Perception Archives - Social Engineering Blogs

Understanding the psychology of social media sharing

psychmechanicsblog — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:21:00 +0000

Just as what people say and do in real life tells us who they are, how they act on social media reveals their personality too.

The same underlying motivations that drive the behavior of individuals in real life are at play in the virtual world of social media.

The reasons why people share what they share on social media are numerous but when looked at via the lens of various psychological perspectives, a lot of motivations clear out from the vague haze of random posts, videos, and pictures.

These psychological perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A single social media behavior could be the result of a combination of motivations highlighted by these perspectives.

Let’s go over these perspectives one by one…

Beliefs and values

You hardly need an in-depth knowledge of human behavior to understand that people like and share stuff on social media that match their beliefs and values.

A guy who favors capitalism, for example, will often post about it. Someone who believes democracy is the ideal form of government will often post about it.

We all have a tendency to reaffirm our beliefs once we’ve formed them. The next psychological perspective explains why…

Ego boost

Our beliefs make up our various identities which in turn make up our ego. Our ego is nothing but a set of beliefs that we have about ourselves. Our ego is how we see ourselves, our image.

The reason why people reaffirm their beliefs is that it helps them maintain or boost their ego.

If I support socialism then reaffirming the awesomeness of socialism boosts my ego because when I say “Socialism is awesome”, I’m indirectly saying, “I’m awesome because I support socialism which is awesome.” (see Why we want others to like what we like)

The same concept can be extended to one’s preferred political party, favorite sports team, celebrities, car and phone models, etc.

Attention craving

Sometimes what people share on social media is just an attempt to get attention.

We all have an innate need to be wanted, liked and being attended to. But, in some people, this need is exaggerated, possibly because they received little attention from their primary caregivers during childhood.

Attention-seekers post more regularly on social media to replete their ‘attention tanks’. If they feel they’re aren’t getting the attention they want they can go to great extremes to force you to pay attention by posting high shock value stuff such as gory pictures, nudity, etc.

Mate value signaling

Social media provides a great platform for men and women to flaunt their value as a suitable mate. This evolutionary psychological perspective is a powerful factor explaining why people share what they share on social media.

Since men who’re resourceful and ambitious are perceived to be ‘high value’ mates, men often share things that directly or indirectly signal these traits.

This is why you see many men sharing pictures of cars, bikes, and gadgets, even setting these as their profile pictures. Resource signaling in men also includes showing off their intelligence (via humor, for example) and occupational achievements.

Mate value in women is predominantly signaled by physical beauty.

This is why the only activity of some women on Facebook is uploading or changing their pictures.

This is also why women frequently use picturing sharing apps like Instagram that allows them to show off their beauty.

Besides beauty, women signal their mate value by displaying ‘nurturing’ behaviors.

Displaying nurturing behavior allows women to signal, “I’m a good mother and I can take good care of babies with the help of my female friends.”

Ancestral women who were nurturing and formed strong relationships with other women to gather food and raise the young together were more successful reproductively than those who did not have these traits.

This is why you see women posting pictures of them holding a cute baby, animal, teddy bear, etc. and stuff that signals how much they cherish friendships and relationships.

When it’s a woman’s best friend’s birthday, you’re likely to see her post a picture of her and her best friend together, along with something like this written in the caption…

I see today is the birthday of my sweetheart, my love, my cutie pie Maria. Oh! dear Maria! Where do I start? As soon as I got the notification about your birthday, my mind drifted to those days we spent together, all the fun that we had when we……………..and so on.

On the contrary, men’s birthday wishes rarely go any longer than, “Happy birthday bro”.

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How to achieve long term goals (A psychological trick)

psychmechanicsblog — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 16:42:00 +0000

Do you find yourself unable to stick to your goals?

Do you quit on your goal as soon as you encounter the first hurdle?

Have you made resolutions countless times only to break them later?

If your answer is in the affirmative to any of the above questions, you’re not alone. Most people are like this because it’s the default way our brains are wired.

With the help of this post, I hope to create a shift in your mindset that will enable you to persist until you accomplish your important goals.

We’re wired for short-term rewards

For the most part of our evolutionary history, our ancestors hunted and gathered food. These were activities that provided instant gratification. The ability to think long-term and plan ahead is fairly recent in our evolutionary history.

