Cupid’s Cognitive Arrow
LARRY KING: What, Professor, puzzles you the most? What do you think about the most?
STEPHEN HAWKING: Women.
LARRY KING: Welcome aboard.
—Larry King Live Weekend (December 25, 1999)
Sex is constantly on the mind. When we’re not thinking about sex, we are thinking about how to get it. Let’s face it: the mating world doesn’t play by simple rules. Contradictions, paradoxes, and ambiguities are apparent at every stage. The consequence is that we are consumed by thoughts related to mating. Early in relationship formation, we are focused on physical attractiveness and the overall value of potential mates as well as our own mate value. In this mate-selection phase of mating, we often ask questions such as, Is she into me? Is she attractive? … Is she attractive enough? What would my friends and family think of her? How can I get her into bed tonight? Is she long-term material?
As we move further into courtship, other universal questions consume us: Am I ready to have sex with him? Is that thing he does when he eats cute? quirky? benign? … or downright gross!? Does he always wear shirts like that? Is his apparent kindness genuine? Is he really going to quit smoking? Is he going to be a success?
When in the throes of a long-term relationship, a host of other thoughts consume the normal adult mating mind: Does he really love me? Do I really love him? What has happened to our sex life? Is he interested in what’s-her-name sexually—and, if not, why does it feel like he is? Why am I not turned on anymore? Why do I no longer find him funny? Does he still find me sexy? … Am I sexy? I wish he would pay more attention to me and the kids. Does he really “have to” go out on three business dinners this week? Why does he always have “business meetings” with her?
Human mating is complex. Mating psychology involves an intricate combination of emotions, physical responses, deep (and often uncontrollable) urges, and many cognitive mechanisms. Many times in your life you have undoubtedly shaken your head in confusion while watching or participating in the mating domain.
Believe it or not, there is hope for understanding many of these mating puzzles. Modern scientists who study human mating from the perspective of our evolutionary origins have developed a framework for understanding mating processes that has led to an extraordinary accumulation of discoveries regarding the nature of our mating mind. Recently, mating researchers have documented qualities of human faces that are universally appealing, qualities of human behavior that are attractive, factors that lead to conflict in relationships, variables that lead to aggression and hostility in relationships, the effects of hormone levels on mating behaviors, and many other puzzling aspects of human mating.1 In short, evolutionary psychology is unlocking mysteries of human mating that precede the existence of Homo sapiens on the African savanna.
As you’ll see, evolution has provided us with some mental machinery that, when properly developed in the right context, can help us navigate the fascinatingly complex domain of mating. Even though humans share many instincts with lower animals, we are unique in our capacity for complex problem solving and reflection. Unlike many other species, we don’t just look at each other, see a body we like, and have sex with that body—certainly not typically, in any case. Rather, the behaviors that constitute mating in our species generally require a great deal of high-level conscious and unconscious cognitive work. Therefore, intelligence is at play somewhere in the mating domain.
In thinking about how conscious forms of intelligence make their way into human mating, consider the different phases of mating—from initial attraction, to courtship, to a long-term relationship. High-level cognitive processes—often involving consciousness and verbal expression—are present at each step. Consider the case of initial attraction. In initial attraction, we think about our own mate value—often quite consciously. In fact, we often even discuss this issue with others (Am I good enough for her? Tell me what you really think—be honest—I’m serious—really—no, I mean it …). We think about the mate values of potential partners (Is he rich? He was pretty loud at that party—is he confident because he’s a great guy … or just a jerk? What kind of dad would he be?). We also use quite a bit of our mind to display our mate value—from the creative use of pick-up lines to displays of charisma, intelligence, humor, personality, and compassion.
Despite what it may seem by opening up the latest issue of Maxim, Playboy, Vogue, or GQ, or by turning on MTV or VH1, physical attractiveness isn’t the whole story. We have all faced situations in which our physical attraction to a person has seriously diminished the second the person opened his or her mouth and situations in which someone with less than matinee-style looks suddenly started looking very nice through their personality. All these examples are cognitions—thoughts—building blocks of human intelligence—designed to optimize one’s own lot in the mating game.
A domain as complex as mating requires a framework that is equally complex. Therefore, in this book we draw from many different disciplines—evolutionary biology, behavioral genetics, behavioral ecology, sociology, anthropology—and from subdisciplines of psychology—evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, creativity, intelligence, social psychology, personality psychology—and more. Many of these threads may appear to conflict, such as the study of individual differences and the study of universal instincts. But science thrives on contradictions; in fact, only by putting various pieces of the puzzle together can we come to a deeper understanding of behaviors as complex as mating behaviors. Still, every new framework owes its debt, so before we get ahead of ourselves, the basic principles of evolutionary psychology and the field of human intelligence deserve particular attention because each is a major foundation of that framework.
Evolutionary psychology is a perspective that underlies all of psychology—it’s not a traditional area of study within psychology, such as, for instance, developmental psychology, which focuses on the development of psychological processes across the life span, or social psychology, which focuses on how people influence the thoughts and behaviors of an individual. Evolutionary psychology is a set of ideas, rooted in evolutionary theory, that can be applied to any psychological issue or question—it is, in essence, a way of understanding all aspects of mind and behavior.
