Chapter 10 Exercises: The Biology-Culture Feedback Loop

These exercises ask you to apply the co-evolutionary model to your own experience and to analyze real cases through the lens developed in this chapter. There are no wrong answers to the reflective exercises — but there are more and less rigorous ways to engage with the ideas.

Exercise 10.1 — Personal Attraction Inventory

Purpose: To practice the co-evolutionary model by applying it to your own attraction patterns.

Instructions: Think of a specific person you have found attractive — not necessarily a current or past partner, but someone whose attractiveness felt real and salient to you. This can be someone you know personally or someone you encountered in media or public life. You do not need to share this person's identity with your instructor or classmates.

Once you have identified this person, respond in writing to the following questions (aim for 500–700 words total):

  1. Biological layer: What features or qualities of this person do you notice you were responding to? Try to identify both physical cues (appearance, voice, smell if applicable) and behavioral cues (how they moved, spoke, carried themselves). Do any of these cues map onto the biological attractiveness signals discussed in Chapters 6–9 (symmetry, health cues, hormonal signals, bonding behavior)?

  2. Cultural layer: Now think about the cultural context in which your attraction formed. What kinds of people had you been exposed to as attractive in your upbringing — in media, family models, community narratives? Does this person fit a template that your cultural environment normalized as desirable? Can you identify any ways in which your cultural environment might have made certain features more salient to you?

  3. Experiential layer: Is there anything specific about your personal history — formative relationships, early experiences, significant events — that might have shaped why this particular combination of qualities appeals to you? You do not need to perform pop-psychology analysis, but reflect on whether developmental experience seems relevant.

  4. The hard question: After doing this analysis, do you feel that your attraction to this person is "really yours"? Has thinking through its biological and cultural components changed how you relate to it? Use Nadia's reflection from the chapter to frame your answer — do you agree with her conclusion that co-constructed desires are still genuinely one's own?

Discussion option: In small groups, share one element of your reflection (not the specific person) that surprised you. What did the analysis reveal that you hadn't noticed before?

Exercise 10.2 — Case Analysis: Sexual Orientation and the Co-Evolutionary Model

Purpose: To apply the co-evolutionary model to a real-world case and assess its explanatory power.

Scenario: You are speaking with someone who tells you: "My cousin came out as gay in his mid-thirties, after a decade of marriage to a woman. He says he always knew but suppressed it. His wife says she had no idea. His parents say he's confused and that this is all about the liberal city he moved to ten years ago."

Each person in this scenario is offering an implicit model of sexual orientation:

  • The cousin implies a fixed, biological orientation that was present but suppressed
  • The parents imply that the environment ("the liberal city") caused or produced his same-sex attraction
  • The wife's experience raises questions about the relationship between internal experience and observable behavior

Questions (500–700 words total):

  1. How would the co-evolutionary model account for each of these perspectives? What does each one get right, and what does each one oversimplify?

  2. Lisa Diamond's work on sexual fluidity — which primarily followed women — raises the question of whether male desire shows less fluidity than female desire. Preliminary evidence suggests it may. How would a co-evolutionary framework explain this sex difference, if it is real? (Consider: what social, hormonal, and developmental factors might produce different patterns of plasticity?)

  3. The parents' explanation — "it's the liberal city" — reflects a social-constructionist view. What would it take for this explanation to be correct? What evidence would support it, and what evidence would undermine it?

  4. What is the most ethically important point you would want the cousin's parents to understand, drawing on the science in this chapter?

Exercise 10.3 — Debate: Can We Separate "Natural" from "Learned" Desire?

Purpose: To practice taking and defending a position on a contested question while engaging seriously with the other side.

The question: Given everything we know about epigenetics, developmental plasticity, neuroplasticity, and the co-evolutionary model, is it possible — or useful — to try to separate "natural" (biologically driven) from "learned" (culturally/experientially shaped) components of desire?

Instructions:

You will be assigned to argue either the PRO position ("Yes, it is possible and useful to make this separation") or the CON position ("No, the distinction cannot be meaningfully made, and trying to make it causes more harm than good"). If your class is doing this as a written exercise rather than a live debate, write a 400–500 word argument for whichever position you find more difficult — the one you do NOT personally agree with.

Scaffolding for the PRO position: - Some components of attraction appear consistently across very different cultural contexts (symmetry preferences, health cues, prosocial character preferences in long-term partners) - Understanding biological priors could help clinicians support people experiencing distress related to attraction - Legal and ethical questions about discrimination often turn on whether a characteristic is "innate" — the distinction matters in practice even if it is philosophically unstable

Scaffolding for the CON position: - The co-evolutionary model shows that biological and cultural influences are constitutively entangled — you cannot separate them even in principle - Attempts to identify "natural" desire have historically been used to pathologize non-normative attractions - Nadia's reflection in the chapter suggests that the question of what is "natural" may be less important than the question of what one chooses to do with one's desires — making the distinction's utility questionable

Reflection (after the debate or after writing your position): Which argument surprised you with its strength? Did engaging with the other side change your own view?