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Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners
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 ad...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3851331/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24004898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-182 |
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author | Moore, David Wigby, Stuart English, Sinead Wong, Sonny Székely, Tamás Harrison, Freya |
author_facet | Moore, David Wigby, Stuart English, Sinead Wong, Sonny Székely, Tamás Harrison, Freya |
author_sort | Moore, David |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3851331 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38513312013-12-06 Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners Moore, David Wigby, Stuart English, Sinead Wong, Sonny Székely, Tamás Harrison, Freya BMC Evol Biol Research Article 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. BioMed Central 2013-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3851331/ /pubmed/24004898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-182 Text en Copyright © 2013 Moore et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Moore, David Wigby, Stuart English, Sinead Wong, Sonny Székely, Tamás Harrison, Freya Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
title | Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
title_full | Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
title_fullStr | Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
title_full_unstemmed | Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
title_short | Selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
title_sort | selflessness is sexy: reported helping behaviour increases desirability of men and women as long-term sexual partners |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3851331/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24004898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-182 |
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