The Costly Crafting Theory

The contributions and applications of the theory The theories proposed by Buss (1996) are being applied as a basis for evolutionary psychology today. For example, Michalski and Shackelford suggest that from an evolutionary viewpoint, personality is a representation of advanced psychological mechanisms which were created as a reaction to the adaptive difficulties regularly encountered by our descendants. This view of personality offers one to reinterpret many areas of personality such as individual differences in personality. Through examining personality from an evolutionary viewpoint Michalski and Shackelford discovered new insights in to various emotions such as social anxiety, jealousy, altruism, aggression, mate preferences, and desire

For example a man who cannot afford to be a good short-term friend, might change to a life-history strategy and greatly invest in one lone-term devoted companionship. Thus he must decide how much energy to use on costly signals. Furthermore this suggests that both theories accompany each other in clarifying individual variances. Costly signalling theory suggests that there is rivalry between humans in sending out gestures to others about their worth as a friend or colleague. Individuals perceived as having the maximum worth are most likely to be favoured by high quality friends and colleagues. Most importantly, this theory offers an evolutionary basis for explaining individual differences. For example, costly signals are likely to be truthful signals about one’s physical ability, economic status or energy supply. This can be seen with men participating in various physical competitions such as kickboxing or wrestling. The signals one sends in participating in such activity are true signals of one’s physical and psychological worth. Thus this worth various amongst men in terms of their health, strength and how inclined ones is to partake in risk taking

As a result of evolutionary psychology’s scientific importance, insights have been given into areas that have functioned outside of evolutionary sciences. It has been suggested that personality characteristics like low emotional stability and low empathy have a damaging effect on ones mating success. Furthermore this effect is more significant when such personality features rise to dangerous levels and are categorised as personality disorders. Evolutionary theories have been used to explain the increased frequency of such maladaptive traits. Thus this study adds to the importance of the models contribution by hypothesising that in familial cultures there was poor selection pressures on personality characteristics that predict success in intimate relationships. The reason behind this was that fathers had control over ones mate choice and did not consider such traits in a potential spouse. The main model used for demonstrating the link between psychopathology and evolutionary theory was the balancing selection model. This model suggests that alleles that influence a disorder might increase fitness. In the gene pool there are alleles that influence dangerous alterations of personality that cannot be changed. The occurrence of these alleles in the gene pool is linked to the strength of the negative selection pressures put on them. However a mutation moving a personality trait away from its peak level might not have a