 1. The Evolution of Human Personality 13
Because what constitutes fitness differs for 
different species, sexes, times, and contexts, 
evolution by selection cannot produce a 
domain-  general motive of fitness maximi -
zation. It is not just that people never list 
“maximization of gene replication” as a 
personal project when asked to list what 
they are striving toward in their lives (Little, 
1989). It is that no such goal can evolve even 
in principle, consciously or unconsciously. 
Stated differently, the products  of the evo -
lutionary process—  the specific adaptations 
and byproducts that characterize humans— 
should not be confused with the evolution -
ary process  that fashioned them. Differen -
tial gene replication caused by differences 
in design features is the process by which 
adaptations get created. But the adaptations 
themselves do not—  cannot—  include a de -
sire to maximize gene replication.
Status  Striving
What can evolve are specific  motives, goals, 
and strivings, the attainment of which re -
currently led to reproductive success over 
human evolutionary history. Consider one 
candidate for a universal human motive—
striving for status  (Buss, 1995a, 1995b; 
Hogan, 1983; Maslow, 1970). Why would 
status striving be a species-  typical motive 
in humans? A variety of sources of evidence 
can be drawn on to address this question. 
First, among closely related species that 
form status hierarchies, such as chimpan -
zees, those who are high in status tend to 
outreproduce those who are lower in status. 
They do so because they gain preferential ac -
cess to both desirable mates and resources 
needed for survival, such as choice food. 
Dominant chimpanzee males, for example, 
tend to monopolize the matings with females 
during estrus, whereas the copulations of 
less dominant males, when they occur, take 
place outside of the peak period of fecundity 
(de Waal, 1982).
Second, the cross-  cultural and historical 
evidence suggests that high-  status males 
such as kings, emperors, and despots rou -
tinely use their status to gain increased sex -
ual access to females (Betzig, 1986). Kings 
and despots routinely stocked their harems 
with young, attractive, nubile women and 
had sex with them frequently. The Moroc -
can emperor Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, for example, acknowledged having sired 
888 children (actually, the number is prob -
ably double this, since only male children 
were acknowledged). His harem had 500 
women. But when a woman reached the age 
of 30, she was banished from the emperor’s 
harem, sent to a lower-level leader’s harem, 
and replaced by a younger woman. Roman, 
Babylonian, Egyptian, Incan, Indian, and 
Chinese emperors acted in a similar man -
ner, using their status to enjoin their trustees 
to scour the land for as many young, pretty 
women as could be found (Betzig, 1992).
Third, cross-  cultural evidence suggests 
that the children of higher-  status individuals 
tend to receive better health care, and hence 
survive longer and are more healthy than the 
children of lower-  status individuals. Among 
the Ache Indians, a hunter–  gatherer group 
in Paraguay, tribal members take great pains 
to remove splinters and thorns from the feet 
of the children of high-  status males (Hill & 
Hurtado, 1996). Choice food, choice terri -
tory, and choice mates all flow with greater 
abundance to those high in status among 
hunters and gatherers around the world 
(e.g., Chagnon, 1983; Hart & Pilling, 1960; 
Hill & Hurtado, 1996).
If the attainment of high status recur -
rently led to increased reproductive success 
over human evolutionary history, then selec -
tion would have fashioned evolved psycho -
logical mechanisms that produce, as output, 
what we observe as a species-  typical motive 
of status striving. This analysis, however, 
does not stop there, because specific and 
testable hypotheses about status striving 
can be generated. One key hypothesis per -
tains to a sex difference in the strength of 
the status-  striving motive. Men and women 
differ in a fundamental fact of their repro -
ductive biology: Women bear the burdens 
(and pleasures) of heavy obligatory parental 
investment, since a minimum of 9 months 
of pregnancy, with all the metabolic costs 
that entails, are required to produce a single 
child. Men, on the other hand, can produce 
a child from a single low-cost act of sexual 
intercourse. This fundamental sex difference 
has led to profound sex differences in sexual 
strategies (Buss, 1994; Symons, 1979; Wil -
liams, 1975). The key difference relevant to 
status striving is this: The reproductive pay -
off to men of gaining sexual access to multi -
ple partners historically has been far greater 