Department of Anthropology’s Evolutionary Wing Colloquium presents Brooke A. Scelza, UCLA Department of Anthropology

Department of Anthropology’s Evolutionary Wing Colloquium featuring Brooke A. Scelza, UCLA Department of Anthropology.

Monday, November 16, 2026, at 4:10 p.m.
Andrews Conference Room 2203
Social Sciences and Humanities Building
Map & Directions: UC Davis Campus Map

Unlike any other species, human pair-bonds are adapted to exist within a multilayered social world. Pair-bonds form the glue that binds us into the complex societies we live in today, and in turn, our societies shape, buffer, and transform our relationships. Often evolutionary science ignores this context, reducing the study of mating to individual preferences and strategies and treating couples as self-contained units. This overlooks a fundamental feature of human pair-bonds: they are embedded within a broader social ecology, shaped by their relationships with kin and non-kin, as well as the cultural norms and institutions that govern mating and marriage. Drawing on almost 20 years of ethnographic fieldwork with Himba pastoralists, I will explore how these different layers of social influence shape the formation, maintenance, and functioning of human pair-bonds. In this talk I will present three lines of research. First, an expanded mate choice task that incorporates social considerations demonstrates the importance of factors beyond individual partner characteristics in shaping mate choice. Second, comparative data from Himba and US couples reveal striking differences in spousal interdependence and its association with marital satisfaction. Third, studies of nonmarital partnerships illustrate how relationships outside of marriage can provide social and material benefits. These findings suggest that social embeddedness is not merely incidental to human pair-bonding, but fundamental to its evolution and functioning.