Evolutionary psychology is traced back to Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution was nearly as much about psychology as it was about biology. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which he based on extensive naturalistic studies of plants and animals in varied parts of the world, provides an extremely logical and powerful explanation for why (and how) species of plants and animals take the forms that they do. In his best-known work, he studied the beaks of finches on the Galapagos Islands. The important riddle that he initially asked regarding these birds concerned his observation that their beaks seemed specialized to particular circumstances of their localized environments. The species of finches at the rocky coast, for instance, had relatively long beaks that seemed designed for pulling food out of holes between rocks. Finches in the rain forests had beaks that seemed designed for getting food out from the bark of trees. How did these birds come to have such remarkably optimized features?
Darwin’s answer came in the form of his theory of natural selection, which suggests that qualities of organisms (which are partly inherited from parents) vary and, further, that certain qualities will ultimately be more likely to lead to survival and reproduction (i.e., reproductive success) than others. Importantly, factors that lead to reproductive success are specific to particular environments—a chick with a relatively long beak at the coast is likely to prosper, whereas a chick with a relatively long beak in the rain forest is not.
A quality that is thought to increase the likelihood of reproductive success is called an adaptation (and is referred to as adaptive). Adaptations are, thus, qualities of organisms (often referred to as phenotypes) that increase reproductive success. Additionally, such qualities reflect a good fit between an organism and an environment. As such, scientists often refer to such adaptations as phenotypes that increase fitness (or, often, qualities that increase genetic fitness).
An additional important point regarding natural selection concerns the idea of change or mutation. With the advent of the field of genetics in the early part of the 20th century, evolutionary theory and research on genetics were ultimately synthesized (an event now referred to as the great evolutionary synthesis, largely attributed to the work of the biologist Ernst Mayr2). During the sexual reproduction process (or any reproduction process), copying errors are possible. When a copying error takes place in the genes during the reproductive process, the outcome is considered a mutation. Although the lion’s share of mutations are deleterious (a fact that corresponds to the modern-day connotation of the word), an occasional mutation leads to a phenotypic quality that is relatively adaptive. For instance, the first finches near the coast of the Galapagos Islands that had, by chance, mutations coding for relatively long beaks were more likely to eat, survive, and, ultimately, reproduce compared with their “normal” conspecifics (i.e., members of their same species). Thus, the long beak (because of its effective fit with localized environmental conditions) would be naturally selected (and would be likely to stay in the gene pool). Ultimately, through many generations of this process, the adaptive phenotypic quality (i.e., the long beak) will come to typify the entire species (i.e., only long-beaked finches will exist on the rocky coast).
One of Darwin’s most important psychological theories pertains not to natural selection but rather to sexual selection (sexual selection is really just a particular type of natural selection). The puzzle that led to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection was the peacock’s tail—colorful and beautiful on the one hand and conspicuous, wasteful, and seemingly maladaptive on the other. How could evolution by natural selection favor such a wasteful feature? Peacocks with a large, colorful tail are surely more likely to be picked out by predators than are their dull-tailed counterparts. Further, imagine how much the body of a peacock would have in terms of physiological resources if it didn’t have this gaudy appendage to maintain! Darwin once said, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”
Darwin’s reaction to the existence of the bright plumage of the peacock led him to one of his most important insights. Given how sexual reproduction works, he concluded that reproduction is, ultimately, more important than survival! If one animal (let’s call it a survivor) has a feature that improves survival a great deal (but that inhibits reproduction) and a competing animal (let’s call it a reproducer) has a feature that tends to inhibit survival but facilitates reproduction, the reproducer will leave more offspring than the survivor. Accordingly, any feature that is, for whatever reason, desirable to potential mates will be selected—regardless of its survival value. Thus, the preferences of the opposite sex (preferences that, clearly, fall under the umbrella of psychological phenomena) select the qualities that will be reproduced in offspring. Why do peacocks have such a bright tail? Because peahens think a bright tail is a hot commodity.
Once Darwin came up with the notion of sexual selection, he concluded that it exists in two important domains: courtship between members of opposite sexes (intersexual selection) and competition for mates between members of the same sex (intrasexual selection). A typical example of intrasexual selection concerns the large horns of grazing mammals such as caribou. Male caribou have antlers that often exceed 4 feet in length and 20 pounds in weight. These antlers often grow at the rate of an inch a day during the summer season and require so much calcium that the animal’s body often taps calcium from the skull to use in the creation of the antler!3 How then, could such an obviously costly and handicap-inducing characteristic be selected by the great optimizing forces of evolution? Answer: intrasexual competition. Bulls use the antlers to fight for access to females. Bulls who win these competitions reproduce. Bulls with relatively large antlers are more likely to be such victors. The genes coding for their ornamental headgear get reproduced along the way.
Intrasexual selection is also observable in humans every time a socially dominant male derogates a competitor’s strength, social status, intelligence, personality, or physical qualities (e.g., penis size). Similarly, intrasexual selection is at work when a woman paints a competitor as overly promiscuous, overly prudish, catty, or unattractive. One of the great—and simple—insights of modern evolutionary psychology is this: It is often the case that features of human behavior parallel those found in other sexually reproducing species. We can learn an awful lot about ourselves by looking to the nature of other animals that were shaped by the same kinds of evolutionary forces that created us.
In terms of both his theory of sexual selection (which suggests that the psychological preferences of one sex can come to shape the phenotype of the other sex over evolutionary time) and his theory of emotional expression across species as having been shaped by evolutionary forces (described in his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals), Darwin was keenly aware of implications for his theory of evolution on the psychology of animals—including humans. Thus, from the get-go, evolutionary theory was designed to be a theory of psychology.
Modern evolutionary psychology, which represents a revolution within psychology, has many different forms. At its core, however, evolutionary psychology is the application of evolutionary principles to an understanding of psychological processes and behavior. Evolutionary psychologists examine psychological questions by addressing what the great evolutionary ethologist, Nikolaas Tinbergen, called proximate and ultimate questions. Proximate questions address the immediate causes of behavior, often including stimuli in the immediate environment of the organism or physiological mechanisms inside the organism. Ultimate questions about behavior lead into the ancestral past of an organism’s species, addressing how some behavior or psychological process would have been adaptive (in terms of survival-based natural selection or reproduction-based sexual selection) for the organism’s ancestors.
Consider, for instance, the ability to present oneself as attractive to potential mates—surely important to mating success. We all try to present ourselves as attractive, with varying success. Consider the woman who wears way too much make-up, the guy who uses too much cologne, or the woman who wears the all-too-visible thong at the family reunion. When it comes to this aspect of mating intelligence, some of us just miss the boat (although the thong display may be adaptive in certain short-term mating contexts).
The ability to effectively present oneself as attractive in the mating domain likely has its roots in environmental upbringing. Some of us were raised in households that focused on the perspectives of others and on the impressions that we give of ourselves. Others (like us) were raised in households that focused much less on the importance of such impressions. For instance, Glenn Geher (hereafter referred to as GG) didn’t realize that it was a good idea to own more than one pair of shoes until he was about 26—and those “shoes” were, in fact, sneakers! This could partly explain his challenged mating life before that point in time. Likewise, Scott Barry Kaufman’s (hereafter referred to as SBK) mom always labeled his clothes drawers while he lived at home. When he first arrived at college, she labeled all his clothes drawers in his dorm room as well. SBK never thought twice about this until one day when he found his date laughing hysterically at the “underwear drawer” label his mom had applied to his clothes bureau. When he never heard from that date again, he became aware of his need to modify aspects of his mating behavior.
From an ultimate perspective, this ability to know how to present oneself to appear attractive clearly makes sense as having been shaped from evolutionary forces. Ancestral humans who not only tried to present themselves as attractive but also were intelligent and, as such, successful in these efforts were more likely to attract mates and, thus, more likely to reproduce and leave genes in future generations.
Understanding the proximate origins of this ability allows us to think about ourselves and the factors in our own lives that shape our mating psychology. On the other hand, understanding the ultimate origins of this ability encourages us to consider why this ability matters in a big-picture sense. A superficial analysis of this ability may lead a misguided individual (or individuals, such as GG and SBK a few years back …) to say something like, “Any woman who judges me by the number of shoes I have or by the relationship I have with my mother isn’t worth my time!”
The ultimate explanation helps us see all this in a wider perspective—it allows us, for instance, to realize that women’s psychology has been shaped by evolution to pay careful attention to behavioral and physical features of men in making choices of mates. This tendency is not capricious—and it’s not really superficial, at least from an ultimate evolutionary perspective. Ancestral females who didn’t engage in such discriminating mental work were less likely to mate with a high-quality male and were less likely to become our ancestors. Accordingly, working on skills associated with being perceived as attractive by potential mates is worthwhile for anyone. Such an ultimate-origin insight provides practical lessons regarding why presentation matters—and why it should matter. By understanding behaviors at each of these levels (proximate and ultimate), evolutionary psychologists can paint a relatively deep and multifaceted portrait of the causes of some psychological processes that typify our species.
Thus, evolutionary psychology seeks to understand both proximate and ultimate causes of species-typical psychological processes in light of the basic ideas of evolutionary theory. Using this approach, evolutionary psychologists have shed light on many questions about human nature that were rather puzzling before the application of evolutionary principles to an understanding of human behavior.
For instance, consider Michael Cunningham’s work on qualities that we find attractive in female faces.4 By examining photographs of women from the Miss Universe contest, Cunningham was able to address features of women who are considered beautiful in a truly cross-cultural, universal sense. The results were clear: the most beautiful women were those with full lips, large eyes, thick hair, and smooth skin. In his evolutionary analysis of the data, Cunningham applies an evolutionary lens: a major feature of reproduction in our species has to do with menarche and menopause—the reproductive years of women are limited. Men under ancestral conditions who happened to, by chance, have psychological preferences for women who were fertile were more likely to mate with such women and were more likely to successfully reproduce—sending such preferences into subsequent generations (to the extent that such preferences have a heritable basis). Focusing on such qualities as full lips and thick hair makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because these are precisely the physical features that degrade with aging (relatively older women tend to have relatively thin lips and hair). Thus, using these particular physical qualities as an attractiveness cue would have been adaptive in our ancestral environment.5
Importantly, the evolutionary forces that created the human nervous system ultimately underlie all aspects of our psychology—from the nature of a baby’s cry, to the fear that young children have of strange men, to the foods that we find particularly yummy, to our most common fears, such as those of spiders, snakes, and heights. However, mating behaviors are those behaviors in particular that bear directly on the ultimate evolutionary outcome: reproduction. Accordingly, many evolutionary psychologists focus on the nature of human mating.
One piece of mating intelligence comes from evolutionary psychology. The other major area of psychology that inspired the mating intelligence framework is the field of human intelligence. Where does mating intelligence fit in with all the other “intelligences” that one hears about? There are very active research programs on a number of other intelligences, which have relevance for mating intelligence. As such, we would expect some overlap with other existing theories of intelligence, but not complete overlap. Let’s take a brief tour of the highly active, constantly evolving, and fascinating field of human intelligence.
At the turn of the 20th century, the British psychologist Charles Spearman6 made a startling discovery. He noticed that performances across a number of different school subjects were positively related to one another. In other words, students who tended to get good grades in one class tended to get good grades in other classes, and vice versa. This pattern has been found over and over again, across school subjects as well as diverse tests of cognitive ability.7
What is particularly interesting about this phenomenon (sometimes referred to as the positive manifold) is that the tests that appear to correlate with each other are seemingly different from each other in terms of surface content. Some tests measure the ability to form analogies, whereas others measure the ability to manipulate images in one’s mind. The fact that all sufficiently large and diverse arrays of cognitive tests tend to positively correlate with each other suggests that they are all measuring a similar process or set of processes. Spearman hypothesized that all of the tests measure a core reasoning process, which transcends particular content. He labeled this the general factor of intelligence, or the g factor (not to be confused with the G-spot) for short. He labeled the abilities specific to each tests as s (for specific).
Although there is accumulating evidence that the g factor does not comprise a single, unitary process or cognitive mechanism,8 there is wide acceptance that g in an aggregate statistical sense is a very real phenomenon and does a good job predicting academic achievement,9 occupational success in professional fields such as physics, medicine, and law,10 and even health and longevity.11 As we noted in the preface, most g factor theorists haven’t conducted too much research on how g operates in the mating domain. But what is the relationship between IQ (often used as a proxy for g) and mating intelligence?
The relevance of IQ to mating depends on the mating intelligence component in question. As we discuss in more detail later, the mating intelligence framework distinguishes between the display of traits and the use of those traits to navigate the mating domain. These two sets of skills don’t necessarily correlate, a state of affairs that presents an intriguing irony: those with the sexiest mental and personality traits may also be the most clueless when it comes to navigating the turbulent waters of the mating domain! Alternatively, very intelligent people may use their intelligence to learn about the mating domain in order to conquer it (there are cottage industries devoted to this,12 and we have no doubt many of our readers fit this category).
Humans are highly sensitive to behavioral cues of potential mates that reveal good genes, in the evolutionary sense that they reveal a relatively low mutation load (a relatively low number of genetic mutations) and good health, survival, and successful reproductive abilities.13 There is accumulating evidence that the g factor is at least partly an indicator of deleterious mutation load, a situation that affects many interacting genes and has an effect on the entire biological system.
The g factor has shown correlations with biological traits such as height, health, longevity, bodily symmetry, and even sperm quality.14 Many of these correlations are very small and in some instances have not replicated,15 but the results suggest that g may at least partially reveal a person’s deleterious mutation load and level of instability during development.
We do want to point out that we are not suggesting that intelligence is entirely genetically determined—not by a long shot. We agree with Steven Pinker, who has argued in his 2003 book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, that both extreme genetic determinism and extreme environmental determinism are misguided and pernicious. Our understanding of the latest research in epigenetics suggests that nature and nurture are always interacting and can never be separated.16 This means that even though intelligence has substantial heritability,17 and genes do play a role in building brains capable of intelligent functioning,18 there are most certainly many interacting genes that play a role,19 and the expression of genes is affected by many environmental variables and life experiences.20 We will continually be highlighting the flexible and contextual nature of human intelligence throughout this book, thereby revealing the subtle and intricate ways in which biology (e.g., genes, the brain, and hormones) and context interact to contribute to mating outcomes.
Still, all selection pressures require at least a reasonable amount of genetic variation to do their job. If these relations between g and various measures of developmental stability replicate, much of human mate choice may be best conceptualized as an evolutionary adaptive and unconscious fear of heritable mutations, something we can refer to as mutation phobia. The basic idea of mutation phobia is that people are put off sexually by mental and physical traits that indicate an extremely high mutation load. Examples frequently given in the biological literature are body asymmetry or dullness of plumage.21
This may sound discriminatory, but every time you choose one mate over another, you are discriminating against the person you didn’t choose. We also admit that this isn’t a very romantic way to talk about mate selection. Certainly other systems, such as the attachment system, can come online, and powerful bonding emotions relating to love are certainly possible.22 But keep in mind that natural and sexual selection mechanisms aren’t as romantic as you and I have the potential to be! Increasing reproductive outcomes is their bottom line, regardless of how that is achieved. So, we have a lot of emotions and cognitive adaptations mixed together in one body. Humans are complicated.
