Abstract
Extensive research in evolutionary psychology has explored the role that altruism plays in mate preference. This research aims to investigate whether altruism is desired for long-term and short term relationships among females and males, as well as to determine potential sex differences within this preference among Thai nationals. To that end, a self-administered online Thai language-based survey was distributed for data collection; 138 Thai respondents (mean age = 22.5, SD = 4.37) completed the survey. The respondents were asked to read nine hypothetical scenarios and rate their preferences for different individuals in the scenarios for long-term and shortterm relationships. In each scenario, if one person displayed high levels of altruism, another person in the same scenario would display a lower level of altruism. A 2 × 2 × 2 mixed ANOVA indicated that both men and women significantly favoured altruistic partners for long-term relationships; whereas, when displays of altruism was low, there was only a slight difference in preference for a short-term or longterm relationship. Moreover, there was no significant difference between men and women’s desirability for altruistic partners. This study provides further support for previous altruism based research which emphasises the importance of altruism regarding long term mate selection.
Highlights
Altruism refers to acts that improve the welfare of another individual at the cost to the actor’s own fitness (Wilson 2015)
The results indicate that there is a preference for the individuals in vignettes who exhibited a high level of altruism compared to those who exhibited a low level of altruism
The results show that there is an increase in preference when the individuals exhibit a high level of altruism compared to when they exhibit a low level of altruism
Summary
Altruism refers to acts that improve the welfare of another individual at the cost to the actor’s own fitness (Wilson 2015). If altruism enhances the fitness of another individual with a cost to the altruist, how could altruism possibly evolve? There are various evolutionary mechanisms such as reciprocal altruism and group selection that explain altruism among non-relatives. Trivers (1971) developed the theory of reciprocal altruism in an attempt to explain altruism towards non-kin. Group selection theory proposes that an individual would help others in the same group in order to increase the survival fitness of the whole group (Pfaff 2015). Both the altruists and their kin would have a higher chance to pass their genes. Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that sexual selection might be a more appropriate explanation
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