The Male Sexual Deficit: Social Fact of the 21st Century

The Male Sexual Deficit: Social Fact of the 21st Century

by | May 10, 2021 | Biological Difference, Dating & Mating Economy, Men's Issues, Sexuality

the”‘“Feminists insist that men’s greater demand for sexual activity is an outdated myth. Recent sex surveys prove the myth to be a fact and one that the social sciences have yet to address.”  

~ Catherine Hakim

Men want more sex than women (in statistical aggregate with individual differences).  This is not a criticism of men or a judgment of women.  This is just the way it is. We were designed this way over eons of time. The fact that men want more sex than women comports directly with the evolutionary evidence of sexual selection and the science of human mating. It reflects and is predicted by the difference between the sexual excitation system dominant in men versus the sexual inhibition system dominant in women.  (See prior posts.)  Only the questioning of this fact seems surprising.

Unsatisfying Sex Does Not Account for the Deficit

I have recently written about why heterosexual women may not want the sex they are being offered (Why Women Are Bored in Monogamous Relationships and Addressing Barriers to Female Sexual Pleasure – Let’s Get Educated).  But the prospect of unsatisfying sex does not account for the disparity of desire between men and women and ultimately the male sex deficit.  The “male sexual deficit” (also called surplus male sexuality) is the condition of men not getting enough sex.

The Male Sexual Deficit is Caused By:
  1. Women generally have a lower sex drive (sexual motivation) — the predominance of their sexual inhibition system (responsive desire). Men have a higher need for sexual activity and a need for more variety of sexual partners.
  2. Women find only a few men “suitable.” Female selectivity is a critical sex difference and evolutionary adaptation. The criteria of mate choice in a woman’s long-term mating strategy reveals “choosiness” for a narrow cluster of traits that define a “suitable” mate.  Related to “suitability,” there is a wide attraction disparity between men and women; men find a majority of women attractive; women find the majority of men unattractive.  (This fact is mostly undiscussable in the dating advice marketplace.)
  3. A severe supply and demand imbalance in the mating market that disadvantages men – the result of a lower female sex drive and “choosiness.” Available and willing women are in short supply compared to the significant demand by interested men.
  4. Women often do not want the “kind of sex” offered by their male partner, causing relative boredom, disinterest, and reduced sexual activity.
  5. There is an increase in the percentage of women who identify as lesbian or bi-sexual in practice.  Female sexual fluidity is growing. Women’s inherent sexual plasticity is leaving men on the sidelines.
Male Sexual Deficit in the Twenty-First Century

This post is named after and draws from a paper written by British sociologist Catherine Hakim.  It also captures the wisdom of evolutionary psychologists pertinent to this topic, primarily the work of David Buss. (See bios in the Appendix.)

Hakim describes the sexual deficit among men as a universal phenomenon in modern societies.  This phenomenon “emerged” during her research on sexual cultures, internet dating, and marriage markets.

Harbingers and Evidence of the Deficit: Sex Differentials Around the World

“The sex differentials in sexuality remain large, substantively important, and are found in all cultures, including the sexually liberated societies of Scandinavia.”  ~ Catherine Hakim

Hakim reviewed studies conducted worldwide over the last 30 years and reported a long list of “sex differentials” between men and women.  Below are just a few examples from various countries.

  • The most commonly reported sexual problem is the lack of interest in having sex.  In all countries, the rate of women is at least double the rate for men at all ages.
  • Men are four times more likely than women to agree to sexual approaches from their partner (38% of men versus 11% in Finland).
  • A majority of women regard love as a precondition for sex, while a majority of men reject the idea. (Sweden)
  • Men express two to ten times more enthusiasm for trying every variation in sexual activity. (Britain)
  • Men are three times more likely to prefer several concurrent lovers. (Estonia and Sweden)
  • Regular masturbation is two to three times more common among men in Sweden, Australia, Finland, and Britain.
  • Men are three times more likely to have frequent sexual fantasies and to use erotica of all kinds.
  • Casual sex was regarded as acceptable by a two-thirds majority of men vs. a one-third majority of women in Britain.
  • Men reported extra-marital affairs twice as often as women. Only in France, Spain and Italy do men and women begin to converge in their acceptance and practice of affairs.

A cross-cultural study of 29 countries showed that sex differences in desire and sexual interest are universal, but the gap between men and women is larger in male-dominated cultures than in liberal western democracies.

Male Sexual Deficit in the United States

Denise Donnelly (University of New Hampshire) analyzed a sample of 6,029 married persons in the United States to determine the correlates of sexual inactivity in marriage and to see if sexually inactive marriages were less happy and stable than those with sexual activity.  Donnelly found that about 1 in 7 marriages in the U.S. are largely “sexless” — characterized by little to no sexual intimacy (“dead bedrooms” is a popular subreddit). Typically, this happens because one member of the relationship refuses to engage in sex.  It is most often the woman.  Although sexually inactive marriages are not uncommon, Donnelly concluded that they are not happy or stable marriages. Thus, lack of sexual activity may be a danger signal for many marriages.

Adverse Effects of Male Sex deficit

Hakim believes the male sexual drought negatively affects society, fracturing families and potentially leading to violence and crime.

Hakim says, with some controversy, that the male sexual deficit helps to explain sexual harassment, sexual violence, rape, infidelity, and a rising demand for commercial sexual services that is almost exclusively male.  (Below, I will provide some contrary and perhaps more reliable evidence about sexual coercion from evolutionary psychology.)

Commercial Sex Services Demonstrate the Deficit

Commercial sex services have existed in all societies, whether they are treated as legitimate or not.  The male sexual deficit explains why, in all societies, customers for the sex industry are men almost exclusively. For instance, in Greece and Italy, 40% of men have bought sexual services compared to less than 1% of women.

An International Labor Office (ILO) study of the sex industry found that demand for erotic services grows as a country (or individual) becomes more affluent; therefore, overall demand is rising.

Demand for such services from women is minuscule in all cultures, and this is not due to women’s lack of economic resources.  Some poor men will find the money if necessary but affluent women are rarely tempted. The sex industry has always been highly stratified, with a diversity of services at all price levels, because male demand exists at all income levels.

Sex Work is Lucrative But Not a Cure for the Deficit

Men’s ambivalence towards women working in the sexual entertainment industry may be because women exploit men’s “weakness” effectively. Women can earn 10 – 40 times more than in conventional jobs.  The sex industry is the sine qua non of the “erotic-economic” bargain but does not significantly depress the male sexual deficit.  (See “Erotic-Economic Bargain — the Ultimate Exchange in the Mating Economy” in Dynamics in the Mating Economy – Domain #1 of Male-Female Difference.)

Cause #1 of the Deficit:  Lower Female Sex Drive

“This gap in desire between men and women is seen in every country and culture where sex surveys have been done. The received wisdom that men always want more sex than their wives is not a stereotype, but a fact.” ~ Catherine Hakim

Measure of Desire in Developed Countries

Inside Hakim’s data set, Finnish sociologist and sexologist Osmo Kontula identified (2009) 12 measures of sexual desire (see Appendix) and offers this summary of four decades of sex research in developed countries:

  • Younger men experience sexual desire twice as frequently as women.
  • Older men experience sexual desire four times as often as women in the same age group.
  • As a result, male sexual desire is compatible with the level of desire in women approximately 20 years younger.
  • Overall, male sexual desire is manifested at least twice as often as female desire, and men would like to have sex twice as often as women.
  • The gap in sexual desire between men and women grows over time.
Female Sex Drive Is More Plastic

The national surveys on sex differences around the globe are corroborated by more detailed studies of the sex drive by Roy Baumeister and other social psychologists.  Those surveys suggest the differences in sexuality between the sexes may be due to the female sex drive being more plastic, malleable, and responsive to social influences (See Cause #5 below), whereas the male sex drive is less compliant (Baumeister, 2000, 2004).

Women’s Lower Interest Is Not a Disorder

Marta Meana, clinical psychologist and researcher in women’s sexuality, concluded (2010) that discrepancies of sexual desire within relationships are the norm rather than the exception, generally due to the woman’s lower interest in sexual activity.  She says clinicians should not treat this as a sexual disorder since very few women are distressed by their lack of desire per se.  Instead, they are worried about the impact on their relationships.

Men Want More Sex Partners – More Evidence of the Deficit

Evolutionary psychologist David Schmitt (2003) studied 16,288 individuals residing in 52 nations (2003) and found sex differences to be culturally universal without a single exception.  Men said they wanted 1.87 sex partners over the next month; women wanted only .78.  Over the next decade, men said they wanted six partners on average; women said they wanted two.  In Middle East countries, such as Lebanon and Turkey, men wanted 2.5 sex partners over the next month. In South America, 35% of men wanted more than one sex partner over the next month, but only 6% of women did.  In Japan, where levels of sex drive appear to be unusually low, six times more men (18%) than women (2.6%) wanted more than one sex partner.

Sex Difference in Rates of Infidelity is Narrowing

The infidelity rate between men and women has narrowed since sexologist Alfred Kinsey found (in 1953) that twice as many men as women had experienced at least one sexual infidelity (50% vs. 26%).  Recent studies show that men cheat with a larger number of partners, and women are choosier even in this domain, typically having a single affair.  And of those women, 70% cite love or emotional connection as the key reason for the affair. This finding points more toward the mate-switching function of female infidelity than a woman’s desire for sexual variety.  (See Mate Switching Hypothesis.) Men’s affairs are more motivated by sex with someone new, especially if they have no sex at home.

Consenting to Sex with Strangers – Sex Differences

Studies of consenting to have sex with strangers found that 75% of men approached by female confederates said “yes” to the question: “will you go to bed with me tonight?”  Nearly 100% of women said “no way” to the request from male confederates.   Most men who declined asked for a raincheck.  (The first study was done in Florida in 1989; it was later replicated in Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands.)

“The psychological and behavioral evidence all points to the same conclusion,” says Buss, “men and women differ profoundly in their desire for sexual variety.”  (As explained in Why Women Are Bored in Monogamous Relationships, a woman may need or want a variety of experiences with the same partner.)

Unfulfilled Longings 

“The large and profound sex difference in the desire for variety is not something that merely rattles around in men’s heads,” says Buss.   “Many men are burdened by lust for a variety of different women, constant cravings that cannot ever be fully satisfied.  Sexual desire sometimes bursts forth into action.”  It explains the philandering of such men like Hugh Grant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Charlie Sheen, who had wives or girlfriends and presumedly were not experiencing much sexual deficit.  But “it also explains,” says Buss,  “the rage of ‘incels,’ whose sexual desires remain forever unfulfilled as they watch women they want from the sidelines of the mating market.”

Men Have a Higher Sex Drive – Period

“Evolution has equipped men with a higher sex drive,”  says Buss. This is reflected in several sexual adaptations:

  • Men become sexually aroused more easily than women, especially to visual stimuli.
  • Men have more frequent and spontaneous sexual fantasies.
  • Men spontaneously think about sex twice as often as women do every day.
  • Men desire to have sex more frequently than do women.
  • Men average 679 circulating units of testosterone; women’s average is a tenth of that.

“In short,” says Buss, “the gender differences in sex drive create a gap. The less interested person has more power over if and when sex will occur, and women are often less interested.”

