We are told by Australia’s TV science broadcaster that hard times make for meek men.
Start with this (the article doesn’t): “Lee says the cross-cultural studies were limited in their findings as they failed to show the mechanisms underpinning the effect.”
In today’s edition of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, University of Queensland researchers Anthony Lee and Dr Brendan Zietsch show environmental factors can influence a woman’s choice of a mate.They find that when faced with the threat of increased prevalence of disease, women choose more masculine males. But during times of resource scarcity, “feminine” males, who are more committed to long-term relationships and caring for resulting offspring, come to the fore.
– Dani Cooper, “Meek men the perfect mate in austere times” (ABC 22 June 2011)
The researchers claim that more masculine males show low commitment. Who knew?
Most of the story is just that increasingly irritating tepid Darwinsludge:
“For women, producing an offspring requires at least nine months of gestation, and even more time and resources raising the child through infancy,” he says.
And the guy is just standing there doing nothing, right?
“Since men can invest relatively less in producing an offspring, it can be evolutionarily advantageous for men not to be as choosy as women.”
Unless they live in a community that doesn’t tolerate it, which is most historical human communities that have survived absent government welfare.