Anyone familiar with evolutionary psychology has surely heard of a theoretical assumption like this:
When it comes to the costs of reproduction, men’s contribution—sperm—is negligible, almost zero-cost, compared with women’s contribution—eggs plus ten months of pregnancy. So men are born with an instinct to “cast a wide net,” openly or otherwise, and look everywhere for chances to leave offspring behind.
Psychologically, this shows up like this: even though the odds of actually succeeding are extremely low, men are still very easily tempted by all kinds of opportunities to leave offspring behind. In men’s eyes, “sexy” is everywhere; temptation is everywhere.
You could also say that men are highly sensitive to what counts as “sexy.”
In fact, there is a spectacular bargain in this world. If a man took advantage of it, he would have a very good chance of dramatically increasing his reproductive success and leaving behind lots of offspring—with almost no risk.
The paradox is that, in men’s eyes, this thing that could so easily fulfill their ultimate wish is not sexy at all.
That spectacular bargain, of course, is donating sperm at a sperm bank. In fact, donating sperm at a sperm bank may be the most effective strategy for a man to increase his reproductive success—period. And yet almost no man would find it sexy or thrilling. It has absolutely nothing to do with sexiness or excitement.
By contrast, watching porn—an activity with not the slightest chance of increasing a man’s reproductive success—looks extremely sexy to men.
Why is a sperm bank, which can actually increase reproductive success, not sexy at all, while porn, which cannot increase it in the slightest, is so sexy?
The answer still lies in evolutionary psychology’s core assumption: mismatch. The idea is that many of our mental functions are actually very old. They evolved to help our ancestors adapt to life in a tribe, but they do not necessarily work perfectly in today’s modern society. Ancient minds and the modern environment are a mismatch.
“The basic logic of the entire pornography industry is mismatch. Pictures of naked women easily make men lose their heads and send their blood racing, even though their arousal will not lead to reproduction. Somewhere in the brain, a photograph of a naked woman gets translated into an actual naked woman; this visual invitation to reproduce usually triggers a physical response in men.” (Naturally Selected) Clearly, this physical response was “matched” only in the ancient world, before photographs and videos existed.
On the other hand, because nothing called a sperm bank existed in ancient tribal life, and there was no evolutionary pressure encouraging men to donate sperm, men never evolved a psychological mechanism that made sperm banks feel sexy.
References:
Mark van Vugt and Anjana Ahuja. Naturally Selected. Intellectual Property Publishing House.
Note
- This article in the “Psychology New Knowledge Mini-Course” series was written at the time to accompany related content in Zhichao Wei: Psychology New Knowledge Course. It is a short popular-psychology essay/op-ed originally published on the now-shuttered platform Fantuan; the original link no longer exists.
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