Human Mating Systems
In most human societies, this marriage type is socially sanctioned, but most actual marriages are monogamous.
What is polygyny?
This refers to the slight physical differences between human males and females, such as body size.
What is sexual dimorphism?
Humans are often called this kind of species because multiple individuals, like fathers, siblings, and grandmothers, help raise children.
What is a cooperative breeder?
This universal social function, specifies who has legitimate sexual access to whom
What is marriage?
This term describes the practice of having one partner at a time but multiple partners across a lifetime.
What is serial monogamy?
Relative to body size, humans have smaller of these reproductive organs compared to chimpanzees, suggesting lower levels of sperm competition.
What are testes?
In monogamous systems, siblings may help raise offspring because they share this percentage of genes with full siblings.
What is 50%?
This classification system allows for the ability to identify close relatives and preferentially invest in them even in the absence of monogamy.
What is the kinship classification?
Humans are described as this kind of monogamous species, where partners live together but may not be exclusively reproductive with each other
What is socially monogamous?
This term refers to the lack of obvious physical signs indicating when a woman is fertile in humans, unlike the sexual swellings seen in some other primates.
What is concealed ovulation?
This type of male investment (providing food, protection, or care) is believed to have evolved after monogamy became common.
What is paternal care?
The practice of monogamous couples forming extra-pair relationships with other monogamous couples as a mechanism to increase social cohesion, and strengthen inter-social connections.
What is wife or husband swapping?
Despite cross-cultural variation, this type of relationship is considered a universal feature of human mating systems.
What is a pair bond?
This argument claims that the combination of moderate dimorphism, moderate testis size, and concealed ovulation indicates humans evolved under conditions favoring long-term pair bonds rather than high male reproductive skew.
What is the pair bonding hypothesis?
Human fathers’ lower testosterone levels after marriage and fatherhood reflect a hormonal shift away from mating effort toward this.
What is parenting investment/ effort?
The practice resulting from the belief that the development of a fetus requires biological contribution from multiple men, resulting in pooled resource contribution.
What is partible paternity?