Abstract
Background: Despite its short-term costs, behaviour that appears altruistic can increase an individual's inclusive fitness by earning direct (selfish) and/or indirect (kin-selected) benefits. An evolved preference for other-regarding or helping behaviour in potential mates has been proposed as an additional mechanism by which these behaviours can yield direct fitness benefits in humans. Results: We asked 32 heterosexual women and 35 heterosexual men to rate the attractiveness of members of the opposite sex in the presence and the absence of information about helping behaviours. Reports of helping behaviour were associated with a significant increase in the attractiveness of both men and women as potential long-term sexual partners. Altruism also increased the attractiveness of men as potential partners for short-term flings, but to a lesser extent than when the same men were being considered for long-term relationships. Altruism did not affect the attractiveness of women as partners for short-term flings. Conclusions: Our results unite two important areas of evolutionary theory - social evolution and sexual selection - and extend the list of means by which helping behaviours, which appear at first glance to be costly to the actor, can in fact earn direct fitness benefits. Helping behaviours may be attractive because they signal 'good genes' and/or because they are perceived as a signal of likely provision of non-genetic benefits (e.g. parental care). Exactly why helping behaviours in a non-mating context might be attractive to potential mates, and whether they are honest signals of mate quality, remains to be elucidated.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 182 |
| Journal | BMC Evolutionary Biology |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 3 Sept 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to thank Peter Long, Mark O’Connell, Ákos Pogany and James St Clair for the discussion that led to the development of this study and Jarrod Hadfield for advice on data analysis. This work also benefitted from discussions with Tim Birkhead, Andy Gosler and Lance Workman and comments from Geoffrey Miller, Tim Phillips, Nichola Raihani, Greg Wyatt and two anonymous reviewers. We are grateful to John Krantz for linking to our online surveys via Psychological Research on the Net (psych.hanover.edu/ Research/exponnet.html). This work was supported by the European Community FP6 coordination action project Integrating Cooperation Research Across Europe (NEST contract no. 043318), by a grant from Oxford University Press’s John Fell Fund to FH and by the University of Oxford via a contribution to the costs of S Wong’s final honour school research project. Publishing charges were covered by the University of Nottingham’s Open Access Fund.
Funding
We would like to thank Peter Long, Mark O’Connell, Ákos Pogany and James St Clair for the discussion that led to the development of this study and Jarrod Hadfield for advice on data analysis. This work also benefitted from discussions with Tim Birkhead, Andy Gosler and Lance Workman and comments from Geoffrey Miller, Tim Phillips, Nichola Raihani, Greg Wyatt and two anonymous reviewers. We are grateful to John Krantz for linking to our online surveys via Psychological Research on the Net (psych.hanover.edu/ Research/exponnet.html). This work was supported by the European Community FP6 coordination action project Integrating Cooperation Research Across Europe (NEST contract no. 043318), by a grant from Oxford University Press’s John Fell Fund to FH and by the University of Oxford via a contribution to the costs of S Wong’s final honour school research project. Publishing charges were covered by the University of Nottingham’s Open Access Fund.
Keywords
- Altruism
- Cooperation
- Mate choice
- Parental care
- Sexual selection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics