Дэвид Басс: Эволюционная психология и стратегии поведения

American evolutionary psychologist
the naval officer

David Michael Buss (born April 14, 1953) is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection. He is considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychology.

Buss earned his PhD in psychology at University of California, Berkeley in 1981. Before becoming a professor at the University of Texas, he was assistant professor for four years at Harvard University and a professor at the University of Michigan for eleven years. The primary topics of his research include male mating strategies, conflict between the sexes, social status, social reputation, prestige, the emotion of jealousy, homicide, anti homicide defenses, and—most recently—stalking. All of these are approached from an evolutionary perspective. Buss is the author of more than 200 scientific articles and has won many awards, including an APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in 1988 and an APA G. Stanley Hall Lectureship in 1990. Buss is the author of a number of publications and books, including The Evolution of Desire, The Dangerous Passion, and The Murderer Next Door, which introduces a new theory of homicide from an evolutionary perspective. He is also the author of Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, whose fourth edition was released in 2011. In 2005, Buss edited a reference volume, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. His latest book is When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault. Buss is involved with extensive cross cultural research collaborations and lectures within the U. S.

Attempts to state the conditions that constitute a certain personality trait and attempts to exhaustively list all the acts that identify a bearer of a trait have not been very successful in providing exact definitions for trait related terms (such as "creative", "humorous", and "ambitious"). The question of what exactly defines an individual as being—for example—courageous is an open one. Another difficulty is measuring how strongly a trait is pronounced in an individual. As a solution to these problems of defining and measuring traits, Buss and K. H. Craik (1980) proposed to introduce prototype theory into personality psychology. First, a group of people is asked to list acts that a person bearing the trait in question would show. Next, a different group of people is asked to name from that list those acts that are most typical for the trait. Then the measurement is conducted by counting the number of times (within a given period of time) a proband performs the typical acts.

One element of David Buss' research involves studying the differences in mate selection between short term and long term mating strategies. Individuals differ in their preferences according to whether they are seeking a short or long term mating strategy (i. e. whether they are looking for a "hook up" or for a serious relationship). The Gangestad and Simpson Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI) determines whether a person favors a short term or long term strategy (also termed as unrestricted and restricted). Higher SOI scores indicate a less restricted orientation, and thus a preference for a short term mating strategy. David Buss and colleagues conducted a study that attempted to uncover where priorities lie—concerning determinants of attractiveness—in short and long term mating strategies. In order to do this, participants' mating strategies were determined using the SOI, labeling each participant as favoring either a short or a long term mating strategy. Each individual was then given the choice to reveal either the face or body from a portrait of a person of the opposite gender. David Buss and his colleagues found that sociosexual orientation or favored mating strategy influenced which part of the portrait was revealed. Men who favored a short term mating strategy chose to reveal the woman's body, whereas men who favored a long term mating strategy chose to reveal the woman's face. David Buss and his colleagues found that favored mating strategies in women had no correlation with which part of the portrait was revealed but had to do with utilitarian aspects that make sense in terms of supportive and dependable resources, health and stamina. To solve the female adaptation dilemma, females select mates who are loyal and are willing and able to invest in her and her offspring by providing resources and protection. Historically, women who were less selective of mates suffered lower reproductive success and survival. Males solve the adaptation challenge of paternity uncertainty and resources misallocation by selecting sexually faithful mates. To maximize their offspring, men have adopted a short term mating strategy of attracting and impregnating many fertile mates rather than one long term mate. David Buss supported this evolutionary reasoning with research focused on sex differences in mating strategies. In a large cross cultural study that included 10,047 individuals across 37 cultures, Buss sought first to determine the different characteristics each sex looks for in a mate. From these findings, Buss was able to hypothesize the evolutionary causes for these preference differences. Buss found that men place very high importance on youth. Because youthful appearances signal fertility and men seek to maximize their number of mates capable of passing on their genes, men place high value on fertility cues. Buss also found that women desire older mates. He later hypothesized that this is because older males tend to have a greater chance of higher social status; this social status could lead to more resources for a woman and her offspring, and could therefore increase a woman's likelihood of sexual success and reproduction. Another area in which the two sexes seem to differ greatly is in their reactions to sexual and emotional infidelity. Buss found that women were more jealous of emotional infidelity while men were more jealous of sexual infidelity. This has been supported as universal norm by Buss' cross cultural study.

Buss has conducted numerous studies comparing the mate preferences of individuals by factors such as gender, time, parents vs. offspring, and type of relationship. He has also conducted a large study investigating universal mate preferences. He and Chang, Shackelford, and Wang examined a sample from China and discovered that men more than women tend to prefer traits related to fertility, such as youth and physical attractiveness. Men also desired traits that could be seen as feminine stereotypes, including skill as a housekeeper. A similar study conducted in the US by Perilloux, Fleischman, and Buss revealed the same, with the addition of the desire for the traits healthy, easygoing, and creative/artistic. Women, however, favor traits related to resources, such as good earning capacity, social status, education and intelligence, and ambition and industriousness.

David Buss' research also explores the differing ways in which men and women cope with intersexual deception. His Strategic Interference Theory (SIT) states that conflict occurs when the strategies enacted by one individual interfere with the strategies, goals, and desires of another. Buss found that anger and distress are the two primary emotions that have evolved as solutions to strategic interference between men and women. When a person's goals, desires, and strategies are compromised, his or her aroused anger and subjective distress serve four functions: (1) to draw attention to the interfering events, (2) to mark those events for storage in long term memory, (3) to motivate actions that reduce or eliminate the source of strategic interference, and (4) to motivate memorial retrieval and, hence, subsequent avoidance of situations producing further interference. The research facilitated by Buss and colleagues shows that women, in comparison to men, will display more emotional distress when they have been deceived about their partner's socioeconomic status, when their partners deploy expressions of love as a short term mating strategy, when their partners display postcopulatory signals of disinterest in pursuing a long term relationship, and when their partners conceal their existing emotional investment in another person. Mate guarding is a co evolution strategy designed to defend against poaching. Jealousy and guesstimation are identified indicators of this guarding strategy. Among men, expressed sexual infidelity of their mate was the most damaging, while women expressed emotional infidelity as the most damaging. Men perceived borderline paternity issues. In contrast, women can always be certain that their offspring are their own. Mate retention tactics among men mainly involved vigilance and violence; among women, it mainly consisted of enhancing their physical appearance and intentionally provoking their mate's jealousy with suggestibility an object/stimulus is a threat to their valued relationship and challenge status hierarchy with changes in attachment.