Preface to the Korean edition
Preface to the Revised Edition
Preface to the first edition

Origins of Mating Behavior
What Women Want
And what men want
One night stand
Seducing a Spouse
Two people living together
sexual conflict
Breakup
Changes over time
Harmony between men and women
Women's Secret Sexual Strategies
The Mystery of Human Mating

Note
References
Translator's Note
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Everything you want to know about love, relationships, sex, and desire, but can't bring yourself to ask.
From matchmaking programs that bring together young men and women and pair them up, to programs that test the affection of existing couples by introducing a kind of flirtation, to programs that track the movements of ex-lovers, countless reality programs related to the meeting, love, and breakups of men and women are dominating public and cable broadcasting.
The theme of love between men and women has been covered countless times in literary works such as poetry and novels and works of art for centuries, yet we are still enthusiastic about various dramas, movies, and reality programs that talk about 'love', which is not much different from the content of centuries ago, only the container that holds it has changed.
This is probably because 'love' between a man and a woman occupies such a huge portion of the lives of the human species, and because its true nature is still shrouded in mystery, continuing to stimulate humans, a curious species.
This time, 『The Evolution of Desire』, published by Science Books, seeks to reveal the truth about love, romance, sex, and marriage between human men and women by digging into the history of human evolution spanning millions of years from the distant past to the present, and revealing in detail the inherent sexual desires hidden deep within our hearts.
David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and former president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, a leading society in the field of evolutionary psychology, is a renowned evolutionary psychologist who is well-known in Korea for his books such as “The dangerous passion: Why jealousy is as necessary as love and sex,” which deals with jealousy and sexual infidelity between men and women, and “The Murderer Next Door,” which deals with why murder occurs, as well as for his appearances in various documentaries.
Published in 1994, 『The Evolution of Desire』 is a classic work in the field of psychology that made David Buss' name and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology known worldwide.
Science Books Co., Ltd. published the 2003 revised edition, which added two chapters to the first edition published in 1994 to reflect new research findings, translated by Dr. Jeon Jung-hwan, a student of David Buss and the first Korean to hold a doctorate in evolutionary psychology.
This book provides an opportunity to resolve your curiosity by looking deep into the human mind through the window of evolutionary psychology, asking, "Everything you wanted to know about love, romance, sex, and desire, but never dared to ask."


Love, jealousy, betrayal, it's all strategy!
About 150 years ago, Charles Darwin proposed a groundbreaking explanation for the mystery surrounding mating in every species on Earth.
Darwin was intrigued by the fact that traits that seemed detrimental to survival, such as the peacock's colorful tail feathers, had developed in animals, and he advocated the theory of sexual selection to explain the evolution of these traits.
In other words, peacocks with fancy tails evolved because they had an advantage in the competition for superior mates and could continue to pass on those genetic traits.
Darwin's theory of sexual selection effectively explained mating behavior by revealing two key processes through which evolutionary change can occur: mate preferences and competition for mates.
David Buss applied this theory of sexual selection to humans, and together with 50 collaborators, conducted a survey of 10,047 men and women from six continents and five islands from Australia to Zambia to elucidate human mate preferences, that is, the qualities each man and woman seeks in a mate, and the various strategies they use in competition to obtain a mate.
And the newly added study on sexual jealousy in the revised edition also included a survey conducted on Korean men and women with the participation of Professor Jae-Cheon Choi of the Department of Ecological Sciences at Ewha Womans University as a co-researcher.
Drawing on the largest survey of human mating desires ever conducted, as well as extensive sociological and ethnographic literature, David Buss argues that human mating, dating, sex, and love are fundamentally strategic.
Our psychological mechanisms are designed to solve a number of specific adaptive problems associated with successfully mating and outcompeting same-sex competitors in the fierce mating battle for desirable mates.
"The Evolution of Desire" peels back the layers of adaptive problems men and women have faced in the mating process and reveals the complex sexual strategies that have evolved to solve those problems.


