An Attachment Theoretical Perspective on Tend-and-Befriend Stress Reactions Abstract This study investigates the “tend-and-befriend” hypothesis proposed in 2000 by Taylor and colleagues, which posits that women utilize an alternative stress response to fight-or-flight, ensuring the survival of themselves and their offspring (tend) through the formation of groups (befriend). In contrast, we propose that, while sexes may differ in the use of tend-and-befriend behaviors, attachment style is a more robust predictor of these behaviors. The relationships among sex, adult attachment anxiety and avoidance, and stress responses were examined in 237 young adults. Participants completed the Experiences in Close Relationships—Revised and the Tend-and-Befriend Questionnaire. Results suggest that women preferred tend/befriend and flight responses over men, while men engaged in more fight responses than women. However, importantly, women and men both endorsed being most likely to engage in tend/befriend behaviors during stress than other responses. Attachment style was an independent and robust predictor of all stress responses, with anxious attachment predicting fight and flight behaviors and increased tend/befriend behavior, and avoidant attachment predicting decreased tend/befriend behavior. One interaction was also identified: Women who were more avoidantly attached were as likely as men to engage in fight behaviors, while less avoidant women reported the lowest fight response. Our findings suggest that while sex differences in self-reported tend-and-befriend behaviors may exist, exploration within sexes (an important oversight of previous research) may indicate different patterns of results. We found evidence of strong effects of attachment style on all forms of stress response, even after accounting for sex, indicating the importance of attachment behavior in stress responsivity.

The Relative Importance of Physical Attractiveness and Personality Characteristics to the Mate Choices of Women and Their Fathers Abstract Prior research assessing mate preferences among women and their parents reveals the potential for conflict within families; daughters value characteristics indicating genetic quality, such as physical attractiveness, more strongly than their parents do. However, prior research also suggests the potential for agreement within families; both daughters and their parents report valuing other mate characteristics much more strongly than physical attractiveness (e.g., mutual affection, intelligence, etc.). We assessed mate preferences among 86 daughter-father pairs using an experimental design varying target men’s physical attractiveness and personality characteristics. We tested five hypotheses investigating the relative importance of physical attractiveness and personality traits to women and their fathers as well as the potential for mate choice conflict between women and their fathers. Both women and their fathers were strongly influenced by the physical attractiveness of the target men and rated more attractive target men as more desirable partners for themselves or for their daughters. Reinforcing the importance of physical attractiveness, men with the most desirable personality profiles were rated more favorably than their counterparts only when they were moderately attractive or more attractive; unattractive men were never rated as more desirable partners for daughters, regardless of their personality profiles. However, physical attractiveness was more strongly related to women’s own dating preferences whereas personality favorability was more strongly related to fathers’ preferences for their daughters. Furthermore, when women and their fathers disagreed about the best mate, women chose the more attractive man while fathers chose the man with the more desirable personality traits. The importance of physical attractiveness to women’s mate choices may lead to conflict with their fathers.

Adaptation to the Suicidal Niche Abstract Primarily a precis of the book The Evolution of Suicide (Soper 2018), this article argues that behaviorally modern humans are specifically adapted to survive in what the author calls the “suicidal niche,” an ecological arena characterized by the endemic fitness threat of deliberate self-killing. A “pain-and-brain” model of suicide’s evolution is proposed, which explains suicide as a noxious by-product of two adaptations combined: the aversiveness of pain, which demands that the organism act to end or escape it, and the cognitive sophistication of the mature human brain, which offers self-killing as an effective means to satisfy that demand for escape. These “pain” and “brain” primary adaptations are posited to be both sufficient conditions for suicide and universal among mature humans, which suggests that the fitness threat of suicide would have posed a predictable and severe adaptive problem in the evolution of our species. Adaptive solutions, which emerged to address the problem, are hypothesized to be psychological and sometimes culturally informed mechanisms that either dull the “pain” motivation for suicide or deny the “brain” means to conceive and enact suicide—or, most likely, a combination of the two strategies. Evolved antisuicide defenses may account for many otherwise puzzling aspects of human behavior and psychology, including susceptibilities to depression, addictions, self-harm, and certain other common psychiatric symptoms, which the author posits to be protective, autonomic responses to suicidogenic pain. The precision of human adaptation to the suicidal niche makes it unlikely that deliberate self-killings can, even in principle, be predicted with useful accuracy at the individual level.

Sex Differences for Preferences of Shoulder to Hip Ratio in Men and Women: an Eye Tracking Study Abstract Shoulder to hip ratio (SHR) is a sexually dimorphic trait in humans, yet no previous study has investigated the gazing behavior and perceived physical attractiveness of men and women in relation to men and women’s SHRs. Men and women are attentive to men’s upper body and consider higher SHRs as cues to masculinity, strength, and formidability. Moreover, while women’s shoulder width varies from one individual to another, to our knowledge no previous study has investigated perceived attractiveness and eye movement in relation to women’s SHR. Therefore, in the current study, we investigated attractiveness ratings and eye movements of both men and women to front- and back-posed male and female stimuli varying in SHR. Our results showed that men prefer more masculine ratios for men and less masculine ratios for women. However, the results also showed that women preferred an intermediate SHR for both men and women in the back view while their preference in the front view is not influenced by SHR. Eye movements showed that men viewed the chest region of other men in the front and back views of stimuli, and they had longer dwell time on chests of male stimuli with higher SHRs, while no significant difference was found for dwell time on chests of female stimuli varying in SHR. Also, no differences were observed for female participants in dwell time, for either chest regions of SHRs of male stimuli or for the chests of female stimuli. Altogether, the results of this study suggest that men more than women are attentive to variations in SHRs.