This is why it’s easy to indulge in an activity that promises a reward now and difficult to delay gratification. It takes some mental effort to delay gratification and think long-term.

When you’re doing a task, your brain’s default wiring makes it ask, “Is this activity giving me what I want?” This is because you’re inclined to think that rewards are to be attained as soon as possible, that either your activity is taking you towards your goal or away from it.

The figure A below shows what usually happens when you start out on a goal…

figure A

When you reach A starting from O, you see yourself making progress and are highly motivated as a result.

Soon, something goes terribly wrong and you hit a low point B. At B, the goal seems too far away and you’re motivated to quit because you don’t see your efforts yielding any fruits.

Most people quit at this point because, remember, our mind is constantly asking us, “Is this activity giving me what I want?”

If the answer to that question is “No” there’s no point in motivating you to continue pursuing your goal and you’re in a state of demotivation. So you quit because that’s the sane thing to do in such a situation.

A task that eats away your time, energy and resources without providing you with any benefit is perceived as costly by your mind.

You could devote your time, energy and resources to something else that’s probably more promising- such as tasks that provide you with instant gratification. (see why we do what we do and not what we don’t do)

It’s not over yet

What if you hijack the way your mind works to prevent yourself from quitting when things don’t go your way?

The figure A shown above tells us that when we do things that take us closer to our goals we’re motivated to continue and when we do things that take us away from our goal, we’re de-motivated and likely to quit.

What if I told you that figure A is not the whole story?

Yes, figure A is actually a part of a larger figure B shown below…

figure B

The obstacle you faced at B that motivated you to quit was just one of the many obstacles that you were going to face on the journey towards reaching your goal.

Most people quit at B, others do so at D, yet others at F, and some at H. When people are at A, C, E, and G they’re highly motivated because their mind is telling them, “Yes, what I’m doing now has taken me closer to my goal.”

The key message that figure B is sending you is that no matter how many low points and high points you hit on the road to accomplishing your goal, the general trend of the graph is akin to a straight line going upward.

figure C (representing the general trend of figure B)

When you remember this you can trick your mind into thinking that what you’re currently doing is, after, all taking you closer toward your goal over time. You hack your short-term brain wiring to apply it to long-term thinking.

The low point that you may be currently experiencing is but a temporary inconvenience, an insignificant dip in the general upward trend of your efforts.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, build muscle, start a business, or write a book, and have hit a low point, remind yourself that if you persist you’ll eventually get there.

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Why do couples engage in rough-and-tumble play

psychmechanicsblog — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 07:46:00 +0000

Amy and Paul had gotten into a relationship about a month ago and were now living together. Amy was busy cooking when Paul hugged her from behind and whispered naughty things in her ear.

“Go away! Can’t you see I’m busy?”, Amy said with a grin but Paul was too turned on to let go. She then forcibly unclasped his arms and ran away, challenging Paul to ‘come and get her’ by twirling her index finger. When Paul went after her, she ran away again.

Paul chased her from room to room around the house. They jumped around, laughed and threw pillows at each other.

Finally, Paul caught her and pushed her against the wall, grasping her hands tightly so that she couldn’t escape. The couple stopped laughing, almost simultaneously, and kissed.

I’m sure you must have witnessed something like this countless times, whether on screen or in real life. Perhaps you yourself did something like this with your partner.

What’s going on here?

Why is it always the man who chases the woman this way and not the other way around?

Female resistance as a test of male sexual competence

“Rough-and-tumble sex play is a common feature of the courtship behavior of humans and many other animals”, writes animal communication expert Robin Baker in his book Sperm Wars.

In species where females are the high-investing sex, courtship dynamics mainly revolve around mate selection by females and the display of quality by males.

Female resistance is a test of male physical strength and sexual competence. One of the criteria that a woman can add to her list when selecting a mate is his ability to overcome her physical resistance.

She can test this ability in two ways- either by watching males compete with each other or by directly testing a male’s ability to overcome her own defenses.

On average, men who are physically able to overcome the defences of a female and achieve copulation leave more offspring than those are not. So women whose sons and grandsons have this ability will enjoy greater reproductive success.

