PART I

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

CHAPTER 4. Functional analysis of gossip

Thinking in terms of Pleistocene adaptation suggests that we should not find gossip about, for example, how soundly so-and-so is sleeping – a fact with relatively little fitness-relevance – nearly as interesting as gossip about with whom so-and-so is sleeping.” (Barkow, 1992: 629).

1 Introduction

“While not much has been empirically established about gossiping as a personality or as a ‘biological’ disposition, there have been some wildly fanciful speculations.” (Rosnow & Fine, 1976). In this chapter I want to outline a theoretical framework that demonstrates how gossip can be regarded as a biological disposition. Gossip is a Human Universal (Brown 1991), which indicates that it is not a purely cultural product. If all people have a tendency to exchange gossip, it makes one wonder which possible adaptive functions can be attributed to this human trait.

Focusing on the adaptive problems of survival, mating and group living that our ancestors faced in evolutionary history, I will now search for the possible adaptive function(s) of gossip. I will discuss multiple functions, because the scope of this chapter is to show that the term ‘gossip’ can better be subdivided in more refined and better-defined categories.

Gossip, Barkow (1989, 1992) says, concerns the exchange of information about other people. As I outlined in chapter 1, much of our daily talk falls under this definition, or as Barkow (1992: 628) says:

“The short answer to ‘which individuals’ [we gossip about] is relatives, rivals, mates, offspring, partners in social exchange, and the very-high ranking. The short answer to ‘what kinds of information’ [we gossip about] is relative standing and anything likely to affect it, control over resources, sexual activities, births and deaths, current alliances/friendships and political involvements, health, and reputation about reliability as a partner in social exchange.” (Barkow, 1992: 629).

This evolutionary perspective on gossip, on which Barkow focuses, embodies a broad range of topics, that each could solve specific, but very different adaptive problems. Looking for the potential adaptive value of gossip, I should classify gossip in different, smaller sub categories. As will become clear in this chapter, I suggest that gossip could solve many problems our ancestors faced. Of course, not one psychological mechanism can be able to solve many different specific problems. It seems more plausible that different specialized psychological mechanisms might have been able to solve the different specific problems I will discuss.

I will now start to outline some of the adaptive problems our ancestors faced, and consequently show how specific kinds of gossip might have been suitable solutions. The goal of this chapter is to show how we can divide gossip as a noun into different sub categories, based on the different functions of each specific kind of gossip. At this point, I do not focus on gossip as a verb. I have already discussed the uses and effects of gossip in chapter 2, and will refer to many of the results from that chapter. In the next chapter, I will also focus again on gossip as an act. I will then discuss how the different sub categories of gossip as a noun can be translated into behavioral models that explain, in evolutionary terms, when it is beneficial to receive and share such specific types of information.

I divide this chapter into four main parts. First, I outline the adaptive problems of learning and suggest how gossip can solve these problems. I then switch to problems of human mating, and the potential problem-solving of gossip in these interactions. Third, I discuss problems of group living, and the potential functions of gossip in this domain. To conclude this chapter I give an overview of how gossip can be classified based its different functions. These smaller sub categories can more easily be translated to operational definitions, which can be used for empirical research.

2 Gossip and experience: why learning is so important

Buss (1999: 67-96) lists ‘food acquisition and selection’, ‘finding a place to live’ and ‘combating predators and other environmental dangers’ as human survival problems, or what Darwin called the ‘hostile forces of nature’. Our ancestors faced problems of finding food, developing good hunting skills, finding a safe place to live, and combating predator risks. For instance, the emotion of ‘fear’, which we are all confronted with at times, was (and still is) the solution to some of the adaptive problems our ancestors faced, such as avoiding bites from animals, attacks from predators, diseases, etc. We still fear some animals, diseases, heights and other things that endangered the survival of our ancestors. The reason for this is very simple -- our ancestors feared dangerous situations, and therefore avoided those situations, which gave them more chances to survive than those who did not fear these dangerous situations, risked their life, and eventually died. If the behavioral strategy of our successful ancestors was passed on (genetically) to their offspring, resulting in fear of dangerous situations again, the offspring also had more chances to survive.

2.1 The importance of learning

Knowledge of what is dangerous, and where is a safe place to live, which animals are safe to approach and which you better avoid, was acquired by our ancestors, and still is today, through experience. When talking about ecological problems of survival, we talk about experience, and therefore about learning, since: “[a]s a matter of definition, we could say that learning occurs when behavior is modified by experience.” (Gaulin & McBurney, 2004: 172).

Learning is important for humans, and as Kaplan et al (2000, 2003) have stressed, intelligence evolved because of ecological selection, and co-evolved with a longer lifespan, unique to humans (see also previous chapter). Humans have a much longer juvenile period, in which individuals are dependent on others for food acquisition, and in which they learn skills they will need in a later stage of life (Kaplan et al, 2000, 2003). Since the growth of humans into adulthood is so slow, there is a higher cost of raising offspring. Bogin and Smith (1996) think that this problem might explain menopause in women. With what is known as the ‘grandmother hypothesis’, (see also Kaplan et al 2000), they explain that women live beyond their reproductive period, to secure extra help in raising the offspring of their own offspring.

Learning is not a uniquely human trait, other animals (especially other primates) use learning techniques as well (see Byrne & Whiten, 1988 and Whiten & Byrne, 1997), but the extended juvenile period, in which learning is central, is unique to humans. In what follows I will discuss how we learn from both real world experiences and fictitious situations. For both, our learning rests on individual experiences and others’ experiences.

2.2 Learning from experiences in the real world

2.2.1 Individual experiences with the real world

All behavior depends on some kind of experience:

“To see why, remember how selection works. Selection simply retains those genes that are good at getting into the next generation. But note that genes are only tested for their ability to cope with the environments they actually encounter; they may have unpredictable effects when they encounter new environments.” (Gaulin & McBurney, 2004: 173)

The adaptations housed within our human minds are tested for adaptive or non-adaptive outcomes in a specific environment through experience. The learning processes of our ancestors (of course, only those that had a positive outcome) resulted in adaptations that still operate today. As I outlined in the previous chapter, a fear of snakes that results in avoiding them had an adaptive outcome for our ancestors, which was carried on to successive generations. Experience teaches us to avoid snakes, but experience also teaches us that we should not fear water hoses, although they resemble snakes.

We learn some things more easily than other things. The ease of learning rests on how well acquired knowledge matches a real-world situation. In evolutionary terms, the ease of learning depends on how well knowledge matches situations that occurred in the EEA. Because these learning mechanisms are designed (by selection) to solve specific problems, it seems more plausible that our minds house multiple learning mechanisms, each designed to solve a specific problem, instead of one general learning mechanism that can solve all problems (Gaulin & Mc Burney, 2004: 171-196).