Causes # 2 and 3 of the Deficit:  Female Choosiness and the Mating Marketplace

“Female choosiness – deciding who qualifies for interaction, relationship escalation, and sexual access is a first principle in human mating.  ~ David Buss

Women find few men “suitable” as mates.  Female “choosiness” coupled with a lower sex drive creates a severe supply and demand imbalance in the mating market that disadvantages men.  Women who are available and willing are in short supply compared to the great demand by interested men.  As a result, many men lose out or opt-out of the market, causing a vast “surplus” of male sexuality. “It is precisely this female selectivity,” says Buss, “that creates sexual conflict, sometimes expressed as resentment by those who fall below the threshold.”

Women Liked Very Few Profiles

Buss cites a study that placed 14 fake male and female profiles on Tinder and analyzed the responses to them.   Over eight thousand (8,288) men liked the female profiles, compared to just 532 women who liked the male profiles.  Although men on Tinder swiped right on hundreds of female profiles, fewer than 1% of women reciprocated that liking.

Few Women Actually On Ashley Madison

Investigative research revealed that 99% of female profiles on Ashley Madison were fake.  In reality, although there were 20 million men actively using the cheating site, only 1,492 women, less than 1% of the total user base, actively used the site.

Examples of Female Choosiness

Buss shares the story of a female friend who tried online dating.  She was described as a successful, intelligent, and attractive academic, no doubt with high mate value. She received more than 500 responses in two weeks.  However, after the end of her exhaustive screening process, she sent only one reply out of the 500.   And after a coffee date with him, “she concluded he did not exceed threshold.”  Another woman told Buss that she used Tinder and swiped right on less than .8 % of the men she saw and met only .6 % of that group, resulting in a .005 % of the total men she saw.

Attraction Disparity – the Pernicious Underbelly of the Deficit

The choosiness and caution demonstrated by women as compared to men are reiterated in Buss’s new book:  When Men Behave Badly.  Buss found that men, on average, find women more attractive than women find men attractive.  The difference is BIG!

In a study, men rated women’s attractiveness along a bell curve.  Sixty (60) percent of the women were rated by men as “average” to “very attractive.”  The women rated only 17% of the men from “average” to “attractive.”  Women rated 58% of the men as below threshold or unattractive.  Ouch.

Eons of Sexual Selection Demonstrate the Disparity

The attraction disparity is demonstrated by eons of sexual selection for the alpha male and men’s behavioral co-evolution to acquire hierarchal power and social status to be that alpha male.  Attraction disparity gives women the upper hand in the sexual marketplace.

Men Lower Their Standards

Contributing to the attractive threshold gap is men’s willingness to lower their standards for casual sexual encounters.  Men are willing to date down when it comes to sex.

Supply and Demand Forces in the Mating Marketplace

In the human mating economy, men primarily sell, and women mostly buy; this is the predominant evolutionary dynamic. Thus, the buyer (female chooser) significantly controls the marketplace.

All mate selection behaviors are driven by supply and demand forces for sexual access to the best or highest-mate-value mates.  Fertile (and consensually most “beautiful”) women are in great demand, and the supply of men interested in them creates significant differences in behavioral dynamics – leading to a multitude of male initiation strategies, misreading of signals by women (male “over-perception bias”), and a reproductive variance curve.

Most Men Want the Same Women

Simply said, roughly 80% of men compete for 20% or less of the same (highest mate value) women in the overall mating economy.  Interested men are plentiful in this market (as driven by biological-hormonal imperatives), and receptive women are scarce.   Supply and demand forces skew odds in favor of female choice and dramatically work against the odds of a man being chosen.

Pursuer and Pursued “Are Not” The Same People

The 180% difference between a buyer and a seller in the mating-sexual economy is dramatic in its psychological impact.   It affects motivation, the origination of desire, perceptions of risk and safety, and ultimately the experience of sexual scarcity or abundance.

The psychology (lived experience) of the sexual initiator and pursuer is vastly different than the psychology of the one pursued and the one who chooses among her pursuers.  This general difference between men and women cannot be overstated. (See “We Are Not the Same People” in Appendix)

Mate Value is the “Currency” of the Deficit

Mate value (and assessed mate value trajectory of men) rules the marketplace.  Men with resources, status, and larger physical attributes (especially height) have greater mate value than men who do not.  Women’s mate value is primarily determined by physical characteristics of beauty, waist-to-hip ratio, and other signals of fertility.  Mate value drives the initial mate selection process.  Mate value includes elements of character and other preferred traits as courtship continues into the period of relationship maintenance.   But human sexuality is primarily designed to choose and access sexual partners, not keep them over time.

“In or Out of Your League”

It is no accident that we commonly rate ourselves and others on a “1-10” point scale.  While there is a tendency for both sexes to over-rate vs. under-rate themselves, we generally know if our desired partner is “in or out of our league.”   If we are a “7,” we strive to bargain successfully for a “7-9.”   Men, especially, who know they are seen as a “5” or below, lust hopelessly after unattainable women who are a “9” or “10.”  This understandable tendency is biologically, not rationally inspired.  There is painful despondency for both sexes related to the invisibility of low mate value.

Reproductive Variance – There Has Always Been a Male Sexual Deficit

“Reproductive variance” refers to the variability of reproductive success for human males and females.  More women have sex and reproduce in the general population than do men, as shown by genetic studies.  For men, the difference between men who did not reproduce (the have-nots) and the men who reproduced prolifically (the haves) is very wide.   For women, there is much less variance; most women reproduce, and the number of children they have is constrained by their biology.

Most Men are Losers in the Mating Game

DNA studies by Jason Wilder and colleagues revealed that approximately 80% of women in human history have reproduced compared to about 40% of men.  The human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

Male Sexual Deficit and Female Choice

The male sexual deficit is an expected “collateral damage” of female preferential mate choice.   Men operate as best they can within this power imbalance, and women use their “erotic capital” (a term coined by Hakim, see Appendix) to achieve their mating objectives.

Less Deficit On Campus

There are now fewer men than women on U.S. college campuses.  That gives those men a sex-ratio advantage and works against a pervasive male sexual deficit.  A sexual deficit remains for the male “losers” of mate competition on college campuses, but some men are getting laid right now that might not have 10 to 15 years ago.

Misperceptions About Mate Value – An Artifact of the Deficit

People differ profoundly in how desirable or valued they are on the mating market.  Differences in desirability create havoc in at least two fundamental ways, according to Buss.  The first centers around misperceptions.  Although both men and women can err in their self-perceived mate value, research shows that men are more likely than women to be overconfident in a variety of domains.

Men experience higher self-esteem than women – a sex difference that emerges at puberty. Men have higher estimates than women of their physical attractiveness.  Consequently, men are more likely to err in overestimating their desirability on the mating market.

Some Men Are Dumb and Dumber

                                    “So you are telling me there is a chance?”  Lloyd, Dumb and Dumber

In the movie Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd (Jim Carey) asks Mary (who is comically out of his league), “so what are my chances?  “Not good,” she says.  “You mean not good like one in a hundred,” Llyod optimistically inquires. “No, not good like one out of a million,” Mary concedes. Nevertheless, Lloyd’s optimism is undeterred.  He thinks he has a chance.

The over-perception bias among men – a belief that women may be interested in them, is a much-studied tenet of mate selection and is related to error management theory.  It is better to lose a potential mating opportunity with a direct pursuit (a false positive) than lose an opportunity by not trying (a false negative).

Everybody Wants the Best Deal in the Mating Market

According to researchers Bruch and Newman (2018), both sexes pursue partners in the mating market who are 25% more desirable than they are.  One of Buss’s colleagues asked, “why am I being pestered by men I don’t care about, but the men I am genuinely attracted to seem to show so little interest in me?”  Buss told his colleague that she is an “8” chasing after “10s” but being pursued by “6s.”

Cause #4 of the Deficit:  Women Do Not Want the “Kind of Sex” Being Offered

Repetitious, unimaginative sex by a long-term partner may produce relative boredom, disinterest, and reduced sexual activity by women.  See post Why Women Are Bored in Monogamous Relationships for discussion of this cause of the male sexual deficit.

Cause # 5 of the Deficit:  Female Sexual Fluidity is Growing

Female sexual fluidity is growing. There is an increase in the percentage of women who identify as lesbian or bi-sexual in practice.   Women are turning away from men for romance and connection; they prefer the company of women for a variety of socio-cultural reasons (e.g., memes of “toxic masculinity and the “me-too” movement).

Liberal Generation Zs – An Increasingly Fluid Population

A recent Gallup poll found one in six (15.9%) Generation Z adults (ages 18-23) identify as LGBTQ.  LGBTQ identification is lower in each older generation, including 2% or less of respondents born before 1965.  Young people who are politically liberal identify as LGBTQ at astronomical rates.  Gallup found nearly thirty-one percent (30.7) percent of Gen Z liberal adults identified as LGBTQ.

This phenomenon and female sexual fluidity is an extremely important topic for one or more future posts on this site.

Buss Disputes Male Sexual Deficit as Source of Sexual Coercion

Buss disputes that the male sexual deficit is the primary source of sexual coercion – an idea called the “male deprivation hypothesis” studied by evolutionary psychologists. Buss shares his research findings and a prolific body of research in his new book When Men Behave Badly.  Sexual coercion is more often perpetrated by high-status males than by low-status males suffering from a sexual deficit. (Buss disagrees with Hakim’s assertions on this point.)

Buss would agree that the male sexual deficit is a contributing cause of infidelity and the demand for commercial sex services because it triggers the powerful motivation by men for sexual variety.  From zero sex partners in a “dead bedroom” marriage to one or more partners outside of that marriage is a significant improvement in sexual variety.

But Male Violence and Sexual Deficit May be Linked

There is compelling evidence that overall male aggression, violence by so-called “incels” (involuntary celibate men), and mass shootings are linked to a lack of sexual relationships, male loneliness, and a condition of low status. Low status is perhaps the most salient, but all three are related.  This topic deserves separate treatment in this space and will be done along with a review of Buss’s books When Men Behave Badly and The Murderer Next Door.  Suffice to say, Hakim and evolutionary psychologists may agree on the general point about violence and the male sexual deficit.

Future Trends of the Male Sex Deficit

According to Hakim, several factors suggest that the male sex deficit will not disappear and might even grow in the 21st century:

  • A decline in the frequency of sexual intercourse (inside and outside marriage) in Britain, the USA, Germany, Finland, Japan and other countries.
  • Women’s increasing economic independence allows them to withdraw from sexual markets and relationships that they perceive to offer unfair bargains, especially if they do not want children.
  • Changes in national sex ratios towards a numerical surplus of men help women re-set the rules in developed societies. (I am dismissive of the influence of more males as an important driver of the male sexual deficit. There would be a deficit even if the sexes were equal in numbers.  Female preferential choice primarily determines the deficit.)
Conclusions

According to Catherine Hakim, the male sexual deficit in developed societies is an indisputable, universal social fact of growing importance.  The research appears to support this conclusion.

Evolutionary psychologists believe the male sexual deficit is predicted by female preferential choice in mate selection.  Also, the sexual deficit among heterosexual men helps explain why men are the principal customers for commercial sexual entertainment, most likely to have affairs, and engage in some forms of violence.

References

Anderson, E. (2012).  The Monogamy Gap:  Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating.

Baumeister, R. (2000). “Gender differences in erotic plasticity: The female sex drive as socially flexible and responsive.”  Psychological Bulletin 126 (3): 347-374.

