To help or punish in the face of unfairness: men and women prefer mutually-beneficial strategies over punishment in a sexual selection context

There is evidence that the evolution of cooperation is, in part, maintained through sexual selection. Supporting this, within a female choice model, men display mutually-beneficial behaviour to attract women, and women prefer men who do so. This evidence is based on a 2-choice -architecture (cooperate or not). Here we extend this to include punishment options within a 4-choice-architecture (‘punishing a transgressor’, ‘compensating a victim’, ‘both punishing and compensating’ or ‘doing-nothing’). Both compensation (a self-serving mutually-beneficial behaviour) and self-serving punishment, are associated with positive mate qualities. We test which is preferred by males and which is chosen by female undergraduates in a sexual selection context. We further explore effects of trait empathy and political ideology on these preferences. In a series of three studies using a third-party-punishment-compensation (3PPC) game we show (Study One), that romantically-primed undergraduate males, express...

有证据表明，合作的演化在一定程度上通过性选择得以维持。为此提供支撑的是，在雌性选择模型中，男性会展现互利行为以吸引女性，而女性更青睐拥有此类行为的男性。该结论基于二选一决策架构（要么合作，要么不合作）。本研究将该模型拓展为包含惩罚选项的四选一决策架构，即"惩罚违规者"、"补偿受害者"、"既惩罚又补偿"以及"不作为"。其中，补偿行为（一种利己型互利行为）与利己型惩罚均与优质伴侣特质存在关联。本研究旨在检验在性选择场景中，男性更偏好哪种行为，女性本科生会选择哪种行为，并进一步探讨特质共情与政治意识形态对上述偏好的影响。在三项基于第三方惩罚补偿（third-party-punishment-compensation, 3PPC）博弈的系列研究中，我们在第一项研究中发现，经过浪漫情境启动的男性本科生会表现出……