Behaviour and beliefs related to male aggression: Evidence of intrasexual selection in humans?
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anthropology, Ecology, Evolutionary Studies
- Keywords
- sexual selection, polygyny, sex ratio, aggression, behavioural ecology, contest competition, human evolution, subsistence effort
- Copyright
- © 2016 Camilleri et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Behaviour and beliefs related to male aggression: Evidence of intrasexual selection in humans? PeerJ Preprints 4:e1802v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1802v1
Abstract
Sexual selection favours traits that increase mating and, thus, reproductive success. Some scholars have suggested that intrasexual selection driven by contest competition has shaped human male aggression. If this is the case, one testable hypothesis is that beliefs and behaviour related to male aggression should be more prevalent in societies where the intensity and strength of sexual selection is higher, as measured by factors such as the presence and scope of polygyny, the number of same-sex competitors relative to potential mates, and male contribution to subsistence. Using data from a global sample of 78 societies, we found strong support for this hypothesis. We discuss potential alternative explanations for the relationships, ruling out some using multivariate methods to control for confounding variables such as political complexity, warfare and geographic clustering.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.