There is hope. What we’re doing here might not be completely pointless. Despite what Green Day has preached for years, nice guys really do finish first. According to a study in the United Kingdom, in the long run, women favor altruism over selfishness.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham and King’s College, London, studied 157 pairs of female twins: 70 identical and 87 non-identical. Each participant answered various questions relating to her own altruism. They were then asked if those same traits would be desirable in a future mate.
The answers were then analyzed, suggesting that, at some point over our evolutionary lives, those with a preference for selflessness mated more frequently with other altruistic people.
“The expansion of the human brain would have greatly increased the cost of raising children so it would have been important for our ancestors to choose mates both willing and able to be good, long-term parents,” said Dr Tim Phillips and colleagues from the University of Nottingham and Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London.
“Displays of altruism could well have provided accurate clues to this and so led to a link between human altruism and sexual selection.”
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How did the researchers come to this conclusion? Well, with more women showing traits of and a preference for altruism, it’s safe to say that somewhere along the way women mated more with altruistic men, passing along the gene. Phillips, the study’s leader, concluded:
“These results are consistent with a link between human altruism towards non-relatives and sexual selection and throws an exciting new light on the puzzle of altruistic behavior—which appears, at first sight, to be at odds with evolutionary theory.”
I have to admit that while this “study” may provide hope, at least in the form of lip service, I have my doubts about the congruence between what people say and how they act. If the researchers studied women’s (and men’s for that matter) mate choices over a longer range study, and compared those mate choices with what they said they valued in the questionnaire, then that would be an interesting and possibly enlightening study.
Next study, make sure at least half the women screened are recently divorced. Then you’ll get more honest replies.
I find that women are attracted to men who resemble their fathers and older brothers. The majority of men have only recently learned to treat women as equals; it will take at least a generation of girls growing up with liberated men in order to have women who expect equal treatment from their partners.
“Nice Guys Finish First” What the frack inspired you to even print this on your page? I can link to more than five dozen alleged feminist blogs and “official” feminist sources that decry “the nice guy” and cite “nice guys” as being misogynist. And then you are going to post a study which claims that women appreciate “altruism?” Feminist vs. non-feminist definitions of “nice guys” aside, there is another problem with your page posting this study. I thought that this page was about men learning how to empower themselves? This is only setting men up for failure. Do I have… Read more »
I don’t believe for a second that people really value altruism that highly. Most people pay lip service, because it isn’t socially acceptable to be openly egoistic.
Did you even stop for a second to think about how unreliable a questionnaire about future mate selection would be before doing this writeup?
I sincerely hope these “researchers” get a failing grade for such a poorly thought out “study”.
This is the sort of rubbish that gives science a bad name. Any guy will tell you that what people, women in particular, what sort of guys they want is a very bad guide.
Women say they want nice guys etc etc, but in reality they love bad boys. Sometimes they marry nice guys but then they are on the lookout for Mr Bad to actually impregnate them.
A study that examined that actual parentage of children rather than what women say they want would have more credibility.
Actual studies have been done and it is certain that at least 3% of all children are being raised by men who are unknowingly not their biological fathers. On the other hand all these studies ignore things like divorce rates and single mothers and children born out of wed lock.
Based on a divorce rate of a conservative 46% It probably isn’t a stretch to assume that the very idea of monogamy is a joke.