Men behaving nicely: public goods as peacock tails

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary Psychology
• Behavioral Economics
• Social Neuroscience

Background:

• Sexual selection and costly signaling theories propose that male competition for mates influences prosocial behaviors.
• Previous research suggests that social factors, including audience presence, can modulate cooperative behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether men's public good contributions are influenced by the presence and attractiveness of an opposite-sex audience.
• To test the hypothesis that men's cooperative behaviors serve as a form of mate competition.

Main Methods:

• Two public good experiments were conducted.
• Experiment 1 involved assessing men's contributions with and without a female observer, varying observer attractiveness.
• Experiment 2 examined all-male groups' contributions over time in the presence of a female audience, alongside charitable volunteering.

Main Results:

• Men contributed significantly more to public goods when observed by women, an effect not seen in women.
• Men's contributions increased with perceived female observer attractiveness.
• In all-male groups, contributions rose over time with a female audience, and men volunteered more for charity.

Conclusions:

• Findings support the hypothesis that men's public good contributions are a strategy to attract female attention and signal fitness.
• Cooperative behaviors in humans can function similarly to costly signals in other species, like a peacock's tail, for reproductive advantage.
• The study provides empirical evidence for the role of sexual selection in shaping human social provisioning and cooperation.