What Women Want vs. What Men Want
To be successful at mating, our ancestors had to solve a number of complex and diverse adaptive problems.
Only by being able to discern who would be a desirable partner, being able to seduce that person, being able to effectively fend off rivals who would try to seduce my lover or spouse, and being able to protect my spouse so that he or she would not leave me, could I have children with my spouse and pass on my genes to future generations.
Moreover, because the adaptive problems our ancestors faced were significantly different for men and women, our ancestors evolved different psychological mechanisms and sexual strategies to address the same adaptive problems.
For men, successful mating required selecting a mate who was likely to bear children, and they evolved preferences for indicators of reproductive potential in women, such as a young age and a waist-to-hip ratio, also known as the S-line.
Moreover, men, who are less certain about whether they are the father than women who are more certain about whether they are the mother because they conceived the child inside their own body, have evolved psychological mechanisms that make them more sensitive to cues that can increase this paternity uncertainty, namely the degree of a woman's sexual promiscuity.
Therefore, compared to women, they are more likely to experience excessive sexual jealousy about their spouse's infidelity, or to prefer a spouse's chastity from the beginning when choosing a spouse.
In the case of women, the psychological and physical resources required for nine months of pregnancy are enormous, so they have evolved a psychological mechanism to prefer men with high social status and a lot of wealth, which indicates that they can steadily invest resources in themselves during that time.
It also shows a preference for the commitment of a man who is willing to invest his wealth solely in himself, rather than siphoning it off to other women.
"The Evolution of Desire" provides an easy-to-understand, step-by-step account of the complex and diverse repertoire of mating strategies we inherited from our distant evolutionary ancestors.
This revised edition, which includes two chapters on newly conducted research results since the first edition was published in 1994 and was a great success, is considered to be the book that most accurately and authentically informs the public about the latest research results in evolutionary psychology on human mating.
These two new chapters explore the purpose of female orgasm. Do women's sexual strategies change with the menstrual cycle? Can men detect ovulation? Why did homosexuality evolve? Can men and women simply be friends? Are men and women destined to forever misread each other's minds? Are men designed to rape women?

Not everyone is okay!
There was once a popular experiment on the Internet that compared the symmetry and attractiveness of the faces of celebrities by photoshopping their faces.
The results generally showed that the more attractive a celebrity we normally find, the more perfectly symmetrical their face is.
This experiment is actually one of the more well-known evolutionary psychology experiments on male and female mate preferences.
Not only a symmetrical face, but also clear skin and fine hair are all characteristics that can only be possessed by a physically healthy person who has gone through a normal development process without being disturbed by external parasites due to a high immune system.
Our ancestors all evolved to be good at discerning and preferring these traits.
Additionally, men have evolved to prefer women's body shape, age, and purity, while women have evolved to prefer men's social status, wealth, and devotion.
Those who failed to mate because they could not choose a mate who displayed these desirable qualities did not become our ancestors.
We today come from a long line of species that faithfully followed their mate preferences and successfully mated for millions of years.
We carry in our minds the mating strategies that led our ancestors to successful mating.
When asked about their ideal type, I often see people answering, “Anyone is fine with me.”
But if we look at the mating market as a whole, it is clear that some partners are preferred and others are avoided.
Desire plays a central role in mating.
Who we are drawn to and who is drawn to us depends on our desires.
Even after deciding to live together with your spouse, if you cannot continue to fulfill your spouse's desires, the marriage will soon end.
At every stage of mating, from mate selection to marital separation, desire underlies it all.
The Evolution of Desire addresses this issue.
But that doesn't mean we are puppets of our desires and genes.
David Buss emphasizes that just because our bodies evolved a mechanism to develop calluses when there is frequent friction, it does not necessarily mean that calluses will develop when friction is applied, and just because our bodies evolved this desire for the opposite sex and our preference for a mate does not necessarily mean that we humans follow it.
The age-old debate of genes versus culture is already reaching a consensus that we humans are the product of the interaction of genes and culture, and David Buss also says that these desires can vary depending on the environment and cultural variations in which individuals grew up.
In fact, compared to the ancestral environment of millions of years ago, women's social advancement has led to greater economic independence, and with the support of social welfare systems, the value women place on men's economic resources has gradually decreased.
Additionally, with the sexual liberation of the 1970s and the development of various contraceptives, the value men place on women's chastity has been gradually decreasing over time.

David Buss argues in this book that only by properly understanding the sexual desires that men and women have for each other can we properly understand the causes and establish preventative measures for various social problems that can arise from misaligned or conflicting desires, such as spousal abuse due to excessive sexual jealousy, rape resulting from being pushed out of the mating market, obsession with women's appearance, crimes between men over social status or property, and war.