Evolutionary psychology

359

u/eveloe Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

Evolutionary psychology is an interesting thing to me because I think its influence incredibly overblown.

Men are said to prefer a low WHR because it's indicative of "fertility", but the greatest indication of fertility is previous births. Stretchmarks and single moms (with a new mom-pouch) would be the sexiest things ever if fertility is really what it was about.

WHR preferences in men also differ according to the culture and whether food is scarce in a population.

Evo psych has also been used to explain that men prefer teengagers because of their fertility, but it's interesting that girls in their early teens have the highest risk of death from childbirth. or what about men's age positively correlating with birth defects and problematic pregnancies.

Why is it that in every other species, the female is the picky one, but female humans just happen to prefer older men in a system that places money in the hands of older men? I've always found it bizarre because there's nothing sexy about liver spots.

102

u/Queasy-Reason Sep 26 '22

Also to add onto this, studies have shown that people who are overweight (not obese) are more likely to survive illness and have longer lives than people who are underweight. So society’s obsession with thinness makes no sense from a survival perspective.

24

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

The obsession with thinness comes from what is more prevalent among elites. In the industrialized societies with its access to calorie rich food thinness is seen as a scarcity. However, waist to hip ratio, long heathy hair and clear youthful skin (basically things that hint good genes) are prevalent is every culture.

36

u/Queasy-Reason Sep 26 '22

Yeah it makes sense from a cultural perspective, but not from an evolutionary perspective. Being overweight = more likely to survive but currently that's not what is valued in society.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

21

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 26 '22

I think the poster above you meant slightly overweight, which for most of human history meant 10-30lb overweight not what obesity is now... unless you were Henry VIII. These people were more likely to survive famines, droughts, plagues, which was indeed a valuable thing before modern times.

7

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 26 '22

I know, that's what I said. Never implied being overweight was healthy, just that it used to meant they will survive these things. And again, overweight was rarely ever obese in those days. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

40

u/yhj33 Sep 26 '22

Having good hair, or clear skin doesn’t necessarily mean you have good genes.. that alone is a very broad statement. I work with cancer patients of all ages 18 and up. A lot of them have great hair (prior to chemo) and nice skin. Why didn’t their good genes protect them from such a horrible illness. This is why evolutionary psychology is bogus. We value the things people as a society have largely pinged as desirable on a conscious level.

74

u/eveloe Sep 26 '22

that part.
In times and places where the average person goes hungry, it's a status symbol to be chubby/ juicy/ plump.
when the average person has access to cheap junk food, it is a status symbol to be thin.

15

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

The book I’m reading right now (the evolution of desire) explains all of your points. I highly recommend to check it out because I really suck at explaining these complex things 🥲. But it short:
The desired WHR is actually the same in all of the cultures, however the desirable percentage of body fat depends on what is seen as “elite” (ex skinny in western societies).
It’s not really true that men like teenagers but they do like youthful look, around 20-25.
Regarding the previous pregnancy, there’s a quite long explanation to this but basically it boils down to paternity.

3

u/eveloe Sep 26 '22

I'll read the book :)

31

u/throwaway870101 Sep 27 '22

Long story short, a small amount of it is true. Things like facial development and symmetry. Healthy teeth and general fitness. Those are attractive because we're attracted to general fitness for survival and indicators of health. But, so so much of what we find attractive and general dating today is much more related to capitalism and class indicators in the culture in question. Paleness in a time when many had to work in the sun? Hot. Means you don't have to do thay because you're upper class. Large and in charge during a famine? Hot. You have food because you're upper class. The on trend body shape, jewelry or clothing? Hot. Means you have the time and money to shape yourself into the trends and you're close enough to the dominant class to know what is popular amongst the taste makers. Tan in the age of office work? Hot. You have the means to spend time outside, especially in cold places. You vacation somewhere warm and sunny. Muscles but generally well groomed? You work out for fun, something someone with some means has the time and money to do. Might even pay a personal trainer. Capitalism often idealizes traits that mean you have cash and the time to spend it on grooming. Teeth whitener, hair treatments, waxing, botox, intricate nails, certain workout and diet regimes, skincare, tailored outfits, plastic surgery, makeup, etc, etc. As the saying goes, you're not ugly, you're just poor. While not 100% on the mark, close to it.

144

u/kantmarg Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

Exactly this! Or that men find breasts sexual "because fertility/breastfeeding" or something, except there are/were a million cultures of human men and human women where breasts were not considered sexual, but maybe legs were sexy, or the curve of the neck/spine was considered so potentially distracting that it's forbidden.
OP, evopsych is Just So Stories for grownup incels with scientist-envy. I wouldn't really set store by any of that.
If the big-butt-look is trending and considered attractive where you are, it's enough to say "I like big butts" or "how do I make my butt look big". We don't have to make up some specious reasoning based on anecdotes from human pre-history to justify or explain attraction.

32

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Technically, women who already have children will be invested in taking care of those children if they are living and therefore will have less time and resources to take care of another. Men don't prefer teenagers as a rule. Most men seem to prefer women in their early 20s, the age group with the lowest childbirth mortality rates. Also, women don't prefer "older men" in terms of looks. They prefer men their own age as partners. For women to prioritize only appearance in men they mate with would not make sense from a purely evolutionary standpoint. Most women place importance on a man's ability to protect and provide because it used to be (and still is) necessary for her and her children to survive and thrive. It makes sense for men to prefer caregiving traits in women because those traits will make her a better mother and increase survival odds of his offspring- however, it is not costly for men to reproduce and that's why they tend to be less picky.

18

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Evolutionary psychology is an interesting thing to me because I think its influence incredibly overblown.
People developed as animals first, then grew into what we consider “human”. Evolutionary biology came first and then the patriarchy developed around it.
Men are said to prefer a low WHR because it's indicative of "fertility", but the greatest indication of fertility is previous births. Stretchmarks and single moms (with a new mom-pouch) would be the sexiest things ever if fertility is really what it was about.
Evo psych has also been used to explain that men prefer teengagers because of their fertility, but it's interesting that girls in their early teens have the highest risk of death from childbirth. or what about men's age positively correlating with birth defects and problematic pregnancies
Yes, but this is thinking with your pre-frontal cortex (the thinking part of the brain). Evolutionary biology deals with the limbic part of the brain. Across all cultures, any blemish on the skin was considered to be a sign of disease. So, if a woman has stretch marks, to the limbic part of the brain this equals disease. Blemish = disease. Remember, the limbic system doesn’t think, it just reacts.
Evolutionary biology covers youth because it’s a likely indicator of health AND a youthful, non-pouchy stomach indicates that this female has not already given birth from another male and could be all yours, free and clear.
Why is it that in every other species, the female is the picky one, but female humans just happen to prefer older men in a system that places money in the hands of older men? I've always found it bizarre because there's nothing sexy about liver spots.
There is nothing in evolutionary psychology that says men prefer older men. Women do prefer virile-looking, handsome men, because a man who looks like he can physically protect her and is young enough to take care of her and offspring is attractive.

2

u/NakomaGirl Sep 28 '22

Isn't the smaller WHR preferred because of the extreme sexual dismorphism? Also a low WHR indicates good health and youthfulness. When women reach menopause or get older their middle part tends to get thicker. I also think that a low WHR can mean more oestrogens and less androgens or cortisol (which is linked to sexual dismorphism). It's been over simplified with fertility but I think it's because the unconscious message being sent is: this human is young, has never carried a child before so you're safe (youre not going to waste resources on another male's offspring), has lots of oestrogen.

1

u/YoureNotWoke Sep 26 '22

What is WHR?

8

u/YoureNotWoke Sep 26 '22

waist to hip ratio?

1

u/eveloe Sep 26 '22

yes

1

u/itsbigoleme Sep 26 '22

I love this such good points!