In our modern world, learning mechanisms enable us to learn some things quickly, without much effort (such as language). However, as the mismatch hypothesis predicts (see previous chapter) our modern environments differ in some aspects from the EEA. We live in rapidly changing environments, and as Henrich and McElreath (2003) have suggested, learning might be most useful under these conditions. Learning is most important when it comes to situations that mismatch the EEA. To give an example, cars are a very recent addition to our environment (in evolutionary terms). We do not fear cars (as the mismatch hypothesis predicts), and individuals learn they are dangerous through experience. If we only learn that cars are dangerous through personal experiences, chances are high we would all have been hit by a car already. First-hand experience can be very costly.

The same was true for our ancestors, as Williams (1966) and Scalise-Sugiyama (1996, 2001) explained. Learning about mobile prey, predation risks and other dangerous situations through first-hand experience might have been so very costly, that it was better to get the experience from others (second-hand).

2.2.2 Others’ experiences with the real world

Bandura's (1969, 1977) proximate explanation for why we learn from observing others is as follows:

"Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modelling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action." (Bandura, 1977: 22)

Bandura (1969, 1977) explained how learning through observation is the process of recording behavioral patterns of people without communicating with them. Watching how others behave and which strategies they use can teach us which actions to copy and which to avoid. When you see someone else acting in a successful way to solve a problem, you might copy this behavior when you are faced with the same problem. However, when you see someone failing to solve a problem, chances are high you will not copy this person’s behavior in the future. Bandura’s (1969, 1977) Social Learning Theory rests on three main principles. First, people observe others; they store and organize the information and often rehearse the strategy before actually mimicking. Second, people are more likely to copy a strategy that has an outcome they value, and, third, people are more likely to copy strategies that have admired status.

An accompanying, ultimate level of explanation, comes from evolutionary psychologists, who frame the learning capacities of humans in a cultural perspective. They use the terms ‘cultural learning’ or ‘social learning’, referring to the cultural transmission/ acquisition of information involved in these actions. In line with Bandura, Scalise-Sugiyama (1996, 2001), Henrich and McElreath (2003), and Richerson and Boyd (1992) have stressed that learning through own experiences can be too costly for an individual (see above). Observation is a cheap way to get information about successful and unsuccessful behavior strategies. We exploit the expertise of others, as Russon (1997) puts it. In effect, imitation of others can be regarded as a fast and frugal heuristic, say Gigerenzer and Todd (1999: 31-32), because it enables individuals to make decisions with limited time and energy. “Humans, unlike other animals, are heavily reliant on social learning to acquire large and important portions of their behavioral repertoire.” (Henrich & McElreath, 2003: 123).

A second reason for copying others, as Bromley (1993) and Richerson and Boyd (1992) explained, is because individual learning can result in errors. We change or corroborate our own experiences, by looking at others:

“We cannot acquire all we need or want to know through direct, first-hand experience. We have to rely on others to give us the benefit of their experience, through experience, through education and social learning. Also, because individual assessments and evaluations may be wrong, they need to be corroborated by independent observers. […] To a large extent, inter-subjective agreement defines reality.” (Bromley, 1993: 75-76)

Maybe an ancestor who first encountered a lion was lucky enough that the lion was resting after having a full meal, and was not chasing this ancestor. This experience might have (falsely) lead this ancestor to believe lions are not dangerous animals, that they should not be feared. For such reasons it can still be valuable to listen to similar experiences of other people. If this ancestor later heard that one of his band members was eaten by a lion, he might change his opinion from ‘lions are safe’ to ‘lions are dangerous’. If he later hears another member of his band was eaten by a lion, this might corroborate his thoughts that ‘lions are dangerous’.

As I argued above, individual learning might be most useful to deal with modern problems that mismatch the EEA. Boyd and Richerson (1988a, 1989a, as cited in Richerson and Boyd, 1992) similarly predicted that social learning should also be more common in changing environments. By testing models that incorporate this idea, they confirmed their hypothesis (for details see Boyd & Richerson 1988a, 1989a). In line with this, Henrich and McElreath (2003) propose that conformist learning should be prevalent in contexts where little information is present (such as changing environments). Copying what the majority does, they say, might be the best solution. However, as Henrich and McElreath (2003) comment earlier in their theory; social learning alone is not sufficient:

“While social learners do very well when they are rare, they do poorly when they are common. Without any individual learners, social learners cannot track changes in the environment, and the first individual learner entering a group of social learners always has higher fitness than the others.” (Henrich & McElreath, 2003: 125)

When environments change, individual learning precedes social learning. First, individuals have to test different strategies to learn which strategy is the best option. Once this is established, others can copy this strategy and social learning becomes the best option.

When we want to learn from others’ experience, we have two options say Henrich and Gil-White (2001). First, we can directly learn from the actions of others, through observation and info copying. Second, we can learn about the actions of others transmitted to us by a third person. This second-hand strategy, of course, requires some communication.

2.2.2.1 First-hand information: direct social learning of info copying

Learning from others by observation might not be a unique human trait, because it can be found throughout the animal world (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999). Learning from observing others is common among other non-human primates. Primate social intelligence is regarded as the precursor of human cultural evolution. The use of observational learning is most common among apes (Boyd & Silk, 505-510) but can be found in some monkeys as well. Hauser (1988), studying vervet monkeys, concluded that these monkeys use social transmission to learn about new solutions to ecological problems. “Nonetheless, it seems clear that no other primate relies on observational learning to the same extent that humans do, and their behavior is much less variable from group to group or from region to region than the behavior of humans is.” (Boyd & Silk, 2003: 510).

Tomasello, Kruger and Ratner (1993) have argued that human imitation differs significantly from other non-human primates’ and other animals’ imitation techniques. Chimpanzees might see others using a stick to gather ants from a nest, and then imitate this behavior, but will never reach the level of imitation humans exhibit. Different from other animals, we humans do not merely copy the idea or invention (use a stick), but carefully pay attention to every action of others and try to imitate this behavior as much and as detailed as possible.

2.2.2.2 Second-hand information: learning through communication

“True imitation is probably not the whole story, however, at least not in the long run.” (Henrich & McElreath, 2003: 127). In addition to getting experience from observation, humans also learn by talking about the behavior strategies of others. As I explained in the previous chapter, some researchers (e.g. Scalise-Sugiyama, 1996, 2001) have suggested that language evolved to transmit information about hunting skills. Kaplan and Hill (1992) say that information exchange in the context of foraging strategies can increase experience information:

“Aché men, for example, live in social groups consisting of about 10 hunters, and at the end of day, each man usually reports to the others in considerable detail concerning every game item that he encountered that day, and the outcome of the encounter. At minimal cost, each man gains 10 times as much information about encounter rates as he actually experiences.” (Kaplan & Hill, 1992: 196)

Mobility of hunter-gatherer communities indeed increases the opportunities to exchange information about foraging techniques, marriage and rituals. Politis (1996), analyzing the mobility and settlement patterns of the Nukak in the Colombian Amazon, attributes not solely economic reasons to the moving patterns of these people, but stresses the importance of information exchange as well. Residential mobility among the Nukak promotes contact between bands and information exchange. Mobilizing to acquire information might imply some costs to the traveler, but he reaps benefits that often go beyond pure information acquisition (Kaplan & Hill, 1992):

