Department of Psychology, University of Sunderland, UK.
Br J Psychol. 2011 Aug;102(3):406-30. doi: 10.1348/000712610X532896. Epub 2011 Mar 16.
Previous research highlighting the role sexual selection may play in the evolution of human cooperation has yet to distinguish what qualities such behaviours actually signal. The aim here was to examine whether female preferences for male cooperative behaviours are because they signal genetic or indirect phenotypic quality. This was possible by taking into account female participants' stage of menstrual cycle, as much research has shown that females at the most fertile stage show greater preferences specifically for signals of genetic quality than any other stage, particularly for short-term relationships. Therefore, different examples of cooperation (personality, costly signals, heroism) and the mate preferences for altruistic traits self-report scale were used across a series of four experiments to examine females' attitudes towards cooperation in potential mates for different relationship lengths at different stages of the menstrual cycle. The results here consistently show that female fertility had no effect on perceptions of cooperative behaviour, and that such traits were considered more important for long-term relationships. Therefore, this provides strong evidence that cooperative behaviour is important in mate choice as predominantly a signal of phenotypic rather than genetic quality.
先前的研究强调了性选择在人类合作进化中可能发挥的作用，但尚未区分这些行为实际上传递了哪些品质。本研究旨在检验女性对男性合作行为的偏好是否因为它们传递了遗传或间接表型质量的信号。通过考虑女性参与者的月经周期阶段，这是可能的，因为许多研究表明，处于最肥沃阶段的女性比任何其他阶段更倾向于特别偏好遗传质量的信号，特别是对于短期关系。因此，在一系列四项实验中，使用了不同的合作例子（个性、昂贵信号、英雄主义）和利他特质自我报告量表，以检验女性在不同月经周期阶段的不同关系长度下对潜在伴侣的合作态度。结果一致表明，女性的生育能力对合作行为的感知没有影响，而且这些特征被认为对长期关系更为重要。因此，这有力地证明了合作行为在配偶选择中很重要，主要是作为表型而不是遗传质量的信号。
