Students say men are more attractive when they take risks, but only risks relevant to our hunter-gatherer ancestors

A willingness to take risks enhances men's sex appeal. This much we know from past research. What's not clear, is whether this is because of cultural beliefs about traditional gender roles, or if it's an evolutionary hang-over (or perhaps both). John Petraitis and his colleagues have put these two explanations to the test by drawing a distinction between risk-taking behaviours that reflect the challenges faced by our ancestors, and contemporary risks based around modern technology.Over two-hundred undergrads (average age 22; 143 women) studied 101 pairs of behaviours - one high risk, the other lower risk - and in each case they indicated which would make a man a more attractive dating partner for a typical young woman. The task was then repeated but in relation to the attractiveness of a woman as a dating partner for a typical young man (some participants completed the questionnaires in the reverse order).Crucially, some of the pairs of behaviours pertained to risks relevant to our hunter-gatherer ancestors - such as "rock climbing at a health club" (low risk) vs. "rock climbing in the back-country" (high risk) and "being a scientist who studies alligators in the wild" (high risk) vs. "being a scientist who studies birds in the wild" (low risk). These hunter-gatherer risks all related in some way to "situations where death, disease or injury could be found in drowning, weather extremes, falling, foods, other species, members of different clans, physical conflict with other pe...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs