A Brief History of Ideas ...

Knowing the Desires of Potential Sex Partners: A Slice of Mating IntelligenceGlenn GeherState University of New York at New Paltz

A Brief History of Ideas ...

Mating Intelligence: Sex, Relationships, and the Mind's Reproductive SystemGlenn Geher Geoffrey Miller

Should Mating Psychology and Intelligence be Linked?How reasonable is the integration of mating and intelligence in the minds of scientists?

Analysis of articles in Intelligence for content tied to mating:Only 3 (0.8%) of 811 articles dealt with mating at all.

Analysis of articles in Evolution and Human Behavior for content tied to intelligence:Only 1 (0.3%) of 311 articles dealt with intelligence at all.

Analysis of articles in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships for content tied to intelligence:Only 2 (0.2%) of 939 articles dealt with intelligence at all.

In a SciSearch conducted for our book, of all 51,477,995 records, only 121 associated ‘mating’ and ‘intelligence.’

... by contrast, 178 connected ‘mating’ and ‘Norway’

... and 168 connected ‘mating’ with ‘cockroach’

Is a scholarly marriage between ‘mating’ and ‘intelligence’ sheer madness?#!?*!&!! ... not necessarily ...

As of September 19, 2006, The Mating Mind was ranked 9,797 (of over a million) on Amazon’s list of sales. It was first published in 2000.

... compared with Glenn’s first book, Measuring Emotional Intelligence (2004), which ranks (on September 19, 2006) 999,106 in sales ... ... but back to the main ideas of this talk ... ... ouch!!!

The Mating Mind’sprovocative thesis:Perhaps human intelligence evolved primarily as a Sexually Selected Fitness Indicator …

Why do some people hold incredible intellectual abilities that seem totally unrelated to survival? Such as the ability to generate complex mathematical formulas to represent the physical world ...

MSNBC News Services - 8:10 p.m. ET July 10, 2006: “New letters shed light on Einstein’s love life …Einstein admitted he spent time with six other women while married”

What is Mating Intelligence?Miller’s answer: All aspects of human intelligence that were primarily designed for courtship purposes (roughly: all indices of creative intelligence with no clear survival value)

Miller’s conceptualization proposes that all intelligence is mating intelligence, on one hand – but his link between such intelligence and mating is decidedly indirect ...

But what about all the cognitive abilities that relate directly to human mating? Cross-Sex Mind-Reading Detecting Infidelity Assessing One’s Own Mate-Value Assessing Value of Potential MatesStrategic Flexibility in the Mating Market

A Model of Mating Intelligence (Geher & Miller, in press; Geher, Camargo, & O’Rourke, in press) Cognitive Mating Mechanisms Mental Fitness Displays Mating Success

A Study of Mating-Relevant Cross-Sex Mind-Reading How well do you know the desires of potential mates? Are there systematic biases in mind-reading that are relatively intelligent?

Just a Slice of Mating Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: A Model for Studying Mating Intelligence The Ability-Based Method for Studying Emotional Intelligence (Mayer & Geher, 1996)

Operationalizing Mating Intelligence • The degree to which participants can accurately guess which personal ads were rated as most attractive to members of the opposite sex • The degree to which participants’ errors in judging desires of the opposite-sex are adaptive

Participants Heterosexual Young Adults (Males: 152; Females: 329) Materials • Index of General Intelligence (Army Alpha Vocabulary Test): • Sample item: Plenary: • Complete – Candid – Culpable – Cloying • 2. Indices of both Long-Term and Short-Term Mating Intelligence

Short-Term Mating Intelligence (Male Example) A: I love sex, generally, and … BLEEPED … in particular. No strings, no reciprocation necessary (although I wouldn’t be adverse to it!). You call the shots as much or as little as you wish. I’ve explored the Kinky. B: I grow more humble but no less passionate about life every waking day. I laugh at myself, care about a lot, and strive to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. I’m pretty simple, but have many talents: play several instruments, and I’m a decent gardener. C: I fully recognize that succeeding means drawing on multiple talents, the best that everyone has to offer—so it seems with relationships. I enjoy many of life’s fine refinements, but I also realize that the best things in life are free.

The Task at Hand To guess which of these three ads was chosen by most women as the most attractive for a short-term, sexual relationship. 4 Total Indices were computed in this study:

Analyses (Phase 1): How Good Were Participants at This Task? Male Short-Term Mating Intelligence:

Overall Trends for all Types of Judgments

A rare case of males demonstrating superiority in a social skill compared with females …

But … Does “Accurate” Correspond to “Intelligent?” Not Necessarily ... Haselton & Buss (2000) – Error Management Theory Males tend to overestimate sexual interest on the part of females (The “I think she likes me that way” Bias) Females tend to be Commitment Skeptics (The “all men are pigs” Bias)

Error Management Effects in the Current Study All ads were rated by two independent judges in terms of presence of sexual content (categorically defined as present or not) Sample Male Short-Term Item coded as having sexual content: I love sex, generally, and … BLEEP … in particular... ___________________________________________________ Sample Female Short-Term Item coded as having sexual content: I am searching for a fling of epic proportions, someone to caress my face as we kiss and who will write me love notes and leave them under my door—but will not get upset with me if I decide to kiss another man. Human beings are not meant to be paired for life,like lobsters.

Defining Male Error Management • Instances in which: • Male overall guessing was significantly off • Errors were such that males tended to overestimate degree to which females would choose sexually charged item

Summary of Male Results Long-Term Judgments – Accurate overall – did not overestimate degree to which females were interested in sexual items Short-Term Judgments – 5 of 10 items had one or more sexual ads – IN EACH CASE (5 of 5), males overestimated the degree to which females chose the sexually charged ad

Defining Female Error Management • Instances in which: • Female overall guessing was significantly off • Errors were such that sexually charged items were overestimated

Summary of Female Results Long-Term Judgments – 5 of 10 items had one or more sexual ads – IN EACH CASE (5 of 5), females overestimated the degree to which males chose the sexually charged ad Short-Term Judgments – 4 of 10 items had one or more sexual ads – IN 3 of 4 cases, females overestimated the degree to which males chose the sexually charged ad Evidence for a ‘Men are Always Pigs’ bias?

Is Either Accuracy or AdaptiveMind-Reading g-Loaded? Not for Females: Neither accuracy nor commitment-skepticism-bias was associated with vocabulary scores. Maybe for Males???

Correlations between IQ and Indices of Accuracy and Adaptive Bias (for Males) IQ____________ Accuracy in Long-Term Mating Judgments .06 Accuracy in Short-Term Mating Judgments .13 Overestimating Sexual Qualities (LT) .05 Overestimating Sexual Qualities (ST) .30*1 ____________________________________________________N = 127 for all; *p < .05; 1significantly predictive of IQ after controlling for other predictors in standard regression. (F(4, 123) = 3.21, p < .05; R2 = .10)

Implications Sex Differences Males are more accurate overall (consistent with findings from Bromley & Camargo (in prep.); DeBacker, Braeckman, & Farinpour, in press)

Males Rarely are Better than Females at Social Intelligence Tasks ... Female superiority has been demonstrated in: ● Emotional intelligence (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 1999) ● Social Intelligence (Connellana, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Batkia, Jag, & Ahluwaliab, 2000) ● Interpersonal Intelligence (Rammstedt, Thomas H. Rammsayer, 1999) ● Nonverbal abilities (Nowicki, 1994) ● Decoding in Communication (Noller, 1986)

A Brief History of Ideas ...