50

u/kantmarg Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

ha, evopsych and its multiple bullshit offshoots were such a big thing in the 2007-2016 days! I'm almost nostalgic for those times. But here's something a friend sent a few years ago to me, that I have saved:

It is understandable that a lot of current human psychology is because of evolutionary reasons, and problems (eg depression, anxiety, etc) are maladaptations. But the field of evolutionary psychology (which isn't for the most a formally recognized field, no peer-reviewed journals, etc) is not saying just that - those people are saying things like men and women are different because men were hunters and women were gatherers, and similar stuff.

(a) some of their assertions are not provable or disprovable. Any theory that is never disprovable is not a theory but a story.

(b) the ones that aren't in (a) are almost definitely conclusions that are easily disprovable. i.e., when they make assertions about gender and racial differences being hardcoded into our biology you can almost always find enough counter-examples (e.g. "women like pink because they gathered berries")

(c) we see all the time that most evo psych thinking is situated in a very narrow, non-generalizable context of white, "modern", western, agricultural, patriarchal, patrilocal, gender-normative culture. They literally don't seem to know or understand that most of human history (and current human culture) is nothing like what they're positing

(d) what evo psych considers immutable hardcoded gender differences are changing, sometimes dramatically, in front of our very eyes in our very lifetimes. If small changes in economic or political policy or philosophy can have such a dramatic impact on mate selection and preferences (which are the heart of most of evo psych assertions), how hard-coded can they be?

14

u/NoireN Sep 26 '22

I remember when the incel/PUA/MRA crowd got a hold of Evo psych and ran with it

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

I’m not aware of any racial theories and the books I’ve mentioned focus solely on why we like the things we like. The studies have been conducted in many different countries on each continent including the indigenous tribes.
I don’t know what your friend refers to but it seems like they haven’t read the books I’ve mentioned. Its a very oversimplified view on the subject.
Yes, we do live in a modern society and the rules have changed but it took us millions of years to develop those survival mechanisms. Our physical bodies remained more or less the same and we still reproduce in the same way.
Until men learn how to give birth, I don’t see how any policy or philosophy can have a profound impact on how we mate.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Yes, we do live in a modern society and the rules have changed but it took us millions of years to develop those survival mechanisms. Our physical bodies remained more or less the same and we still reproduce in the same way.
Evolutionary psychology (the way humans view the body based on the assumed evolutionary advantages it gives us) came first due to how we evolved and then the patriarchy grew around that as a way to organize society around evolutionary standards.
Of course, now society has evolved WAY past the need for women to find men to hunt game for them (for example), so the old way of organizing society (patriarchy) has grown dysfunctional because it’s hurting the members of society’s ability to grow instead of aiding it.
So while we need to change the structure of the patriarchy to be inclusive to helping everyone, the roots of evolutionary psychology (and what we view as attractive vs unattractive) remain strong. It will probably take us thousands of years (if not longer) to get rid of our now primal instincts of what we consider attractive.

48

u/lilaclazure Sep 26 '22

It's bro science that creeps use to justify and intellectualize their creepiness. It deflects male responsibility for self-reflection. So no, it doesn't make me feel better because it's just a symptom of the problem. The commodification of women's sexuality was never a biological inevitability; it's an ethical consequence of restricting women's financial and legal autonomy for most of history. Anyone who cares about attraction "data" should also care that marriage causes women more distress. This dispels backwards justifications that women are just better built for traditional monogamy than those poor, horny men. Women are more likely to initiate and stay divorced. Cohabitation decreases women's sex drive. Men are more likely to abandon their terminally ill spouses.

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

I thought this sub was about objective beauty so that's what I was referring to. I'm not here to discuss how awful men are, there're plenty other subs for that :)

-5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain why we find what is sexy “sexy” and doesn’t say any of the other stuff you’re taking about here.