Baumeister, R. (2004). “Gender and erotic plasticity: Sociocultural influences on the sex drive.”  Sexual and Relationship Therapy. 19: 133-139.

Bruch, E.E. and Newman,  M.E.J. “Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets.”  Science Advances, 4, no. 8 (2018).

Donnelly, D; (1993).  “Sexually inactive marriages;” The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 30, Issue 2.

Kontula, O. (2009). “Between Sexual Desire and Reality: The Evolution of Sex in Finland.” Population Research Institute, Helsinki.

Meana, M. (2010). “Elucidating a women’s (hetero) sexual desire: definitional challenges and content expansion.”  Journal of Sex Research,  47 (2-3): 104-122.

Mustanski, B. (2011)  “How often do men and women think about sex?”  Psychology Today, December 6.

Peplau, LA. (2003). “Human Sexuality: How do men and women differ?” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (2): 37-40.

Schmitt, D.P.  “Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands.”  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, no. 1 (2003).

Appendix

Kontula’s 12 Measures of Sexual Desire

  1. thoughts, fantasies, and spontaneous arousal
  2. desired frequency of sex
  3. desired number of sexual partners
  4. frequency of masturbation
  5. continuous willingness to engage in sex
  6. the emergence of sexual desire in youth
  7. seeking out experiences and initiating them
  8. desiring a variety of experiences
  9. investing resources for sex
  10. attitudes favorable to sexuality
  11. infrequent absence of sexual desire
  12. self-assessed degree of desire

Catherine Hakim

Catherine Hakim is a British sociologist who specializes in women’s employment and women’s issues.  She is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Civil Society (Civitas). She has published over 100 articles in academic journals and over a dozen textbooks and research monographs. 

Hakim is best known for her criticisms of many feminist assumptions about women’s employment.  Her “preference theory” seeks to provide an empirically based predictive explanation for the differentiated choices women make between paid productive work and unpaid “reproductive” work in affluent modern societies.

Hakim defines “erotic capital” as an individual’s beauty, sexual attractiveness, enhanced social integration, liveliness, social presentation, sexuality, and fertility that can provide opportunities to advance in life. Hakim says erotic capital plays a subconscious role in daily life decisions, such as career offerings, enrichment opportunities, and social networking.    Hakim asserts that current dating apps and subsequent decisions for marriage are driven by a woman’s erotic capital and a man’s economic capital.   (I have named this the erotic-economic bargain.)

David Buss

David Buss is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is the author of leading textbooks on evolutionary psychology,  The Evolution of Desire, The Dangerous Passion, The Murderer Next Door, and Why Women Have Sex, co-authored with Cindy Meson.  His most recent book is When Men Behave Badly – The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault.  Buss has written for multiple publications and received numerous awards, including designation as one of the fifty most influential psychologists in the world.

We Are Not the Same People
(Steven Fearing, 2010)

You are the people of the Adored

I am the people of the Longing. 

We are not the same kind of people at all.

You are the people who receive the desire;

I am the people who feel the desire like a wound in my body. 

You are the people who receive “gifts”.

I am the people who fight other men in the material world so that gifts may be given. 

You are the people (who are not fat or ugly) who live in the act of choosing.  I am of the people who hope to be chosen.

You are of the people who choose when you want love and sex.

I am of the people who wait with longing to be chosen.

You are the people who enjoy the adoration of 50 offers.

I am of the people who are mostly lost, one among the 49 others.

You are the people who receive the gifts and the offers with no risk.

I am of the people who must constantly risk and suffer the feedback of a hundred offers avoided, discounted, or rebuked.

You are of the people who speak of no jealousy because you rarely lose love to another person who was chosen instead, and because 50 more offers to you await your response.

I am of the people who have lost you to another person many times.  That wound in my heart is a gaping, angry hole.

Sometimes the people of the longing try to fill the hole with God, with service, with drugs, or a belief in the possibility of a transformed world. The people of the longing try to fill the hole with meaning.  It rarely works to stop the longing. 

You are the people of the adored.  I am the people of the longing. 

We are not the same people.

 

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Evolutionary Science and Our Political Divide: The Root of It – Part 1

Evolutionary Science and Our Political Divide: The Root of It – Part 1

by | Oct 27, 2020 | Biological Difference, Evolutionary Science and Our Political Divide, Gender Politics, Sexuality

Male competition for mates and sex differences are first cause in human political affairs.

Since the advent of agriculture in human societies, nearly all impulses for male power and authoritarianism, and expressions of male dominance in a social hierarchy, have ultimately been the result of men competing for sexual access to women. All disputes over territory and wars between nations have their roots in out-group competition and the rewards of that competition for increasing mating opportunities. All causes of the unequal distribution of resources throughout all of human history are linked causally to the male reproductive strategy.

All impulses to check male authoritarianism come from men and women who lack resources and equality and exist at the lower end of a social hierarchy. Women primarily lead the charge to check the impulses of authoritarian men unless they want to mate with them. Liberal policies that strive to equitably distribute resources are more frequently backed by women.

Conservatives, and especially conservative men with power, are mostly interested in pursuing and maintaining male dominance and resist policies and governmental rules that change the status quo. Conservatives are most aligned with male needs and a male mating strategy. Liberals policies are more linked to a female mating strategy which focuses on the caretaking of children and other human beings.

Evolutionary Politics

The application of evolutionary science to our current political environment is quite revealing and instructive. In Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide (2019), Hector Garcia explores how evolutionary adaptations explain and predict our Left-Right political divide and a litany of issues. This post (and the one to follow) relies heavily on Garcia’s insights and the book’s 533 references of scholarship covering a broad range of disciplines.

Garcia applies the evolutionary lens to conservatism versus liberalism, equality versus hierarchy, and “big ape” authoritarianism; he reveals the “politics” of human mating strategies as a story of resource acquisition, sexual control, and the power of tribes. The underbelly of our political instincts has deep ancestral roots.

Planting and Staying Put Changed Everything

The study of human evolution shows that for most of our existence as a species, individual and community interests were in rough equilibrium. Our forging ancestors sought status, like all primates, but they generally acquired the highest status by doing things that benefited the group. Hunter-gatherers kept greed in check by employing guilt and shame among the group. Cooperation was essential to survival. Before agriculture, there were restraints on competition and evidence of coordination inside of the tribe.

With the advent of agriculture and civilization, a split began to occur. Individuals could acquire hitherto unimaginable status by accumulating wealth and power – often at the expense of family and community. Once agriculture drove out foraging, the need to cooperate was no longer essential to survival. It became every man for himself, except competition between tribes (out-groups) led to the development of coalitions and subsequent war between tribes and nations.

Size of the Tribe and Food Storage

Hunter-gatherer “tribes” tended to range in size from an extended family to a larger band of no more than about 100 people. Tribe-size groups were easier to regulate from within because hunter-gatherers could not store vast amounts of food to leverage their power base; there were limits to how much wealth and influence they could acquire. But when humans began to master agriculture, things changed drastically. Men used this power to achieve reproductive success in a zero-sum game. Zero-sum games are the root of inequality.

The Split

In the United States, the split between individual interests and community interests has become embedded in two ideologies: conservativism and liberalism. Conservatives promote individual freedom and self-reliance, primarily defined as freedom from government. Liberals promote fairness and equality and freedom from injustices suffered by a large segment of the community. In a later post, I will explain the foundations of morality that have shaped these positions. It is actually more complex than “individual vs. community,” but self-interest and the common good exist in a state of tension in most political ideologies. Understanding the moral foundations of conservatives and liberals is the only way for us to “listen to learn” from one another.

“Daddy Party” and “Mommy Party”

Republicans protect us with strong national defense; Democrats nourish us with Social Security and Medicare. Republicans worry about our business affairs. Democrats look after our health, nutrition, and welfare. It’s the traditional American family. “Daddy” locks the door at night and brings home the bacon. “Mommy” worries when the kids are sick and makes sure each one gets treated fairly.  ~ Chris Mathews (1991).

Gender/Sex and Political Affiliations

The existence of a fundamental gender gap in American political party affiliation has been reported for years. In 2009, Gallop concluded their survey analysis with this: “The fact that the gender gap persists not only across age groups, but within major racial, ethnic, and marital-status groups, reinforces the conclusion that a gender difference in political orientation is a fundamental part of today’s American political and social scene.”

In 2020, the gender gap has widened even more. The New York Times/Sienna College poll of July 16, 2020, found that women favored Biden by 22 points. White women with a college degree favored Biden by 39 points. The Wall Street Journal poll in August of 2019 found that white/non-college men favored Trump by 45 points, 67-22 percent.

“Barring a giant polling error, the 2020 election will witness the largest gender gap in partisan preference since women gained the franchise” (New York Intelligencer, “Men and Women Have Never Been More Politically Divided,” October 19, 2020).

Stereotypes and Political Affiliation

Political scientist Nicolas Winter looked at US survey data from the American National Election Study from 1972 to 2004 and that found voters overwhelming used more masculine stereotypes to describe GOP candidates and more feminine characteristics to describe Democrats.

In another study (2006), political scientist Monika McDermott administered the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) to 780 Americans, along with a series of questions about their political beliefs and behavior. The BSRI is one of the most widely used instruments to assess gendered psychology. For feminine traits, the BSRI asks participants to rate how much the following descriptors apply to him or her: “understanding, sympathetic, warm, loves children, compassionate, gentle, eager to soothe hurt feelings, affectionate, sensitive to the needs of others, and tender.” Masculine traits were described as “willingness to take risks, forceful, strong personality, assertive, independent, leadership ability, aggressive, dominant, willing to take a stand, and defends own beliefs.”

McDermott found that men and women who scored high on femininity were significantly more likely to identify as Democrat, and men and women who scored high on masculinity were more likely to identify as Republican.

Why Do Sex-Based Partisan Differences Exist?

Political partisanship arises from sex-based approaches to perpetuating our genes. Conservatism is a male-centric strategy shaped by the struggle for dominance in male competitions within-and-between groups, while liberalism is a female-centric strategy derived from the protracted demands of rearing human offspring.

Not all men enact a conservative strategy, nor do all women enact a liberal strategy. But we do see sex-based leanings — two bell curves, one tilting toward the political right for men, and one tilting to the left for women, with significant overlap between the curves.

Partisan Politics and Reproductive Dominance

The tribalistic flavor (us vs. them) of political conservatism, with its emphasis on female sexual control and hawkish territorial nature, is rooted in male mate competition – the ageless biological struggle for reproductive dominance. Male competition for women turns out to be the core driving force behind political issues.

The winner-take-all mentality of conservative economic policy is based on male competition for mates. War is team-based male-mate competition. The coalitionary psychology of men was forged by the risk of being annihilated by the outside tribe – and the potential gains of taking over the rival tribes’ territory, resources, and women. Militaristic logic embedded in that psychology maps squarely onto the hallmark values of political conservatism. It is from the context of violent male mate competition and its most heightened expression, war, that we are able to most fully understand the masculine tenor of conservative political psychology.

Roots of Liberalism

The roots of liberalism have arisen from the timeless effort to rein in dominant males and to prevent them from monopolizing resources and impinging on the evolutionary fitness of those with less power. Liberalism is based on the prodigious human task of raising children, a critical survival enterprise championed by women and provisioned by the “Mommy” parties of the world.

Big Five Personality Traits

Social scientists have developed various models for understanding human personality, the most widely researched of which is known as the “Big Five.” The Big Five personality traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Cross-cultural studies strongly suggest that Big Five patterns of interacting with the world are genetically based universals. Human personality traits, especially openness to experience, reliably correlated to political orientation.

Liberal Openness

Openness to experience is a hallmark of the liberal political orientation. This personality dimension reflects not only an openness to new things, policies, and programs, but also to other people. Liberals demonstrate xenophilia, an attraction to new cultures, and even outsiders. High openness is also related to sensation-seeking and a general appreciation for novelty and adventure. There is a moderate correlation of openness to the trait of extroversion – the tendency to be talkative and seek social interaction.

One large study (Gerber et al., 2010) of over twelve thousand Americans examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of core social and economic values, as well as self-reported political ideology (a five-point scale ranging from very liberal to very conservative). The authors found that higher openness was associated with greater liberalism across all three measures of orientation.

Conservatives Fear Disease and Outsiders

Could fear of disease translate into fear of outsiders and political conservatism? Research has shown that individuals who have a higher perceived threat of disease show more ethnocentrism, greater xenophobic attitudes toward foreigners, and increased willingness to stigmatize socially marginalized groups. This is particularly ironic in the time off Covid-19 but will make sense in the context of conservative “moral foundations” described in a future post in this series.

Xenophobia: Membership Has its Privileges

Xenophobia is a dislike of outsiders and a corresponding preference for in-group members and values. This is not just about “outside” people and their physical differences, but also about differences related to language, customs, dress, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, political party, and even sports teams. This preference often manifests as a sense of patriotism and loyalty. Conservative political ideology predicts prejudice against an outside group. If xenophobia reflects an adaptation that helped our ancestors avoid contagious diseases from outsiders, we would expect to see xenophobia in modern times and conservatives exhibiting more fear of contagion.

Patrilocality and Human Warfare

Historically, humans have been mostly patrilocal – that is, women often left their natal group (i.e. more adapted to outsiders) whereas men stayed put with their male relatives. The resulting concentration of male blood relatives encouraged strong, trusting, and cooperative male bonds based on shared genes. The love and trust that related men have for one another have had profound implications for the human condition across time. Higher relatedness gave men greater confidence in risky cooperative enterprises, such as war. Patrilocality in human groups is associated with more frequent warfare.

Human Males Are Like Chimpanzees

Primatologists Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson write that among four thousand mammals, only chimpanzees and humans follow this pattern of patrilocality, accompanied by “a system of intense, male-initiated territorial aggression, including lethal raiding into neighboring communities in search of vulnerable enemies to attack and kill.” Chimpanzee males are extremely hostile to outside males, thus males rarely transfer between groups. Any male attempting to transfer would be killed by the males of the out-group. By contrast, 50-90 percent of female chimpanzees transfer to other groups to breed once they reach sexual maturity. Whereas male transfers are seen as sexual competitors carrying foreign genes, females are welcomed as potential mating partners. (Again, the female-centric roots of xenophilia.)

Xenophobia and Band of Brothers

Thus, xenophobia is concentrated among men and has caused real dangers for them. Most of the world’s perpetrators of violence are men, but most of its victims are also men. The United Nations recently found that globally, 80 percent of homicide victims are men.

If ancestral men could not leave their group for fear of death, then turning inward to their band of brothers, remaining xenophobic toward outsiders, and favoring dominance over other groups was evolutionarily sensible. The over-representation of men among conservatives and the preponderance of male interests embedded in conservative ideologies reflect these ancient selection pressures on men. (I will come back to xenophobia in post #2 of this series.)

Conservatives Are “Disgusted”

Research consistently finds a higher disgust sensitivity related to self-placement on the Left-Right spectrum. One study of 31,045 men and women from 121 countries found that those who self-rated as conservative showed significantly higher disgust sensitivity than those who self-rated as liberal.

Disgust sensitivity (as well as fear of disease) can translate into fear of outsiders. Researchers found that those with higher disgust sensitivity were more likely to see immigrants and foreign ethnic groups as less than human, and scored higher on measures of political conservatism, social dominance orientation, and right-wing authoritarianism. Research in this area links the fear of pathogens to disapproval of nonnormative sexual behaviors, which suggests that our sexual morality is rooted in adaptations designed to help us survive reproduction in a world filled with pathogens. (I will address social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism more in-depth in the next post.)

Conservatism, Conscientiousness, and Closed Systems

Conscientiousness (a Big Five personality trait) is consistently associated with political conservatism. Conscientiousness relates to orderliness and control of one’s environment. According to a study by Alain Van Heil and colleagues reported in the Journal of Personality, a preference for closed systems is related to cognitive rigidity, or lower cognitive complexity – the ability to grasp alternative perspectives or dimensions and synthesize those varying perspectives into a cohesive framework. An example offered by Garcia: saying “All immigrants are criminals,” instead of reasoning, “Some immigrants my commit crimes, but many do not, and there are a variety of factors that may lead to such behaviors” (p. 60).

Conservatives Are More Rule-oriented

Related to conscientiousness, conservatives in the US score higher than liberals on measures of following rules. This is linked to the conservative value of traditionalism and dedication to the existing way of doing things – a resistance to social change. Conservatives tend to favor harsher punishment for rule-breakers, such as the death penalty and longer prison sentences.

Political Affiliation and the Autistic “Male” Brain

One theory that might explain the conservative, male-centric personality is proffered by British developmental psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. He argues that autism is an extreme variant of the male brain. Autism is over-represented by males in a 10-1 ratio. Baron-Cohen also describes how men prefer “closed systems” that are predictable, factual, rule-based, knowable, and to some extent, controllable. Again, these ways of processing information are linked more reliably with the “conscientiousness” of conservatism and in opposition to the “openness to experience” of political liberals.

Theory of Mind

Important differences between females and males that Baron-Cohen uses to explain autism are glaringly present between liberals and conservatives. Being able to read the mind of another human (thoughts, emotions, intentions) is called theory of mind (ToM). The inability to read minds is one of the hallmarks of autism. There is much evidence that women outperform men on theory of mind (ToM) tasks and are better at understanding the minds of others.

Brain Morphology and Theory of Mind

The brains of men and women (morphology and function) exhibit vastly more similarities than differences. Even so, existing differences have meaningful implications for our political psychology.

While few studies to date have measured the difference in the theory of mind between liberal and conservatives, two neuroimaging studies give us some interesting clues. One study measured gray-matter volume and found those self-identified as liberal exhibited greater volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region implicated in the theory of mind and feeling the pain of others. Conservatives had greater brain volume in the amygdala — the fear center of the brain.

Another study examined MRIs of Republicans and Democrats. Republicans showed greater activation in the amygdala, and Democrats had more activation in the cingulate insula, a brain region also activated in theory of mind tasks. Mindreading differences between liberals and conservatives may be a function of differences in brain structure.

Women and Liberals Show More Empathy

Any research finding of difference between women and men will have a rough correlation to differences between liberals and conservatives, respectively. For instance, women score higher on questionnaires that measure empathy. Girls from one year of age show more empathy to others’ suffering than do boys. Liberals show more signs of distress about violence and suffering than conservatives and tend to score higher on empathy measures.

Language, Gender, and Political Affiliation

Women have better language skills. A Gallup poll (2001) found that those who identified as being liberal were more likely to be bilingual than moderates or conservatives. Other studies show that liberals score higher than conservatives on verbal ability and vocabulary tests. (And girls develop vocabularies faster than boys.) Lower verbal ability has also been associated with right-wing authoritarianism and a high social dominance orientation. (I would gladly supply the eight studies behind this section upon request.)

Fairness and Turn-taking

Females are generally more concerned with fairness and males are more concerned with dominance hierarchies. These tendencies are observed early. One study found that girls exhibited twenty times more turn-taking than boys and boys exhibited competitive behaviors fifty times more than girls. Boys often form dominance hierarchies. Girls, on the other hand, spend more energy trying to solve differences using politeness, tact, and diplomacy. Boys are more incline to intra-group and intergroup dominance. Boys don’t let losers forget who won. Girls more often try to make the players feel equal and deemphasize who won. Intergroup dominance among male competitors continues into adulthood and is seen everywhere from professional sports teams to street gangs to militaries.

Primacy of Fairness for Liberals

In my next post, I will expound at length about the moral foundations of liberalism and conservativism. Suffice to say now, the concept of fairness (meaning equality) is a sacred value for liberals. In one large international study (34,476 subjects) conducted by Jesse Graham, liberals agreed to such statements as “when the government makes laws, the number one principle should be ensuring that everyone is treated fairly.” Graham found that fairness concerns are reliably higher among those identifying as liberals.

Conservatives and Social Hierarchy

Conservatives are more comfortable with social hierarchies, tend to oppose policies such as affirmative action, and participate little in efforts to redirect social wealth. Research has found that conservatives score higher on the Social Dominance Orientation scale (SDO). In my next post, I will explore and assert the benefits of a conservative framework that are somewhat independent of their comfort with social hierarchies.

“Conservatives” Helped Our Ancestors Survive – a Prologue to Moral Foundations

There is a significant relationship between conservatism, masculinity, physical stature, spatial abilities, and many other adaptations that are geared for using violence to survive a harsh, ancestral environment. There is evidence that less empathy among men has fitness benefits. A lack of empathy has utility in male mate competition and for killing in warfare. Natural selection doesn’t care what traits get passed on. Sometimes the advantage can involve empathy, and at other times, suppressing it. It is not difficult to imagine how suppressing empathy would help in the heat of battle. In a similar vein, intolerance for ambiguity would be useful in dangerous environments such as combat. When the stakes are life and death, it makes more sense to think in black and white terms.

Conclusion of Post #1 — The Roots of Our Political Divide

The differences found between men and women related to cognition, affect, language, social behavior, and brain morphology, strongly mirror the same differences between liberals and conservatives and are directly correlated to male and female mating strategies. “Stereotypes about liberalism having a feminine quality and conservatism a masculine one, have empirical backing and are rooted in our neuropsychology, which was shaped by selective pressures of the natural and social environments of our ancestors. In turn, our evolved political orientations reflect those pressures. While there have been many explanations for what drives our political stances, few have as much explanatory power as the strategies we employ to survive and reproduce” (Sex, Power and Partisanship. p.64-65).

Stayed tuned for Post #2 in this Series, the Roots of Our Political Divide

In the next post (#2 of “Roots”), I will address social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism, the politics of sexual control, and much more. After that, I will unveil the brilliant work of Jonathan Haidt on the moral foundations of liberalism, conservativism, and libertarianism, and address related issues of motivated reasoning in the post-objectivity era.

References

Gerber, A. et al., (2010). “Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships across Issue Domains and Political Contexts,” American Political Science Review, 104.

Graham, J. et al., (2011). “Mapping the Moral Domain,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101.

Kanai, R. et al., (2016). “Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults,” Current Biology 21, no. 8.

McCue, C. & Gopoian, D., (2000). “Dispositional Empathy and the Political Gender Gap,” Women & Politics, 21, No. 2.

McDermott, M., (2016). Masculinity, Femininity, and American Political Behavior.

Schreiber, D. et al. (2013). “Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 2.

Van Heil et al., (2010). “The Relationship between Social-Cultural Attitudes and Behavioral Measures of Cognitive Style: A Meta-Analytic Integration of Studie,” Journal of Personality 78, no. 6.

