CONTEXT Most research on heterosexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) has focused on women. However, heterosexual transmission of STDs cannot be prevented without a better understanding of men's, as well as women's, sexual beliefs and behaviors. METHODS Heterosexually active men's beliefs about four methods of STD prevention--abstinence, mutual monogamy, use...

We explore a connection between monogamy of non-locality and a weak macroscopic locality condition: the locality of the average behaviour. These are revealed by our analysis as being two sides of the same coin. Moreover, we exhibit a structural reason for both in the case of Bell-type multipartite scenarios, shedding light on but also generalising the results in the literature [16, 14]. More sp...

Kinship and marriage systems represent the ways in which humans organize relatedness and reproduction. The work presented in this thesis extends the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological foundations of evolutionary biology to the study of these aspects of human social behaviour. Firstly, a game-theoretic analysis shows that the evolution of monogamous marriage can be understood within ...

Love, attachment, and truth of human monogamy have become important research themes in neuroscience. After the introduction of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET), neuroscientists have demonstrated increased interest in the neurobiology and neurochemistry of emotions, including love and affection. Neurobiologists have studied pair-bonding mechanis...

The majority of human societies allow polygynous marriage, and the prevalence of this practice is readily understood in evolutionary terms. Why some societies prescribe monogamous marriage is however not clear: current evolutionary explanations--that social monogamy increases within-group co-operation, giving societies an advantage in competition with other groups--conflict with the historical ...

Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) are described here as a model system in which it is possible to examine, within the context of natural history, the proximate processes regulating the social and reproductive behaviors that characterize a monogamous social system. Neuropeptides, including oxytocin and vasopressin, and the adrenal glucocorticoid, corticosterone, have been implicated in the ne...

Social monogamy has evolved multiple times and is particularly common in birds. It is not well understood why some of these species are continuously and permanently paired while others occasionally 'divorce' (switch partners). Although several hypotheses have been considered, experimental tests are uncommon. Estrildid finches are thought to be permanently paired because being short-lived opport...

In mating systems where individuals pair, separate and re-pair repeatedly (i.e. serial monogamy), some males monopolize more than one female's reproductive life span and thus leave other males effectively mateless. Males who cannot secure females through traditional methods may seek alternatives, such as rape, to ensure gene passage into future generations. Analysis of US government records sho...

The neurohypophyseal hormone Arginine Vasopressin (AVP) and its receptor type 1a (AVPR1a) play important roles in the modulation of social behaviors in mammals. RS3 microsatellites in the AVPR1a promoter region have been implicated in influencing social behavior. However, the relationship between RS3 diversity and social monogamy in primates is not clear. In this study, RS3 sequences from 18 pr...

In all comparative analyses, humans always fall on the borderline between obligate monogamy and polygamy. Here, we use behavioural indices (sociosexuality) and anatomical indices (prenatal testosterone exposure indexed by 2D : 4D digit ratio) from three human populations to show that this may be because there are two distinct phenotypes in both sexes. While males are more promiscuous and displa...