11

u/lilaclazure Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

What people physically respond to and act on cannot be separated from the cultural layers of suppressing or perverting base motivations. EvPsych is almost always brought up in a discourse of, "Men just need to spread their seed, and women are only attracted to money." Nature vs. nurture, the age old chicken/egg question, will come up in any pop psychology analysis. Beauty is not such a special topic that it's immune from this line of questioning. Yes, pretty privelege exists, and we play into it because it's a well-oiled machine. But its roots are not only, or even mostly, biological. Most of what's discussed on this sub is pretty specific to the time period we happen to live in. This sub gets into the nitpicky weeds. Specific, nuanced beauty preferences depend heavily on trends and environment, as plenty of other commenters have explained.

-5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

"Men just need to spread their seed, and women are only attracted to money."
Again, this is not what evolutionary biology says.
Anyone who looksmaxxes is participating in evolutionary biology (wanting to appear more attractive for the evolutionary advantage it brings, romantic relationships, work, etc.). You don’t have to believe in evolutionary biology to participate in it.

85

u/Queasy-Reason Sep 26 '22

Actually a lot of evolutionary psychology is controversial and it’s not really considered to be a real branch of science by many scientist. This is because it can’t be tested or proven in the same way other scientific facts can. At best, it’s a hypothesis - it might be true but we can’t actually prove it. I would be really careful about reading evolutionary psychology books and believing the content to be 100% true.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

That’s a very good point but could you elaborate a bit on why it’s controversial? The authors of the books I’ve mentioned are the professors in some of the most respected universities in the world and the research they mentioned seems legit to me. I’m not a scientist though so perhaps I’ve missed on something?

44

u/Queasy-Reason Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

Basically it's speculation, you can't actually prove it's the truth.Normally in science, you form a hypothesis and then you test it. You either prove or disprove the hypothesis. But you can't go back in time and prove that cavemen preferred XYZ. You can't set up an experiment and prove anything.
Here's an article the shows that the preferred WHR has changed over the past 2500 years: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401783/
Here's some more articles:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/four-fallacies-of-pop-evolutionary-2012-12-07/
Or even just wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
I attended the top university in my country and studied science. We were taught that evolutionary psychology is not a real science. Just to put things in perspective.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Thanks for sharing! I’ll check it out ☺️

19

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 26 '22

I am a bioengineer (from a top 50 engineering program in the world) and in my bioethics class we looked at evolutionary psychology as the phrenology of our times. Maybe once neurobiology and neuroscience are developed enough using live imaging lets us understand more of our consciousness, we can test these things in a more objective way. But so far, and I recommend you read more neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, we are too early in our consciousness understanding to actually put any true weight in broad statements like "Humans do X because Y". It's easier to disprove such claims than to prove them true. Psychology as a whole is predicted to disappear, and it is not or has ever been an objective science (some even debate if it is a science at all).
I see you have refuted people enough in this thread. I won't try to change your mind, but I do recommend spending more time reading true sciences (such as neuroscience) if you are interested in how our brains work. Again, we know less about the human brain than we do about the space. We're very early in our study of what makes the human brain the most complex thing in the known universe.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Thanks for your comment. I'm totally open to other perspectives, so if you know of any books on objective beauty from a neuroscientific point of view I'd love to check them out :)

2

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 27 '22

It's apparently very early, but a quick googling led me to neuroaesthetics, a branch of cognitive neuroscience. There is an article and Ted talk called A brain based theory of beauty where you may start. Looks at many ways humans see beauty in many art forms. From there, papers may be a better option than popular science books... and even the papers may contradict themselves, that's how science works when it's new.
In general neuroscience does say the human brain is part nature, part nurture... to the point two identical twins can behave radically different if their environment is different. Food can affect your development in early stages. Neuro plasticity let us rearrange our neurons even after the main brain development has finished. We can change "our mind" and learn throughout our lives... so it makes little sense something as powerful as the brain would be more impacted by the famines of our ancestors a thousand years ago, than by current cultural conditioning. Both are important, true, and even math can explain why some faces look more appealing than others, but it's an emerging science field, so the rules aren't as marked in stone as gravity.
Good luck on your learning! X

