Chris Reiber

Sexual Hookup Culture: A Review

“Hookups,” or uncommitted sexual encounters, are becoming progressively more engrained in popular culture, reflecting both evolved sexual predilections and changing social and sexual scripts. Hook-up activities may include a wide range of sexual behaviors, such as kissing, oral sex, and penetrative intercourse. However, these encounters often transpire without any promise of, or desire for, a more traditional romantic relationship. A review of the literature suggests that these encounters are becoming increasingly normative among adolescents and young adults in North America, representing a marked shift in openness and acceptance of uncommitted sex. We reviewed the current literature on sexual hookups and considered the multiple forces influencing hookup culture, using examples from popular culture to place hooking up in context. We argue that contemporary hookup culture is best understood as the convergence of evolutionary and social forces during the developmental period of emerging adulthood. We suggest that researchers must consider both evolutionary mechanisms and social processes, and be considerate of the contemporary popular cultural climate in which hookups occur, in order to provide a comprehensive and synergistic biopsychosocial view of “casual sex” among emerging adults today.

Hooking up: Gender differences, evolution, and pluralistic ignorance.

“Hooking-up” – engaging in no-strings-attached sexual behaviors with uncommitted partners - has become a norm on college campuses, and raises the potential for disease, unintended pregnancy, and physical and psychological trauma. The primacy of sex in the evolutionary process suggests that predictions derived from evolutionary theory may be a useful first step toward understanding these contemporary behaviors. This study assessed the hook-up behaviors and attitudes of 507 college students. As predicted by behavioral-evolutionary theory: men were more comfortable than women with all types of sexual behaviors; women correctly attributed higher comfort levels to men, but overestimated mens actual comfort levels; and men correctly attributed lower comfort levels to women, but still overestimated womens actual comfort levels. Both genders attributed higher comfort levels to same-gendered others, reinforcing a pluralistic ignorance effect that might contribute to the high frequency of hook-up behaviors in spite of the low comfort levels reported and suggesting that hooking up may be a modern form of intrasexual competition between females for potential mates.

Risk behaviors in a rural community with a known point-source exposure to chronic wasting disease

BackgroundThe emergence and continuing spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in cervids has now reached 14 U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and South Korea, producing a potential for transmission of CWD prions to humans and other animals globally. In 2005, CWD spread for the first time from the Midwest to more densely populated regions of the East Coast. As a result, a large cohort of individuals attending a wild game feast in upstate New York were exposed to a deer that was subsequently confirmed positive for CWD.MethodsEighty-one participants who ingested or otherwise were exposed to a deer with chronic wasting disease at a local New York State sportsmans feast were recruited for this study. Participants were administered an exposure questionnaire and agreed to follow-up health evaluations longitudinally over the next six years.ResultsOur results indicate two types of risks for those who attended the feast, a Feast Risk and a General Risk. The larger the number of risk factors, the greater the risk to human health if CWD is transmissible to humans. Long-term surveillance of feast participants exposed to CWD is ongoing.ConclusionThe risk data from this study provide a relative scale for cumulative exposure to CWD-infected tissues and surfaces, and those in the upper tiers of cumulative risk may be most at risk if CWD is transmissible to humans.

Change in Human Social Behavior in Response to a Common Vaccine

PURPOSEnThe purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that exposure to a directly transmitted human pathogen-flu virus-increases human social behavior presymptomatically. This hypothesis is grounded in empirical evidence that animals infected with pathogens rarely behave like uninfected animals, and in evolutionary theory as applied to infectious disease. Such behavioral changes have the potential to increase parasite transmission and/or host solicitation of care.nnnMETHODSnWe carried out a prospective, longitudinal study that followed participants across a known point-source exposure to a form of influenza virus (immunizations), and compared social behavior before and after exposure using each participant as his/her own control.nnnRESULTSnHuman social behavior does, indeed, change with exposure. Compared to the 48 hours pre-exposure, participants interacted with significantly more people, and in significantly larger groups, during the 48 hours immediately post-exposure.nnnCONCLUSIONSnThese results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior. Although the adaptive significance of this finding awaits further investigation, we anticipate it will advance ecological and evolutionary understanding of human-pathogen interactions, and will have implications for infectious disease epidemiology and prevention.

Evolutionary science as a method to facilitate higher level thinking and reasoning in medical training

Evolutionary science is indispensable for understanding biological processes. Effective medical treatment must be anchored in sound biology. However, currently the insights available from evolutionary science are not adequately incorporated in either pre-medical or medical school curricula. To illuminate how evolution may be helpful in these areas, examples in which the insights of evolutionary science are already improving medical treatment and ways in which evolutionary reasoning can be practiced in the context of medicine are provided. To facilitate the learning of evolutionary principles, concepts derived from evolutionary science that medical students and professionals should understand are outlined. These concepts are designed to be authoritative and at the same time easily accessible for anyone with the general biological knowledge of a first-year medical student. Thus, we conclude that medical practice informed by evolutionary principles will be more effective and lead to better patient outcomes. Furthermore, it is argued that evolutionary medicine complements general medical training because it provides an additional means by which medical students can practice the critical thinking skills that will be important in their future practice. We argue that core concepts from evolutionary science have the potential to improve critical thinking and facilitate more effective learning in medical training.