“Information acquisition may pay off in currencies other than calories. Steward (1938) reports that young adult males in the Great Basin frequently travelled great distances to visit and share information about food distribution with their hosts. For their hosts the value of information may have been increased food yields. The value of the information for the young men might have been to obtain welcome in groups containing marriageable women.” (Kaplan & Hill, 1992: 187)

Returning to information exchange, which is central here, Tooby and Cosmides (2001) argue that our attention will be driven to both stories about potentially damaging situations, (such as seemingly safe situations with concealed threats) and to advantageous situations that we should seek out and prolong. Social communication benefited our ancestors, giving rise to a rapid flow of experience:

“In this process of incarnation, humans, beings social and communicative organisms equipped with decoupling, are no longer limited by the slow and unreliable flow of actual experience. Instead, we can immerse ourselves in the comparatively rapid flow of vicarious, orchestrated, imagined, or fictional experience. A hunter-gatherer band might contain scores or even hundreds of lifetimes’ worth of experience whose summary can be tapped into if it can be communicated. So, vicarious experience of especially interesting events, communicated from others, should be aesthetically rewarding.” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001: 23)

Tooby and Cosmides (2001) further comment on this by stating that today we still value stories about other people, because of these experience-related benefits. Listening to what happened to others was adaptive for our ancestors to increase their experience. Those who showed interest in stories about others had an advantage on those who did not care to hear about the behaviors of others. The interested ancestors were the winners of the evolutionary arms race. The ones who cared for experiences of others became our ancestors, and today we (as their progeny) still show interest in stories about other people, because selection favored this human trait:

“Indeed, we evolved not so long ago from organisms whose sole source of (non-innate) information was the individual’s won experience. Therefore, even now our richest systems for information extraction and learning are designed to operate on our own experience. It seems therefore inevitable, now that we can receive information through communication from others, that we should still process it more deeply when we receive it in a form that resembles individual experience, even though there is no extrinsic reason why communicated information needs to be formatted in such a way. That is, we extract more information from inputs structured in such a form. What form is this? People prefer to receive information in the form of stories.” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001: 24)

Their argument is in line with Sperber’s (1985) explanation for why we value stories over Stock Exchange information or numbers, as I outlined in the previous chapter with the little memory experiment.

2.2.2.3 Who we learn from and the prestige – or general copying bias

What is important to keep in mind, as Richerson and Boyd (1992) stress, is that learning mechanisms are shaped by natural selection. Individuals do not copy everyone and everything; they are selective in their copying behavior. Richerson and Boyd (1992) therefore discuss biased transmission, and the simplest form is direct bias, which means that individuals need not (re)invent behavior, but evaluate different strategies (of others) and choose from among these. And, “Again, if we suppose that selection on genes is responsible for the guiding rules behind people’s choices, direct bias will tend to cause adaptive cultural variants to spread.” (Richerson & Boyd, 1992: 65).

I agree with Henrich and Gil-White (2001) that age and sex should be important criteria in selecting whom to copy or not:

“Premodern societies have a strong, sex-biased division of labour, so children should prefer somewhat older, same-sex models. This allows children to acquire gender-relevant skills and scaffold themselves to increasingly complex skills – for copying models that are too advanced will often result in failure.” (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001: 176)

These authors also argue that we are more likely to copy healthy individuals. Clear skin, bright eyes, shiny hair, and lack of injuries are all cues of a potential state of health; we should therefore be more likely to copy those who have these features (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001: 176).

Copying older people or healthier people actually indicates a similar pattern; we copy higher status individuals. As I will argue later in this chapter, status and reputations are important, and the best option is to keep your status as high as possible (see below). It has been argued (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Henrich, et al, 2001; Henrich and Gil-White, 2001) that mimicking the behavior of higher status people is an adaptive strategy that might lead to an increase in one’s own status. But, reputations are often complex. Being a good hunter involves different skills and perhaps even keeping to a certain diet (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). It is often difficult to determine what exactly causes someone to be skilled and prestigious. Boyd and Richerson (1985) therefore argue that evolution might have shaped human psychology for a general copying bias rather than a specific copying bias. It is less costly to mimic the general behavioral pattern of an individual than to analyze precisely which behavioral combinations lead to success. Their General Copying Bias theory explains why we sometimes do not copy specific strategies, but the overall behavior of higher status individuals. Or as Henrich and Gil-White (2001: 167) say:

“Cultural transmission is adaptive because it saves learners the costs of individual learning. Once some cultural transmission capacities exist, natural selection favors improved learning efficiencies, such as abilities to identify and preferentially copy models who are likely to possess better-than average information. […] Such preferred models may be said to have prestige with respect to their ‘clients’ (the copiers).”

In the next chapter, I focus on how we can translate all the different kinds of gossip I lay out in this chapter into behavioral models. I will also focus in more depth on the effect of the General Copying Bias. As will become clear, this GCB distorts the way we process gossip information (see chapter 5).

2.3 Learning from the fictive world

In addition to learning from the real life experiences of our own and others', we also learn from fictive actions of our own and others'. Scalise Sugiyama (2001) cites Humphrey (1983, as cited in Scalise Sugiyama, 2001), who stressed the importance of experience to the survival of every individual, and referred to play and dreaming to get experience. I will not discuss the role of dreaming here, but overview the importance of play, and narratives.

2.3.1 Individual fictive learning: pretend play

“Perhaps the most commonly agreed upon definition for play is that it is a form of juvenile behavior resembling functional behavior but its form is typically exaggerated, seemingly less serious, and has individual components rearranged in unusual sequences. It has also been described as a class of behaviors in which the means are more important than the ends.” (Pellegrini & Bjorklund, 2004: 24)

The tremendous benefits play offers is that no threats, or risks endanger the actors. Pellegrini and Bjorklund (2004) distinguish for object play and fantasy play. Object play refers to manipulation of objects. They say that the function of object play is related to hunting skills. It prepares young children for the use of objects in the context of hunting in later stages of life. Similarly, Steen and Owens (2000) regard chase play, performed by 3 to 5 year olds as a cognitive adaptation to solve the evolutionary (and developmental) problem of training to become a skilled hunter. This form of pretend play is a safe mode to get skilled in chasing prey. Because no real risks of getting seriously injured are present in this pretend play, children can learn difficult skills, and train themselves without being exposed to extreme costs.

Fantasy play, as Pellegrini and Bjorklund (2004) call it, refers to the player taking a stance that differs from reality. It is engaging in a fictive world, and requires higher intelligence skills and a Theory of Mind[3]. In this vein, Tooby and Cosmides (2001) say that pretend play rests on cognitive mechanisms that allow us to make representations that are decoupled from our real world (metarepresentations). The decoupling is important for the individual, to distinguish fictive situations from real situations. If this were not the case, then false information from fictive events would flow into our knowledge about the real world.

Without Theory of Mind pretend play is not possible. “Pretend play is now recognized as so fundamental an expression of the human cognitive architecture that its absence in a toddler is seen as diagnostic of a neurological impairment (autism).” ( Frith, 1989: cited in Tooby & Cosmides, 2001: 9). Taylor et al (2004) investigated this with a longitudinal study of young children, and indeed concluded that Theory of Mind is required to engage in imaginary play. Their research focused specifically on children who had imaginary friends, with whom they interacted. They noticed that this is a very common phenomenon (occurring in 65% of children), and that these imaginary interactions enable children to perform better in social contexts in later stages of their life.

