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Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry
Men with light eyes lack the dominant gene allele that codes for dark-brown eyes. Pairing with a woman who lacks the same allele must increase paternity confidence in these men, because any children with dark eyes would be extremely unlikely to have been fathered by them. This notion implies that me...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8604838/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34580799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02120-7 |
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author | Bressan, Paola |
author_facet | Bressan, Paola |
author_sort | Bressan, Paola |
collection | PubMed |
description | Men with light eyes lack the dominant gene allele that codes for dark-brown eyes. Pairing with a woman who lacks the same allele must increase paternity confidence in these men, because any children with dark eyes would be extremely unlikely to have been fathered by them. This notion implies that men with light (blue or green) eyes should (1) prefer light-eyed women, especially in a long-term context, and (2) feel more threatened by light-eyed than by dark-eyed rivals. Yet because choosiness is costly and paternity concerns are entirely driven by the prospect of paternal investment, any such inclinations would be adaptive only in men who expect to invest in their children. Here I test these ideas using the data of over 1000 men who rated the facial attractiveness of potential partners, and the threat of potential rivals, whose eye color had been manipulated. Light-eyed men liked light-eyed women better (particularly as long-term companions), and feared light-eyed rivals more, than did dark-eyed men. An exploratory analysis showed that these large, robust effects disappeared in men who had felt rejected by their fathers while growing up—suggesting that such men are not expecting to invest in their own children either. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8604838 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86048382021-12-03 Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry Bressan, Paola Arch Sex Behav Original Paper Men with light eyes lack the dominant gene allele that codes for dark-brown eyes. Pairing with a woman who lacks the same allele must increase paternity confidence in these men, because any children with dark eyes would be extremely unlikely to have been fathered by them. This notion implies that men with light (blue or green) eyes should (1) prefer light-eyed women, especially in a long-term context, and (2) feel more threatened by light-eyed than by dark-eyed rivals. Yet because choosiness is costly and paternity concerns are entirely driven by the prospect of paternal investment, any such inclinations would be adaptive only in men who expect to invest in their children. Here I test these ideas using the data of over 1000 men who rated the facial attractiveness of potential partners, and the threat of potential rivals, whose eye color had been manipulated. Light-eyed men liked light-eyed women better (particularly as long-term companions), and feared light-eyed rivals more, than did dark-eyed men. An exploratory analysis showed that these large, robust effects disappeared in men who had felt rejected by their fathers while growing up—suggesting that such men are not expecting to invest in their own children either. Springer US 2021-09-27 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8604838/ /pubmed/34580799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02120-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Bressan, Paola Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry |
title | Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry |
title_full | Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry |
title_fullStr | Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry |
title_full_unstemmed | Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry |
title_short | Blue Eyes Help Men Reduce the Cost of Cuckoldry |
title_sort | blue eyes help men reduce the cost of cuckoldry |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8604838/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34580799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02120-7 |
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