We understand now that IQ may be related to the display component of mating intelligence. But is someone with an IQ of 160 much sexier than the person with an IQ of 120? In general, probably not. It is likely that our mate preferences were shaped more to avoid mating with people with an extremely high mutational load, than to finely discriminate among individuals with roughly similar levels of mutation load.23
With that said, there are certainly individual differences. IQ may play an important role in finding a good match—those with similar IQ levels tend to marry each other.24 This could be due to a number of factors, including that people with similar levels of IQ may feel more comfortable being with one another, sharing similar values and enjoying similar intellectual pursuits and conversations (see Chapter 3, where we discuss individual differences in mate preferences). We must also take into consideration the existence of other personality traits and cognitive abilities. Someone who has a high IQ but isn’t particularly interesting, creative, or entertaining may not be attractive to a lot of people (although that person may certainly be interesting to others with a similar personality). Likewise, someone with a low IQ can compensate by highlighting other traits.
Indeed, research shows that IQ is only moderately correlated with creativity, with the relationship differing significantly depending on the domain.25 Also, IQ shows little relation to personality traits, with the notable exception of the openness to experience domain, which is related to higher IQ.26 In the next Chapters 2 and 3, we consider the roles of creativity and personality in mating intelligence.
The fact that IQ may matter for different people suggests the importance of researchers studying mating intelligence in populations from all strata of society. College sophomores, who are typically studied in mating research, tend to have higher IQs than the general population, so firm conclusions shouldn’t be made based solely on these studies. Also, more research needs to be conducted cross-culturally. Many of the studies (but certainly not all) summarized in this book are from North American college sophomores. We hope this book sparks researchers around the world to investigate this important topic.
Finally, what about the relation between IQ and the mating mechanisms component of mating intelligence? Those with higher IQs tend to discount immediate rewards in favor of longer-term goals.27 Perhaps those with higher levels of general intelligence are better able to prioritize their immediate goals in the service of obtaining their longer-term goals. In recent years, neuropsychologists have located a set of brain areas in the frontal lobe (around the forehead) of humans that support self-control. These “executive functions” were the last bit of our brain to evolve and include the ability to plan, inhibit, and delay responding.28 Whenever someone must focus hard on a task and ignore distractions, this area is particularly active. The extent to which these areas light up in a person predicts a lot of important outcomes, including whether people are likely to follow the norms of society, resist a wide variety of temptations, and engage in risky behaviors. Executive control even predicts the willpower to resist the urge to eat M&M’s when on a diet!29
Individual differences in these very same self-control cognitive mechanisms have been used to explain mating-specific behavior, such as why some people cheat on their partners and others stay faithful. A recent study found that performance on tests measuring various aspects of executive functioning were positively related to the reported tendency to stay faithful, actual flirting behavior, and desire to go on a date with someone other than one’s partner.30 In this book, we provide some hints to how intelligence plays itself out in terms of mating strategies, but more research needs to be conducted to see how intelligence affects species-typical mating mechanisms.
Now, let’s briefly consider the relationships of mating intelligence to other “intelligences” that have been proposed by researchers.
During the past 30 years, various researchers have emphasized additional “intelligences” that are tied to a specific context or domain of intellectual functioning. This approach is in line with the idea from evolutionary psychology that humans possess a variety of modules, information-processing devices, or biological propensities, which are designed to react to particular environmental stimuli.31,32
One of the first to go beyond g was Howard Gardner33 when he introduced his theory of multiple intelligences. According to the latest version of his theory, there are eight independent cognitive abilities: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.
Gardner’s theory has profoundly influenced educational psychology, although the theory’s impact on psychological testing is not nearly as strong, garnering criticism from g factor theorists that when they try to measure his intelligences, most of his so-called independent intelligences are highly correlated with one another.34 Gardner’s intelligences can be conceptualized as talents or “domains of mind” that evolved to solve recurrent problems in the environment,35 with general intelligence playing a role in all domains to different degrees, depending on how much explicit, on-the-spot novel reasoning is involved.
At any rate, Gardner’s theory paved the way for others to propose additional intelligences. In the early part of the 20th century, Edward Thorndike defined social intelligence simply as the ability to understand and interact with others. In recent years, John Kihlstrom has generated scholarly work on social intelligence, and the study of how the brain is related to social interactions (“social neuroscience”) is a burgeoning field. In his book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, Daniel Goleman argues for the need for the latest social neuroscience research findings to affect the construct of social intelligence and our understanding of relationships. We also see its relevance to our understanding of mating.