In line with this thinking, Whiten and Byrne (1988b) have argued that play also occurs in other animals, but only in those who have Machiavellian intelligence skills. They refer to studies which tend to confirm that play occurs in primates (for a more detailed overview see e.g. Jolly, 1988 and Whiten and Byrne, 1988b), and say that: “One of the most plausible ‘arguments by design’ for the function of play is that it serves to gather knowledge […] to allow future flexible response to relatively novel circumstances…” (Whiten & Byrne, 1988b: 59). Recently Lewis and Barton (2004) also concluded that the occurrence of social play in non-human primates is related to an increase in the cerebellum size. The cerebellum enables cognitive and motor skills, which are both required in social play.

As an example of the ‘safety’ of pretend (or fantasy) play, Bogin & Smith (1996) explain how girls, who look adult before becoming fertile, act as if they were adult women, and get experienced, before risking to get pregnant. Boys, similarly, reach fertility earlier, but can experience adult socio-sexual feelings, such as anxiety, pleasure, pride and guilt, long before they physically appear to be adults. Their adult-like behavior is considered humorous, so that they can compete with adult men without risking their lives. For both girls and boys this adolescent phase in life offers them an opportunity to gather experience, learning how to act as adults and parents before becoming adults and parents. “From this theoretical perspective, it is profitable to view the evolution of human childhood and adolescence as adaptations for both feeding and reproduction.” (Bogin & Smith, 1996: 31.)

Play has the most value for younger children, who lack experience. Bock and Johnson (2004) analyzed the play behavior of children in Botswana, and noticed that play occurred most at a younger age and the time devoted to play decreased as age increased. This supports the idea that play prepares the younger ones for skills they will need at a later stage in their life. Also, young children seem to play with older children, to learn from their behavior, and the learning is even bi-directional. Gray and Feldman (2004), observing children playing at school noticed that young children not only play with other children from their own age, but also with adolescents. The youngsters benefit from this play because they somehow feel more secure and engage in kinds of play behavior they would not act out with same-aged children. The adolescents also learn from this playing, because this is an ideal situation to practice nurturance and leadership.

2.3.2 Others’ fictive learning: fairytales, myths and other stories

Play and fictive stories are similar, because both involve the metarepresentation of a state of affairs of other individuals (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001). Again, we need Theory of Mind to gain this form of experience. Since, processing stories involves attributing minds to fictive characters and mind-reading (Zunshine, 2003).

The major difference between the two might be that play occurs most in children and declines with age, while our interest in fictive stories remains active when growing older. Tooby and Cosmides (2001) call our interest in fiction an adult version of children’s play behavior. But children like stories too. As a matter of fact, all humans like stories about other people (Brown, 1991), and a reason for this might be because fiction reflects reality, says Carroll (1999):

“In literature the most frequent and important themes are those that concern individual identity, sexual romance, and the family. Survival is the basis of all adventure stories, and by far the largest proportion of stories that are not strictly oriented to survival are organized around the mating game, the concerns of parents for children, and family relations generally.” (Carroll, 1999: 164)

Humans value fiction (and the arts) because these stories have adaptive functions; they transmit valuable information to be used in real life (Carroll, 2002):

“Art provides an emotionally and subjectively intelligible model of reality, and it is within such models that human beings organize their complex behaviors in flexible response to contingent circumstances. The imaginative models that we construct about our experience in the world do not merely convey practical information. They direct our behavior by entering into our motivational system at its very roots--our feelings, our ideas, and our values. We use imaginative models to make sense of the world, not just to "understand" it abstractly but to feel and perceive our own place in it--to see it from the inside out. Making sense of the world in this way, through narrative and through the other arts, is both a primary psychological need and a necessary precondition for organizing our behavior in ways that satisfy all our other adaptive needs.” (Carroll, 2002: 611)

Our interest in fiction, from evolutionary perspective, is integrated into a more general framework of research on evolution and the arts (for an overview see Carroll 2002; Richardson & Steen, 2002).

The reason why fiction catches our interest is because fiction triggers our emotions (Carroll, 1999; Tooby & Cosmides, 2001):

“[…] although fiction seems to be processed as surrogate experience, some psychological subsystems reliably react to it as if it were real, while others reliably do not. In particular, fictional worlds engage emotion systems while disengaging action systems (just as dreams do). An absorbing series of fictional events will draw out of our mental mechanisms a rich array of emotional responses – the same responses that would be appropriate to those same events and persons if they were real. We care about the people involved, we identify our welfare with one or more of the characters, we may be afraid, or disgusted, or shattered, as if (in the emotional channel) those events were happening to us.” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001: 8-9)

Fictive stories resemble situations that existed in the EEA. When hearing (or reading) about situations that resemble reality, you feel as if you are experiencing these things yourself, and that gives fiction its adaptive value. You gain experience without taking any risks and you invest very little effort (i.e. get information at very low cost).

2.4 Gossip as a learning strategy

By outlining the importance of learning to battle the hostile forces of nature, the role of communication becomes clear. Learning rests largely on the transmission of information (social or cultural learning), and this is where one of the adaptive functions of gossip plays a role. I will discuss this now in more detail.

2.4.1 Adaptive problems of learning that gossip could solve

“There is a fantastic payoff in trading hard-won knowledge with kin and friends, and language is obviously a major means of doing so.” (Pinker, 1994: 367). The core idea of my argument here is that gossip solves the adaptive problem of the costs implied with acquiring first-hand experience. Learning which strategies improve or endanger your fitness can be costly, and in the extreme can even cause your death. Acquiring information about the strategies others have tested can resolve this problem. Social learning solves the problem of individual trial and error, and it is in this view that gossip plays an important role.

Similar to what Scalise Sugiyama suggested (2001: 225): “What social or environmental factors might have triggered the emergence of storytelling? The answer to this question, I believe, is the costs involved in first-hand information acquisition.” To know what is going on around you is to your benefit, to the extreme it can sometimes save your life. “…a proper attention to gossip […] has plain survival value for a social animal.” (Derbyshire, 2001: 27). Or as Spacks (1982) reports about one of the respondents she questioned: “In the doing, in the talking, the story-telling, she encounters her own capacities and experiences her own pleasures. She also learns and relearns what she shares with the rest of humanity.” (Spacks, 1982: 32).

2.4.2 Strategy Learning Gossip (SLG)

In the first chapter I defined gossip in the most general sense as information about the deviant or surprising traits and behaviors of third persons. The central function of gossip in resolving the problem of acquiring experience is the behavioral information transmitted through gossip. I therefore rename gossip that functions to acquire experience Strategy Learning Gossip, or abbreviated: SLG.

