Evolutionary Psychology Gets Human Mating All Wrong

Because there isn’t a single strategy that all men or all women use

Licensed from Adobe Stock

I selected the above image for this story because it made me think of the look that women of many cultures might give to a so-called Evolutionary Psychologist (Evo Psych) trying to explain to them their interests and priorities when looking for a lover or a husband. It’s a look of somewhat bemused disbelief, coupled with a foundational acceptance and understanding of their own sensuality.

This isn’t just my inference, because the Himba women pictured above do live and love quite differently than how Evo Psych envisions they would or should. It’s nothing at all like the Madonna/Whore dichotomy found in Victorian-inspired Western narratives or the reductive ideas about what all men value and how all women assess potential partners.

For one thing, Himba women do most of the labor-intensive work since men are often away tending cattle. In one study, about 77% of women (and 85% of men) had at least one extra-marital partner and births outside the marriage are common and not stigmatized. It’s not exactly Darwin’s England, or Leave It to Beaver dynamics.

I can almost imagine these women saying some version of “Buss, please . . .” because their lives (and mating strategies)…