Humans are extraordinary creatures, with the unique ability among animals to imitate and so copy from one another ideas, habits, skills, behaviours, inventions, songs, and stories. These are all memes, a term first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. Memes, like genes, are replicators, and this enthralling book is an investigation of whether this link between genes and memes can lead to important discoveries about the nature of the inner self. Confronting the deepest questions about our inner selves, with all our emotions, memories, beliefs, and decisions, Susan Blackmore makes a compelling case for the theory that the inner self is merely an illusion created by the memes for the sake of replication.

http://people.morrisville.edu/~reymers/readings/SOCI201/Into%20the%20Internet%20-%20Blackmore%201999.pdf

The Meme Machine

During human evolutionary history, there were "trade-offs" between expending time and energy on child-rearing and mating, so both men and women evolved conditional mating strategies guided by cues signaling the circumstances. Many short-term matings might be successful for some men; others might try to find and keep a single mate, investing their effort in rearing her offspring. Recent evidence suggests that men with features signaling genetic benefits to offspring should be preferred by women as short-term mates, but there are trade-offs between a mate's genetic fitness and his willingness to help in child-rearing. It is these circumstances and the cues that signal them that underlie the variation in short- and long-term mating strategies between and within the sexes.

/pdf/the-evolution-of-human-mating-trade-offs-and-strategic-4f53scw0tn.pdf

The evolution of human mating: Trade-offs and strategic pluralism

What is compassion? And how did it evolve? In this review, we integrate 3 evolutionary arguments that converge on the hypothesis that compassion evolved as a distinct affective experience whose primary function is to facilitate cooperation and protection of the weak and those who suffer. Our empirical review reveals compassion to have distinct appraisal processes attuned to undeserved suffering; distinct signaling behavior related to caregiving patterns of touch, posture, and vocalization; and a phenomenological experience and physiological response that orients the individual to social approach. This response profile of compassion differs from those of distress, sadness, and love, suggesting that compassion is indeed a distinct emotion. We conclude by considering how compassion shapes moral judgment and action, how it varies across different cultures, and how it may engage specific patterns of neural activation, as well as emerging directions of research.

/pdf/compassion-an-evolutionary-analysis-and-empirical-review-5cniwqureb.pdf

Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review

What makes a face attractive and why do we have the preferences we do? Emergence of preferences early in development and cross-cultural agreement on attractiveness challenge a long-held view that our preferences reflect arbitrary standards of beauty set by cultures. Averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphism are good candidates for biologically based standards of beauty. A critical review and meta-analyses indicate that all three are attractive in both male and female faces and across cultures. Theorists have proposed that face preferences may be adaptations for mate choice because attractive traits signal important aspects of mate quality, such as health. Others have argued that they may simply be by-products of the way brains process information. Although often presented as alternatives, I argue that both kinds of selection pressures may have shaped our perceptions of facial beauty.

/pdf/the-evolutionary-psychology-of-facial-beauty-2ztdp2t50v.pdf

The evolutionary psychology of facial beauty.

The aim of this review is to consider variation in mating preferences among females. We define mating preferences as the sensory and behavioural properties that influence the propensity of individuals to mate with certain phenotypes. Two properties of mating preferences can be distinguished: (1) "preference functions'-the order with which an individual ranks prospective mates and (2) "choosiness'-the effort an individual is prepared to invest in mate assessment. Patterns of mate choices can be altered by changing the costs of choosiness without altering the preference function. We discuss why it is important to study variation in female mating behaviour and identify five main areas of interest: Variation in mating preferences and costs of choosiness could (1) influence the rate and direction of evolution by sexual selection, (2) provide information about the evolutionary history of female preferences, (3) help explain inter-specific differences in the evolution of secondary sexual characteristics, (4) provide information about the level of benefits gained from mate choice, (5) provide information about the underlying mechanisms of mate choice. Variation in mate choice could be due to variability in preference functions, degree of choosiness, or both, and may arise due to genetic differences, developmental trajectories or proximate environmental factors. We review the evidence for genetic variation from genetic studies of heritability and also from data on the repeatability of mate-choice decisions (which can provide information about the upper limits to heritability). There can be problems in interpreting patterns of mate choice in terms of variation in mating preferences and we illustrate two main points. First, some factors can lead to mate choice patterns that mimic heritable variation in preferences and secondly other factors may obscure heritable preferences. These factors are divided into three overlapping classes, environmental, social and the effect of the female phenotype. The environmental factors discussed include predation risk and the costs of sampling; the social factors discussed include the effect of male-male interactions as well as female competition. We review the literature which presents data on how females sample males and discuss the number of cues females use. We conclude that sexual-selection studies have paid far less attention to variation among females than to variation among males, and that there is still much to learn about how females choose males and why different females make different choices. We suggest a number of possible lines for future research.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/DB79D853FB764ADB3C114417B7012081/S0006323196005014a.pdf/div-class-title-variation-in-mate-choice-and-mating-preferences-a-review-of-causes-and-consequences-div.pdf

Variation in mate choice and mating preferences: a review of causes and consequences.

The Ant and the Peacock

Foreword Preface Part I. Darwinism, Its Rivals and Its Renegades: 1. Walking archives 2. A world without Darwin 3. Darwinism old and new Part II. The Peacock: 4. The sting in the peacock's tail 5. Nothing but natural selection? 6. Can females shape males? 7. Do sensible females prefer sexy males? 8. 'Until careful experiments are made ...' 9. Ghosts of Darwinism surpassed Part III. The Ant: 10. Altruism now 11. Altruism then 12. The social insects: kind kin 13. Make dove, not war: conventional forces 14. Human altruism: a natural kind? 15. Breeding between the lines Epilogue Notes on the letters of Darwin and Wallace Bibliography Index.

The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today

In his classic Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought (1966), George Williams showed definitively that our understanding of adaptation, a central concept of evolutionary theory, must be gene‐centered. The purpose of adaptations is to further the replication of genes. Genes are machines for turning out more genes; and adaptations are the means by which genes pluck resources from the world to promote this self‐replication. Thus adaptations transform potential resources from part of the indifferent world‐at‐large into tailor‐made environments, environments brimming with resources for organisms’ distinctive adaptive needs. Systematically different adaptive problems therefore give rise to different environments; and so different species, for example, have different environments. Thus a gene‐centered analysis of adaptations implies a gene‐centered theory of environments. Without genes to specify what constitutes an environment, environments would not exist. Ra...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/431021

Helena Cronin

Papers

The Ant and the Peacock

The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today

Adaptation: "a critique of some current evolutionary thought".

Sexual selection: historical perspectives.

The vital statistics