(Press-News.org) Groningen, The Netherlands —February 1, 2011— Mate guarding is classified as excessive or unwarranted jealous or protective behavior towards a spouse or mate. This is common among many different species and can be useful to defend territory, guarantee paternity, or prevent disease. The authors of a new study published in Personal Relationships have discovered that this behavior is more common in societies which practice arranged marriages or in cultures that place a high value on parental influence in the choice of mate for their children. Furthermore, the authors comment on the fact that mate guarding is not an exclusively male phenomenon, and women can be just as forceful in protecting their monogamous relationships.
In many cultures, rules, behavioral practices, and physical measures, including veiling and walled courtyards, have been applied to prevent contact between women and potential sexual partners. The current findings indicate that the occurrence of mate guarding is more prevalent in Muslim, Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Moroccan, and South Asian societies.
Lead author A.P. Buunk, "In Western cultures, most husbands do not actively try to prevent contacts between their wife and other men and may even accept a moderate degree of flirting. In contrast, in many Islamic cultures husbands actively prevent even superficial contact between a female member and another man. If a male cannot guarantee the paternity of their offspring, they could very well be investing precious resources in another man's offspring. It therefore becomes most important to ensure the fidelity of the female mate."
There is considerable evolutionary evidence that in most societies and historical periods, marriage has been at least partly arranged and has been based on a series of familial considerations rather than on the desires of the individuals concerned. In their article the authors emphasize that the degree in which parents control the mate choice of their children is an important factor in the occurrence of mate guarding. Additionally, freedom of mate choice or the ability to form a love-based union seems to make mate guarding less necessary. The findings clearly indicate that in cultures and social contexts in which freedom of mate choice is valued highly, the level of mate guarding is relatively low.
There are different reasons why men and women may choose to engage in mate guarding. In Venezuela, a man may pursue an arranged marriage to form important social or business alliances with other men. In this case a man may feel that he needs to guard his "property" zealously. A woman in an arranged marriage may fear desertion, and with it the stigma of divorce, as a result of her husband's infidelity and would therefore be more likely to engage in mate guarding behavior. Buunk, "If a marriage is not based on choice or love a person is more likely to become jealous over seemingly inconsequential events. This is probably because it is harder to be sure that the other person is in love with you out of their own volition."
INFORMATION:
This study will be published in a forthcoming issue of Personal Relationships . Members of the media may request a full-text version of this article by contacting scholarlynews@wiley.com.
Article: "Mate Guarding and Parental Influence on Mate Choice."; Abraham P. Buunk and Alejandro Castro Solano. Personal Relationships; Published Online: January 28, 2011 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01342.x). Abstract: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01342.x/abstract.
Professor Abraham P. Buunk is Academy Professor, Evolutionary Social Psychology, at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the University of Groningen. His other research concerns social exchange and social comparison in applied areas, including professional burnout, absentee¬ism, AIDS-prevention, loneliness, depression, marital satisfaction, well-being among the elderly, and coping with cancer.
Personal Relationships, first published in 1994, is an international, interdisciplinary journal that promotes scholarship in the field of personal relationships using a wide variety of methodologies and throughout a broad range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, communication studies, anthropology, family studies, child development, social work, and gerontology.
About Wiley-Blackwell
Wiley-Blackwell is the international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, with strengths in every major academic and professional field and partnerships with many of the world's leading societies. Wiley-Blackwell publishes nearly 1,500 peer-reviewed journals and 1,500+ new books annually in print and online, as well as databases, major reference works and laboratory protocols. For more information, please visit www.wileyblackwell.com or our new online platform, Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), one of the world's most extensive multidisciplinary collections of online resources, covering life, health, social and physical sciences, and humanities.
END
Using "microbubbles" and ultrasound can mean more targeted breast biopsies for patients with early breast cancer, helping to determine treatment and possibly saving those patients from undergoing a second breast cancer surgery, a new study in shows.
