Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Education, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Br J Psychol. 2013 Feb;104(1):3-13. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02093.x. Epub 2012 Feb 1.
Insights from sexual selection and costly signalling theory suggest that competition for females underlies men's public good contributions. We conducted two public good experiments to test this hypothesis. First, we found that men contributed more in the presence of an opposite sex audience, but there was no parallel effect for the women. In addition, men's public good contributions went up as they rated the female observer more attractive. In the second experiment, all male groups played a five round public good game and their contributions significantly increased over time with a female audience only. In this condition men also volunteered more time for various charitable causes. These findings support the idea that men compete with each other by creating public goods to impress women. Thus, a public good is the human equivalent of a peacock's tail.
性选择和昂贵信号理论的观点表明，男性对女性的竞争是其公共品贡献的基础。我们进行了两项公共品实验来验证这一假设。首先，我们发现男性在有异性观众在场的情况下会做出更多的贡献，但女性没有这种平行效应。此外，当男性对女性观察者的吸引力评价更高时，他们的公共品贡献也会增加。在第二项实验中，所有男性群体都玩了五轮公共品游戏，只有在有女性观众的情况下，他们的贡献才会随着时间的推移而显著增加。在这种情况下，男性也会自愿为各种慈善事业投入更多时间。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即男性通过创造公共物品来给女性留下深刻印象，从而相互竞争。因此，公共品是人类相当于孔雀尾巴的东西。
