The evolved information processing design of the human mating mind

In this dissertation, I investigated the psychological adaptations designed to overcome the challenge of mate acquisition through its sub-problems such as (not) missing an opportunity to interact with a potentially suitable partner, identifying mates who exhibit specific fitness-relevant cues, identifying mates that are available to us, and identifying (right) ways of appearance-enhancement. In an attempt to unravel the psychological adaptations designed to solve the stated sub-problems of mate acquisition, I studied the effect of the theoretically-anchored inputs such as biological sex, incomplete visual information, mating context, lumbar curvature angle, and back arching behavior. Through investigating the effects of those inputs (e.g., mating context and lumbar curvature angle), I found outputs consistent with the proposed psychological adaptations (e.g., male preference for an intermediate lumbar curvature angle in women) designed to solve the sub-problems of mate acquisition (e.g., identifying mates with the specific fitness-enhancing trait). Furthermore, these findings indicated that our approach to studying the human mating mind led to accurately identified inputs producing the predicted outputs