This chapter traces theoretical and empirical progress in the study of human mating over the past few decades. Early pre-evolutionary formulations proposed that men and women were identical in their mating motivations. Most were simplistic, typically postulating a single motive for mating: the search for similarity, equity, or complementarity. Given the large sex differences in human reproducti...

The paper by Weerasinghe and Parr resurrects a longstanding debate over the causal role of wealth in fertility reductions of the past centuries (1). Malthus, who did not foresee any negative correlation between wealth and fertility, wrote, “That population does invariably increase where there are the means of subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will abundantly prove”...

BACKGROUND As highly active antiretroviral therapy (ART) restores health, fertility and sexual activity among HIV-infected adults, understanding how ART influences reproductive desires and decisions could inform interventions to reduce sexual and vertical HIV transmission risk. METHODS We performed a qualitative sub-study among a Ugandan cohort of 1,000 adults on ART with four purposively sel...

The recognition and fulfilment of the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of all individuals and couples affected by HIV, including HIV-serodiscordant couples, requires intervention strategies aimed at achieving safe and healthy pregnancies and preventing undesired pregnancies. Reducing risk of horizontal and vertical transmission and addressing HIV-related infertility are key comp...

BACKGROUND Following extensive research activity to develop an effective agent to control male fertility, such a product may be available for use within approximately 5 years. However, little is known concerning contraceptive knowledge, desires and attitudes of men in different countries, and their acceptance of male fertility control (MFC). METHODS A survey of >9000 males aged 18-50 years wa...

In qualitative decision-theoretic planning desires { qualitative abstractions of utility functions { are combined with defaults { qualitative abstractions of probability distributions { to calculate the expected utilities of actions. In this paper we consider Lang's framework of qualitative decision theory, in which utility functions are constructed from desires. Unfortunately there is no conse...

A substantial literature has been developed around whether orphans, a population rapidly expanding due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, suffer disadvantage relative to their non-orphaned peers. Despite this attention, however, the exact nature of the orphan disadvantage and the specific mechanisms driving such disadvantage are poorly understood. This paper focuses on pregnancy outcomes, an area of par...

We cannot see others’ mental states, so we infer them by watching how people behave. Bayesian inference in a model of rational action – called inverse planning – captures how humans infer desires from observable actions. These models represent desires as simple associations between agents and world states. In this paper we show that by representing desires as probabilistic programs, an inverse ...