2.4.2.1 Gossipees of SLG: mere carriers of fitness-relevant information

The subject of gossip in Strategy Learning Gossip (SLG) has a non-focused role. The identity of the gossiped subject does not really matter. He or she is a mere carrier of fitness-relevant strategies. Whether we know the gossipee or not, we will be interested in the transmitted information if we can learn from their behavior. Replacing the gossipees of SLG with any other name will not change the value of SLG. Let me explain with an example.

“Have you heard Peter was rushed to the hospital after eating at this fancy new restaurant in Ghent? He caught a severe form of food poisoning!”

Whether you know Peter or not, the SLG information remains the same. The SLG information here is “If you eat at this fancy new restaurant you risk getting seriously ill”. Whether the gossipee is Peter, Tom, Anne, or anyone else, this does not change the value of the SLG. Try to change the name in the example I gave you with another name, and it will become clear.

If you do know Peter, this form of SLG might have an extra value to you, namely that you are informed that your friend (or foe) is deadly ill. Also, if you know the gossipee of SLG, this might indicate that what happened to this person can easily happen to you as well. SLG about people from your close surrounding has relatively higher probability of applying to you as well since you live in the same environment, than SLG applying to an unknown person whose environment is unknown to you as well.

Although the gossipees of SLG are mere carriers of fitness-relevant information, certain features of the gossipee still might matter, such as their age, sex, and status. Since we do not learn from and copy just anyone, we select who we will learn from by some cues. I think the importance of certain features of the gossipee might be different for fitness-promoting and fitness-endangering SLG. To explain this, I will present you two examples, one of a fitness-promoting SLG, and one of a fitness-endangering SLG.

I start with an example of SLG about fitness-endangering situations, where personal features of the gossiped subject might not matter much. In my opinion, the recipient of this kind of information is best to avoid costly strategies that others have experienced, regardless of whether this person was older, more successful or healthier than the recipient. To illustrate, consider a five-year old boy and his father take a ride on a brand new roller coaster in a funfair. Due to a technical mistake, they are both not properly secured and fall out of their seats, getting seriously injured. When their friends spread this news (fitness-endangering SLG) around, it will not mater if they focus on the adult or the five-year old, and it will not matter if they tell this to poor people or millionaires; recipients of this information will think twice before trying out (new) roller coasters in funfairs.

When the SLG is about fitness-promoting strategies, things are different. We will not copy the beneficial strategies of others if this does not benefit ourselves, and the only way we can improve ourselves is by copying others who are healthier and wealthier. To return to my example, imagine the five-year old boy and his father visited the game-machines before going on the roller coaster ride. The boy might have run around the game-machines in this funfair to search for coins people left in these machines. When he finds plenty of these coins, this child might feel as if he is a millionaire, and other children will soon follow this successful strategy. However, you don’t see adults running around game machines and screaming for joy when they find some lost coins. Unless you are homeless, or very poor, as an adult your average status is higher than a five-year old. What is fitness-promoting for this child might not be as beneficial for you. When it comes to fitness-promoting SLG, the gossipee (carrier of fitness-relevant information) should have equal or preferable higher status than the recipient. Because older, healthier or more prestigious people are more interesting to mimic (see above) we can expect that we will exchange more fitness-promoting SLG about older, healthier and more prestigious people.

2.4.2.2 SLG topics: new and unexpected-outcome strategies

As I said in chapter 1, gossip is not about all behaviors, but rather deviant or surprising behaviors. In this context SLG translates to new strategies (which are both clearly deviant and surprising) and strategies we are familiar with, but that have a different outcome. In the latter situation, we will be surprised if the outcome of a strategy we are familiar with is different from the usual outcome. SLG is functional to learn from, and to change-or-corroborate our thoughts about our own experiences. In summary, SLG functions to teach us new strategies, and to change-or-corroborate our own experiences, with experience information from others. These two functions are similar to the functions attributed to social learning, which I described in section 2.2.2 of this chapter (see above).

What is ‘new’ to a receiver depends on the behavioral repertoire a receiver has stored in his experiences. Younger, less experienced people will benefit more by learning from SLG. Consequently, older, more experienced people might not learn as much from SLG as younger people do, but can fall back more often on the change-or-corroborate function of SLG. Extremely rare occurring situations are ideal for become topics of SLG. “Man struck by lightning, while walking in a park”, “Girl killed by flower-box that fell from window-sill”, are examples of situations that have a low frequency of occurrence. These kinds of stories spread fast, and often appear in the media as well. In chapter 7, where I focus on Media Gossip, I will come back to this. As a reminder of the boundaries of my research topic, I want to state that SLG about these events is often related to rumors and so-called Urban Legends, and is, therefore, different. As I explained in chapter 1, I restrict gossip as an overall noun (and therefore SLG) as information of which the sender has truth/false knowledge. The sender must believe the information is true, or must know the information is not true (a lie). Everything in between these certainties, which is information that we have heard about but do not know whether it is true or not, I classified as rumors, and these are not the subject of this research. Urban legends and rumors very often report about ‘strange, very uncommonly occurring events’. If the sender has truth/false knowledge, and this is the case if he or she was a witness to the event, or trusts the person he or she heard the SLG from, I will call this SLG. As soon as such SLG starts spreading around quickly, and between many people who don’t trust each other (who do not know each other very well) the SLG turns into rumors and Urban Legends.

To illustrate SLG about surprise and common situations, let me return to the example of the roller coaster incident. We learn roller coasters are dangerous, and especially people who have no own experiences with roller coasters learn a lot from this information. Still, many of us have been riding roller coasters for years without ever getting hurt. We usually consider this as a fun (and safe) activity, and do not expect different outcomes such as injuries. Hearing that people get injured distorts our general idea about roller coasters; it deviates from the ideas we have stored in our minds about funfairs and roller coasters. Hearing this kind of SLG, we might corroborate our storage of experiences with roller coasters.

2.4.3 SLG might solve problems of survival, mating and group living

Attributing this learning function to gossip, I come very close to Scalise Sugiyama’s (1996, 2001) view on why humans tell stories. Her work inspired my idea to regard gossip as a social learning heuristic. However, I do criticize that she only discusses the role of second-hand information in the context of hunting, and not in a wider social context. Learning to survive is not solely about how to secure food, but also about living with other human beings who, throughout our evolutionary past, have shaped a great deal of our behavior.

Although I have stressed the importance of learning so far in the context of natural selection, I also think that sexual and social selection shaped our learning motivations. I do not talk about sex differences (yet, see later) here, but want to stress that we not only interested in strategies that can secure our survival, but also interested in strategies that can help us gain experience in the context of mating and being a successful group-member. SLG in general should be further split into different categories, which I term as Survival SLG, Mating SLG, and Social SLG. These three forms of gossip are similar in function, but still differ enough in terms of problems they could have solved and still might solve. Let me explain each different kind in more detail.

2.4.3.1 Survival SLG: Learning about life and death

Survival SLG concerns strategies from which we can learn how to directly improve or secure our fitness to survive. It concerns strategies that influence our health, food acquisition, living, and other basic problems of survival. Talking about how someone got ill and suffers from it is Survival SLG, from which we learn what to avoid. Talking about how someone else escaped this illness (e.g. by a healthy diet) is Survival SLG from which we learn what to mimic in the future. Talking about someone who died from eating a poisonous plant is Survival SLG from which we learn what to avoid eating in the future. Talking about someone who discovered a nutritious new food source is Survival SLG from which we learn what to eat in the future. Etc.

