女人爲何青睞無私好男人?
Nice guys actually finish first when it comes to getting the girl, new research suggests.
Psychologists believe that traits such as selflessness and altruism have become part of our genetic make-up because they were attractive to mates.
They believe that as humans evolved, qualities such as being fittest and strongest were usurped by other qualities – such as offering a helping hand in bringing up the children.
“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.”
The study, which investigated whether altruistic behaviour evolved as a result of sexual selection, involved 70 identical and 87 non-identical female twin pairs.
They completed questionnaires relating to their own levels of altruism by answering questions such as "have you given money to charity?" and "have you dived into a river to save someone from drowning?"
They then asked them if they would find the same qualities desirable in potential mates.
Statistical analysis of their responses suggested that, in our evolutionary past, those with a stronger mate preference towards altruistic behaviour mated more frequently with more altruistic people. That means that altruistic genes would be more prevalent than selfish genes.
Dr Phillips said: “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 behaviour – which appears, at first sight, to be at odds with evolutionary theory.”
The results were published in the British Journal of Psychology.
一項新的研究表明，好男人事實上能夠最先追到女孩。
心理學家們認爲，無私和利他主義等品質已經成爲我們基因的組成部分，因爲這些品質對伴侶來說極具吸引力。
他們認爲，隨着人類的進化，有些素質，如成爲適者和強者，已經被其它素質超越，比如能夠幫忙撫養孩子。
來自諾丁漢大學和倫敦國王學院精神病學研究所的研究人員——蒂姆•菲利普斯博士及其同事稱：“人類腦力的拓展會大大地增加培養孩子的成本，因此，對於我們的祖先來說，在伴侶的選擇上，願意並能夠長期勝任父母角色這一點很重要。”
“人類表現出的利他主義行爲可以很好地爲這一點提供準確的線索，從而使人類的利他行爲和兩性選擇之間產生了聯繫。”
利他行爲是否是兩性選擇發展的結果呢？該研究對此展開了調查，並選擇了70對同卵雙胞胎女性和87對異卵雙胞胎女性作爲調查對象。
她們填寫了有關自身利他性的問卷，回答的問題包括“你曾給慈善組織捐過錢嗎？”和“你是否曾跳入河中救溺水者？”等。
研究人員隨後詢問她們是否希望潛在伴侶身上具備同樣的這些素質。
有關她們的回答的數據分析表明，在人類的進化史上，那些比較喜歡伴侶有利他行爲傾向的人會更多地選擇比較無私的人作爲配偶。這意味着利他主義基因的存在會比自私基因更普遍。
菲利普斯博士說道：“這些研究結果也證明，人類對非親屬的利他行爲同兩性選擇之間確實存在聯繫。令人興奮的是，研究還爲人們解開對利他行爲的困惑提供了新線索，因爲，乍一看來，利他主義似乎同進化論是互相矛盾的。”
上述研究結果發表在《英國心理學雜誌》上。
Vocabulary:
altruism: the fact of caring about the needs and happiness of other people more than your own（利他主義；利他；無私）
usurp: take (a position of power or importance) illegally or by force（篡位，奪位）
