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12 - Copulatory Urgency: An Evolutionary Perspective of Women’s Sexual Desire

from Part II - Copulatory Adaptations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2022

By
Courtney L. Crosby
Edited by
Todd K. Shackelford
Todd K. Shackelford
Affiliation:
Oakland University, Michigan
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Summary

Despite the extensive empirical exploration of sexual desire, only one field explains the proper biological function of this phenomenon—evolutionary psychology. This chapter reviews women’s copulatory urgency—individual differences in the experience or intensity of sexual desire—from an evolutionary psychological perspective. An evolutionary psychological perspective of the function of sexual desire can shed light on how deficits in this motivational force may emerge, which may be useful for clinicians when helping patients understand the etiology of sexual desire concerns. An evolutionary psychological perspective of sexual desire further reveals: (1) why men and women differ in their experiences of sexual desire, (2) how natural selection produces individual differences in sexual desire, and (3) how extremes in sexual desire may be associated with hypersexuality, paraphilias, or an evolutionary mismatch between the adaptive problems faced during our species’ past and the challenges we face today. I begin the chapter by presenting a brief history of research on sexual desire and highlighting the limitations of early models of sexual responding. Next, I discuss the difficulties of measuring sexual desire, and explain how evolutionary meta-theory can be fruitful when examining context-dependent individual differences in sexual desire. I then describe the impact of several important contextual factors (e.g., age, relationship length, parental effort, partner habituation) on variation in women’s sexual desire responses and highlight avenues for future research. The chapter ends by discussing the qualities of compulsive sexual behavior and proposing that extreme variations in sexual desire as we currently understand them may be the result of an evolutionary mismatch. In sum, I suggest that scientists distinguish between sexual desire and sexual arousal, consider evolutionary meta-theory when thinking about context-dependent variation in sexual desire, and be cognizant of potential confounds when examining women’s sexual desire responses.

Keywords

sexual interestsexual desiresexual motivationsexual urgeslibidosexual behaviorwomen’s hypersexualitywomen’s sexuality
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology , pp. 319 - 340
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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