Survival SLG is information about life and death. It is information about the strategies of other people, that have either been successful or non-successful, and from which the receiver can learn what to avoid and what to promote to secure his or her own life.

2.4.3.2 Mating SLG: Learning about heart and hurt

Mating SLG is information about the successful and unsuccessful strategies others have used (tried and tested) to find and/or guard a mate, and deal with sexual rivals. I discuss the different problems of human mating more in detail in section 3 of this chapter. Gossip as an overall noun embodies different kinds of information (also called gossip) that could solve problems of human mating (see below). Central to Mating SLG is that the behavior strategies are in focus, and not as much the gossipee himself or herself, as is the case in other kinds of Mating Reputation Gossip. For instance gossiping about the successful strategy of a man to win the heart of a woman is Mating SLG from which other men can learn how to behave in the future when they want to find a mate. Talking about the unsuccessful strategy of a man to conquer the heart of a woman, is also Mating SLG, from which other men can learn how not to behave in the future.

Mating SLG is information about mating strategies. It is information about how others have behaved to find or guard a mate, in either a successful of unsuccessful way, and from which the receiver of this information can learn how to behave in the future when he or she wants to find or guard a mate. It is information to learn how to please your heart and the heart of others, and especially to learn how not go get hurt or not to hurt others.

An extra note I want to mention here concerns Mating SLG about parenting skills. Learning from others how to deal with problems concerning raising offspring has clear fitness-relevant value. It affects the inclusive fitness[4]of the parent or related family member. In the next sections, I will discuss the problems of parenting and the importance of inclusive fitness more in detail, and come back to the value of Mating SLG about parenting skills.

2.4.3.3 Social SLG: Learning about right and wrong

Group living is important because it offers co-operation possibilities and protection. I discuss the problems of group living and other functions of gossip later in this chapter. What I want to focus on here is that we learn from Social SLG how to interact with others. We learn about social norms. Recently Baumeister, Zhang and Vohs (2004) have already outlined this function of gossip. As they say:

“Anything that might ease or facilitate the process of learning these rules [guidelines for how to live in a culture] would be beneficial to the individual seeking to live in the culture. That is were gossip comes in handy. In our view, gossip is a potentially powerful and efficient means of transmitting information about the rules, and other guidelines for living in a culture. On the surface, gossip consists of stories and anecdotes about particular other people, perhaps especially ones that reflect negatively on the target. We readily concede that some of the appeal of gossip is simply learning about other people. However, we think that a second, less obvious function of gossip is to convey information about social norms and other guidelines for behavior.” (Baumeister, Zhang & Vohs, 2004: 113)

Through Social SLG we can learn how to behave in a culture. To give an example of how important this can be I refer to the anecdote John Derbyshire (2001) reported in a popular journal. He tells the story of how he used to refrain from taking part in gossip interactions at work, and how this once resulted in losing his job. The tradition at his former job, a brewery, used to be to go for a drink at lunchtime on Friday and return to work lightly intoxicated in the afternoon. The new boss, however, did not approve this behavior. Derbyshire ended up being the only one who was a little drunk after lunch, while the other colleagues had heard (through gossip) that this new boss would sanction those who drank during office hours.

Social SLG is about teaching and learning what is right and what is wrong to do in a certain social setting. It is about how to behave, and especially how not to behave. Gossip reveals the social etiquettes. Social SLG also teaches us about the social contracts we don’t know of (yet), and also reinforces the social contracts that govern a society; through Social SLG we can corroborate what we knew already.

As I will argue later in this chapter, this type of gossip is closely related to Co-operation Reputation Gossip and Calibration Reputation Gossip, which concern information about people who follow or defect social contracts or other group norms. The major difference between Social SLG and Co-operation and Calibration Reputation Gossip is that for Social SLG the focus lies on the behavioral information, while the focus of the other two are directed to the gossipee. All three different kinds of gossip often co-occur, and whether they co-occur or not depends on the relationship between the gossipers and the gossipee. If the gossipers and the gossipee do not know each other, the information will be solely Social SLG. If the gossipers know the gossipee, it will be Co-operation or Calibration Reputation Gossip as well.

Baumeister, Zhang and Vohs (2004) do not note a difference between Social SLG, Co-operation Reputation Gossip and Calibration Reputation Gossip. Still, I think it is important to do so. The example Baumeister et al (2004) give at the beginning of their article concerns a man who was betrayed in a purchase from a commercial company. This is an example of gossip information that can be classified as both Social SLG and Co-operation Reputation Gossip. We learn that it is wrong to betray others, or we can corroborate if we knew this already, and we punish the person who cheated, by giving him a bad reputation and decrease his future co-operation opportunities.

2.4.3.4 Other-SLG

Because this classification of gossip is based purely on theoretical fundaments, and future empirical research should investigate whether extra categories are needed or not, I leave open this option by adding an ‘Other-SLG’ category. Other-SLG covers forms of SLG that cannot be classified under Survival SLG, Mating SLG, or Social SLG. Or, it can also embody gossip stories that can be classified under one or more of the three other forms of SLG, but when multiple functions are present and one of the functions is not to transmit information about survival, health or social matters.

2.4.4 Sex differences in Strategy Learning Gossip

When focusing on specific SLG topics, we can expect some male/female differences. Especially concerning Mating SLG, men and women will be eager to learn about different strategies. I will discuss this in more detail in the next section. Although I expect sex differences to occur in what is being gossiped about, at first glance you might not expect any sex differences in a tendency to exchange SLG. Getting experiences at low costs is equally important for men and women. Learning how to secure your life, how to attract mates and how to behave properly are all as important for men as they are for women. When asking men if they gossip, they often reply “No, not at all”, and if you then point to a specific gossip conversation you overheard from them, they will tell you that “This is not gossiping, but exchanging important information”. That is exactly what is going on when we exchange SLG; we exchange information that is so important that it can influence your fitness. Men most certainly exchange SLG, because it was so important for our male ancestors to secure their survival and reproduction, and it is still is helpful for modern men to improve their life skills.

But, there is a reason why I argue that women might show a greater tendency to engage in SLG than men. The reason lies in different relocation patterns in the past (as I described in chapter). Women were being relocated after marriage and forced to become the more socially active gender, able to integrate easily in new social environments. Our male ancestors traveled a lot as well, and visited other bands, but did not stay with these culturally different groups for the rest of their lives, as our female ancestors did when they married. Behaving according the group norms in order to be accepted as a group member must have been more important for our female ancestors. Of course, relocation in our modern societies will have an effect on both men and women, eliciting higher interest in SLG. However, on average I expect this effect to be largest for women, since they experienced this problem more often in our evolutionary past. If this is true, these sex differences should still reflect in current behavior, with women showing greater interest in SLG (especially Social SLG) than men. Fewer sex differences might be expected for Survival SLG and Mating SLG. Men traveled extensively in our evolutionary past, dealing with new environments and new problems of survival to which Survival SLG could have offered solutions. And, of course, mating is as important for men and women.

