Friday, November 10, 2006

Good genes new name for sexy sons???

Steve Gangestad was here at UT this week and gave about the same talk he gave last year at FAU. He also gave our seminar a new in-press paper at JPSP to read (about women's mate preference shifts across the menstrual cycle). He presented some of the data from that paper in his talk but basically these results show that women prefer men who are confrontative, arrogant, attractive (etc) when fertile and do not prefer men who are faithful, intelligent, kind (etc). Well...I started thinking about this...if women want these men when they are fertile, they are obviously attempting to produce offspring with these men. And these are traits that researchers have termed markers of "good genes". But they are only good genes for male offspring who can short-term mate. So how are is this theory different from sexy sons? I asked Gangestad what he thought and got a round-about answer. Then I asked him, "Well you certainly wouldn't want these traits in your daughters would you?" (particularly arrogance and confrontative personalities) and he said no. So I said "well then it seems like to me if you don't want these traits in daughters, these women are trying to get good STM genes for their male offspring, which seems like sexy sons to me." And he summed it up by saying more research is needed.

So I guess the point of all this is...what do you guys think? I'm certainly not denying the research that shows that women drastically shift their preferences when they are fertile, but I guess what I want to know is, are they choosing then to have male offspring who will be good at STM? And what then about their female offspring? (Or I guess I'm also asking...am I totally crazy and way off-base here? ha ha)

2 comments:

Emily said...

Judy, so I'm way late here, but I thought I'd respond on the blog, even though we actually talked about it in person. My response is...I don't have an answer for ya'! Good one, huh? :) Anyway, I mentioned that Trivers (with Jon Seger) had a paper that may shed some insight, "Asymmetry in the evolution of female mating preferences," but otherwise, let me know what you find out!

Emily said...

Actually, I just came across a better reference where they discuss your point explicitly (hope this helps!):

Kokko, H. (2001). Fisherian and "good genes" benefits of mate choice: How (not) to distinguish between them. Ecology Letters, 4, 322-326.