A major issue addressed by researchers on the topic of social intelligence is whether social intelligence is related to general intelligence. Are those of us who score higher on traditional measures of intelligence better able to navigate the wavy waters of the social world? In addressing this issue, some researchers have emphasized that intelligence is specific to each context in which it is applied.36 Goleman has argued that social intelligence cannot be measured properly by paper-and-pencil tests but rather must gauge the individual’s ability to be socially appropriate in actual social interactions.37 Gardner has echoed this sentiment in response to critiques that his intelligences correlate with each other when administered in test format.38 Cognitive psychologist Robert J. Sternberg proposed a distinction between analytical intelligence (the type of intelligence mostly measured by IQ tests) and practical intelligence (the type of intelligence one uses in the real world to solve problems relevant to one’s own life).39,40 We agree that to fully capture human intelligence in its many guises one must go beyond laboratory testing. Perhaps nowhere is this more relevant than in regard to the mating domain (for obvious reasons)!
Social intelligence may therefore be specifically geared toward solving problems presented in social life. As noted earlier, Gardner includes social intelligence in his theory of multiple intelligences. He splits social intelligence into intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence, defining intrapersonal intelligence as the ability to know your own internal mental and emotional state and interpersonal intelligence as the ability to understand and distinguish those whom surround you in the social world. In support of the idea of a distinct kind of intelligence designed for social purposes (i.e., social intelligence), Gardner points to people with brain damage that impairs their ability to recognize the internal states of others but does not necessarily impair their performance on nonsocial cognitive tasks (e.g., math).
What role would social intelligence play in mating? A socially intelligent individual would successfully communicate with other individuals and accurately represent the internal world of his or her acquaintances. Mating clearly includes socially relevant tasks such as acquiring and keeping a mate, and it inevitably involves a degree of social interaction and navigation. Not only must an individual possess the ability to read another’s thoughts and feelings, but this individual must also possess a proficiency in interpreting complex social stimuli. We take up these issues more in Chapter 7 when we discuss mind-reading. The mating-intelligent individual must be able to gauge the social standing of potential mates as well as evaluate his or her own status in society and thereby identify realistically who he or she can potentially acquire as a mate (although, as we note in later chapters, a modicum of self-delusion can be adaptive!). In sum, mating intelligence may be construed as a special case of social intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is another newcomer on the scene.41 Emotional intelligence—generally comprising cognitive abilities tied to emotional processes—is closely related to social intelligence, yet it has received more attention by scientific researchers. Peter Salovey and John Mayer, who developed the idea of emotional intelligence (popularized by Daniel Goleman in 1997), see this kind of intelligence as consisting of four main components: the ability to identify emotions, the assimilation of emotions into thought, the understanding of emotions, and the management of emotions. Like for many of Gardner’s and Sternberg’s intelligences, tests of emotional intelligence correlate with tests of general intelligence, but these also are partially separate.42 Emotional intelligence relates to additional variables that clearly play a role in the mating domain (and that we touch on throughout the book), such as openness to experience, agreeableness, social competence, quality of relationships, interpersonal sensitivity, work relationships, drug use, deviancy, aggressiveness, and psychiatric symptoms.43 Many of these relationships still exist even after controlling for the effects of general intelligence and personality.
It is not difficult to imagine the impact of emotional intelligence on the mating domain. On average, a person who cannot control his emotions will not likely be as successful in obtaining a desirable mate compared with his emotionally savvy counterpart. In fact, several recent scientific papers that examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and success in intimate relationships—conducted by Marc Brackett and his colleagues at Yale—suggest that emotional intelligence does correspond to success and happiness in relationships. There is no doubt: emotional intelligence is an important facet of mating intelligence (see Chapter 7 for more on the link between emotional intelligence and mating intelligence).
In light of the importance that emotions play in the mating game, it is easy to see how emotional abilities may underlie mating intelligence. For instance, think about how much emotional processing takes place when people engage in the crucial task of assessing interest of potential mates. Does he like me? Does he like me that way? Suppose you’re a college student at the bar with some friends for a night of dancing and laughs. You see Christopher from your statistics class. Nice guy. What a big, warm smile he gives you! Wasn’t expecting that … hmm. And it’s not just his smile—his posture when he comes over to talk with me is very warm and approachable—his emotional expressions are telling me something. Clearly, emotional intelligence, including the kinds of emotional-cognitive tasks given in this example, represents an important slice of mating intelligence.
Theories of emotional and social intelligence get us closer to explaining intelligence applied to the mating world. However, researchers studying these kinds of intelligence have not traditionally focused on mating-relevant issues and therefore have not been as effective in helping us understand intimate relationships as they could be. Current theories of intelligence provide us with great potential for understanding the psychology of human mating. We think it’s time for this potential to be tapped. By drawing on past work on human intelligence and a deep understanding of our evolutionary past, the mating intelligence framework takes us a step further in our ability to understand the psychological aspects of human mating. It was from this fusing of evolutionary psychology and intelligence that mating intelligence was born.
Mating intelligence consists of the entire set of psychological abilities designed for sexual reproduction. For instance, the thought-work that one engages in when trying to figure out whether a romantic partner might engage in an act of sexual infidelity is the particular kind of thought-work that falls under the umbrella of mating intelligence. Mating intelligence is not a single adaptation, nor is it located in a single brain region or a single gene. It is a collection of dozens or hundreds of distinct psychological processes and learned skills that affect the mating domain based heavily on context.
