Titel
The Association between Pro-Social Attitude and Reproductive Success Differs between Men and Women
Autor*in
Abstract
The evolution of pro-social attitude and cooperation in humans is under debate. Most of the knowledge on human cooperation results from laboratory experiments and theoretic modeling. Evolutionary explanations, however, rest upon fitness consequences. We therefore examined fitness correlates of pro-social behavior in a real life setting, analyzing data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n = 2545 men, 2967 women). We investigated whether pro-social attitude, proxied by self reported voluntary work, is associated with lifetime reproductive success. We find a sex difference in the association between pro-social attitude and offspring number. In men, a pro-social attitude was associated with higher offspring number, whereas in women, it was associated with lower offspring count. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate fitness consequences of pro-social behavior towards strangers. We conclude that analysing real life settings may help to explain the evolutionary forces leading to pro-social behavior in humans and speculate that these factors might differ between the sexes.
Stichwort
BehaviorProsocial behaviorGeneralized linear modelHuman evolutionAltruistic behaviorLongitudinal studiesReproductive successSchools
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
Erschienen in
Titel
PLoS ONE
Band
7
Ausgabe
4
Publication
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
Rechteangabe
© 2012 Fieder, Huber
Universität Wien | Universitätsring 1 | 1010 Wien | T
+43-1-4277-0