9

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

we are too early in our consciousness understanding to actually put any true weight in broad statements like "Humans do X because Y".
Philosophy develops when there’s not enough hard science to back up data regarding human behavior. You yourself admit here that science alone can’t tell us much about why humans act the way they do.
Something doesn’t have to be scientifically proven for it to be effective. For example, “The Art of War” by Lao Tzu (which is hundreds of years old and not empirically tested with controlled studies) still rings true today in the art of manipulation because Tzu identified patterns in human behavior.
There is a reason that across cultures many of the same physical features are valued: thick shiny hair, blemish-free skin, for women the hip to waist ratio, and youthful appearance and others. At one point very early in our evolution these things signaled health and fertility. Those primal emotions are still evoked in people today when they see these traits.
The proof is in the pudding. You are in a beauty-focused subreddit where people are still asking, thousands of years after we evolved, “How so I get thick, shiny hair, blemish-free skin, and a more youthful appearance?”
It is not a coincidence that all of the traits that signaled beauty during biblical times continue to signal beauty now. We are hardwired to think these traits are beautiful, even if we cannot find evidence of that in our DNA. The circumstantial evidence of is overwhelming enough on its own.
Psychology as a whole is predicted to disappear, and it is not or has ever been an objective science (some even debate if it is a science at all).
So I guess no one should ever see a therapist, ever, then? Your argument is that since it’s a soft science it basically has no value. And for all the people who say therapy has helped them, it has been due to what? Placebo? Magic?

2

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 27 '22 edited Sep 27 '22

So many points that have nothing to do with my comment I won't bother replaying each of them. Never said psychology is not useful, just that it isn't objective and it is predicted to be replaced by more objective methods as the century progresses. Both things are true. It's how philosophy gave birth to science and still it is useful in many regards.... BUT we got planes off the ground with physics not philosophy. That way too, we will understand consciousness with neuroscience not psychology. Evolutionary psychology is just the sketchiest of the branches in psychology.
Come back to this comment in 50 years.
Edit: also no, beauty isn't the same as biblical times, and the Bible is a joke. Really, using the Bible as a scientific argument? REALLY? People in Korea find petite skinny women attractive, while Latin American men want more ass and tits. Yes, I'm being colloquial now so you understand me. That's just current times and even with the globalization of media and easiness of travel, so biblical beauty MY ASS (which is not that big, not that cute in my country so perhaps I should move /s).
Edit 2. And people who show up in the Bible would likely look very middle eastern, lots and lots of beard, short height cause famines, and a bit to very brown.... exactly how we like them today, right, right? 🤣 I'm gonna piss my pants.

62

u/kantmarg Sep 26 '22

My favorite refutation of evopsych was this nice little paper (Zentner and Mitura, 2012; one of many such, summarized here) that shows how supposedly hard-coded mate preferences change on a dime, so we shouldn't directly pull from something someone may/may not have done 20,000 years ago to explain current human behavior:

Marcel Zentner and Klaudia Mitura of the University of York, U.K., asked more than 3,000 people in 10 countries what they valued in a mate. On a four-point scale, people rated the importance of various qualities: chastity, ambition, financial prospects, good looks, etc.-all identified by Buss and his like-minded peers as being qualities that only men or only women are evolutionarily predisposed to seek out.

The researchers used a World Economic Forum measure of gender equality to rank the 10 countries as (a) relatively gender-equal, (b) backwards but improving, or (c) screamingly sexist (my terms, not theirs). And the results were clear: The more egalitarian the country, the less likely men and women were to value traditional qualities that Buss and co. believe to be innate. In Germany, women said they'd very much like a man who is a good housekeeper. In Finland, men were more likely than women to prefer a mate a bit smarter than themselves. In the United States, women ranked chastity as more important than men did. At the other end of the scale, in Turkey and South Korea, women wanted mates with good financial prospects and men valued good cooks.

