That’s the study I link at the top of my Ape article and again here up-thread. It supports my point.

Its own evidence refutes that pair bonding is ethnographically common (too many counterexamples disprove any biological basis for that in humans, even if watered down to just mean rational partner preference and not biochemical imprinting, which they present no evidence of because humans don’t have that) and they admit humans are not biologically “socially monogamous” in whatever sense you mean either (they admit too many counterexamples disprove that as biological; they claim cultural evolution maybe, but offer no convincing evidence of that, since most of the evidence is colonialist and thus not indicative of choice but compulsion).

For my discussion and evidence (and links) regarding “jealousy” science see 90% of Evo-Psych Is False (search “jealousy”) and Poly Family (same). More recent examinations include Kristján Kristjánsson and, ironically, Chung and Harris, whose attempt to recover jealousy against critiques ends up redefining it exactly as I do and thus in fact eliminating it as a distinct emotion or as innate to sex or romance at all, proving my point.

The overall evidence is simply: jealousy manifestation varies too much by culture and context to be biological (your own cited evidence proves this; as does all other evidence); unless you reduce it to a mixture of envy, insecurity, or possessiveness, which are not anchored to sex or romantic partnering but universal emotions, and often censurable or toxic (even more than rage or fear or pride).

Competition and possessiveness are not jealousy and the general consensus is that no other animal experiences jealousy as such—unless it is redefined as simply “inequity aversion” that has nothing to do with sex or pairing, which is not what anyone in the real world means by jealousy; or redefined in similarly self-refuting ways like possessiveness (which simply admits my point that we are conflating jealousy with possessiveness) or feeling of loss (missing someone when they are not there is not jealousy either, nor even any of the emotions people usually mistake for jealousy) or the like.

The fact that scientific studies can never coherently define jealousy in any distinctive or consistent way is already evidence of my point. But that all such studies reduce to what I just pointed out clinches it.

Frontiers | Are We Monogamous? A Review of the Evolution of Pair-Bonding in Humans and Its Contemporary Variation Cross-Culturally https://share.google/MCRNaZIPHUyeT8swm

I have been reading the works of dozens of biologists primatologist etc on the topic for almost an year almost always they recognise humans as a pair bonding species or socially monogamous…If you Checkout the works of frans de waal , alan f Dixson , bernard chapais , carel van scheik etc …Sexual jealousy is natural in humans aswell as other species…There’s not a species that practice polyamory in the sense of no mating competition jealousy etc …humans are no exception…

So I am actually curious what are the resources from you came into the conclusion you make ??

You’re wrong. See my other comment.

You also are reasoning fallaciously. For example, “humans are also not comparable to bonobos in their mating system” because “humans exhibit multiple mating systems, only one of which is multimale–multifemale, as seen in bonobos” is to confuse culture with biology. Bonobos don’t have culture. So they default to biology. Which is sexually communal, not monogamous (and certainly not relevantly “pair bonding”). The reason humans can have diverse systems is culture. But that means none of those systems is biological. The ability to build any of those systems is biological.

Which means humans, if left without culture, would be sexually communal and thus more like Bonobos than any other Great Ape.

For example, Gorillas naturally default to harems (polygyny). Humans obviously are not biologically inclined to that. They only build it artificially (that’s why so many societies are instead poyandrous, or serially monogamous, or monogamish, etc.). And “the predominant human pattern is serial pair bonding” is simply not true. It’s not true biochemically (as monogamish and serially monogamous cultures prove) and it’s not true in any biological way at all (as polygynous and polyandrous cultures prove).

Indeed, the Mosuo alone decisively disprove any biological basis for “pair bonding” as a thing. Women there “paid bond” (scare quotes) with male relatives they don’t have sex with, while not pairing or bonding at all with the men they do have sex with. Which decisively proves these systems are all cultural constructs. The only biologically innate behavior that can explain all of them is bonobo-style sexual communalism. Everything else is a cultural construct.

Just FYI, humans are not socially monogamous nor show a tendency toward pair bonding.

First:

Most human cultures are polygynous (or polyandrous) or serially monogamous, and the latter are often monogamish (with wife sharing or loose requirements of fidelity), or have no conception of what you mean by monogamy at all.

For example, the Mosuo have walking marriages, where the “pair bond” (marriage”) is nonsexual and between a woman and her brother (or nearest male relation), who live together and raise her children as theirs, but she can go and have sex with anyone she wants (and likewise her “partner” has sex with any women he wants).