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Long-term and Short-term Mating Strategies: Domain #2 of Male-Female Difference

Long-term and Short-term Mating Strategies: Domain #2 of Male-Female Difference

by | Sep 22, 2020 | Biological Difference, Dating & Mating Economy, Sexuality

“…to an extraordinary degree, the predilections of the investing sex —females, determine the direction in which the species will evolve. For it is the female who is the ultimate arbiter of when she mates and how often and with whom.” ~Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Women That Never Evolved, 1981

Would You Go to Bed With Me?

In a study on a college campus, confederate men walked up to women, and confederate women walked up to men and said:

“Hi, I’ve been noticing you around town lately and I find you very attractive.”

Then they (eventually) asked:

“Would you go to bed with me tonight?”

All the women said “no,” and were offended, insulted, and just puzzled by the request to go to bed.

Seventy-five percent of the men said “yes.” Many of the men who declined the offer were apologetic, citing previous commitments.

This is an often-cited series of experiments in social and evolutionary psychology conducted by Russell Clark & Elaine Hatfield. These experiments were replicated in France with the same results.

How Receptive are Men versus Women to Sexual Invitations?

In a study by Buss and Schmitt (1993), college men and women rated how likely they were to consent to sex with someone they viewed as desirable if they had known them for only an hour, a day, a week, a month, six months, a year, two years, or five years. Both men and women said they would probably have sex after knowing a desirable potential mate for five years. At every shorter interval, men exceeded women in the reported likelihood of having sex. After knowing someone for only one week, men were positive about consenting to sex.

Women Unlikely to Consent to Sex

Women, in sharp contrast, were highly unlikely to consent to sex. Men were only slightly disinclined to having sex with someone they had known for only one hour; for women, sex after one hour was a virtual impossibility.

Long and Short-term Mating Strategies — Differences Between Men and Women

The predominant theory in evolutionary psychology suggests humans have both long-term and short-term mating strategies. These studies unmask the differences between men and women in their mating strategies.

Second Domain of Differences in Sexual Psychology and Response

This is the second in a series of posts that explain the domains (see Appendix) of difference between men and women in their sexual psychology and response. Tendencies related to short and long-term mating strategies apply to the general population of male and female heterosexuals but do not predict the unique sexuality of a particular man or women. (See introduction to the series: Male-Female Differences in Sexual Psychology and Response.)

This post will explore the following differences:

  1. General psychological factors related to mating strategies
  2. Objectives, costs, and benefits of short-term and long-term mating strategies for men and women
  3. Relative importance of trait preferences for each strategy along three dimensions: physical attractiveness, resources, and character, illustrated by Venn diagrams.
At-a-Glance Summary of this Post
  •  A long-term mating strategy is essentially rooted in commitment and monogamy.
  • A short-term mating strategy allows or prefers casual sex with more than one partner.
  • Women’s predominant mating strategy is long-term vs. short-term by a wide margin.
  • Men’s predominant mating strategy is short-term but their long-term strategy is almost equal for reasons also tied to evolutionary benefits.
  • The human mating economy is primarily fueled (implicitly) by the intersection of men’s short-term mating strategy and women’s long-term mating strategy.
  • Men’s short-term mating strategy is emboldened by their perceived mate value.
  • Women’s short-term strategy is correlated with low self-esteem.
  • Lower mate value men benefit most from a long-term strategy.
  • High mate value women (commonly with high self-esteem) choose a long-term strategy and benefit most from that strategy.
  • Men have lower standards for short-term mates, requiring almost no traits other than physical attractiveness.
  • Women’s short-term strategy emphasizes physical stature of the man, with some concern for resources and character.
  • Women’s short-term strategy, while secondary, reveals complex motivations and is used to secure resources, access better genes, switch mates, and sometimes secure a long-term partner.
  • Men’s short-term strategy gives great emphasis to physical attractiveness, has a small concern for character, and no concern for resources.
  • Men’s long-term mating strategy has character requirements, some resource considerations, and an emphasis on physical attractiveness.
  • Women’s long-term strategy has a great need for resources and character, with physical attractiveness prioritized in a third position. Resources and character are often subject to trade-offs in mate selection.
  • Long-term and short-term mating strategies operate as concurrent functions (like dual processing switches) sensitive to context and environmental conditions.
  • Female choice in mate selection is the most powerful force on the planet – determining the mating strategies of both sexes.
General Sex Differences in Long-term and Short-term Mating Strategies

The above studies underscore several differences in male-female sexual psychology and response, as noted in: Dynamics in the Mating Economy: Domain #1 of Male-Female Difference.

  • Women have the psychology of choice and an abundance of sexual attention during their reproductive years; men mostly do not have choice or an abundance of mating opportunities.
  • Men (mostly) have the psychology of sexual scarcity.
  • Women have the psychology of caution and fear — sexual inhibition and “brakes” on sexual activity and the experience of risk. Women fear being physically hurt, left to fend on their own with a child, or suffering reputational damage.
  • Women are prone to have regret or guilt about what they did in the sexual and mating realm.
  • Men are prone to have guilt and regret about what they did not do.
  • Men fear being humiliated and rejected.
  • Men are driven by a spontaneous, initiating sexual psychology (spontaneous desire) and women are characterized by a cautionary, “response desire.”

Mating Strategies Introduction

“Today’s dating scene has become a global uncontrolled experiment in competing mating strategies. Men and women are locked in a run-away arms race of male sexual escalation tactics vs. female commitment escalation tactics. Science-minded singles have a new self-consciousness as fitness displayers, mate choosers, gene replicators, and social primates.” ~ Evolutionary Psychologist, Geoffrey Miller (YouTube – 2019)

Long-term Mating Strategies

A long-term mating strategy for men involves attracting and securing a mate who will provide sexual fidelity. A long-term mating strategy for women seeks sexual fidelity and provision of resources and protection of children over time. Women have predominantly a long-term mating strategy (and sex “drive”) that most often seeks a single-sex partner who is committed to her and the potential offspring that might result from their mating. A women’s long-term strategy creates caution and selectivity in accepting male advances. The desired benefits of a woman’s long-term strategy influence male sexual access and thus much of male behavior. (See Mate Selection Science.)

Short-term Mating Strategies

A short-term mating strategy attempts to maximize immediate sexual access and sexual partners. Men have evolved with mostly a short-term-mating strategy (and sex “drive”) but also employ a long-term strategy for several evolutionary advantages. A man’s short-term mating strategy fuels desire for contact with women for any possible chance of a romantic or sexual encounter. Although much less predominant, a woman’s short-term mating strategy may include a complex set of motivations. (See Why Women Have Sex.)

Dual Processing Switches

Long-term and short-term strategies for men and women operate as concurrent functions sensitive to context and environmental conditions. They are not binary operations but more like dual processing switches with a range or “volume” on each at any moment in time. They may function in parallel like a thermostat, modulating the influence of other mode to keep a particular sexual personality in balance or at its “set” point. Sexual strategies by men and women are influenced by age and especially a woman’s fertility window.

Big Cojones — Evidence of Short-term mating

Evidence of short-term mating is seen by the size of human male testes; they are larger than the highly monogamous gorillas and orangutans, but smaller than the more promiscuous baboons, bonobos, and common chimpanzees. Bigger testes mean more sperm competition and more short-term mating.

Sperm Volume

Also, sperm volume increases related to the amount of time a couple has been apart since their last encounter. This increase in sperm insemination is precisely what is expected if humans had an ancestral history of casual sex and marital infidelity. The fact that men carry a physiological mechanism that elevates sperm count when their wives may have had opportunities to be unfaithful points to an evolutionary history in which humans had extramarital affairs at least some of the time.

 
“Collision” of Strategies

The human mating economy is primarily fueled (implicitly) by the intersection of men’s short-term mating strategy and women’s long-term mating strategy (See Human Mating Strategies). This “collision” of a man’s short-term mating strategy and a woman’s long-term mating strategy continues to shape gender-specific sexual behavior in modern times and causes more selectivity, caution, and different sexual responses by women as compared to men. Mating strategy “conflict” is resolved by accommodation and negotiation in a process of mate value sorting within the mating economy. It is highly dependent upon individual context. Desire is mitigated by costs, benefits, and availability for both sexes.

Diagram #1: “Collision” of Mating Strategies

venn diagram: collision_of_mating_strategies
Subset Strategies

Humans also have “subset” mating strategies or mating behaviors that intersect with basic long and short-term strategies, including serial mating and extra-pair copulation (EPC) – i.e. infidelity or consensual non-monogamy. Which mating strategy is adopted very much depends on individual mate value. Those higher in mate value can more easily implement their preferred mating strategy. In general, higher mate value women focus even more on a long-term strategy and higher mate value men may focus even more on a short-term strategy. Mating strategy can also be influenced by the sex ratio in the local mating pool and operation of social/cultural norms in the local environment.

Humans Employ Strategic Pluralism

Ultimately, what people want in a long-term mate can be quite different from what they want in a short-term mate. Humans employ “strategic pluralism” — a variety of strategies and tactics when it comes to mating. There are multiple routes to mating success.

Women’s Long-term Strategy

Women’s long-term mating is driven by genetic characteristics and interests of our species: internal fertilization, an extended period of gestation, prolonged infant dependence on mother’s milk, and the need for relatively “high” male parental investment compared to other primates. In addition to protection and a provision of resources, a woman’s long-term strategy seeks character traits that ensure stability and loyalty to her and her children over the long-term.

Trade-offs Between Resources and Character

What is often more salient in female mate selection and relationship satisfaction is the tension between the two preferences inside the female long-term strategy: resources and character. A woman’s long-term mating strategy often involves ambivalence and internal confusion related to her desire for a mate with resources and status, and her preference for loyalty, kindness, intelligence, and character traits for parenting. (See “trade-off boundary” on diagram below.) In America, resources usually win this game of mate selection preference, often with rationalization and denial about the lack of optimal character.

Diagram #2: Women’s Long-term Mating Strategy

Venn diagram: women's long-term mating strategy

Benefits of Women’s Long-term Mating Strategy

  • Significant resources from mate
  • Parental investment
Costs of Women’s Long-term Mating Strategy
  • Restricted sexual opportunity
  • Sexual obligation to mate

The benefits far outweigh the costs and have pre-eminent value in female mate selection — and thus overall power to influence sexual access and all domains of male behavior.

Women’s Short-term Strategy

Women are found to prefer features related to muscularity, strength, fitness, and masculinity – traits associated with symmetry, in their short-term mates. They also look for stable character traits (minimal levels of generosity and kindness) and a fair amount of resources. While the following gives considerable attention to the complexities of a woman’s short-term strategy, it bears repeating that this strategy is not dominant in female mate selection; it is secondary and selective.