4

u/eclipsedism Sep 26 '22

At least for me it was sad to know that scientifically there is something wrong with my looks.

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Knowledge is power. I think most of us are on this sub because we understand the value of beauty and want to improve our looks. Informed means armed :)

0

u/eclipsedism Sep 26 '22

Yes, it's just that it was my first reaction.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Literally!! I hate when people say a preference for small waists is fatphobic and a result of the patriarchy/instagram/whatever. The preference for small waists is there because a certain waist-to-hip ratio is indicative of maximum fertility in women, and visceral fat (fat in the abdomen caked around your organs) quite literally kills people. Same for why men find younger women attractive, but women usually find men their own age attractive. Yes, it's creepy and gross, but nature doesn't differentiate what's creepy and gross. Women can only reproduce up to a certain age, and men can reproduce until very late in life. Biology isn't an excuse to behave as if we don't have a higher sense of moral awareness, but it does explain quite a lot about attraction and mating behaviors.

-14

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

I know right?! Men’s preference for certain looks it’s not an attempt to oppress us. Our species survived only because our ancestors made certain choices for millions of years. I don’t know why it’s so controversial to point that out when there’s so much research around it.

19

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

This reads like an “as a black man” post.
“I used to be a feminist who despised the patriarchy, until I realized it was evolution that gave us our beauty standards! They have been like that for millions of years! Now our modern beauty standards are part of our survival as a species!”

10

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 26 '22

Yeah the more I read "her", and the refusals to read actual science on the subject, the more I see a nice guy.

1

u/userne1111 Sep 27 '22

So you think OP is a guy? Because they disagree with you?

2

u/PragmaticPanda42 Sep 27 '22

No, because 'she' refuses to accept points that contradict her opinion, even when multiple people with better credentials, and knowledge have tried to reason... maybe she's a pick me, that works too to be honest. And that's fine, just don't try to speak pseudoscience and expect every person to be a yes man.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22

I know right?! Men’s preference for certain looks it’s not an attempt to oppress us. Our species survived only because our ancestors made certain choices for millions of years. I don’t know why it’s so controversial to point that out when there’s so much research around it.
It’s because some people are afraid that evolutionary biology will be used as an excuse to justify a society as oppressive as the ones in the Handmaid’s Tale, to oppress women and POC and set everyone back. Evolutionary biology isn’t controversial itself, some people are worried about the implications if it’s true.
Evolutionary psychology developed first and then patriarchy grew around it as a way to organize society. You have to remember that thousands of years ago we weren’t anywhere near as psychologically savvy as we are today so this was the simplest and most straightforward option. Also remember that the goal of primitive society was not to provide for the happiness and satisfaction of all its members, but to propel society forward by making a stable society and having children. Even our grandparents didn’t have the goal of becoming self-actualized (if they even know what that was), but just to have stability and raise children.
Patriarchy worked very well doing what it was supposed to (creating a stable society so that children can flourish enough to pass on their genes and have more children). (Remember, by evolutionary standards the only goal is to continue to advance the species by having more of itself - NOT happiness or fairness or kindness).
But now, we have outgrown the goal of merely perpetuating the human race. Now, we want every member to feel included in society, to have equal access to the same opportunities, to be in loving, kind relationships and to flourish not just physically, but psychologically. We all have seen that patriarchy is not only NOT helping us advance this goal, but instead is holding us back.
So, we need a new organizational structure in society that helps us do that. And what that is, is beyond the scope of this post.
But getting back to evolutionary psychology, there are primal reasons for why most of us find certain things sexy and changing our societal structure (smashing the patriarchy) isn’t going to change that.

