Sex and parenting: the effects of sexual conflict and parentage on parental strategies
Abstract There is perhaps no more popularized aspect of animal behavior than the things parents do for offspring. Yet our understanding of the evolution of care is only rudimentary, perhaps because parental behavior is one of the most variable behavioral traits we know. Sexual reproduction, particularly in anisogamous species, has a major impact on variable patterns of care. Recent work on conflicts between the sexes over care and the consequences of variable paternity on paternal care has generated fascinating new ideas about the evolutionary forces acting on parenting.
Two approaches to the study of the psychological significance of situations were compared, one using data for individuals' perceptions of situations and the other using data for individuals' reactions to situations. Perception and reaction data for 40 subjects were used for multidimensional classification of 12 situations, which were selected so as to cover four different types of stressful situations. For three of the a priori groupings of situations the congruence in outcomes between the two methods was high. The implications of the congruence and the discrepancies in outcomes for the two approaches are discussed. The main conclusion is that one should distinguish clearly between situation perception factors and situation reaction factors in further research on the psychological significance of situations.