Conducting the test

To conduct such a test, a woman has to first resist verbally and then physically. The stronger and more realistic the resistance the better the test will be.

Resist too little and the test is meaningless. Resist too much and the male may inadvertently cause serious physical injury.

The fact that this type of courtship aggression rarely results in serious damage in cats, mink or even humans shows the accuracy with which this feature of sexual behavior has been molded by natural selection.

Frequency of the test

In species such as humans that form long-term relationships, you should observe this test frequently during the initial stages of the relationship. Once the female has tested the male she need not do it again and again.

Even then, occasional re-appraisal of the male’s strength and ability doesn’t harm.

For some couples, rough-and-tumble sex play is an infrequent element in their relationship while for others it may even go up to the level of sadomasochism.

Final words

It’s important to note that this test is just one of the many ways in which females evaluate the mate value of a male.

Usually, this test happens within the context of a newly formed relationship where the female has already begun favoring the male as her sexual partner.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that a female will conduct this test on any male that she hasn’t even begun evaluating as a potential partner.

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Mate choice copying and why all the good guys are taken

psychmechanicsblog — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 15:27:00 +0000

In humans, females are the high investing sex meaning that they invest more in their offspring than the males.

Nine months of gestation followed by years of feeding, nurturing and caring means paying a huge price in terms of time, energy, and resources.

Due to this, there is a pressure on women to select the right mates that are not only genetically sound but are also willing and able to help her invest in their offspring, especially in the context of long-term mating strategy.

Making the right mate choice is important for a woman because it’s likely to ensure her own reproductive success. Any error or misjudgment on her part, however, could mean that her huge efforts go to waste or that her reproductive success stands threatened.

One of the psychological mechanisms that women have evolved to increase the probability of making the right mate choice is called mate choice copying.

Mate choice copying

Say you move to a new city that’s very alien to you. You have no idea how things work there. What do you do to survive and adjust?

You simply copy those around you.

As soon as you arrive at the airport, you do what your fellow passengers do to reach the exit. On the subway station, you see a bunch of people lined up and assume it to be the place where tickets are sold.

In short, you make many calculations and predictions based on what other people do and they mostly turn out right.

In psychology, this is called the social proof theory and states that when we’re uncertain we follow the crowd.

Mate choice copying is very similar to the social proof theory in the way it works.

When selecting a mate, women have a tendency to evaluate what mates other women have selected in order to give themselves a better idea about which mate is worth selecting and which is not.

If a man is attractive to a lot of attractive females, a woman concludes that he must have a high mate value i.e. he must be a good mate.

Otherwise, why would so many attractive women fall for him in the first place?

Studies have shown that women rate men as attractive when they see other women smiling or positively interacting with them. Interestingly, when a women look at an attractive male, they’re more likely to spontaneously smile, thereby reinforcing mate choice copying for other women.

It’s easy to see the potential benefits that mate choice copying can offer to a woman. Evaluation of the male traits usually takes a lot of time and mate choice copying can provide women with useful shortcuts that they can use to aid their mate selection.

Mate choice copying is also the reason why women find committed men attractive. If a man has been deemed worthy enough to commit to by a woman, then surely he must be a good catch.

Women often complain that ‘all the good guys are taken’. The truth is the other way round. They perceive all the taken guys as good.

Mate choice copying in the bedroom

One of the common sources of conflict between couples in the bedroom is regarding foreplay. Women usually complain that men pay little attention to foreplay. They deem men who can stimulate them to orgasm as competent.

When asked why they like men who can stimulate them to orgasm, women naturally respond in terms of the pleasure that they gain from orgasm.

But, according to animal communication expert Robin Baker, the advantages a woman gains from selecting the more competent men are biological as well as sensual.

Basically, a woman uses a man’s approach to foreplay and intercourse to gain information about him.

A man who’s able to arouse a woman and stimulate her to orgasm signals that he has past experience with other females. This, in turn, tells her that other women have also found him attractive enough to allow intercourse.

The more effectively he stimulates her, the more experienced he should be- and hence greater the number of women who’ve so far found him to be attractive.

Mixing her genes with him, therefore, may produce sons or grandsons who’re also attractive to women, thereby increasing her own reproductive success.