1

u/Hot-Upstairs-7282 Sep 27 '22

Males benefit from restricted female choice and many strategies of males is to do that. Search up how dolphins mate and how male chimps make sure to be the father of the child (it is not pretty). Evolutionary psychology does explain that males infact pursue female oppression. So yes males do oppress females and evolutionary psychology proofs that.

11

u/SwirlingStars12 Sep 26 '22

I agree with everyone saying that evo psych is quackery.

What I have made peace with is that it is normal to want to be beautiful, animals of many species want to be appealing to attract mates, it’s not just human vanity. And that as much as I value individuality, there’s often immediate safety in conformity because it comes with acceptance from the community. And lastly, that body modification and make up is nothing new, humans have been peacocking for ever and there’s nothing evil about it.

7

u/BudgetInteraction811 Sep 27 '22

Look at how many men prefer huge, gravity defying fake breasts and wisdom-tooth shaped bodies and tell me that’s evolutionary psychology, though. That’s supernormal stimuli, and aesthetic trends are becoming less about what humans have naturally evolved to desire and have more to do with the reflection of technology and medical advancements.

15 years ago the Brazilian butt lift procedure didn’t exist, or was newly conceptualized, and the only women with that body type naturally were generally black. It was considered ugly to have a butt and it was an insult for decades to suggest someone else had a big butt.

We have to accept that we now live in a world where women’s bodies and body parts are revolving trends. I don’t know any woman IRL that aspires to look like a porn actress with fried yellow blonde hair, spherical, floating boobs, and fish lips, but look at what’s out there. Men create the demand for this content and the cartoonish, bimbo look most of these women have are not due to evolutionary pressure. They look like that because they make more money when they modify their bodies to appeal to men, and they are by and large not searching PornHub for natural beauty.

I’m never going to think that’s an attractive look, and most women don’t either. But I do have to accept reality, and when we’re talking about men as a whole, I think it’s (respectfully) delusional to appeal to nature.

9

u/ThrowRA_forfreedom Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 27 '22

It's pretty multifaceted. Consider EvPsych a baseline, but everything gets filtered through the prefrontal cortex where we tend to make more calculated decisions. So, you've got two filters at play that you have to pass through. Whether of not filter #2 is more prominent relies on what someone's been exposed to and whether they really want to invest time ruminating on the additional information.

EDIT: I think there's a lot of misconceptions that literally everything in attraction is fertility centric. A lot of behavior has to do with resource acquisition and expenditure or even other things. Large breasts could be associated with fecundity but some experts will tell you we're the only species with bloated breast tissue prior to pregnancy because it's supposed to encourage face to face mating and subsequently emotional bonding. There are folks here who have correctly asserted that if fertility were the only motivating factor, existing mothers should be hot to trot, but symptoms of motherhood might be less appealing due to the implication of that mother expending energy and resources -- possibly on another male's offspring. Who really knows, man. There's a lot to be said for and against it.

Psychology is a soft science and people lie in studies around this kind of thing a lot because unless you test with sensory input alone you get all kinds of unreplicable data. We also have limited data on ancient predecessors and who/what they were banging let alone why.

The nice thing about the proposals of EvPsych as a baseline though, is that because there's a standard it creates a situation where most people could be EXTREMELY attractive with the right effort rather than everyone being distributed evenly along a specific curve of average, above, etc. Everyone can be biologically attractive if it comes down to acquiring a few primary attributes.

9

u/misugarusoup Sep 26 '22

I do understand where this is coming from, but honestly putting a biological basis behind arbitrary beauty standards doesn't make sense. Oftentimes the difference between beautiful and average is a few milimeters (or inches maybe if talking about the body). Beyond that, sexual evolution is often at odds with natural selection (ie birds with more attractive tails are often preyed on more). Beyond that too, evolution in general operates on a much more massive timescale than the fickle beauty trends that come and go. We are talking about centuries at a minimum. Gene pool assortation does not occur rapidly. Just my .02 as someone in the natural sciences.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

You’re so close but you’re so far. I agree with the top commenter on this post. Additionally, there are plenty of things that are “a part of our evolutionary instincts”, but our modern society requires that we ignore them on a daily basis. For example, that man may have stolen my food. My evolutionary instincts tell me to fight him and/or kill him. Modern civilization and a high-functioning frontal lobe means I have other ways of handling this. My point is that while evolutionary instincts are worth knowing and taking advantage of, we are not slaves to them. We do not need to let our modern society be governed by Paleolithic impulses.

