Women's Sexual Working Models: An Evolutionary-Attachment Perspective‪.‬

According to attachment theory, sexual behaviors are regulated by an inborn sexual behavioral system, a species-universal neural program (Bowlby, 1982/1969; Shaver, Hazan, & Bradshaw, 1988) whose major function is to pass one's genes to the next generation (Buss & Kenrick, 1998). However, because impregnation is generally not sufficient for the survival of human offspring, who have a long period of vulnerability, sexual partners often stay with each other long enough to care jointly for their offspring, thereby increasing the offspring's chances of survival (H. E. Fisher, 1998; Hazan & Zeifman, 1994; Mellen, 1981). Accordingly, over the course of human evolution, selection pressures have produced psychological mechanisms regulating the adaptive expression of sexuality. In conceptualizing these functionally adaptive psychological mechanisms, Buss and Kenrick (1998) proposed that these mental representations, which we call "sexual working models" (following attachment theory), should incorporate emotions, cognitions, and motives regulating interaction between sexual partners. These sexual working models reflect experiences with the repeated activation and functioning of the sexual system in diverse social environments and may therefore be the foundation of individual differences in sexual attitudes, responses, and behaviors (see Shaver & Mikulincer, in press). Research and theory in evolutionary psychology have focused on species-typical adaptations, which have become an integral part of the neural hardware of all humans. Researchers have largely ignored individual differences in the operation of sexual-system psychological mechanisms and their associated motives, emotions, and cognitions (Buss, 2004). Individual differences in adaptive mechanisms can emerge from a variety of heritable and nonheritable sources and their combination (e.g., viable genetic subtypes whose relative frequency is maintained by dynamic equilibrium within a gene pool; within-family norms; contextually sensitive variations in gene expression; and unique developmental experiences; Bailey, 1998; Buss & Greiling, 1999). These individual differences in sexual working models underlie corresponding individual differences in sexual behavior. The main purpose of our study was to devise a method for measuring individual differences in sexual working models and to provide preliminary evidence for its reliability and validity.