In summary, both men and women should show a tendency to engage in SLG, and this tendency will be bigger for women, especially concerning Social SLG. For all different kinds of SLG sex differences can be expected in specific topics gossiped about.

3 Gossip and evolutionary problems of mating

Beyond securing our own survival, reproduction is important in evolutionary terms. If our ancestors knew how to secure their own survival, but did not reproduce, we would not be here today. The same sex differences in what men and women find attractive in a potential mate are shown to occur cross-culturally (Buss, 1999: 99-160).

Our present human mating strategies are shaped by sexual selection forces throughout our evolutionary history (Buss, 1994: 5-6). Sexual selection leads to sex differences when considering what we find attractive in a potential mate. What we have to keep in mind, though, is that selection shaped our desires. What we actually do and whom we finally choose to be our partner might be a reflection of these inherited desires but can be different as well (Buss, 1994; Symons, 1979). A woman might not desire a dominant man to be her partner, but the social context she lives in might make her decide to marry a dominant man to offer her protection from environmental threats (Graziano, Jensen- Campbell, Todd & Finch, 1997: 147-148).

Because the literature on an evolutionary approach to human mating is enormous, and I just want to outline the basic problems men and women face in the context of human mating, to show how gossip could have solved some of these problems. I will not give a full, detailed overview of all research in this domain. My general outline is based mainly on the work of Buss (1994) and Buss and Schmitt (1993), complemented with some of the most important recent studies.

3.1 Attraction between sexes (intersexual selection)

First of all, women desire multiple traits in men, and similarly men desire various traits in women. There is not one single mechanisms that shapes their desires, but rather multiple. Therefore, popular quotes such as “Women want rich men” do not cover the whole story (Graziano et al, 1997: 161-164). If it where that simple, mating would not be as problematic as it was and still is.

Second, although it has been suggested that humans evolved primarily for monogamous mating (Miller & Fishkin, 1997), I concur with the opposite hypothesis of Buss (1994) and Schmitt (Buss & Schmitt 1993) that humans have evolved for both long-term and short-term mating. Both men and women use different strategies, and favor different traits depending on their mating strategy (short-term or long-term). I will discuss both strategies for both sexes, in my following overview of adaptive problems in the context of sexual selection.

3.1.1 Men’s adaptive strategy and -problems of short term relations

3.1.1.1 Short-term is adaptive for men

One of the central premises in Buss and Schmitt’s (1993) Sexual Strategy Theory (SST) focuses on the difference between long-term and short-term mating. Generally, men have a stronger desire for short-term mating, and women have a stronger desire for long-term mating, these authors say. Because of differences in gamete production and parental investment, men have more advantages of having multiple partners. From a biological perspective, men benefit more than women from short-term sexual strategies (see Trivers, 1978 for more details). Again, I want to stress that no moral statements can be made from this. Evolutionary psychologists never say men should have as many partners as possible. But in the perspective biological principles of human mating, those men who have multiple partners have more options for reproduction, which in biological perspective is more successful than having fewer partners and fewer reproduction options.

When saying that, in biological terms, men benefit more than women from short-term relations, this is not to say that women do not engage in short-term relations. As I will discuss later in this section, women have multiple sexual relations as well, and opt for short-term sexual relations. If women did not choose short-term relations, where would men find their ideal potential short-term mate?

When questioning men and women about their sexual behavior and desires, Schmitt, Shackelford and Buss (2001) noticed that men indeed have a stronger desire for short-term relations than women do. They also concluded that, on average, men more that women, have a stronger desire to have more sexual partners (see also below) and men, more than women, need less time before consenting to sex. Schmitt et al (2001) stress as well, though, that both men and women have adaptations for short-term mating, but that men are generally more oriented toward short-term mating than women (for more details see Schmitt, Shackelford & Buss, 2001).

The most convincing evidence so far that men have a stronger desire for sexual variety, and therefore have a stronger desire for short-term relations, comes again from a research of Schmitt (Schmitt et al, 2003). In co-operation with researchers from 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) he collected data from 16,288 people. The results from this large-scale cross-cultural survey confirmed the hypothesis that men have a stronger desire for more sexual partners and short-term sexual relations, than women:

“This study provides the largest and most comprehensive test yet conducted on whether the sexes differ in the desire for sexual variety. The results are strong and conclusive—the sexes differ, and these differences appear to be universal. Men not only possess a greater desire than women do for a variety of sexual partners, men also require less time to elapse than women do before consenting to sexual intercourse, and men tend to more actively seek short-term mateships than women do.” (Schmitt et al, 2003: 101)

3.1.1.2 Problem of number of partners

Highly related to the fact that men have a stronger desire for short-term relations, they also have a stronger desire for a larger number of sexual partners. I already mentioned the research of Schmitt, Shackelford and Buss (2001) that confirmed this. When asking men and women how many sexual partners they desired in the next thirty years, Buss and Schmitt (1993) as well noticed a significant sex difference in the mean scores of male and female respondents. On average women desired 5 sex partners and men 18. Miller en Fishkin (1997: 220-221) replicated this experiment. Their average for female respondents was 2.79, a little lower than Buss and Schmitt’s findings. But, their male respondents’ average outscored by far; Miller and Fishkin’s male respondents’ average desired number of sexual partners was 64.32. However, they had to admit that, when two outliers were removed from the sample, their average came close to the number 18 of Buss and Schmitt. Nonetheless, the overall pattern clearly indicates that men desire more partners than women. The research of Ellis and Symons (1990) regarding sex differences in sexual fantasies also indicated that men desire higher number of sex partners.

When men meet new women, they often get aroused. Buss (1994) talks about the Coolidge-effect, named after President Coolidge:

“The story is told that President Calvin Coolidge and the first lady were being given separate tours of newly formed government farms. Upon passing the chicken coops and noticing a rooster vigorously copulating with a hen, Mrs. Coolidge inquired about how often the rooster performed this duty. ‘Dozens of times each day,’ replied the guide. Mrs. Coolidge asked the guide to ‘please mention this fact to the president.’ When the president passed by later and was informed of the sexual vigor of the rooster, he asked, ‘Always with the same hen?’ ‘Oh, no,’ the guide replied, ‘a different one each time.’ ‘Please tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,’ said the president.” (Buss, 1994: 79-80)

But as Symons (1979) explained, what we want is not always what we can have. Men, he said, desire a large number of sexual partners, but reality constraints their actual behavior. In their search for multiple sexual partners men face adaptive problems.

3.1.1.3 Problem of sexual intent of women

One of the adaptive problems men face in their search of a potential female mate, is that her sexual intent might differ from his desires, and that she might even lie about this sexual intent. When men pursue short-term relations with women, they do not desire non-promiscuous women. Looseness and promiscuity (which are undesired in their long-term strategy, see below) are female qualities that increase men’s chances on reproductive success in the context of short-term mating (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Buss, 1994). Women often deceive men in their sexual intent, which causes extra adaptive problems to men (see below).

