女人为何青睐无私好男人?

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.

一项新的研究表明，好男人事实上能够最先追到女孩。

心理学家们认为，无私和利他主义等品质已经成为我们基因的组成部分，因为这些品质对伴侣来说极具吸引力。

他们认为，随着人类的进化，有些素质，如成为适者和强者，已经被其它素质超越，比如能够帮忙抚养孩子。

来自诺丁汉大学和伦敦国王学院精神病学研究所的研究人员——蒂姆•菲利普斯博士及其同事称：“人类脑力的拓展会大大地增加培养孩子的成本，因此，对于我们的祖先来说，在伴侣的选择上，愿意并能够长期胜任父母角色这一点很重要。”

“人类表现出的利他主义行为可以很好地为这一点提供准确的线索，从而使人类的利他行为和两性选择之间产生了联系。”

利他行为是否是两性选择发展的结果呢？该研究对此展开了调查，并选择了70对同卵双胞胎女性和87对异卵双胞胎女性作为调查对象。

她们填写了有关自身利他性的问卷，回答的问题包括“你曾给慈善组织捐过钱吗？”和“你是否曾跳入河中救溺水者？”等。

研究人员随后询问她们是否希望潜在伴侣身上具备同样的这些素质。

有关她们的回答的数据分析表明，在人类的进化史上，那些比较喜欢伴侣有利他行为倾向的人会更多地选择比较无私的人作为配偶。这意味着利他主义基因的存在会比自私基因更普遍。

菲利普斯博士说道：“这些研究结果也证明，人类对非亲属的利他行为同两性选择之间确实存在联系。令人兴奋的是，研究还为人们解开对利他行为的困惑提供了新线索，因为，乍一看来，利他主义似乎同进化论是互相矛盾的。”

上述研究结果发表在《英国心理学杂志》上。

Vocabulary:

altruism: the fact of caring about the needs and happiness of other people more than your own（利他主义；利他；无私）

usurp: take (a position of power or importance) illegally or by force（篡位，夺位）