How far does a person go to achieve reproductive success?
For example, a rapist is often successful reproductively but
they are at risk of going to jail , being spawned by the
public or transmitting an STD. In each case the rapist will
not be around to care for their children so how does he know
they are being cared for and are likely of carrying his genes
to the next generation. Surely to be successful
reproductively the children have to survive and be cared for.
The best strategy is for another man to take good care of the
child but often if a woman is raped they will abort the
foetus or behave aggressively towards it when it is born.
In this case the man has been too greedy and aggressive and
therefore failed to be successful. It could be said that the
rapist's trait of stirving to reproduce at all costs has
perhaps gone too far causing the man to fail to carry his
genes onto the next generation.
Symons stated that human behaviour is uniquely flexible and
successful in responding to environmental variation but the
goals which motivate behaviour are inflexible. Men lose out
more from infidelity as they might use all their energy in
caring for a child who might not be his, this can explain why
men can act aggressively towards theur partner. Therefore, if
a man who abused his girlfriend became socially unpopular,
the man might alter his behaviour but his goal of striving to
protect himself from rearing another man's child will stay
the same. Instead he could strive to keep his girlfriend
interested in him and act romantically so that she would not
be tempted to be unfaithful and have another man's baby. Am
I right in saying that trait for the goal rather than the
methods of achieving the goal will be carried on to the next
generation.
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