Such cognitive processes include memories (I do remember her talking with that guy Andrew extensively at the Taylors’ party …), perceptions of others’ behaviors and emotions (She kept smiling and doing that hair thing when they were talking—she just seemed so happy and into him, now that I think about it …), perceptions of one’s own emotional states (Gosh, now that I think about, something really didn’t feel right to me about that interaction at all—I was totally pissed off about it even though I tried not to be …), attention (I so noticed that she took the phone upstairs—why?!!—Maybe I’ll check the caller ID), and, often, excessive planning that taps cognitive resources (OK—we’ll cancel our other plans so we can go to the Hills’ party on Friday—Andrew and his wife are ALWAYS at the Hills’ parties—that’ll give me a chance to reassess this situation …).
Crucially, there are gender differences as well as individual differences in all of these cognitive processes, and these differences relate to mating outcomes. People aren’t always going to behave the same way or make the same decisions. Consider the idea of cognitive resources. There are a lot of ways for our cognitive resources to be depleted,44 and the mating domain is no exception. For some people, just talking to someone of the opposite sex can be a cognitively demanding task. A recent study by Karremans and colleagues in the Netherlands found that mixed-sex interactions temporarily cause a decline in cognitive functioning.45 Men, but not women, were the ones who showed the decline in cognitive performance after interacting with a woman. Men also reported higher levels of impression management in mixed-sex interactions relative to same-sex interactions.
Unfortunately, the researchers did not explore individual differences, but we surmise that the guys who did not get anxious or lose their head (literally!) while talking to women would fare better in the mating domain. They would undoubtedly come across as more attractive to women—more confident as well as more sexually experienced. These are important mating intelligence skills.
When our cognitive resources are depleted, we are also more at risk of cheating. Simone Ritter and her colleagues46 found that under normal conditions, romantically involved heterosexual individuals reported less interest in attractive opposite-sex individuals than those who were single. All bets were off though, when they were cognitively taxed by the experimenter; for example, if they were under heavy time pressure while completing a task. In these situations, with their executive-control guards down, there was no longer a difference between single and romantically involved individuals. Other research shows that people in monogamous relationships whose minds are fatigued spend more time looking at attractive potential mates,47 are more likely to accept a coffee date from an attractive person who is part of the experiment,48 and report a greater likelihood of cheating.49 It appears, then, that it’s much easier for romantically involved people to reject attractive potential partners when they have enough cognitive resources and time to consciously make that decision to control their impulses.
We are also not at our best cognitively when we have too many options. Researchers Alison P. Lenton and Marco Francesconi50 looked at 84 speed-dating events and found that when people faced abundant choice (larger speed-dating events), they were not able to use as may cues to make a decision—so they paid attention to the most quickly and easily assessed characteristics such as height and weight. These findings were the same for both males and females. Yes, both males and females can get cognitively overloaded.
The idea that cognitive processes play a role in mating is actually a rather new development.51 In 1998 Geoffrey Miller and Peter Todd published their seminal paper “Mate Choice Turns Cognitive,” in which they reviewed the accumulating research on the role of perception, judgment, and search strategies in the mating domain. Note, however, that cognitive processes that constitute mating intelligence can be deliberate and conscious, or they can be unconscious. Importantly, the unconscious elements of mating intelligence need not be considered unintelligent. Indeed, many of the mechanisms, such as cue integration (see Chapter 4) and mind-reading (see Chapter 7), operate at a level that isn’t typically accessible to conscious awareness.
There is strong consensus in psychology that humans possess two quite distinct modes of thought—one controlled and the other more automatic.52 Many automatic processes may lie outside our conscious awareness, but they still can be very adaptive.53 Dual-process theories of cognition have greatly increased our understanding of a wide range of cognitive, personality, social, developmental, and cross-cultural phenomenon. In fact, one of the newest theories of human intelligence to come onto the scene makes just this point. According to SBK’s Dual-Process Theory of Human Intelligence, the key to predicting differences in any slice of human intelligent behavior is to understand differences in the mix of goal-directed and spontaneous cognitive processes that make up that behavior.54 According to this theory, neither mode of cognition is more important than the other; it all depends on the context. As we will demonstrate in this book, many spontaneous processes that draw on our unconscious mind are heavily tied to mating issues and have an underlying evolutionary logic that is quite smart.
The flavor of human courtship is markedly different from that of other species. We will do just about anything to attract mates, from singing and dancing to writing poems and painting marvelously complex and aesthetic pictures. We also are unique in the number of dates we go on before we make a commitment to a mate. Orangutans and turtles don’t tend to go to many classy restaurants where they engage in witty banter and have long conversations about preferences and values. The interesting question, though, is, Why do we bother?
Surely most humans are looking for a mate whom they can connect with on a “deep, personal level” and who shares similar hopes, desires, values, goals, and fears. But even so, mate preferences aren’t arbitrary. In humans, fitness can be demonstrated in a lot of ways, and we certainly adopt many different strategies to attract potential mates. This book focuses on two major types of courtship displays: cognitive courtship displays and personality courtship displays. Now, let’s briefly look at the other component of mating intelligence: mating mechanisms.
