Sociobiology

"Our Cheating Hearts" by Robert Wright was the most intriguing of the three articles, and it tried to enlighten the reader on the complex and sometimes confusing issue of human relationships. Wright is an evolutionary psychologist who feels that the brain like any other organ has changed throughout the evolution of time. Just as any other animal, a human's main objective in life is to pass on our genes, and if we cannot do this with our significant other than many humans will deem cheating as a viable option. Wright does not encourage people to cheat but in the article it does seem that he regards cheating as almost the rational thing to do. As much as I do not want to agree with him I feel as though he makes a convincing argument. Wright looks at the issue in a scientific way and says cheating is a perfectly logical and justifiable behavior because the desire to pass on one's genes is the most basic component in nature and life. Therefore, what better way then to attempt reproduction as many times with as many mates as possible.

I agree with Wright's contention that men are much more inclined to have a sexual fling than women and that men do not seem to consider intelligence as a factor when looking for a sex partner, but I feel that his argument is not as complete as it should be. I believe that in order to understand why some men and women cheat and some do not we first must understand the context in which their decisions are being made. Other external factors such as place of work and attractiveness of the male or female are factors that were never discussed. If a married man or women at a workplace works with a vast number of the opposite sex than he/she is obviously more prone to cheating. In addition, if a man or women is of above average attractiveness than I would surmise he/she is more susceptible to cheating because of opportunities being proposed. As much as it pains me to say I feel that most men and women if given the prospect would cheat on there significant others. I think the numbers are too low because cheating happens when chance meets opportunity, and a large number of times this does not happen. Simply put some men and women do not have the opportunity to cheat because there environment does not allow them to interact with the opposite sex or they are merely not desirable. I found it unusual to learn that when men cheat this does not mean they are unhappy. Dr. Joyce Hamilton Berry, a clinical psychologist says that. "When I counsel clients, I compare male infidelity to a man walking into the kitchen and seeing a chocolate cake sitting on the counter. It looks good; it smells good. He is not hungry, but he will eat the cake anyway. I thought that was a great analogy and that man sometimes cheat when they see a woman who is attractive and appears to be interested, even though there is nothing lacking in their marital relationships, they initiate affairs anyway.

I found it very interesting that women tend to cheat on there spouse more during time of ovulation when they are most likely to be pregnant. That is a scary thought that many fathers could conceivably be raising children that were not sired by them. I certainly do not think we should solve this problem by demanding the children of past relationships to be killed like the Yanomamo's of South America do. However, I do think that DNA testing should be less expensive so that many families could end the doubt of who is truly the parent. Under the section as to why women cheat I thought the author failed to mention a few obvious reasons that women are starting to catch up to males when it comes to cheating. Sex researchers agree that today more women are committing adultery than ever before. Over the last twenty years more and more women are entering the workforce and working outside the home alongside men, oftentimes in office environments that are charged with sexual electricity. It seems as though some women could get involved in extramarital affairs because they are lonely, others because they want to escape the monotony of marriage. Still others are motivated to cheat due to revenge after they find out about there husband's infidelity. I find the different types of jealously that males and females display when they are caught cheating rather interesting. Evolutionary psychologists such as David Buss hypothesized men and women would differ psychologically in the weight given to cues that trigger jealousy. A man's jealousy has been thought to focus on sexual infidelity because a long-term partner's sexual infidelity jeopardizes his certainty in fatherhood, placing him at risk of investing in another man's offspring. A woman's jealousy has been hypothesized to focus the long-term diversion of a man's commitment, such as his emotional involvement with another woman. (Buunk, 1996) I completely agree with Wright's argument that the movies and Hollywood glorify adultery and do not help the cause to maintain a traditional family. Moreover, everywhere you look on television you see someone like Tony Soprano making infidelity look like the norm with no consequences involved. I feel that the ease at which one can access pornographic material in today's society is also hurting the family unit as well. The internet which now has over 300,000 pornographic websites gives married people a warped sense of reality. I particularly liked how Wright ended his article by saying that humans are the most multifaceted and complex animals on the earth, but none the less we are still animals. People sometimes forget we are still animals, and are subject to the same weaknesses that are inherently human. We have the capacity to be moral creatures but in many instances for one reason or another we are not.

I feel that the Rushton article is very fascinating, but I can't say that I agree with many of his arguments. The article touches on a ideas such as altruism, IQ, and genetics but the most compelling to me is the fact that Rushton claims he can explain the differences in races using his r/K theory. Rushton discusses many taboo matters that I feel almost border on racism. I think this way because the definition of race is extremely subjective and there is no basis for deciding which traits to use in any classification system. Consequently, one can pick and choose traits about any race at will until result suit the researcher's purpose. This is why estimates of the number of different races vary so widely, because there is no such thing as a distinct race. There is also usually more variation in a trait within races than between them. Ruston himself even acknowledged this as being true when he said that "no claim is made that races are discrete groups."

Rushton believes there is a consistent pattern of human racial differences. The three primary human racial groups are the