Abstract
Language may have evolved as a signal of mental fitness. However, it remains unclear what language form and topic men use to covertly signal mate quality. In this study 69 men created compliments to impress unfamiliar women they chose to either date or work with and provided hand scans to compute 2D4D ratio as a proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure and masculinity indicator. Compliments were coded in terms of form (literal vs. metaphorical) and topic (women's appearance vs. non-appearance), with metaphorical ones being subsequently rated by 114 women for psycholinguistic features, indices of intelligence and willingness to have a romantic relationship with the author. Results showed that in a dating context, men produced more metaphorical form compliments targeting appearance compared to the working context and they were associated with men's art creativity and negatively with 2D4D ratio (i.e., positively with masculinity). Women preferred establishing a romantic relationship with a higher proportion of the men producing metaphorical compliments in a dating than a working context. Furthermore, in the dating but not the working context, women perceived men producing such compliments as being more intelligent, and importantly this correlated with the men's actual verbal intelligence. Overall, findings suggest that men may use metaphorical language compliments targeting women's appearance in a dating context to signal covertly their mate quality.
Highlights
Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights won the heart of the king solely by telling him stories for 1,001 nights, which displayed both her creativity and humor. Miller (2000) used this analogy as the basis for his “Scheherazade hypothesis” which posits that the evolution of complex language may have been influenced by the need to be more attractive to potential mates and to maintain their subsequent interest
The current study aimed to provide experimental support for the “Scheherazade hypothesis” that the evolution of complex language may have been driven to some extent by sexual selection (Miller, 2000)
To this end we investigated the differences in language used by men when paying compliments to women in mating as opposed to non-romantic contexts in order to establish which specific aspects of language form and subject are used in a mating context
Summary
Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights won the heart of the king solely by telling him stories for 1,001 nights, which displayed both her creativity and humor. Miller (2000) used this analogy as the basis for his “Scheherazade hypothesis” which posits that the evolution of complex language may have been influenced by the need to be more attractive to potential mates and to maintain their subsequent interest. The topic of compliments can be sex- or context- dependent and able to indicate sexual interest during interpersonal interactions (Doohan and Manusov, 2004; Rees-Miller, 2011; Brown et al, 2014). There is a positive association between the secondary sexual characteristics in faces and immunocompetence which has influenced the perceived attractiveness of feminine faces in women and masculine ones in men and the content of chat-up lines in form of compliments, when a short-term relationship is pursued (Little et al, 2011). Few studies have investigated whether the compliment topic employed by men and its sexual intent can signal mate quality
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