Farnaz Kaighobadi

From Mate Retention to Murder: Evolutionary Psychological Perspectives on Men's Partner-Directed Violence

In response to the tragically high incidence and negative consequences of female-directed violence in intimate relationships, a large literature has been dedicated to the investigation of the proximate and the ultimate or evolutionary predictors of mens partner-directed violence. Evolutionary psychology offers a framework for investigating the design of evolved information-processing mechanisms that motivate costly behaviors such as mens partner-directed violence. We review several forms of mens partner-directed violence, including insults, sexual coercion, physical violence, and homicide, from an evolutionary psychological perspective and with a particular focus on the adaptive problem of paternity uncertainty. The problem of paternity uncertainty is hypothesized to have selected for the emotion of male sexual jealousy, which in turn motivates mens nonviolent and violent mate retention behaviors. We review empirical evidence for the relationships among paternity uncertainty, male sexual jealousy, and mens partner-directed violence. We propose that a comprehensive understanding of mens partner-directed violence will be achieved only by careful consideration of both proximate and ultimate causes.

Suspicions of female infidelity predict men's partner-directed violence

Archers argument regarding sex differences in partner violence rests on a general account of between-sex differences in reproductive strategies and in social roles. However, mens partner-directed violence often is predicted by perceived risk of female infidelity. We hypothesize that mens partner-directed violence is produced by psychological mechanisms evolved to solve the adaptive problem of paternity uncertainty.

Husband's Esteem Predicts his Mate Retention Tactics:

delity or prevent their defection from the relationship. These tactics include low-risk acts that render the current relationship more attractive by bestowing benefits on the woman, as well as cost-inflicting acts that render defection from the relationship risky or dangerous for her. Previous research has linked mens mate retention behavior with mens mate value (value as a current or potential partner) using womens reports. The current research addresses limitations of that research using self-reports and cross-spousal reports from 107 married couples concerning their self-esteem and their esteem for their partner. The results indicate that the level of esteem that wives have for their husbands is positively associated with their perception of their husbands use of positive inducements and negatively associated with their husbands self-reported use of cost-inflicting mate retention behaviors (i.e., Direct Guarding, Intersexual Negative Inducements, and Intrasexual Negative Inducements). The level of self-esteem reported by men was negatively associated with their self-reported direct guarding behavior. Discussion explores the possibility that esteem—both self-esteem and esteem from ones partner—functions as an internal gauge of relative mate value.

Book Review: Can Ideology Save the Angry Caveman?

Martha McCaughey is Director of Women’s Studies at Appalachian State University. In The Caveman Mystique, McCaughey questions the scientific utility of evolutionary theories for generating workable explanations of human male psychology. She condemns evolutionary science for producing and maintaining modern men’s selfindulgent, sexually aggressive “caveman” identity. According to McCaughey, evolutionary science, in general, and evolutionary psychology, in particular, is a hodge-podge of ideologies built on a biased selection of and reliance on published literature. And yet McCaughey concludes with an ideological definition of a “new manhood” (“Homo textual”) to which all men should aspire. According to McCaughey, “Men can take a great leap forward and become new kinds of men...This new man [Homo textual] understands identity as socially constructed and consequential” (p. 140). McCaughey’s criticisms of evolutionary explanations of human male psychology do not differ from the well-worn “criticisms” leveled by practitioners of standard social science (see Tooby and Cosmides, 1992, for a review and debunking of these criticisms). The standard social science model assumes that the human mind is a product of the social world and that the mind consists of a few general-purpose mechanisms. McCaughey’s repeated claim to be familiar with evolutionary theories grants her no discernable insight into the debates between standard social science and evolutionary science. Her ideological biases and muddled thinking are apparent from the Introduction to the book, in which she refers to evolutionary theories with such howlers as “grand narratives,” “lived ideologies,”