Name: The Mating Mind
ISBN: 9780385495172

The Mating Mind

"Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller shows the evolutionary power of sexual choice and the reasons why our ancestors became attracted not only to pretty faces and healthy bodies, but to minds that were witty, articulate, generous, and conscious. The richness and subtlety of modern psychology help to reveal how the human mind evolved, like the peacock's tail and the elk's antlers for courtship and mating.". "Drawing on new ideas from evolutionary biology economics, and psychology, Miller illuminates his arguments with examples ranging from natural history to popular culture, from the art of New Guinea's bowerbirds to the sexual charisma of South Park's school chef. Along the way, he provides insights into the inarticulacy of teenage boys, the diversity of ancient Greek coins, the reasons why Scrooge was single, the difficulties of engaging with modern art, and the function of sumo wrestling."--BOOK JACKET.

What Hacker News says

obelosFeb 2019

Dawkins is amazingly lucid when he sticks to topics he knows very well. “The Selfish Gene” and “The Extended Phenotype” were world altering for me. Like integral calculus, I rarely have cause to apply the concept in the domain in which it was described, but the understanding that his conveyance of the material shaped in me is something I feel in my thinking every day, more than two decades later.

“The Mating Mind” by Geoffrey Miller (another biologist who would do the world a favor by sticking to his domain of expertise) came to me more recently but has left a similar impression. It impeccably elaborates upon the power of sexual selection and how it intertwines with natural selection.

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zrthAug 2016

Two of my most favorite books tries to shine light on some of the different aspects of your (first) question. Maybe the unexpected findings during the pursuit of this question will be as fascinating to you as it was to me.

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped Human Nature (2000) (Geoffrey Miller)

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (Matt Ridley)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Queen:_Sex_and_the_Evo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(psychologist)...

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mindcrimeOct 2015

    http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is

Some good stuff there indeed. The Game, Predictably Irrational, The Mating Mind, and Lord of the Rings stand out to me as excellent suggestions. I'm just now starting book 12 of Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and while I've enjoyed it so far, I'm not sure I'd cite it as "thought provoking". Entertaining, yes, and certainly worth reading, but the series doesn't stand out to me in that way.

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blubMar 2015

I think it's hard for a lot of people to create emotionally and sexually meaningful relationships. Unless you've had out of the ordinary incidents like being slapped, punched and so on, it's probably a lack of opportunities combined with some bad luck and maybe a lack of understanding how relationships can be "hacked" a bit to help them along.

My theory is that the way we form relationships is a combination of innate ability (1) and learned behaviour (2).

(1) is common to each human and includes things such as interpreting facial expressions, sense of touch, etc, even though I agree that conditions such as autism can have a significant negative impact here. Still, you said you are failing, which means you are trying and you do express a desire to succeed, so I am guessing that this is not what's preventing you from succeeding, but rather it's something related to your beliefs and behaviours. Which leads me to...

(2) this behaviour is normally learned as we grow up, as a combination of advice from parents, your social circle and simply experimenting. But if one has an unusual childhood, parents that teach them "wrong" things, is e.g. bullied or simply has bad luck, they might end up either not knowing what to do to form a romantic relationship or even doing the opposite of what they should do. In which case they have to learn by themselves. Now I don't know the particulars of your situation, but have you read available literature about how human sexuality and relationships work? e.g: Pittman's Man Enough, Miller's Mating Mind, Meston's Why Women Have Sex. This might be a starting point in better understanding what's happening and why you find things difficult.

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diegoFeb 2015

I'm not saying he's right, but "we're all social animals" ignores the entire discipline of evolutionary psychology. Biology forced males and females of various species to evolve different strategies. For humans some of those strategies are obsolete, but it doesn't mean that they're gone from our brains. If you haven't, check out The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller or similar books.

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mudilFeb 2014

Those of you who downgrade my comment should put that PC stuff aside, and consider reading about the evolution of sexuality. Such as "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley, and "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller.

All your wishful thinking will never make women and men the same.

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