I really like brains and neuroscience. So when we each had to come up with an area of focus for this course, I knew I wanted to do something with sexual selection of the brain and human intelligence. The first article I shared with the group argued that contrary to what is typically assumed, human [...]
In our directed reading, we have discussed many topics revolving around a few fairly basic ideas. The concept of sexual selection is predicated on the assumption that males and females, though united in their goal to reproduce, have different interests; that is to say, circumstances or behaviors that positively impact a female’s reproductive success may [...]
It’s the end of the semester and thus of our directed reading, and this is my last post for this blog that is directly affiliated with the class. It’s a look back, a brief review of what we’ve done, but, more importantly, I want to present my thoughts about what we’ve done in general to [...]
Looking back over our weekly meetings this semester, I keep coming back to our discussions of pop culture, and of our everyday lives. We read so many eye-opening articles, but, in the end, it was relating these articles to representations of femininity and masculinity in the media that was most interesting to me. Thinking about [...]
This week, we decided to take a look at the genetic basis for some of the theories revolving around attractiveness that we’ve been discussing. The 2004 study we chose focuses on the theory that the reason one person is attracted has its basis in the immune system. It is well established that disease has been [...]
A question brought more clearly into focus recently and one that has been bothering us recently deserves to be aired. How should we measure “mating success” when we are doing studies about human sexual selection? The article discussed in the previous post defined this as the number of sexual partners a male had had in [...]
Do you like your boyfriend because he looks like your father? This is the (somewhat disconcerting) question that we tackled in class this week. Similarity in mate partners, or homogamy, has been well documented in human sex partners. Choosing a mate with genetic similarity would mean that you would be more likely to share genes [...]
A couple of weeks ago, I shared Reinius and colleagues’ 2008 article, “An Evolutionarily Conserved Sexual Signature in the Primate Brain” with our group. The study compared gene expression in the occipital cortex of males and females from three primate species. The species were selected for their morphological sexual dimorphism: humans (Homo sapiens) and cynomolgus [...]
This is a kind of “mission statement” for this website. It will become a permanent page once we resolve our technical issues. Welcome! The purpose of this blog is to explore the effects of sexual selection on human evolution and on the behavior of modern humans. We, the Swarthmore students studying this subject in a [...]