Talk:Debate Guide: Evolutionary logic

• Kenrick, D. T., & Keefe, R. C. (1992). "Age preferences in mates reflect sex differences in human reproductive strategies." Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 75–133.

  " Social psychologists have held that when selecting mates women prefer older men and men prefer younger women. In a form of economic exchange based on conventional sex role norms, both men and women seek potential partners who are similar to themselves. Behavioral psychologists have proposed an evolutionary model to explain age preferences. The social exchange model does not explain what cross cultural research which is that men and women in other cultures differ in ways that are parallel to gender differences in US society. The evolutionary model submits that men and women pursue distinct reproductive strategies. It also theorizes a more complicated relationship between gender and age preferences than the social exchange model. 2 behavioral psychologists have conducted 6 studies to determine whether the evolutionary model holds true. The hypothesis states that, during the early years, men prefer women who are only somewhat younger than they are, but as they are, they prefer women who are considerably younger than they are. On the other hand, young women prefer men who are slightly older than they are and this preference does not change much with age. The psychologists examined age preferences in personal advertisements from newspapers in Arizona, West Germany, the Netherlands, and India and in singles advertisements by financially successful US women and men in the Washington, D.C. They found the results consistently fit well with the evolutionary model. They also studied marriage statistics from Seattle, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, which also supported the hypothesis. They conducted a cross-generational analysis using 1923 marriage statistics from Phoenix which indicated consistency across generations. A study of marriages that took place between 1913 and 1939 on the small island of Poro in the Philippines also supported the theory. Thus psychologists should expand previous models of age preferences to incorporate the life history position."