Patients with early breast cancer undergo a sentinel lymph node biopsy to determine if their cancer has spread, said Dr. Ali Sever, lead author of the study. Ultrasound, on its own, can't distinguish the sentinel lymph node from other lymph nodes, Dr. Sever said. However, "our study found that microbubble contrast- enhanced ...
HOUSTON -- (Feb. 1, 2011) -- Rice University bioengineers and physician-scientists at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have successfully destroyed tumors of human brain cancer cells in the first animal tests of a minimally invasive treatment that zaps glioma tumors with heat. The tests involved nanoshells, light-activated nanoparticles that are designed to destroy tumors with heat and avoid the unwanted side effects of drug and radiation therapies.
The results of the new study are available online in the Journal of Neuro-Oncology. The researchers ...
TORONTO, ON – New research from the University of Toronto could provide some restful nights for the 18 million North Americans who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.
In a recent study that appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, scientists from the University demonstrated that repeated obstruction of the airways requires release of the brain chemical noradrenaline. The release of this chemical helps the brain learn to breathe more effectively and purposefully.
"What we showed is that repeated disruption of normal lung activity – what happens during sleep apnea – ...
"Nucleolus", or small nucleus, is the term coined by early biologists for the tiny structure within the nucleus which they saw under the microscope. In this structure within the nucleus, RNA molecules and proteins are assembled to form ribosomes, the true protein factories of cells.
Defective nucleoli have been implicated in several rare hereditary diseases, most recently also in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. Despite intense research efforts around the world, the molecular causes of Parkinson's disease are still unclear. Under ...
BOSTON (February 1, 2011) -- In a paper published in the January issue of the journal Economics and Human Biology, a team of applied economists including William A. Masters, a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, suggests a new approach to monitoring the relationship between nutrition and child mortality in developing countries.
Based on dozens of surveys compiled over 20 years, changes in the number of mildly underweight children could be used as an early-warning signal of underlying public health threats that are difficult ...
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- For decades, medical wisdom about shingles has been that it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The commonly-held belief is that patients are protected from a recurrence of the herpes zoster virus, which causes shingles, after one episode. But according to a study published in the February issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, recurrences of shingles may be significantly more common than doctors have suspected.
"It's been thought that recurrences were limited to people with compromised immune systems, for instance from chemotherapy or bloodborne malignancies, ...
Researchers report that an arctic relative of the grouse has evolved to cope with its extreme environment by moving efficiently at high speeds or when carrying winter weight. This discovery is of relevance to welfare in the poultry industry where birds are bred to be heavier. Ultimately better understanding the physiology of a natural animal model of extreme weight gain could one day lead to improving the welfare and meat yield of domesticated breeds and so contribute to preventing a future food security crisis.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ...
ESA's Cluster satellites have flown through a natural particle accelerator just above Earth's atmosphere. The data they collected are unlocking how most of the dramatic displays of the northern and southern lights are generated.
Two of Cluster's four satellites found themselves in a natural particle accelerator above the northern hemisphere on 5 June 2009. The first to cross was satellite C3 at an altitude of 6400 km, followed five minutes later by C1 at 9000 km.
This is the first time that scientists have measured such a region simultaneously using more than one satellite. ...
How is going for a jog like voting for president? As far as our brains are concerned, physical activity and political activity are two sides of the same coin. Scientists found that people who live in more active states are also more likely to vote. And in an experiment, volunteers who were exposed to active words like "go" and "move" said they were more likely to vote than did people who saw words like "relax" and "stop."
The study was inspired by research showing that brains lump all kinds of activity together. For instance, a message that's meant to promote fitness—physical ...
Boston, MA - It is estimated that up to 10 percent of the U.S. population may have some form of renal disease, with 450,000 patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) requiring hemodialysis. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh have identified a cell in zebrafish that can be transplanted from one fish to another to regenerate nephrons, providing the potential to improve kidney function. These findings are published in the February 3 edition of Nature.
Currently, the five-year survival rate for ...
