ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes the reasons why people have particular preferences and priorities cannot be satisfactorily addressed without consideration of the ways in which our long history of natural and sexual selection pressures shaped the emotional, motivational and information-processing mechanisms underlying the expression of values and preferences. It outlines an evolutionary psychological framework which can be used to derive hypotheses about factors affecting valuations of natural resources. The chapter presents a logic by which one may predict differences in valuations as a function of sex, age, and social and material circumstances. It focuses on possible differences in valuations of the environment by women versus men, as well as differences in their reluctance to risk damaging the environment, based on considerations of sexually differentiated adaptations for intrasexual competition. The chapter hypothesizes that particularly large sex differences pertain to valuations that engage psychological adaptations shaped by a history of intrasexual competition.