Perfectionism and Relationship Status Influence Health Evaluations of Faces with Limbal Rings Abstract Research consistently demonstrates that limbal rings are a visual cue to health, given their peak vibrancy is observed in healthy individuals. Such perceptual acuity toward limbal rings is especially apparent among women evaluating male faces. The current research was designed as a replication and extension of previous findings demonstrating how women perceive limbal rings. Additionally, we sought to determine if this preference was moderated by relationship status and related to individual differences in perfectionistic tendencies, consistent with past research demonstrating moderation of good genes preferences by personality and relationship status. Women evaluated the perceived health of faces with and without limbal rings before responding to measures assessing perfectionistic tendencies. We replicated previous findings indicating that limbal rings are indeed a health cue, particularly in male faces. Furthermore, we extended previous findings by demonstrating that women higher in other-oriented perfectionism, a dimension of perfectionism associated with exceedingly high criteria for others’ abilities, perceive faces with limbal rings as particularly healthy. Importantly, this perceptual acuity was only apparent among single women. We frame results in terms of how perfectionism facilitates recognition of good gene cues.

Facing Competing Motives: Testing for Motivational Tradeoffs in Affiliative and Pathogen-Avoidant Motives via Extraverted Face Preferences Abstract Affiliative and pathogen-avoidant motives adaptively influence interpersonal preferences. For facial structures connoting extraversion, affiliative motives heighten preferences for extraverted faces, whereas pathogen-avoidant motives downregulate preferences. Despite what appears to be competing tension between motives for preferences in extraverted faces, previous research had yet to identify this possibility within a single experiment. The current study temporally activated an affiliative, pathogen-avoidant, or control state before tasking participants with indicating preferences for extraverted faces, relative to introverted, and support for campus-wide social networking activities to demonstrate convergence with previous findings demonstrating temporal shifts in affiliative interest. Although activated motivational states did not influence interpersonal preferences directly in this study, mediation analyses revealed participants’ upregulated extraverted face preferences and support for a campus social network following an exclusionary experience because of a heightened affiliative desire. We frame results as motivational tradeoffs, offering suggestions to identify competing motive effects more effectively for future research.

The Rough Stuff: Understanding Aggressive Consensual Sex Abstract Research on sexual behavior often characterizes rough sex as sexual aggression and as violent or abusive in nature. In a sample of 734 male and female undergraduates, we examined the extent of rough sexual acts in romantic relationships, the triggers for those acts, and how rough sex differs from “typical” sex. Participants were asked their definition of rough sex, questions regarding sexual aggression and behaviors during rough sex, and abusive behaviors in the relationship. Findings indicate that rough sex is triggered by curiosity and a need for novelty, and that both men and women often initiate rough sexual behaviors. Consensual rough sex typically results in little violence and only superficial injuries such as scratches, bruises, and welts. Rough sex does not correlate with violence in the relationship or abuse. However, rough sexual behaviors were increased in situations that involved male sexual jealousy. Being separated from a sexual partner was the second most common trigger for rough sex, particularly for men. Aspects of rough sex, such as increased semen displacement and decreased latency for female orgasm are discussed.

Bioecological Counseling Abstract During the past 20 years, fields such as ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology have drawn upon life history theory to make important advances in our understanding of the ecology of human behavior, building extensively upon the earlier work of Bronfenbrenner and others. In this article, we (a) elaborate on an alternative to the traditional mental health model that is emerging from research informed by life history theory, (b) use a recent extension of Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) bioecological model to integrate applications of life history theory to humans into counseling and psychotherapy, (c) coin the term Bioecological Counseling to denote the resulting framework and chart out how it may be applied in practice at various levels (e.g., via recovery management), and then (d) identify implications for research. We hope this article stimulates interest in bioecological counseling as well as draws attention to the broader utility of evolutionary theory for counseling and psychotherapy.

The Price of Singlehood: Assessing the Impact of Involuntary Singlehood on Emotions and Life Satisfaction Abstract A considerable proportion of people living in Western societies are single, i.e., they do not have an intimate partner. Recent research has indicated that about half of these instances are involuntary—people want to be in a relationship, but face difficulties in attracting partners. Within the context of an evolutionary theoretical framework, the current study aims to estimate the occurrence of involuntary singlehood in the Greek cultural context and to assess its impact on emotional wellbeing and on life satisfaction. Using an online sample of 735 Greek-speaking participants (431 women and 304 men), it was found that nearly 40% of those who were single were involuntarily so. It was also found that involuntary singles experienced significantly more negative emotions and lower life satisfaction than voluntary singles and people in a relationship.

Beyond Sex Differences: Predictors of Negative Emotions Following Casual Sex Abstract Recently, much attention has been focused on understanding casual sex, or hooking up, among college students. The current study uses an adaptationist approach to go beyond sex differences in casual sex behavior, examining predictors of emotional reactions and including a community sample (39 females, 84 males) in addition to a typical college sample (103 females, 62 males). If males and females possess different emotional mechanisms designed to evaluate the consequences of sexual behavior, we would expect sex differences in emotional reactions as well as in motivations for engaging in casual sex. Individual differences in motivation may influence whether emotional reactions to casual sex are positive or negative. Early environmental cues of relationship stability may also have an impact on emotional responses. Results indicate that in addition to sex differences, factors such as early environmental cues of relationship instability, individuals’ motivation for engaging in casual sex, and the number of their casual sex partners contribute to the positive or negative nature of their response to casual sex experiences. In addition, results from the community sample suggest that there may be life stage-specific effects.