simultaneously. The Himba population, as described in the video, is characterized by flexible relationships and high rates of extramarital liaisons, which provide a unique context for studying mate selection and desirability.

💡Hypergamy

Hypergamy is the practice of seeking a mate of higher social status or better traits than oneself. Alexander discusses how this concept, often applied to women's mate choices, is relevant in understanding aspirational mate selection, where individuals aim to 'marry up' in terms of attractiveness, income, or social status.

💡Mate Value

Mate value refers to an individual's overall desirability as a partner, based on traits like physical attractiveness, social status, and personality. The video explores how mate value is assessed within the Himba community, with higher mate value individuals being more selective and more likely to pair with similarly valued partners.

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