References:

Yorzinski, J. L., & Platt, M. L. (2010). Same-sex gaze attraction influences mate-choice copying in humans. PLoS One, 5(2), e9115.

Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., & Feinberg, D. R. (2007). Social transmission of face preferences among humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274(1611), 899-903.

Eva, K. W., & Wood, T. J. (2006). Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 175(12), 1573-1574.

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Do parents prefer sons or daughters?

psychmechanicsblog — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 07:45:00 +0000

Before we tackle this question, let’s review some fundamental concepts of evolutionary biology and psychology. You need to have an understanding of these concepts before proceeding and if you’re already familiar with them a nice little review won’t hurt.

Reproductive potential

It’s the number of children an individual organism can produce. In humans, males have a higher reproductive potential than females because they produce much more sperm in their lifetime than females produce eggs.

Reproductive certainty

While males have a higher reproductive potential, females have a higher reproductive certainty. This means that almost all females reproduce whereas a lot of men do not get a chance to reproduce at all.

Reproductive success

Our psychological mechanisms are wired to seek reproductive success i.e. successfully passing on as many genes to the next generation as possible (having kids who can successfully reproduce).

Keeping these concepts in mind, let’s delve into the eternal question of whether human parents prefer sons or daughters…

More sons = greater reproductive potential

Since human males have a very high reproductive potential compared to females, having more sons means more of your genes have the chance of making it to the next generation.

When it comes to reproductive success, more is better. Having a head start is always preferred. If conditions turn out bad later and some genes die, others can survive.

Therefore, in general, parents tend to prefer sons over daughters under average circumstances.

What exactly do I mean by ‘average circumstances’?

Average circumstances mean that the factors that influence reproductive success are not extreme.

Now, there are a lot of variables that can influence reproductive success but the most important of them all is ‘availability of resources’.

Hence, in this case, ‘average circumstances’ would mean that the resources that parents can invest in their children are neither large nor small, they’re average.

What if the resources are not average? What if the parents have less or more available resources? Will that affect their preference for sons versus daughters?

The answer is yes.

When available resources are meager

Reproductive success is both a function of reproductive potential and reproductive certainty. It’s just that under average circumstances, reproductive potential becomes more important because there’s already a good degree of reproductive certainty.

But when the available resources are meager, the balance of the equation shifts. Now, reproductive certainty becomes more important. In other words, when available resources are less, reproductive certainty becomes a more important determinant of reproductive success.

As you might have guessed, in such a situation daughters become more preferable than sons.

When you don’t have a lot of resources to invest, you can’t run the risk of producing sons whose reproductive certainty is low compared to daughters. They may not get a chance to reproduce at all, especially when their parents can invest very little in them.

There is a direct relationship between the reproductive success of males and their resourcefulness.

Therefore, when there’s a resource constraint, parents can’t simply go for the possibility of passing on a greater number of genes to the next generation. They’ve got to aim just for certainty. Beggars can’t be choosers.

It isn’t surprising, therefore, that women without a long-term partner or married to low-status men tend to produce an excess of daughters while women married into resourceful families tend to produce an excess of sons.

The logical conclusion that we can make from all that we’ve discussed above is that parents who have slightly more than average resources should show no preference towards either boys or girls. They should prefer boys and girls equally.

However, should economic conditions worsen, they’re likely to prefer girls over boys.

An interesting study conducted by researchers from two business schools showed that parents who had both daughters and sons spent more on daughters in bad economic times.

These parents seemed to unconsciously understand that in tough economic conditions reproductive certainty became more important than higher reproductive potential.

Even more intriguing is the fact that such preferences also exist at the womb level. When resources are scarce, female biology suppresses boys’ survival in the womb. The result being that mothers give birth to fewer males than normal.

Here’s a short video discussing this…

References:

Cameron, E. Z., & Dalerum, F. (2009). A Trivers-Willard effect in contemporary humans: male-biased sex ratios among billionaires. PLoS One, 4(1), e4195.

Durante, K. M., Griskevicius, V., Redden, J. P., & White, A. E. (2015). Spending on daughters versus sons in economic recessions. Journal of Consumer Research, ucv023.

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Why do humans engage in warfare

psychmechanicsblog — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 05:12:19 +0000

Why do humans engage in warfare at all? At first blush engaging in warfare seems to make no evolutionary sense. After all, if survival and reproduction are our core needs, why would we ever want to engage in an activity where the chances of us getting killed are so high?