Mating mechanisms allow us to navigate the complex, emotionally laden, and often-treacherous sea of human mating. These mating mechanisms are comparable to the adaptations for mating that many evolutionary psychologists write about. For instance, David Buss and his colleagues provide evidence suggesting that men are particularly astute at detecting signs of a female partner engaging in sexual infidelity compared with females (who are more astute than men at many other social-cognitive tasks). For instance, these researchers found that men remember more details regarding sexual infidelity than women do. Buss argues that men’s astuteness regarding this issue is an evolutionarily shaped adaptation.55
The evolutionary reasoning that Buss and colleagues apply suggests that males in our evolutionary past were faced with the problem of paternity certainty—unlike females, who were always sure that their offspring were indeed their genetic kin. Males have never been 100% sure that their offspring are their own. As such, evolution would favor men with cognitive capacities that helped them reduce the likelihood of a mate’s sexual infidelity. One mechanism that helps with this task is awareness of information that may reliably predict whether a female will have sex with another man. This mechanism is one of the many psychological processes that together represent mating intelligence.
Other mating mechanisms addressed in detail in this book include the ability to effectively judge a partner’s mate value, the ability to detect deception in the sphere of mating, and the ability to modify one’s mating strategies in light of existing conditions of the local mating market, in addition to a plethora of others. In combination, these cognitive processes that bear on mating outcomes make up the mating mechanism component of mating intelligence.
Mating mechanisms differ markedly from courtship abilities. Whereas mating mechanisms are explicitly about the mating game, courtship displays are explicitly about something altogether different (such as music, art, poetry, extraversion, and kindness). Thus, our twofold theory of mating intelligence suggests that half of mating intelligence—mating mechanisms—is dedicated to helping us deal with stimuli tied to mating, whereas the other half—courtship displays—is only indirectly related to mating and is, essentially, designed to help us acquire high-quality mates by advertising ourselves as good mating prospects. See Table 1.1 for a breakdown of these domains of mating intelligence.
Table 1.1 Defining Features of the Two Main Domains of Mating Intelligence
Of course, there can be overlap among the two components. For instance, conscientiousness can be used both as a courtship display and as a mechanism for maintaining a healthy, harmonious relationship. Or consider one of the most important areas of mating: mate selection. In the mate-selection process, we engage in courtship displays and use our mating mechanisms to assess the courtship displays of others. In the process, there are several universal issues that we face. When trying to attract a mate, what courtship displays should you use? How should you go about displaying your physical qualities, such as strength, virility, fertility, and athleticism? What psychological traits are important to convince your desired partner that you have the capacity for kindness, intelligence, creativity, resourcefulness, and social status? How accurate are we at evaluating the courtship displays of potential mates? Likewise, how well can we deceive in our own efforts to present ourselves as an amazing mate? Perhaps most importantly, how should we differ in how we present ourselves depending on what kind of mating outcome we are seeking (short term vs. long-term)?
It is important to note that mating intelligence doesn’t predict that all cognitive processes relating to mating should relate to each other. Some skills or strategies that increase an individual’s chances of obtaining a short-term fling may backfire when trying to acquire a high-quality mate and maintain that relationship. The mating intelligence framework should help us make predictions based on mating strategy (short-term vs. long-term) and other important variables, such as the age, gender, personality, attachment style, and life history of the person. We hope that further research will bear out the full structure of the mating intelligence framework. We are just laying the groundwork.
Mating intelligence combines two approaches—the study of individual differences that intelligence researchers are focused on, and the study of universal adaptations that concern evolutionary psychologists.56 By bringing together both perspectives, we can come to a more complete understanding of human mating.
We first discuss courtship displays in the cognitive domain (Chapter 2) and in the personality domain (Chapter 3), before turning to cognitive mechanisms that are used in different phases of human mating. Chapter 4 looks at the various traits that are generally considered attractive and how these traits integrate and play out in the real world. Chapter 5 discusses the numerous mating strategies that exist among humans, all of which are highly dependent on context. In Chapter 6, we discuss adaptive biases such as overconfidence. Sometimes, self-delusion can be quite adaptive in the mating domain! In Chapter 7, we discuss the important role of emotional intelligence in mating intelligence as well as the conditions under which we deceive in our relationships. We also focus on the psychology of catching a lying mate. In Chapter 8, we use the mating intelligence framework to figure out whether nice people finish last.
A major goal of this book is to help people take knowledge gleaned from psychology so that they can succeed in their own mating-relevant goals. In our final chapter, Chapter 9, we explore implications of mating intelligence for real-life situations. Because different readers will be in different life stages, this book focuses on two important mating contexts: short-term mating (the singles scene) and long-term mating (the mysterious world of long-term relationships). Chapter 9 also discusses implications of mating intelligence for reducing socially undesirable mating behaviors such as violence and for increasing cross-communication between the sexes.
In the Epilogue, we present the “world-famous” Mating Intelligence Scale that will allow you to test your own mating intelligence. The chapter also brings together a lot of ideas presented throughout this book. We hope that by the end of your journey through this book, you will have some answers to the many puzzles of human mating.