Mating games: the evolution of human mating transactions

Mating games: the evolution of human mating transactions

We propose a new, evolutionary, game-theoretic model of conditional human mating strategies that integrates currently disconnected bodies of data into a single mathematically-explicit theory of human mating transactions. The model focuses on the problem of how much resource a male must provide to a female to secure and retain her as a mate. By using bidding-game models, we show how the male’s m...

The Evolution of Human Mating

Mating is close to the engine of the evolutionary process—differential reproductive success. As descendants of reproductively successful ancestors, modern humans have inherited the mating strategies that led to our ancestor’s success. These strategies include long-term committed mating (e.g., marriage), short-term mating (e.g., a brief sexual encounter), extra-pair mating (e.g., infidelity), ma...

Insights into the mating games

Richard Wagner’s fascination with the natural world goes back as far as he can remember. As a child growing up in Long Island, USA he started by collecting insects in his back garden and by the age of ten he had acquired his first pet snake. His unusually tolerant parents encouraged his hobby and in his teens his snake collection reached a peak of seven (augmented by many lizards, turtles and s...

Anigraf4: Dancers mating games

Agents, actions, mental organisms and anigrafs are often confused because the definitions are not precise. A reductionist distinction is that an action is initiated by an agent, whereas a mental organism coordinates a sequence of actions carried out by several agents. An anigraf shows the relations among the goal states for agents or mental organisms, but is sometimes used to identify a group o...

Anigraf4: Dancers mating games