Diagram #3: Women’s Short-term Mating Strategy

venn diagram: women's short-term mating strategy
Benefits of a Woman’s Short-term Strategy

Women have a short-term mating strategy that brings several benefits. According to David Buss (Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science of the Mind, 1999), there are three classes of benefits (among a few other hypotheses) that are supported by research:

  1. Resource acquisition. Women could engage in short-term mating for the immediate exchange of meat, goods, or services. Ancestral women may have also engaged in short-term mating in order to obscure the paternity of her offspring (“paternity confusion”) and elicit resources from more than one man. In addition, short-term mating may have brought protection (a resource) from other males when the primary mate was not present.
  2. Genetic benefits. Short-term mating potentially brings enhanced fertility. It may also bring superior or diverse genes from a high-status male, thus giving offspring a better chance of survival against environmental change. Also, the “sexy son” hypothesis suggests that male progeny of such men are very attractive to women in the next generation, thus securing a positive genetic legacy.
    • Physical Stature Equals Genetic Fitness. Women’s prioritization of physical features in short-term partners is consistent with strategic pluralism theory that says women may seek genetic fitness in short-term partners. (Gangestad and Simpson, 2000). According to this “good genes” theory (Thornhill and Gangestad, 1993), women are attracted to men who effectively advertise having genes that are resistant to local pathogens.
    • Ovulation and Short-term Mating Success. Research has found that women value such characteristics (including the scent of symmetrical men) even more around the time of ovulation. As a result, symmetrical and muscular men have greater short-term mating success compared to their relatively asymmetrical and non-muscular peers. They have more sexual partners and are more desirable as affair partner.
  3. Mate Switching Hypotheses. While preferences for traits associated with high-testosterone (muscularity, strength and facial symmetry) tend to support the hypothesis that women seek genetic benefits in short-term mating, recent research and DNA evidence has cast some doubt on this as a motivation and has drawn more attention to the “mate switching hypothesis.” (See Mate Switching Hypothesis).

David Buss (Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science of the Mind, 1999) identifies three reasons for a woman’s short-term mating strategy (infidelity or extra-pair copulations) that confirm a mate switching hypothesis.

Hit the Road Jack

One study found that extra-pair mating made it easier for a women to break up with their current partner — what Buss calls “mate expulsion.” David Buss and Cindy Meston report (Why Women Have Sex, 2009) that women have affairs to test the waters to see if there is someone better out there for them, in an attempt to “trade-up” for a better partner. Women have affairs if they think their relationship may be dissolving. And women cultivate “back-up mates.” As Buss likes to joke in quoting a female research participant, “men are like soup; you always want to have some on the back burner.”

From a Short “Flight” to a Long “Flight”

According to “sexual strategies theory” (Buss and Schmitt, 1993), by being open to short-term relationships, women can increase their options for long-term ones. They can solicit the interest of many men and use this wider net to evaluate long-term mates, or they may be able to turn short-term relationships into long-term ones. If women use short-term mating to assess or attain long-term relationships, they may prioritize the same traits in short-term partners that they prioritize in long-term partners.

More Clues to Mate Switching and Sex Differences

There are other clues to explain the infidelity (short-term mating strategy) of women as reported by Buss –clues that fortify a mate switching objective.

  1. Women who are sexually or emotionally unhappy have affairs. This is not true for men. Men do not often report marital unhappiness as a reason for an affair. According to Buss, men can be relatively happy in their marriage and still have affairs. The issue of emotional dissatisfaction appears to be specific to women.
  2. 70% of women become emotionally involved with or fall in love with their affair partner. In contrast, only about 30% of men do.
  3. As stated above, qualities desired by women in an affair partner are often similar to the qualities desired in a long-term mate. Women want character traits (e.g. kindness) and resources in an affair partner, just not as much as in a long-term mate. This is not true for men. For example, women usually want intelligence in an affair partner. For men, intelligence in an affair partner is mostly irrelevant. Desiring the same qualities in an affair partner further supports a view that the female long-term mating strategy is significantly more adaptive in evolution than the short-term mating strategy.
Self-esteem in Women

Studies have shown that a woman’s self-esteem is a significant predictor of short-term-mating. Women scoring low on self-esteem tended to have a greater number of sex partners, one-night stands, and a preference for short-term sexual relationships.

Costs of Women’s Short-term Strategy
  • Risk of a sexually transmitted disease
  • Risk of pregnancy
  • Reduced value as long-term mate
  • Greater risk of physical and sexual abuse
  • Risk of withdrawal of resources from husband

While the benefits noted above seem compelling, the costs of a woman’s short-term mating strategy far outweigh the benefits and produce a “response desire” and “braking” pattern of female sexual response. These costs directly influence female sexual response and sexual psychology. (See Spontaneous and Response Desire – the Underbelly of Heterosexual Mating.)

Men’s Short-term Strategy

“There seems to be no question but that the human male would be promiscuous in his choice of sexual partners throughout the whole of his life if there were no social restrictions. The human female is much less interested in a variety of partners.” ~ Alfred Kinsey

Evolutionary adaptation has dictated a preference by men for a short-term mating strategy. Trivers’s (1972) theory of parental investment and sexual selection provides a powerful reproductive basis for expecting sex differences. Men, more than women, are predicted to have evolved a greater desire for casual sex and a variety of partners. The same act of sex that causes a woman to invest nine months of internal gestation obligates the man to practically no investment.

Premium On Female Beauty

Men’s short-term strategy puts an immense premium on physical beauty and fertility. Character traits required of a woman are minimal (i.e. “don’t be dangerously crazy”) and resources are not required at all. Men’s short-term strategy is more predominant than their long-term strategy, but the difference is less pronounced behaviorally in modern times.

Diagram #4: Men’s Short-term Mating Strategy

venn diagram: men's short-term mating strategy
Restraints on Men’s Short-term Mating Strategy

Although men could potentially conceive more offspring if they were promiscuous instead of monogamous, there may have been at least two restraining factors of evolution against male promiscuity. Reproductive success depends on the survival of one’s offspring. Children have a better chance of survival if two parents contribute. Men who were highly promiscuous may not have been able to support all their offspring, and thus may not have been as genetically successful as more monogamous men.

Women Have to Consent

As suggested by Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice (The Social Dimension of Sex, 2001), a second possible restraining factor on male promiscuity is an obvious one: the question of whether a male can get a lot of potential mates if females won’t consent to mate with him.

Promiscuous Male At Possible Disadvantage

Men not predisposed to mate in long-term relationships might not have left enough offspring for a totally promiscuous genetic tendency to proliferate. According to Baumeister and Tice, males thus evolved to mate in long-term relationships to raise their children to adulthood, and also evolved a tendency to be more open than females to a wider variety of mating opportunities. Perhaps this greater need for compromise between monogamy and promiscuity can also explain why men have a greater variety of sexual practices and interests than women.

Put A Ring On It

David Buss suggests (Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science of the Mind, 1999), that men, even in ancestral times, who failed to commit might not have attracted any women at all. Women’s requirement for consenting to sex could have made it costly for men to pursue a short-term strategy exclusively. In the economics of reproductive effort, the costs of not pursuing a permanent mate may have been prohibitively high for most men.

High Mate Value Men Like Short-term Mating

High mate value men (on the “Self-perceived Mating Success Scale”) tended to have sex at an earlier age, a greater number of sex partners, and more sex relative to their lower mate-value counterparts. And high mate value men scored higher on the “Sapiosexuality Inventory” suggesting that they are pursuing a short-term mating strategy. These are measures of the holy grail of sexual turn-on for women: self-confidence. This is what “cocky” really means. (BTW, penis size does indeed contribute to this self-confidence — to being “cocky.” (See Undiscussables.)

Men Lower Their Standards

Buss and Schmitt (1993) found that men desire more partners and lower their standards for short-term mating. Men in this study expressed lower standards than women on forty-one of the forty-seven characteristics named as potentially desirable in a casual mate. For brief encounters, men required a lower level of charm, athleticism, education, generosity, honesty, independence, kindness, intelligence, loyalty, sense of humor, sociability, wealth, responsibility, spontaneity, cooperation, and emotional stability.

Closing Time Phenomenon

Relatedly, men shift perceptions of attractiveness near closing time in a singles bar regardless of how much alcohol they have consumed. With this “closing time phenomenon,” women just look better and better as the night wears on. In contrast to men, most women can obtain a desirable temporary mate without having to relax their standards at closing time.

Sex Ratio Effect on Short-term Mating for Both Sexes

Men shift to brief encounters when more women are sexually available (positive sex ratio), satisfying their desire for variety. Correlated to that, women on college campuses today will shift toward more short-term mating because the surplus of women causes more intra-sexual competition. When there is a surplus of men, in contrast, both sexes shift toward a long-term mating strategy marked by stable marriages and fewer divorces.

Benefits of Men’s Short-term Strategy
  • Potential to reproduce; more sex partners
  • No parental investment
Costs of Men’s Short-term Strategy
  • Risk of sexually transmitted diseases
  • Some resource investment
  • Less protection for genetic children
  • Acquiring a reputation as a womanizer
  • Suffering violence from husbands, brothers or fathers
  • Retaliatory affairs by wives or a costly divorce

The benefits of the male short-term mating strategy have shaped the evolution of male neurology and physiology and influenced male behavior, especially sexual initiation and intra-sexual competition. But costs do mitigate this strategy, especially in modern times.

Men’s Long-term Strategy

For long-term mates, men still put a premium on physical beauty and markers of health and fertility for initial attraction. Buss and Schmitt (1993) studied 37 cultures and confirmed the universal desire for physical attractiveness in a long-term mate. But men also want a woman who is faithful and kind. Resources are considered but are usually a distant third in importance. As stated above, men who are willing to commit to a long-term relationship have a wider range of women from which to choose.

Marriage in the U.S. Favors Men With Resources

As discussed in Dynamics in the Mating Economy: Domain #1 of Male-Female Difference, marriage patterns in modern America confirm the fact that men with resources are most able to actualize their preferences.

Diagram #5: Men’s Long-term Mating Strategy

venn diagram: men's long-term mating strategy
Benefits of Men’s Long-term Strategy
  • Increased paternity certainty
  • Improved social competitiveness of children
  • Sexual and social companionship, especially for “beta” males
Costs of Men’s Long-term Strategy
  • Restricted sexual opportunities
  •  Heavy parental investment
  • Heavy relationship investment

The benefits of men’s long-term mating strategy tend to outweigh the costs in most cultures in modern times. Pair-bonding and relative monogamy is the norm in most modern societies.

References

Buss, D. M., (1999). Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science of the Mind.

Buss, D. M. & Schmitt, D.P. (1993) “Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating.” Psychological Review, 100, 204-232.

Clark, R. D. & Hatfield, E. (1989). “Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers.” Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 2, 39-55.

Dibble, et al (2015, June 11). “Simmering on the back burner: communication with and disclosure of relationship alternatives.” Communication Quarterly, 63(3), 329-344.

Gangestad, S.W. & Simpson, J.A. (2000). “The evolution of human mating: Tradeoffs and strategic pluralism.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 573-587.

Li, P. (2008). “Intelligent Priorities: Adaptive Long- and Short-term Mate Preferences,” in Mating Intelligence, eds., Geher, G., & Miller, G.

Thornhill, R., & Gangestad, S..W. (1993). “Human facial beauty: Averageness, symmetry and parasite resistance.” Human Nature, 4, 237-269.

Trivers, R. L. (1972). “Parental investment ad sexual selection.” In B. Campbell (Ed.), Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man, (pp.136-179).