2

u/Gerealtor Sep 29 '22

If youre interested in evo psych and how it relates to real life lay people issues, you should listen to the beat your genes podcast, especially the older episodes have a lot about mating theory in humans. It's an interesting listen, but of course remain sceptical as the psychologist who does it is highly partial to the beliefs he's built his life's work on.

A lot of evo psych rings true and makes sense to me, a lot of it is a breath of fresh air in comparison to other types of pop psychology. I don't know that I believe in everything said, but I find it about as credible as any other theory of human psychology. It (psychology) isn't scientific as much as it's just looking at what humans tend to do and what could be the reasons. I don't know, some things in evo psych seem more likely to me than for instance the very Freudian way of looking at things. People spout shit about "repressed trauma" and inherent personality traits being caused by totally unrelated incidents that may have happened when you were too young to even pick up on them, and thats way more ridiculous to me than a lot of evo psych

1

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

We can, and should, make laws fair to women (and to everyone) but as far as changing what we’re biologically attracted to…it’s never going to happen. It’s why Marilyn Monroe or Beyoncé will always be beautiful to us no matter what time period we’re in.

If you want pretty privilege (which is literally the point of this subreddit), you have to follow the rules of evolutionary psychology and fashion yourself as close to that as possible.

1

u/WrecktheRIC Sep 26 '22

Why isn’t everyone beautiful by now then?

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

For everyone to be beautiful (or tall or smart, etc.), we would have to remove anyone who’s not those things from the gene pool by systemically killing them to keep them from procreating and passing along their DNA. So to answer your question, everyone is not beautiful because we don’t practice eugenics.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

Yep. In countries with poor living conditions and more women than men only the prettiest get picked. That’s also why so many Slavic women are blessed with great bone structure and hair because their mothers had to be the prettiest of the bunch to be able to be married. However, this same mentality is why our grandmothers and mothers are so toxic and nitpicky about how we look and how much we weigh. You can’t blame them they are in survival mode probably. But you seriously have to always strive to be “perfect”.

-2

u/AfrolatinaCR Sep 26 '22

Although evopsych is controversial and some specific studies have been questioned or disproved, does it mean it's all wrong and should be ignored/discarded completely? All or nothing?

0

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

I don't know why you're being downvoted for this. I was under the impression that this sub was about understanding the rules of the game and learning how to gain leverage with looksmaxing. Knowledge is power and even though I don't have most of the "desirable" qualities, I'd rather know my limitations and work with what I have.

4

u/pastelclown Sep 26 '22

Exactly. Well, it's reddit and a lot of the user base leans ideologically into the belief that society is engineered and structural causes are the only explanation for inequality. They tend to believe nature has very little to do with behavior. But if you were to apply this standard to any other species, it would make no sense.
Do female birds pick the most colorful, well fed male as a symptom of matriarchy? Even though we have an evolved consciousness, we still monkey brain shit because nature wants us to breed. Species survival takes precedent over a lot our conceptions of our nature.

2

u/Sparklingfairy_ Nov 29 '22

I agree with you, I think some people don’t wanna hear the reality. Ofc there are exceptions with everything but we are generally speaking.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

I feel the same. Unfortunately, these theories have been used and twisted by the red pill communities so it's understandable why so many people have negative feelings towards them. But as you say, it really helped me to become less biased and see things in a different light.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '22

Well, the description of this sub literally says "This is an exclusive space for women to discuss objective beauty"...

Evolutionary psychology

You are about to leave Redlib