The Mosuo should be biologically impossible. Unless humans have no biologically innate inclination toward sexual monogamy. All the other diverse patterns of relationshiping only further prove this. Human marriage and relationshiping is a cultural construct; it has no biological tendency.

Second:

Pair bonding should be in scare quotes because there is no such thing in humans. You can say it exists in some abstract vague sense, but that would be to conflate paradigmatic examples (e.g. prairie voles) with non-paradigmatic ones (e.g. great apes). People mostly believe in a mythological version (that what happens to prairie voles happens to primates all the way up to us, which is false, as monogamy isn’t a great ape thing but a lesser ape thing and thus quite far from humans evolutionarily).

In real cases, actual biochemical imprinting occurs, thus damping partner-switching. No such biochemical reaction happens in humans (or any of the great apes, which is why they have harems or communes, not bonded pairing). And humans (like all great apes) too easily switch partners or cooperate with multiple partners to indicate any such biochemical effect.

The pair bonding myth is part of monogamy mythology altogether, where people “assume” that Western monogamous marriage is because of biological biochemical “pair bonding” (hence all the nonsense about “the one” and “made for each other” and other superstitions) rather than (in actuality) just something humans made up (as proved by all the human societies that didn’t; including ours now, where serial monogamy has become the norm, which also contradicts and thus disproves any human biochemistry of pair bonding).

But yes, it is also true that in those animals that do have chemical pair bonding, they fool around all the time anyway, so pair bonding has more to do with reliably combining resources than sexual fidelity, even in animals with that biochemistry. But that’s not humans.

Ethnographically, polygyny and polyandry is permitted, and the overwhelming majority of individuals are engaged in monogamous marriage. Societies that lack paternal certainty or a recognized social father are cross-cultural outliers.

Moreover, pair bonding does not necessarily imply a lifelong relationship, a single exclusive partnership, or strict sexual exclusivity. Thus, being a pair-bonded or socially monogamous species is fully consistent with serial monogamy and occasional infidelity; these patterns are not contradictory. In fact, most pair-bonded species exhibit similar dynamics.

Humans are also not comparable to bonobos in their mating system. Rather, humans exhibit multiple mating systems, only one of which is multimale–multifemale, as seen in bonobos—and this is not the primary system. Instead, the predominant human pattern is serial pair bonding, typically involving one partner at a time, though sometimes more, with occasional infidelity.

The fact that humans are socially monogamous, or show a tendency toward pair bonding, does not negate a parallel tendency toward infidelity. With rare exceptions, species that are considered sexually or genetically monogamous . For example, socially monogamous gibbons show extra-pair paternity rates approaching 10 percent, along with high levels of extra-pair copulation when opportunities arise. Prairie voles in the wild likewise demonstrate considerable behavioral flexibility, with at least 45 percent open to wandering mating.

In other words, pair bonding or social monogamy does not equate to the modern understanding of monogamy as lifelong or strictly sexually exclusive. While rates of extra-pair paternity in humans are relatively low, this primarily indicates that humans usually reproduce within their social partnerships. This supports the classification of humans as a socially monogamous or pair-bonded species, but it does not imply that strict sexual exclusivity is natural or universal. Indeed, the prevalence of infidelity in human societies suggests that non-exclusive sexual behavior remains common despite predominant social monogamy.

For these reasons, several researchers caution against using pair bonding as evidence for a strict genetic or biological basis for contemporary monogamy. Demonstrating such a basis would require showing that pair bonding or social monogamy consistently entails a single relationship structure combined with strict sexual exclusivity—evidence that is currently lacking.

You mentioned that humans are like bonobos, which is not a view generally accepted by evolutionary biologists. While humans may share some similarities with bonobos in certain aspects of mating behavior, this is not the primary pattern of human mating.

My exact words were:

In fact that study only describes a mathematical model for polygynous animals with controlled harems (like the Great Ape and Redwinged Blackbird). Humans are polygamous (like the Bonobo and Saltmarsh Sparrow), not polygynus (if you haven’t noticed, we explore both serial and parallel partnering in both directions), and in fact are culturally more often serial monogamists (strict monogamy is so rare in humans as to be evolutionarily irrelevant); and we don’t maintain controlled harems.

