Quotes from David M. Buss

Sincerity in personal advertisements is a code word for commitment, used by women to screen out men seeking casual sex without any commitment.

Emotional support is yet another facet of commitment, revealed by behavior such as being available in times of trouble and listening to the partner's problems.

Feminist scholars rightly stress the importance of power in sexual conflict. It must be recognized, however, that men's motivations for power, status, and resources exist in part because women have preferred to mate with men who possess power, status, and resources. Neglecting this part of the causal origins of sexual conflict will impede efforts to alter it.

The consequences of women's attractiveness for a man's social status are critical. Everyday folklore tells us that our mate is a reflection of ourselves. Men are particularly concerned about status, reputation, and hierarchies because elevated rank has always been an important means of acquiring the resources that make men attractive to women. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect that a man will be concerned about the effect that his mate has on his social status

To maximize the chances of preserving a long-term bond, couples would do well to remain faithful; produce children together; secure ample economic resources; act kind, generous, and understanding; and attend to their mate's sexual and emotional desires. These actions do not guarantee a successful relationship, but they increase the odds substantially.

We are the first species in the known history of three and a half billion years of life on earth with the capacity to control our own destiny. The prospect of designing our destiny remains excellent to the degree that we comprehend our evolutionary past. Only by examining the complex repertoire of human sexual strategies can we know where we came from. Only by understanding why these human strategies have evolved can we control where we are going.

Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder. —DONALD SYMONS, "What Do Men Want?

Other exceptions occur when women mate with substantially younger men. Many of these cases occur not because of strong preferences by women for younger men but rather because both older women and younger men lack bargaining power on the mating market.

Las mujeres que elegían a los hombres en parte por su fortaleza y habilidades físicas tenían más posibilidades de sobrevivir y reproducirse.

Upset over neglect and unreliability reflects a conflict over investment of time and effort. It takes effort to be on time. Reliability requires relinquishing time and resources that could be channeled toward other goals. Neglect signals a low investment, indicating that the man lacks the depth of commitment necessary to perform acts that require even minimal cost for the woman's benefit.

Which men are most likely to be controlling? Those who are lower in mate value. These men ramp up heavy mate guarding because they believe they have lucked out in attracting a desirable woman and believe that she will be difficult or impossible to replace.

Online pornography allows individuals to explore creative sexual possibilities they never knew existed but also creates entirely unrealistic expectations for real life sexual interactions.

Men need to understand the sexual over-perception bias that afflicts their mating minds. They should know that, most of the time, the women smiling at them are merely being friendly or polite, not signaling sexual interest.

Using one's own sexual mind as an infallible guide for inferring the sexual minds of others is an error.

It is a source of power to recognize that women hold the reins in this evolutionary equation, and their mate selections, in principle, have the power to undermine male control and create greater equality between the sexes.

Differences in desirability create havoc in at least two fundamental ways. The first centers around misperceptions. A man who is a 6 but thinks he's an 8 will be utterly irritated when the woman who's an 8 whom he's trying to chat up rejects his advances. Although women and men both can err in their self-perceived mate value, research shows that men are more likely than women to be overconfident in a variety of domains

A second way in which desirability discrepancies create mating conflict centers not on men's misperceptions but rather on the hard, cruel fact mentioned earlier—men view many women as "above threshold" in attractiveness, but women tend to be attracted primarily to men in the top twentieth percentile.

One way to curtail men's proprietary mindset is to empower women -a trend that started with first-wave feminists who ushered in women's right to vote and continues today with women's increasing access to their own resources-.

One colleague captured the conflict that can ensue by expressing frustration after several years of unhappy dating: "Why am I being pestered by guys I don't care about, but the men I'm genuinely attracted to seem to show little interest in me?" I told her that she is an 8 chasing after 10s but being pursued by 6s. It dawned on her that pursuing men just outside of her mate-value range was the source of her misery.

First, an evolutionary perspective does not view sexual coercion as a biological imperative, as inevitable, or as ineluctable. Just as modern science has created novel vaccines and drugs to eliminate many "natural" diseases, with enough knowledge we can create personal, social, and legal environments that curtail or suppress the components of male psychology that contribute to sexual coercion.

From the moment of conception, when the one tiny sperm joins the nutrient-rich egg, women are already contributing much more than the man.

Within-species sexual conflict arms races are analogous to arms races between predators and prey.

The key point is that men who have success in attracting women are typically more likely to use coercion, and those who are less successful are less likely to use coercion. These findings refute the evolution-based mate-deprivation hypothesis of rape.

Just as modern science has created novel vaccines and drugs to eliminate many natural diseases, with enough knowledge we can create personal, social, and legal environments that curtail or suppress the components of male psychology that contribute to sexual coercion.