Male Attractiveness Goes Beyond Skin Deep (4935 words)

Social biology course (Social Behavior). Research paper on this topic:
"Male attractiveness in humans and what it might signal in terms of male quality."
There are 4 sections within this research paper:
500 words Exploratory Essay
100 words for Title
100 words for Abstract
5000 words Research Paper

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BACKGROUND
The journey began in Africa about 6 million years ago when primitive humans diverged from African apes through the attainment of an upright posture and the ability to walk on two feet (Tobias, 1995). Over the next thousands of years the bipedal journey of Homo sapiens as they dispersed out of Africa and into various parts of the world has been marked by numerous adaptive responses. These responses are consistent with the first tenet of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution: Natural selection. Natural selection is the process whereby subjected to selective pressures, a population with pre existing genetic variation undergoes a gradual shift towards the trait which allows the maximal survival of the species as whole (Freeman & Herron, 2007). These genetic variations – essentially brought about by mutations of specific alleles, and genetic drift due to sampling – get passed on from generation to generation through the exchange of hereditary materials between parents. As a consequence, over time the multitude of isolated communities that urbanized across the globe developed distinctly variable traits, phenotypically (observable physical traits) dissimilar from the parental population.                                          
Since reproductive success and gene propagation are entirely dependent on sexual reproduction, the knowledge of factors that influence mate selection is essential to the understanding of the evolution of selective traits. The goal of this paper is to review existing researches in the field behavioral biology, especially those pertaining to mate choice, and explore the influence of attractive male qualities on the subconscious female mind, from an evolutionary point of view. The plausible explanation behind the basis of mate selection is given by English naturalist Charles Darwin’s second tenet of evolution: Sexual selection. Sexual selection is causal agent that promotes phenotypic variation among natural populations; it...