In his book The Whisperings Within, author David Barish observes:
The evolutionary mechanism should be clear. Genes that allow females to accept the sorts of mates who make lesser contributions to their reproductive success will leave fewer copies of themselves than will genes that influence the females to be more selective. Accordingly, genes inducing selectivity will increase at the expense of those that are less discriminating. For males, a very different strategy applies. The maximum advantage goes to individuals with fewer inhibitions. A genetically influenced tendency to “play fast and loose”—”love’em and leave’em”—may well reflect more biological reality than most of us care to admit.
In his book “The Moral Animal,” Robert Wright makes the following points:
Much of the relevant history of our species took place before our ancestors were smart enough to ask much of anything. And even in the more recent past, after the arrival of language and self-awareness, there has been no reason for every evolved behavioral tendency to fall under conscious control. In fact, sometimes it is emphatically not in our genetic interest to be aware of exactly what we are doing or why. Only traits that would have propelled the genes responsible for them through the generations in our ancestral social environment should, in theory, be part of human nature today.
Understanding the often-unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that—in many realms, not just sex—we’re all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer. The full scope of the logic will take some time to explain, but I don’t think I’m spoiling the end of the movie by noting here that the puppeteer seems to have exactly zero regard for the happiness of the puppets.
To figure out what women are inclined to seek in a man, and vice versa, we’ll need to think more carefully about our ancestral social environment(s)… Whatever the typical level of reserve for females in our species, it is higher than the level for males—the particular environment doesn’t much matter. For this point depends only on the premise that an individual female can, over a lifetime, have many fewer offspring than an individual male. And that has been the case, basically, forever: since before our ancestors were human, before they were primates, before they were mammals—way, way back through the evolution of our brain, down to its reptilian core. Female snakes may not be very smart, but they’re smart enough to know, unconsciously, at least, that there are some males it’s not a good idea to mate with.
When it comes to assessing character – to figuring out if you can trust a mate – a male’s discernment may differ from a female’s because the kind of treachery that threatens his genes is different from the kind that threatens hers. Whereas the woman’s natural fear is the withdrawal of his investment, his natural fear is that the investment is misplaced. Not long for this world are the genes of a man who spends his time rearing children who aren’t his.