Outnumbered Men Play the Field
Jun 10, 2009 | Posted by bryan | 0 Comments
Lead a man to women and he will play the field, according to research.
Daniel Kruger, researcher at the University of Michigan, explains that men in female-dominated populations are less likely to marry at an early age, despite the greater availability of potential mates.
He adds that the apparent lack of rationality in the findings is accounted for by the different evolutionary forces at work in males compared with females.
Among a plentiful supply of females, this leads men to instinctively prefer short-term relationships with a variety of partners.
However, as men age, their priorities change – and the likelihood for an older man to be married increases in communities where women outnumber their male counterparts.
In this older group, evolution still plays a role, as they typically prefer partners who are still within their prime reproductive years.
This leads to a tendency for older men to marry younger brides, according to the research.
Mr Kruger’s article notes that an imbalance between the genders in any community is unlikely to be maintained in the long term.
This is due to Darwin’s theory that the less populous gender will have greater opportunity to reproduce, helping to restore the imbalance in future generations.