Sex and mating are central to evolutionary processes. Understanding the factors, including the evolved mechanisms, affecting men’s and women’s sexual decision-making, is of interest to scientists, and the public at-large. But, “getting it right” is critical to researchers trying to develop more effective interventions to address today’s important health issues (e.g., preventing HIV, the sexually transmitted virus that causes AIDS, in high-risk populations). In the current work, we briefly describe Attachment Fertility Theory (AFT) (Miller & Fishkin, 1997; Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatua, & Pedersen, 2002; Miller, Pedersen, & Putcha-Bhagavatula, 2005; Pedersen, Miller, Putcha, & Yang, 2002; Pedersen, Putcha-Bhagavatula, & Miller, 2011), and Stewart-Williams and Thomas approach (this issue), then we discuss the communalities and differences between these approaches. AFT’s ability to provide a unified, universal (sex-similar) framework for understanding intra-individual and inter-individual sexual diversity (e.g., from short-term relationships to pair-bonds) has guided unique research questions, including in HIV prevention research. It has done so with high-risk populations (e.g, men who have sex with men) who engage in high levels of sex (and unprotected anal intercourse [UAI)]) with numerous sexual partners. One might think that high-risk MSM might be an unlikely population for testing AFT’s predictions. Nevertheless, we briefly present a new set of findings that demonstrates how generalizable and useful AFT can be in developing testable hypotheses regarding sexual behaviors and sexual risk-taking. Finally, along with our conclusions, we discuss what tools are needed to better understand systems of evolved mechanisms and advance future work in this field.

中文翻译：

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依恋生育理论：复杂的机制系统简化了性、交配和性风险

性和交配是进化过程的核心。了解影响男性和女性性决策的因素，包括进化机制，是科学家和广大公众感兴趣的。但是，“正确处理”对于试图开发更有效干预措施以解决当今重要健康问题（例如，在高危人群中预防艾滋病毒，即导致艾滋病的性传播病毒）的研究人员至关重要。在目前的工作中，我们简要描述了依恋生育理论 (AFT)（Miller & Fishkin，1997；Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatua, & Pedersen, 2002；Miller, Pedersen, & Putcha-Bhagavatula，2005；Pedersen, Miller, Putcha, & Yang，2002 年；Pedersen、Putcha-Bhagavatula 和 Miller，2011 年）以及 Stewart-Williams 和 Thomas 方法（本期），然后我们讨论这些方法之间的共同点和差异。AFT 能够提供一个统一的、普遍的（性别相似的）框架来理解个体内部和个体之间的性多样性（例如，从短期关系到夫妻关系），从而引导了独特的研究问题，包括 HIV 预防研究。对于与众多性伴侣进行高水平性行为（以及无保护的肛交 [UAI]]）的高危人群（例如男男性行为者）已经这样做了。有人可能认为高危 MSM 可能不太适合用于测试 AFT 的预测。尽管如此，我们简要介绍了一组新的发现，这些发现证明了 AFT 在制定关于性行为和性冒险的可检验假设方面是多么具有普遍性和有用性。最后，