Appendix

 
Domains of Male-Female Differences in Sexual Psychology

1. Behavioral dynamics in the mating economy

2. Long-term vs. short-term mating strategies

3. Trait preferences and priorities for mate selection

4. Physical attraction and perceptions of beauty

5. Concordance between physiological response and psychological desire

6. Spontaneous desire vs. response desire

7. Sex and love-making that fuels desire

8. Accelerator vs. brake: sexual excitation and inhibition systems

9. Brain structures: sexual pursuit and visual stimuli

10. Hormonal differences

11. Variety and novelty

12. Sexual mentation and “sex drive”

13. Influence of context

14. Female competing intentions and imposed double bind 

15. Sexual orientation (and preference) fluidity and response variability

16. Orgasm – purpose and characteristics

17. Meta emotions

18. Romance and desire, together and apart

19. Psychology of monogamy

20. Infidelity – reasons and response

21. Jealousy – triggers, tactics, and consequences

22. Sexual fantasies

 

*Assumptions of Mating Straight Talk
  • Men and Women have similarities as human beings, and aggregate differences from each other, that are primarily a function of biology and evolutionary adaptation. Our similarities do not often cause conflict. But our differences, and the denial of those differences, often cause “trouble”.
  • Men and Women have differences that we must acknowledge and understand in order to have satisfying heterosexual (romantic and sexual) relationships.
  • Men and Women have differences that we must acknowledge and understand in order to bring clarity to the “politics” of sex and gender.
  • Men and Women need “straight talk” (radical honesty) in order to uncover and accept our differences.
  • Men and Women need straight talk about our differences in order to empower one another for co-creative relationships.

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Male-Female Differences in Sexual Psychology and Response

Male-Female Differences in Sexual Psychology and Response

by | Aug 25, 2020 | Biological Difference, Dating & Mating Economy, Sexuality

Over the millennia, men and women have evolved with different objectives and strategies of sexual psychology and response – strategies related to choosing a mate, reproduction, and parental investment. For the next several months, this blog space will address twenty-two “domains” of difference in sexual psychology and response between cisgender men and women with an emphasis on a heterosexual orientation.* (See “Assumptions” below.)

Here is a narrative summary of these differences followed by a list of the twenty-two domains. There is overlap and synergy between the domains but the underlying distinctions are clarifying. These differences are based on statistical aggregates of all men and women from authoritative research studies and cannot predict the unique sexuality of a particular man or woman.

General Differences between Men and Women in Sexual Psychology and Response
  • Women have their own unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and vary more than men in anatomy, sexual response, sexual mechanisms, and the way their bodies respond to the sexual world. Women vary more widely from each other and change more substantially over their lifetime than do men.
  • Women are less likely to have alignment (“concordance”) between their genital response and their subjective arousal; this causes confusion and misunderstanding for women and their male partners. Men have dramatically more concordance between their genital response and subjective arousal.
  • All sex happens in context. Women are more context-sensitive than men and all external circumstances of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, and orgasm.
  • Women’s sexual functioning is more influenced by their internal brain state — how they think and feel about sex. Judgment, shame, stress, mood, trust, body image, and past trauma are more influential on a woman’s sexual well-being.
  • Men and women have significantly different hormones and some variations in brain structure. Differences caused by the amount of testosterone cannot be overstated.
  • Men and women differ in visual orientation for physical attraction and the traits preferred in a mate.
  • Human sexual response consists of a “dual control” system with an excitation mechanism (“accelerator”) and an inhibition mechanism (“brake”). Men are accelerator-dominant and women are brake-dominant.
  • Related to differences between the sexual “accelerator” and “brake,” men operate primarily from “spontaneous desire” triggers and women operate primarily from “response desire” triggers.
  • Men sell (mostly) and women buy (mostly) in the mating economy; this is the predominant evolutionary dynamic. The psychology of the sexual initiator and pursuer is vastly different than the psychology of the one pursued and the one who chooses among her pursuers.
  • The psychology of male intra-sexual competition is quite different than the psychology of female intersexual selection (preferential mate choice.) Also, women’s intra-sexual competition (women competing against each other) for male attention is a different behavioral phenomenon than male-on-male competition.
Domains of Male-Female Differences in Sexual Psychology

1. Behavioral dynamics in the mating economy
2. Long-term vs. short-term mating strategies
3. Trait preferences and priorities for mate selection
4. Physical attraction and perceptions of beauty
5. Concordance between physiological response and psychological desire
6. Spontaneous desire vs. response desire
7. Sex and love-making that fuels desire
8. Accelerator vs. brake: sexual excitation and inhibition systems
9. Brain structures: sexual pursuit and visual stimuli
10. Hormonal differences
11. Variety and novelty
12. Sexual mentation and “sex drive”
13. Influence of context
14. Female competing intentions and imposed double binds
15. Sexual orientation (and preference) fluidity and response variability
16. Orgasm – purpose, and characteristics
17. Meta emotions
18. Romance and desire, together and apart
19. Psychology of monogamy
20. Infidelity – reasons and response
21. Jealousy – triggers, tactics, and consequences
22. Sexual fantasies

Each domain will be examined as a distinct phenomenon of difference although some will be addressed as correlated or parallel in physiological or psychological response. This blog series will not necessarily run continuously – as other topics (some in a series, some not) will also be posted.

Thanks for reading what is coming to Mating Straight Talk. Comments are encouraged!

*Assumptions of Mating Straight Talk
  • Men and Women have similarities as human beings, and aggregate differences from each other, that are primarily a function of biology and evolutionary adaptation. Our similarities do not often cause conflict. But our differences, and the denial of those differences, often cause “trouble”.
  • Men and Women have differences that we must acknowledge and understand in order to have satisfying heterosexual (romantic and sexual) relationships.
  • Men and Women have differences that we must acknowledge and understand in order to bring clarity to the “politics” of sex and gender.
  • Men and Women need “straight talk” (radical honesty) in order to uncover and accept our differences.
  • Men and Women need straight talk about our differences in order to empower one another for co-creative relationships.

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Spontaneous and Response Desire – the Underbelly of Heterosexual Mating

Spontaneous and Response Desire – the Underbelly of Heterosexual Mating

by | Jun 16, 2020 | Biological Difference, Dating & Mating Economy, Relationship Issues, Sexuality

 

John met Sarah at a happy-hour event. She was surrounded by a group of men, but John got some eye contact from her and shared a quick introduction and small talk.  It was apparent she was not “with” any of these men, although each one was interested in her.  John was enamored by Sarah’s bright eyes, her smile, her gestures, her voice – by everything about her. He felt compelled (an urgency in his body) to get a moment with her as she walked toward the door to depart.  He gave her his card.  (He knew that was lame.) Of course, she did not call him.  He saw her weeks later at the same event.  He asked for her number and declared his interest.  She said she “was not dating right now.” John expressed understanding and acceptance. But he did not really understand if Sarah was just not into him or if this was actually a “bad time” (whatever that meant) for her.  John had done his part to initiate but did not know Sarah’s “situation” or what she was actually thinking and feeling.  And he never would.

What Are ‘Spontaneous’ and ‘Response’ Desire?

“Spontaneous” and “response” desire are research terms related to the sexual psychology of men and women.  They reflect behavioral expressions of biological sex differences (hormones and brain), evolutionary mating strategies, sex “drive” differences, differences in sexual “context” setting, and functioning of the modern-day dating and mating economy.

When the spontaneous desire of men encounters the response desire of women, misunderstanding and frustration may ensue.  This blog explores research on sexual desire by Emily Nagoski* (Come As You Are, 2015) and is a companion to the blog post “Is Your Sexual Foot on The Accelerator or Brake?”   I will address issues of spontaneous vs. response desire related to long-term committed partners and supply and demand in the mating economy for initial mate selection and briefly return to John and Sarah before concluding.  But first, let’s revisit some of the science.

Sexual Excitation System (SES) and Sexual Inhibition System (SIS)

Emily Nagoski suggests both men and women have an excitation system (accelerator) and inhibition system (brake) for sexual activity.   She calls this the “dual control model.”  Think of this dual control as biological mechanisms for approach and avoidance.

Men Operate From Their Accelerator

Men operate primarily from their accelerator, or sexual excitation system (SES), constantly scanning the environment for anything sexually relevant.  The SES turns-on with anything a man sees (especially), hears, smells, tastes, or imagines.  The SES operates proactively — it approaches, pursues, and initiates spontaneously.

Women Are “Brake” Dominant

 The inhibition system or brake (SIS), in contrast to the SES, notices all potential threats in the environment and sends a signal to turn-off.  It is associated with fear of consequences and self-consciousness.  Women are decidedly SIS-dominant.  They respond to sexual opportunities only in the right context and when safety is assured.  They are quite content to rest in a cautious or neutral zone until the right stimulus is presented.  Out of sight, out of mind is the default position of response desire.

Spontaneous Desire is the Signature Feature of the Male Sex Drive

“Spontaneous desire” happens when the SES is fully activated.  The SES fuels spontaneous sexual pursuit with a sense of urgency and eagerness.   Male sexuality is “accelerator-dominant” and spontaneous by nature; it reacts, more than women, to sexually relevant stimuli independent of context and more commonly initiates.  Spontaneous desire is the signature feature of the male sex drive, fueled by testosterone and brain structures.  (See future blogs for further discussion of sex drive, sexual thoughts, and fantasies.)

When Arousal Meets a Great Context

“Response desire” occurs when one is willing to receive sexual interest although not initially feeling desire or sexual arousal.  The SES accelerator system is quiet; the SIS braking system is alert but not overly triggered. With sufficient sexual stimuli and appropriate context, response desire allows one (usually a woman) to move from a place of neutrality to being aroused and desirous of a sexual connection.   Because women are more “brake-dominant” in their sexual response, their desire more likely happens, in Nagoski’s words, “when [physiological] arousal meets a great context.”  For many women, subjective desire comes after physiological arousal, not before.  Rosemary Basson (author and Director of the University of British Columbia Sexual Medicine Program) says for many women, desire is not the cause of love-making, but rather the result.

Eighty-Five Percent of Women Are Response-Desire Dominant

According to Nagoski, 30 percent of women never experience spontaneous desire for sex, while 75 percent of men mostly experience spontaneous desire.   She says 55 percent of women experience a relative combination of spontaneous and response desire but ultimately concludes (Come As You Are, p. 307) that 85 percent of women are response-desire dominant.

Context Is Everything for Women

Nagoski says context for women is made of two things:  

1) the circumstances of the present moment – whom you are with, where you are, whether the situation is novel or familiar, risky or safe, and

2) a woman’s brain state in the present moment:  whether she is relaxed or stressed, trusting or not, loving or not, at that moment. 

“The evidence is mounting that women’s sexual response is more sensitive than men’s to context, including mood and relationship factors, and women vary more from each other in how much such factors influence their sexual response.”  (Come As You Are, p.  75).  For women, a great context can create subjective arousal; a bad context can prevent it entirely.

Desire Patterns in Long-term Relationships

The “collision” or “collaboration” of these two desire patterns can create interesting challenges in heterosexual sexual relating, especially in sustaining desire in long-term monogamous relationships.

For maintaining mutual desire in a long-term monogamous relationship, Esther Perel, (author of Mating in Captivity and leading expert in couple’s psychotherapy) recommends developing autonomy “inside of” the relationship in order to create a space for “wanting” what you don’t have.   John Gottman, in contrast, recommends (The Science of Trust) deepening intimacy as a doorway to the erotic life in a long-term monogamous relationship.   Perel says “build a bridge to cross” fueled by “wanting” and Gottman says “build a bridge together” fueled by “having.”