I thus said we are only like Bonobos in the single one respect that we are like sparrows: we do not naturally form harems like the Great Ape or blackbird; we are naturally more like Bonobos and sparrows, as we are naturally polysexual and noncommittal. That’s simply a fact. And I am not aware of any living scientist disagreeing with it.

you noted that extra-pair copulations (EPCs) are low in humans, which appears contradictory to the claim of a bonobo-like mating system. I

I did not say that anywhere in this article.

To the contrary, the rate of infidelity is close to 50% by self-report for both men and women (and the actual rate is probably higher than self-reported). So it is not “rare.” It is actually normal.

And that only measures the incidence of infidelity, not its frequency. Your use of a weird term like EPC only measures sex acts, not sex partners; and infidelity rate does not even measure partners, it only counts how many people cheat at all, not how often or with how many people. So you don’t seem to have a good handle on even what you are talking about, much less what I am talking about.

And this is all modulated by cultural enforcement, so these measure trends against culture back to natural form. If we removed the constraints of culture, these rates would all go up, as then people would be free to act naturally and not be coerced into acting nonnaturally.

an overwhelming majority of offspring are sired by the social father, which does not align well with a bonobo-style reproductive strategy.

I do not know what you think a “social father” is, or if you understand the difference between culture and biology.

Consider the Mosuo (discussed in A Barely Thinking Ape Hoses Cultural Anthropology and Comes Up with the Manospheric Hooker Theory of History: Part 2, which is cited here in the article you are commenting on):

In that culture, children are raised by their mother and her brother. She can have sex with any men she wants and her children are thus sired by as many different men as she wants, none of whom have any responsibility to those children. They, instead, are raising their own sisters’ children.

That this culture exists, is ancient, and functional entails that humans have no natural inclination toward monogamous social fathering. That is always a culturally forced outcome, not a natural one.

Indeed, “one to one” paid bonding is ethnographically rare, and most peculiar to modern imperial (land-owning or herd-owning) societies. It also is abiological. Free cultures now openly endorse serial monogamy, not “pair bonding,” which is now seen as archaic and old-fashioned, illustrating its cultural basis.

Most foraging cultures are serial monogamous with open marriage common, and infidelity common when not open (with frequent appearance of polygyny and even polyandry as well). So, no pair bonding. We also lack the addictive neurochemical pair bonding mechanism present in other animals usually held as examples, indicating we do not naturally “pair bond.” We naturally make lifelong friends, but not as addictive chemical reactions, and not monosocially.

As far as child paternity goes, no data is useful because all fertile people now have had regular access to selective birth control and so we cannot ascertain anything about what’s natural from current figures. Such results are also distorted by social coercion (culturally enforced behaviors). We would have needed to run paternity studies on ancient pre-civilization cultures, and we don’t have time machines to do that with.

But the existence of poly-parental societies (groups like the Mosuo; and others with wife-sharing; polygynous societies; polyandrous societies; and societies like ours, with serial monogamy approved where raising step-children is commonplace) entails that “pair bonding” is again counter-indicated as a natural attribute of humans.

That doesn’t mean we don’t form bonds with people. It just means we don’t naturally do so for reasons of restricting sex or parentage, nor do we limit bonding to a single person but regularly allow polybonding, always in friendship and interfilial relationships, and often in marital or sexual relationships, if we look broadly at the entire ethnographic record.

Sorry, Alan, I don’t know who you are responding to.

No one here has argued anything about sex outside of marriage. This thread is about having children outside of marriage. Which neither requires sex (single people can get children by surrogate or IVF) nor does sex require it (as safe sex does not produce children).

Otherwise, I am actually polyamorous and suspect it’s the only moral framework for human sexual relationships.

But that is not the same thing as “hookups” which is defined in different ways but whatever you mean by it, the options are not “marriage or hookups.” There is an entire moral regime of options in between.

Additionally, you noted that extra-pair copulations (EPCs) are low in humans, which appears contradictory to the claim of a bonobo-like mating system. In humans, an overwhelming majority of offspring are sired by the social father, which does not align well with a bonobo-style reproductive strategy.

Even among foragers humans form one-to-one pair bonds . Doesn’t this provide evidence that monogamy is the most natural form of relationship to humans ?

Is hooking up bad ? The tone felt like people should have sex within marriage or long term relationship instead of hookup…