To understand why this happens we first need to look at why we engage in risky behaviors at all…

Choosing risky behaviors

A risky behavior may simply be defined as a behavior which has the potential to incur huge costs to the person doing that behavior.

Starting a business can be a risky behavior because you might end up wasting time and money if you’re unsuccessful; proposing to your crush can be a risky behavior because you might get rejected; investing in the stock market can be a risky behavior because you might end up losing your money.

And engaging in warfare can be a risky behavior because you might get killed- the ultimate loss.

Yet people start businesses, propose to their crushes, invest in the stock market, and engage in warfare. Why?

It’s because the potential benefits of these behaviors can outweigh their potential costs. A risky behavior is that where the potential benefits and costs are both huge.

An entrepreneur can become a millionaire by starting a business, so can a person investing in the stock market, and proposing to your crush may lead to a relationship. These are all benefits that some people believe are worth taking huge risks for.

But what are the potential benefits of engaging in warfare?

Evolution of warfare

Warfare is an activity pursued exclusively by men. Their intended victims are most often other men, although women frequently suffer as well.

Men have physical adaptations that facilitate success in a war. Men exceed women in upper body strength; the average man is nearly twice as strong as an average woman in the chest, shoulder, and arm strength.

Men show superiority in throwing distance and throwing accuracy, which would facilitate combat involving rocks and spears (weapons that we used for most of our evolutionary history).

The psychological adaptations include the tendency to form coalitions (gangs) that explicitly exclude women. One of the strongest fears of men is to act cowardly in a battle and they experience great excitement, glory, and a sense of brotherhood at the prospect of war (think all-male modern sports competitions).

But for warfare to evolve, certain important conditions need to be met. All these conditions are designed to make men perceive the benefits of engaging in warfare greater than the potential costs.

Let’s go over these conditions…

First and foremost, in order to pass on its genes to the next generation, an animal typically requires resources (food and land) and mates. The ideal way to gain more resources is to gain more land. Gaining more land also provides sexual access to mates.

As you can see, if you gain more land (especially fertile lands), your reproductive success is more or less guaranteed to increase.

Although few wars are initiated with the stated intent of capturing women, gaining more copulations is almost always viewed as the desired benefit of successfully vanquishing an enemy.

Secondly, members of the coalitions must believe that their group will be victorious and that the collective resources of one’s coalition will be greater after the aggressive encounter than before it.

Since the potential costs of war are huge, you require a great deal of motivation in the opposite direction to successfully outweigh them. By promising your soldiers that they’re going to get huge rewards when they're victorious, you’re able to boost their morale.

Note that wars are essentially carried out in coalitions. This is because, in a war, there’s always a risk of death. If you go alone to a battle, you have a 100% chance of getting killed.

If you go with 10 men, your chance of getting killed is 1/10 (10%), which is quite low compared to the previous case but kind of high given we're talking about as such a precious resource as human life.

But when more people accompany you, your probability of getting killed decreases significantly. The greater the number the better it is for each individual. If 100 people go to war, the probability of each person getting killed would be 1/100 (1%) and if 1000 people go to war then this probability would be 1/1000 (0.1%), which is very low.

As you can see, forming large coalitions enables men to share the huge risks that wars carry. This tips the scale more toward the benefits side of engaging in a war.

Consider what happens when an army has been subdued and the numbers are reduced, say from 1000 to just 100. The probability of each member getting killed is dramatically increased from what it was at the initial stage.

This often results in surrender or what is known as the ‘battlefield panic’ where a group of men thinks it wiser to defect and save their lives than to continue.

Chimps frequently patrol the borders of their territory, sometimes raiding, attacking or even killing their neighbors.

Conclusion

To summarize, engaging in a war has the potential of providing men with huge benefits in terms of resources and reproductive success but in order to motivate them to go to war, the huge costs associated with war have to be reduced.

If you look at history, men have created all kinds of expansionist ideologies and under the guise of fighting for or defending their ideologies, all they actually ever fought for was land, power, resources and women.

References:

Why do chimps kill each other?