Increase Activation of Accelerator and Decrease Activation of the Brake

Nagoski says either of these strategies may accomplish the same overall goal:  increasing activation of the accelerator and decreasing activation of the brake.  The goal of both approaches is to sustain curiosity.  Perel suggests we sustain curiosity about our partner when we view them from a distance.  Gottman suggests we sustain curiosity about the nature of pleasure in the context of commitment.

Take Control of the Context

It is clear that passion does not happen automatically in a long-term relationship. But passion can happen if the couple takes deliberate control of their context.  Neither the strategy of distance nor the strategy of deepening intimacy by itself will nullify the foundational, biological difference between spontaneous male desire and response-oriented female desire.

Spontaneous and Response Desire in the Brain

Differences in brain structure between men and women relate to the spontaneous and response desire systems.  Men, in general, have a higher baseline of activity in the older part of the brain, the limbic system, which makes them particularly alert during the first stage of seduction, according to the renowned physician and author, Marianne Legato (Why Men Die First).

Area of Sexual Pursuit is 2.5 Times Larger In Males

The medial preoptic area (MPOA), found in the hypothalamus, is related to sexual pursuit and is 2.5 times larger in males, according to neuropsychiatrist, Louann Brizendine (The Male Brain).  Men also show greater activity in the visual cortex when perceiving erotic pictures, reflecting a gender-specific visual mechanism for sexual selection.

Female Amygdala and Cautious Sexual Response

The brain’s danger and alert system is the amygdala.  While larger in males, the female amygdala seems to be more sensitive to the fear of consequences, modulating a more cautious sexual response.

Fear of Punishment and Sexual Anxiety in the Female Brain

Another part of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), creates a more response-dominant neurological foundation for women.  According to Brizendine, the ACC is the worrywart, fear-of-punishment area, and center of sexual performance anxiety.  It weighs options, detects conflicts, and motivates decisions.  The ACC is also the area for self-consciousness; the ACC is bigger in women.

Spontaneous and Response Desire is Predicted in Human Mating

The difference in male and female desire patterns is extremely relevant to the operation of the dating and mating economy.  Spontaneous desire and response desire are aligned with the short-term mating strategy of men, the long-term mating strategy of women (respectively), and the biological foundation of the sexual accelerator and brake.   Spontaneous desire for men and response desire for women are predicted by human mating strategies as defined in the fields of evolutionary psychology and biological science.

A man’s short-term mating strategy fuels desire for contact with women for any possible chance of a romantic or sexual encounter.   A women’s long-term strategy creates caution and selectivity in accepting male advances.  The reasons for this evolutionary adaptation are central tenets of mate selection science.   (See Human Mating Strategies and What is Mate Selection Science? pages.)

Supply and Demand of Spontaneous and Response Desire

Men (mostly) sell.  Women (mostly) buy.  In the human mating economy, the buyer (female chooser) significantly controls the marketplace; men spontaneously pursue, women respond when ready.  The difference between buyer and seller in the sexual marketplace determines motivation, behavior, and the experience of sexual scarcity or abundance.

Sex is (Relatively) an Abundant Resource for Women

Sex for most women (during their fertile years) is an abundant resource; it is not in short supply.  It is a need (subject to self-imposed selection preferences) that can almost always be met.  Therefore, there is no need to attend to it (out of sight, out of mind).  There is no need to respond to any particular man if conditions are not perfect and that man is not preferred (in that moment) over other men available in her dating pool.   At another moment in time, Sarah might respond to John. 

Conclusion

Sexual relating between men and women often hinges on the “dance” between spontaneous desire and response desire – the “undercurrents” of strategy and preference in dating and mating.   Desire patterns are biologically based with evolutionary roots (human mating adaptations for reproduction and survival of children).  Understanding sex differences in spontaneous and response desire is a pathway for awareness, empathy, and behavior change that will improve heterosexual relationships.

Notes

Emily Nagoski is the former Director of Wellness Education at Smith College where she taught Women’s Sexuality.  She is a respected author and expert in the field of sexuality — writing, speaking, and training internationally.

If you are tracking along with these blogs (in addition to reading pages on the main menus!), you will notice I have cited (so far) male-female differences related to:

  • subjective vs. physiological arousal,
  • sexual excitation vs. inhibition,
  • spontaneous vs. response desire,
  • sex “drive,” 
  • influence of situational context, and
  • overall mating strategies.

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Is Your Sexual Foot on the Accelerator or Brake?

Is Your Sexual Foot on the Accelerator or Brake?

by | Jun 2, 2020 | Biological Difference, Relationship Issues, Sexuality, Women's Issues

Men and women are different. Their “sexual engine” makes different use of the accelerator and brake. Author, sex researcher, and professor of women’s sexuality, Emily Nagoski, calls this the “dual control model” (Come As You Are, 2015). This model explains aspects of the biological and psychological difference between male and female sexuality and what we need to know to have sexual self-confidence and empathy for our partners.

Accelerator vs. Brake

The central sexual response mechanism in the brains of men and women consist of two universal components – a sexual accelerator and a sexual brake.

This dual control model consists of two parts:

  1. The Sexual Excitation System (SES) or “accelerator” of sexual response receives information about sexually relevant stimuli in the environment. It sends signals from the brain to the genitals to “turn-on”. The SES constantly scans the “context” (including thoughts and feelings) for things that are sexually relevant. With the SES, anything you see, hear, smell, taste, or imagine might send a “turn-on” message.
  2. The Sexual Inhibition System (SIS) is the sexual “brake.” This system notices all potential threats in the environment (such as STI transmission, unwanted pregnancy, social consequences of sexual activity) and sends signals to “turn off”. Nagoski calls this the sexual “foot brake.” It is primarily associated with the fear of consequences. There is also a second brake, more akin to a handbrake, associated with a fear of performance failure, like worry about not having an orgasm. “If you try to drive with the handbrake on,” says Nagoski, you might be able to get where you want to go, but it’ll take longer and use a lot more gas” (Come As You Are, p. 49).
For Arousal — Activate the Accelerator and Deactivate the Brake

Arousal (psychological desire) happens with activation of the accelerator and deactivation of the brake. The former is more salient for men, the latter more important for women. Male sexuality is accelerator-dominant because the SES scans for female attributes that are cues of fertility. The SES (in men) is the pursuer and the initiator. Women’s brake system comports with the evolutionary agenda for a cautious choice of a mate and a need for safety.

Accelerator and Brake in the Brain

Differences in brain structure between men and women are related to the male-dominant accelerator system and the female-dominant brake system.

Men, in general, have a higher baseline of activity in the older part of the brain, the limbic system, which makes them particularly alert during the first stage of seduction, according to Marianne Legato* (Why Men Die First). The medial preoptic area (MPOA), found in the hypothalamus, is related to sexual pursuit and is 2.5 times larger in males, according to neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine (The Male Brain). Men also show greater activity in the visual cortex when perceiving erotic pictures, reflecting a gender-specific visual mechanism for sexual selection.

Female Amygdala is More Sensitive to the Fear of Consequences

The brain’s danger and alert system is the amygdala. While larger in males, the female amygdala seems to be more sensitive to the fear of consequences descriptive of the braking system.

Brain’s Worry Center is Bigger in Women

Another part of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), is also involved in “braking.” According to Brizendine, the ACC is the worrywart, fear-of-punishment area, and center of sexual performance anxiety. It weighs options, detects conflicts, and motivates decisions. The ACC is also the area for self-consciousness (the “handbrake”). The ACC is bigger in women. In addition to a less active ACC in men, testosterone decreases worry about punishment and reduces the strength of a sexual brake and fortifies the sexual accelerator.

Women Put On the Brakes

For women, in both ancient and modern times, safety is a powerful need that activates the sexual brake: fear of being killed, being raped, getting pregnant, and/or having their reputation destroyed. A woman’s deepest unconscious fear is that a man will rape or kill her. (A man’s deepest unconscious fear is that a woman will sexually humiliate him.)

Sexual Temperament Questionnaire

According to Nagoski’s research using her “Sexual Temperament Questionnaire,” 50-65% of women have a moderately strong inhibition system (SIS). Any increase in stress (anxiety, overwhelm, exhaustion) will reduce interest. And, 25% of women have a “high” SIS or a very strong braking system. These women are sensitive to all reasons not to be aroused and have more sexual problems than women with less active SIS. Nagoski says low female desire is not about hormones or boredom with monogamy; it is most likely about stress, depression, anxiety, trauma, attachment, relationship satisfaction, and lack of self-compassion. [Other researchers say boredom and lack of novelty do affect female marital desire.]

SES and SIS Operate Independently

The sensitivity of the SES and SIS are individual traits. Both can be sensitive, both can be not sensitive, and one or the other can be sensitive and not sensitive, co-existing together. (It can get very complicated!) But the general differences of dual control between men and women directly affect their sexual relating and sexual psychology. These differences are congruent with evolutionary theory and mate selection science.

Asexuals Have Essentially No Sexual Excitation System

A fairly weak accelerator (independent of brakes) is one predictor of asexuality – people who do not desire sexual contact. In studies of self-identified asexuals, researchers found asexuals had significantly “less accelerator” activity than their sexual counterparts (Prause and Graham, 2007**). Nagoski posits that part of the cause of asexuality as a sexual orientation for women is that their brains do not notice sexually relevant stimuli. Nagoski says asexuals represent only about 1 percent of the general population. Whereas, about 5-10 percent of women score as having low SES on the Sexual Temperament Questionnaire.

Why is it Important to Understand the Sexual Accelerator and Brake?

Men and women have differences that we must acknowledge and understand to have fulfilling romantic and sexual relationships.

A difference in the level of desire is the single most common sexual dysfunction for couples. Usually, that dysfunction includes a belief by one partner that their level of desire is better or is the way it “should be.” Nagoski suggests it is not the differential in desire that causes the dysfunction but how the couple manages it. The problem isn’t desire itself; it’s the context. What is needed is more sexually relevant stimuli activating the accelerator and fewer things hitting the brake.

Advice for Couples

Good advice to couples is to focus first and foremost on the operation of her “brakes.”  What is the right context for romance and sex; what context for sexual expression takes her foot off the brake? What are the sources of her stress, anxiety, and relationship dissatisfaction? What trauma is still unexamined and unresolved? What triggers her handbrake — body image concerns or worry about orgasm? The to-do list in her head?

Nagoski has a helpful worksheet in Come As You Are to identify and list the “not-so-sexy” inhibitory contexts (as well as a worksheet for situational accelerators) in the following categories: mental and physical well-being, partner characteristics, relationship characteristics, other life circumstances, and the sexual activities practiced.

Conclusion

The composition of our excitation and inhibition systems is set by our biology, life experiences, and habits. Creating the right balance of acceleration and braking for any person or couple is more art than science, and probably hard work. Again, these are individualized sensitivities. But there is no substitute for giving your partner understanding, acceptance, and compassion. Start with how men and women are generally different and what part of that difference is true for you as a person and a couple. Let’s refuel that engine with the right contexts and get it back on the road at the right speed.

Notes

See blog: Spontaneous and Response Desire — the Underbelly of Heterosexual Mating and future blogs on the importance of context for women.

*Marianne Legato is an internationally renowned academic, physician, author, lecturer, and pioneer in the field of gender-specific medicine. She is Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine at Columba University and founder of The Partnership of Gender-Specific Medicine.

**Prause, N. and Graham, C., “Asexuality: classification and characterization.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 36, 2007, p. 341-56).

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