Sociosexuality, Testosterone, and Life history Status: prospective Associations and Longitudinal changes among men in Cebu, Philippines

Publication date: Available online 7 November 2018Source: Evolution and Human BehaviorAuthor(s): Lee T. Gettler, Patty X. Kuo, Stacy Rosenbaum, Josephine L. Avila, Thomas W. McDade, Christopher W. KuzawaAbstractSociosexuality is defined as an individual's interest in uncommitted sexual activity and can be measured in terms of both psychological orientations and behavioral expression. In socio-ecological contexts in which adults monogamously partner and cooperate to raise children, individuals with unrestricted sociosexuality are likely to prioritize mating/competition over committed partnering and parenting. Given the importance of mother-father cooperation in the evolutionary past, humans may have the capacity to facultatively and opportunistically downregulate sociosexuality to focus on priorities related to invested partnering and parenting. To date, no prior studies have used longitudinal data to track within-individuals changes in sociosexuality as it relates to such life history transitions. Given the lack of prior longitudinal research in this area, it is likewise unknown what physiological mechanisms might mediate within-individual changes in sociosexuality through time but testosterone is a plausible candidate. To explore these questions, we drew on a large, long-running study of Filipino men (n = 288), who were single non-fathers at 25.9 years of age and were followed up 4–5 years later. We found that men with more unrestricted sociosexuality at baseline w...
Source: Evolution and Human Behavior - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research