More males mean more territory patrols, study shows

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Reciprocal altruism: Helping and forming bonds with nonrelatives

psychmechanicsblog — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 11:32:34 +0000

It was the birthday of a co-worker of Monica’s. It had been four years now them working together. Previously, they just used to greet each other on their respective birthdays. But this year Monica’s friend gave her a gift on her birthday. Monica felt compelled to the same for her friend, even though she’d never done it before.

When someone does a favor for us, why do we feel tempted to return it?

Why are we likely to help those who’ve helped us before?

Why do we tend to buy gifts for those who do the same for us?

Reciprocal altruism

One should expect altruistic acts from one’s immediate family- one’s closest genetic relatives. This is because by helping each other survive and reproduce, a family is essentially helping its shared genes to successfully pass on to the next generation.

But what explains altruism outside of the family?

Why do people form close bonds with those who’re not related to them?

It’s all due to a psychological phenomenon known as reciprocal altruism. In simple words, reciprocal altruism is nothing but mutual benefit. We form bonds with people and help them so that we may get helped in return. Friendships simply can’t exist without the prospect of mutual benefit.

Origins of reciprocal altruism

During most of our evolutionary history, hunting was the main activity for procuring food. But success from hunting was unpredictable and erratic. One week a hunter would obtain more meat than required and another week he'd acquire nothing at all.

Add to this the fact that meat can’t be stored for long and is easily spoiled. Our hunter ancestors therefore could only survive if they somehow ensured a continual supply of food.

This generated selection pressure for reciprocal altruism, meaning that those who had mutual altruistic tendencies were more likely to survive and out-reproduce those who did not have such tendencies.

Those who were helped, helped others in the future. Therefore, altruistic tendencies are widespread amongst today’s humans.

Reciprocal altruism is found in the animal kingdom too.

Chimpanzees, our closest cousins, form alliances to boost their chances of survival and reproduction. A dominant male-male alliance in chimps is likely to out-reproduce other males.

Vampire bats that suck cattle blood at night don’t always succeed. It has been observed that these bats provide regurgitated blood to their ‘friends’ when they’re in dire need. These ‘friends’ are bats who had provided them with blood in the past! They form close associations with each other even though they’re unrelated.

Shadow of the future

Reciprocal altruism is likely to occur when there’s a large shadow of the future. If the other person thinks that they’ll be interacting with you frequently in the extended future, then they have a strong incentive to be altruistic towards you. They expect you’ll be altruistic towards them in the future too.

On the other hand, if the other person thinks that they won’t be interacting with you for long (i.e. a small shadow of the future), then there seems to be no point in being altruistic.

This is one reason why most friendships in schools and colleges happen at the beginning of the academic year and not when the course is nearing its end.

At the beginning, students seek other students who might benefit them during the course. There’s simply no point in making friends when you’re hardly going to interact in the future.

If it looks like a friend is going to be altruistic towards you beyond college, then you’re likely to form a lifelong bond with that friend. If a friend has helped you a lot in the past and so have you, then you’re likely to form a lifelong friendship with them because you’ve both already demonstrated your respective commitment to reciprocal altruism.

When there’s no future to look forward to, chances of reciprocal altruism are less. It’s all about mutual benefit.

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Parental favoritism and why step parents tend to be jerks

psychmechanicsblog — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 09:05:07 +0000

Scene 1

Jenny always felt that her parents favored her younger sister over her. She knew it wasn’t due to the age factor since she was only a few months older than her sister. Also, she was more hardworking, studious, calm-tempered and helping than her younger sister.

It seemed to make no sense to her as to why her parents doted more to her younger sister who barely had any good personality traits.

Scene 2

By the same token, Arun’s parents seemed to prefer his older brother but, on the contrary, it was pretty clear to him why- his elder brother was much more successful than him.

Arun would be frequently at the receiving end of his parents’ bashing, pestering him to take his career and life seriously. They compared him to his elder brother, saying things like, “Why can’t you be like him?” “You’re such a disgrace to our family.”

Origins of parental favoritism

Although many would like to believe otherwise, parental favoritism exists. The main reason being that parenting, in and of itself, is a costly affair.

Whenever we do something that incurs huge costs on us, we have to make sure that the benefits we gain outweigh them. Take the example of a firm. A firm will only decide to provide specialized costly training to its employees if it knows that it will bring more profits to the organization.