3.1.1.4 Problem of reproductive value and fertility of women

Since sexual selection is about the potential of reproduction by securing offspring, men in their short-term (and long-term) strategies will care for the reproductive potential of women. For women there are two important factors: her reproductive value and her fertility. Buss and Schmitt (1993) give an example by comparing a 14-year-old girl to a 24-year-old girl. The first has higher reproductive value; the latter has the highest fertility. The future reproductive potentials of a 14-year-old girl exceed those of a 24-year-old girl, but the 24-year-old girl has more chances of being fertile already. When pursuing short-term goals men will favor the fertility of a woman, when he wants to obtain a long-term relation, he will be more interested in her reproductive value (favoring younger women to marry).

Because fertility and reproductive value are disguised in female humans, men face the problem of estimating both features correctly. Cues they use to do this are youth and health, say Buss and Schmitt (1993). I discuss these more in detail in the next section on men and long-term relations.

3.1.1.5 Problem of commitment

Last, when men pursue short-term relationships, they want to avoid commitment and investment (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). They resolve this problem by deceiving their potential partners (see below). And they have to, since the best strategy for men to win the heart of women for short-term relations is by displaying immediate investment. Women want to acquire resources from men, in the context of short-term relations, so that men cannot omit a form of investment. Other signals they display, to best show off their qualities as good short-term mates, are their dominance and physical attractiveness (Schmitt & Buss, 1996).

3.1.2 Men and long-term relations: problems they face

Although short-term strategies are most adaptive for men, this does not imply that they do not benefit from and engage in long-term relationships. When looking for a long-term partner the problems men face mainly concern the reproductive value of a potential mate, and her fidelity (Buss, 1994). Let me discuss both traits in a little more detail.

3.1.2.1 Women’s disguised reproductive value: the importance of youth and beauty

As I already said above, cues to detect the reproductive value of women are youth and beauty:

“Our ancestors had access to two types of observable evidence of a woman's health and youth: features of physical appearance, such as full lips, clear skin, smooth skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, and a good muscle tone, and features of behavior, such as a bouncy, youthful gait, an animated facial expression, and a high energy level. These physical cues to youth and health, and hence to reproductive capacity, constitute the ingredients of male standards of female beauty.” (Buss, 1994: 53).

Youth

Research on what men and women display and ask for in personal advertisements, has shown that men prefer a younger partner, and explicitly ask for this in their personal ads (Butler-Smith, e.a., 1998; Greenless & McGrew, 1994; Hayes, 1995; Matthews, 1999; Rajecki, e.a., 1991; Rasmussen e.a., 1998; Sprecher, e.a., 1994; Wiederman, 1993; Willis & Carlson, 1993). The cross-cultural studies from Buss (1989) and Kenrick and Keefe (1992) gave similar results. Pawlowski and Dunbar (1999) also noticed that women less than men mentioned their age in personal advertisements. They disguised their age. After analyzing their profiles, these authors concluded that it is mostly women older than 35 who decline to mention their age.

However, men will not always prefer younger women; it depends on which stage of their life history they are in. If it is true that men have preferences for fertile women, then teenaged boys should prefer slightly older girls to younger ones. Kenrick, Keefe, Gabrielidis and Cornelius (1996) questioned teenagers about their sexual desires and found that teenage boys prefer partners to be slightly older, which proves this prediction.

Beauty

What men regard as ‘attractive’ or beautiful in potential partners relies on some facial and bodily features. Related to the youth-aspect, neoteny of the face plays an important role in attractiveness. Neotenous features are, for instance, large eyes, high cheek bones, small nose and chin, full lips, etc. (Buss, 1994). To test this, Johnson and Franklin (1993) manipulated faces, using a computer program. Their results show that faces with these younger features are rated as more attractive than ‘older’ looking faces.

Next, concerning the face, the skin is very important, says Etcoff (1999), who wrote a book on beauty and evolutionary psychology. The skin, Etcoff argues, signals health, at least when she appears flawless and bright. A last facial feature that is rated attractive in women is facial symmetry. Again, it has been suggested that facial symmetry signals health (Shackelford & Larsen, 1999). Women with more symmetrical facial features are rated more attractive than women with less facial symmetry (Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997; Grammer & Thornhill, 1994).

When focusing on bodily features, two important cues are waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and body-mass-index (BMI). Singh (1993, 1995) reported that men, in general, prefer slim women (low BMI) to overweight women (high BMI), and a WHR of 0.70. For women the WHR ranges from 0.67 to .080. Furnham, McLelland, and Omer (2003) tested Singh’s hypothesis, using drawings of either light or heavy women, with high or low WHR. British and Kenyan women both rated a WHR of 0.70 as most attractive, and preferred light women over heavier ones. Later studies using more realistic computer images (e.g. Streeter & McBurney, 2003) also confirm Singh’s hypotheses.

In a study, using front-view and profile pictures of women, Torte and Cornelissen (2001) noted that BMI and WHR are both important cues in attractiveness ratings. Both their male and female raters preferred the depicted (real) women with lower BMI, and lower WHR. In their conclusion, BMI was put forward as the most important predictor. This importance of BMI is what defines attractiveness for men and women. Low BMI seems to be more important for women than for men to be rated as attractive. This falls in line with the research of Maisey, Vale, Cornelissen, and Tovee (1999). They compared attractiveness ratings of pictures of men and women, and concluded that size (BMI) is most important for women, while shape is most important for men. For men, it is not the waist-to-hip ratio that determines their attractiveness, but rather waist-to-chest ratio (WTC). Maisey et al (1999) noted that men with higher BMI, but smaller WTC (indicating big chest) were still rated attractive, while for women BMI was the main criterion to rate attractiveness. Women with higher BMI are rated less attractive, even if they have the ideal WHR. The reason for this, these authors say:

“Men have evolved to find optimally attractive women of a particular BMI range that is a good predictor of optimal health and reproductive potential. It seems that the cues to male attractiveness serve a different function. For men, a body shape indicative of physical strength seems to be more important than simple body mass.” (Maisey, et al, 1999: 1500)

3.1.2.2 Faithfulness and chastity

Next to beauty, for long-term sexual relationships men desire faithfulness, sexual loyalty and chastity of women. A key problem for men is paternal uncertainty. If their long-term partner cheats on them, they risk the cost of investing in offspring that is not theirs. Men therefore prefer faithful women over unfaithful or promiscuous women for long-term goals (Buss & Schmitt, 1993).

3.1.3 Women’s adaptive strategy and –problems of long term mating

3.1.3.1 Why long-term relations are more valuable for women

While short-term sexual strategies are more desired by men because of the greater biological benefits they can gain, long-term relationships are most desired for women, since the biological benefits following from this strategy are greater for them (see Trivers 1978 for more details). Women generally desire one single sexual partner to be romantically and sexually involved with (Ellis & Symons, 1979). They do not desire to maximize their number of sex partners, and tend to be choosy in picking out fewer partners. Because of their high parental investment, they especially face problems of finding a partner who is willing to commit and invest in them and their offspring.