Back to the Basics of Mate Choice: The Evolutionary Importance of Darwin’s Sense of Beauty

Abstract

There is a simple and general explanation for the evolution of mate choice that does not rely on benefits to be gained from favoring some potential mates over others, nor on ornament-preference genetic correlations (but that can help establish such benefits and correlations). Mate choice necessarily arises from competition to engage the powerful but discriminating reward mechanisms that regulate sexual interactions. Progress in understanding the evolution of mate choice will come from analyzing the subjective nature of the cognitive-emotional mechanisms that regulate its expression. A key mechanism may be the sense of beauty—the feeling whose function it is to reward attention to, and engagement with, attractive objects. Any animal whose behavior and decision-making are regulated by mechanisms of emotion and feeling may possess the sense of beauty. Competition to be perceived as beautiful engages brain-generated, top-down influences on perception and subjective experience, adding manifold ways to improve ornament attractiveness. In this paper, I discuss the evolutionary consequences of mate choice involving the sense of beauty and how to test for it.