Spending a huge amount of money training employees who aren't delivering is money going down the drain. There has to be a bigger return on investment for the big price paid.

Similarly, parents expect a return on their investment from their children. But there's a catch- they primarily want in the form reproductive success (successful passing of their genes to the next generation).

Speaking in terms of biology, offspring are basically the vehicles for parents’ genes. If offspring do what they’re supposed to do (pass on their parents' genes) without hassles, then parents will benefit from their lifelong investment in their offspring.

So it makes sense that parents should favor those offspring who’re likely to contribute to the reproductive success of their genes and press those who’re not to change their ways so that their odds of reproductive success also increase.

Jenny’s younger sister (Scene 1) was more beautiful than her. So she was more likely to be reproductively successful than her, at least in the unconscious perception of her parents.

Jenny's mom badgered her to visit salons and parlors to encourage her to improve her looks. Her mother hated the fact that Jenny didn't maintain herself, and for good evolutionary reasons. (see What do men find attractive in women)

On the other hand, resources accrual is the key determinant of reproductive success in men and so, instead of pestering him to change his looks, Arun’s parents wanted him to take his career seriously. They favored their elder son because he was likely to yield a good reproductive return on their parental investment.

Why step-parents tend to be jerks

It is well-known that biological parents typically provide more love, care and affection than substitute parents. A child raised by step parents is at a greater risk of physical and emotional abuse.

As I mentioned before, parenting is costly. Not only in terms of the resources invested, but also in terms of time and energy devoted into raising children. It makes no evolutionary sense to raise offspring that do not carry your genes. If you invest in such offspring, you’re incurring unnecessary costs on yourself.

So to motivate step parents to avoid investing in genetically unrelated children, evolution has programmed them to resent their step-children, and this resentment often rears its ugly head in ugly ways in the form physical and emotional abuse.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all step parents are abusive, just that the chances of them being jerks are more; unless some other belief or need overrides this evolutionary tendency.

The mystery of adoption

Say a couple were unable to have kids on their own and decided to go for adoption. They loved and cared for their adopted child as much as its biological parents would. How does evolutionary theory explain this behavior?

It depends on the unique case that one may be considering but the simplest explanation could be that ‘our evolutionary behaviors are not fixed in stone’. A person can, in his lifetime, acquire beliefs that make him act contradictorily to what his evolutionary programming demands.

We contain multitudes. We're a product of both our genetic programming and past life experiences. There are numerous forces battling it out in our psyche to produce a single behavioral output.

The important thing to remember, however, is that no matter what the behavior, the economic principle of costs v/s benefits still holds i.e. a person will only do a behavior if its perceived benefit outweighs its perceived cost.

It could be that the couple mentioned above, by adopting a child, are trying to save their relationship. Because the news of not being able to have kids can be distressing and a strain on the relationship, the couple can adopt and pretend that they have a child.

This not only saves the relationship but keeps alive the hope that if they keep trying, one day they might have kids of their own.

Since parenting is costly we’re programmed to enjoy it to offset the costs. Parents get a deep sense of satisfaction and contentment when they care for their young. It could be that parents who adopt are primarily satisfying this pre-programmed need for satisfaction and contentment.

Claiming that parents who adopt violate the principles of evolutionary theory is like claiming that having sex with contraceptives goes contradictory to the fact that sex has the biological function of passing on genes.

We humans are cognitively advanced enough to make the decision of hacking into that function to just go for the feeling part. In this case, pleasure.

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What men gain (and lose) by pursuing short term mating

psychmechanicsblog — Sat, 02 Jul 2016 04:48:29 +0000

Mating strategies in humans are essentially of two types- short term and long term.

Long term mating strategy involves finding a long term partner with whom one decides to mate, have offspring and then raise those offspring. Short term mating strategy, on the other hand, involves mating with more…

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Why sexual fidelity matters more to men

psychmechanicsblog — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 02:11:35 +0000

Sexual infidelity in a long-term relationship, such as marriage, is undesirable to both men and women.

Since the major goal of forming a long-term relationship is to have repeated sex in order to increase the odds of conception, if a person looks for sex outside the relationship he’s straight-out…

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