Rethinking Bateman's Principles: Challenging Persistent Myths of Sexually Reluctant Females and Promiscuous Males

In 1948, Angus Bateman published a paper on fruit flies that tested Charles Darwin's ideas of sexual selection. Based on this one fruit fly study, Bateman concluded that because males are able to produce millions of small sperm, males are likely to behave promiscuously, mating with as many females as possible. On the other hand, because females produce relatively fewer, larger, and presumably more expensive eggs, females are likely to be very discriminating in selecting only one high-quality sexual partner. He also posited that a male's reproductive success increases linearly with the number of females he is able to mate with, but that a female's reproductive success peaks after she mates with only one male. Consequently, in almost all organisms, sexual selection acts most strongly on males. These ideas became a recurring theme in attempts to explain wide-ranging differences in male and female behavior not only in nonhuman animals but also in humans. As such, Bateman's conclusions and predictions have become axiomatic and, at times, have gone unquestioned even when modern empirical data do not conform to this model. This article reviews the origins and history of these ideas and uses modern data to highlight the current and growing controversy surrounding the validity and general applicability of this paradigm.