ABSTRACT
Mating intelligence, at first glance, seems oxymoronic, connoting, as it does, both heated passion and cool rationality. When in the throes of lust, most people would not describe their intensely focused, often frenzied activity as intelligent. Yet most modern-day theories of intelligence define this construct not as the ability to answer multiple-choice items on a paperand-pencil test, but, rather, as the ability to adapt to a variety of environmental and social demands (Sternberg, 2000). Even within other species, the idea of a Machiavellian intelligence, in which social manipulation and cunning are used to achieve goals within one’s group, has been extensively examined (Byrne & Whiten, 1988; Whiten & Byrne, 1997). In The Mating Mind, Geoffrey Miller (2000) explored the ways in which such social intelligence could be used to achieve reproductive success. And Buss’s (2001) explication of the “cognitive biases and emotional wisdom” involved in sexual selection also pointed the way for understanding these stratagems
as a kind of intelligence. The view of intelligence as the ability to adapt to environmental and social change raises the question of why such adaptation is necessary in mating. Isn’t it all about biology? Well, no.
