Citation

Finkel EJ, Eastwick PW. Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 2015; 3: 7-11.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.cobeha.2014.12.006

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Relative to other primates, Homo sapiens are born immature. To survive, they require intensive provisioning and nurturance across many years. One evolved mechanism for fostering such caregiving is for parents to pairbond -- to develop and sustain a deep emotional connection to each other -- which bolsters fathers' contributions to childrearing. Such paternal investment increases the likelihood that offspring survive long enough to reproduce. On average, once a pairbond has formed, partners typically provide each other with emotional and motivational support and, ultimately, promote each other's psychological and physical health. Furthermore, they tend to exert themselves to sustain the pairbonded relationship over time, including by engaging in biased cognitive processing to derogate alternative romantic partners.