Cross-cultural variability in sociosexuality as a cooperative problem

Łukasz Tanaś

Abstract

Human cooperation and coordination can be viewed as an outcome of a gene-culture coevolutionary process, in which increased reliance on cultural transmission creates a niche, which shapes the “social brain” with a suite of norm-psychology, pro-social traits and high fidelity social learning and this provides a feedback loop on complexity of cultural transmission itself. In this light we can expect cooperative problems to be supported by intuitive norm-psychology. In the domain of human sexuality, general sex drive variability is not a cooperative problem and therefore cultural norms play minor part in its regulation. Sociosexual variability, on the other hand, can be a cooperative problem, in and some contexts it is strongly regulated by norms. In patriarchal cultures of honor, especially chastity of females can become a sacred value and as such, sociosexual restrictiveness is expected to be the generalized default intuitive response. Even contemplating a tradeoff against this value could be subject to punishment and maintenance of reputation of “protection” of this value can result in such extreme events as “honor killings”. In developed, gender-equal countries, possibly because institutions are in place to solve the major issues related to the mating vs parenting tradeoff, sociosexual decisions rest on self-interested individual deliberation instead.