Abstract
The evolution of pro-social attitude and cooperation in humans is under debate. Most of the knowledge on human cooperation results from laboratory experiments and theoretic modeling. Evolutionary explanations, however, rest upon fitness consequences. We therefore examined fitness correlates of pro-social behavior in a real life setting, analyzing data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n = 2545 men, 2967 women). We investigated whether pro-social attitude, proxied by self reported voluntary work, is associated with lifetime reproductive success. We find a sex difference in the association between pro-social attitude and offspring number. In men, a pro-social attitude was associated with higher offspring number, whereas in women, it was associated with lower offspring count. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate fitness consequences of pro-social behavior towards strangers. We conclude that analysing real life settings may help to explain the evolutionary forces leading to pro-social behavior in humans and speculate that these factors might differ between the sexes.
Highlights
The nature and evolution of pro-social attitude and cooperation in humans is being intensively discussed
We find that in men, a pro-social attitude was associated with higher offspring number, representing a ‘real life’ confirmation of direct fitness effects of pro-social behavior, beyond mathematical modeling and lab experiments
Few studies have demonstrated effects of altruistic behavior toward kin on reproductive success [e.g., 9–12], the present results are novel as they demonstrate fitness consequences of pro-social behavior towards strangers
Summary
The nature and evolution of pro-social attitude and cooperation in humans is being intensively discussed. The selective mechanisms giving rise to pro-social behavior during human evolution are under debate. Proposed explanations involve both direct and indirect fitness benefits, multilevel selection models and various combinations of selection models [rev. Aim of the study was to investigate fitness correlates of pro-social attitude in a real life setting, using data obtained from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. We examined whether pro-social attitude, proxied by self reported voluntary work, is associated with reproductive outcome. We further examined whether this association differed between men and women, because due to their differing reproductive potential, the evolutionary mechanisms leading to pro-social behavior might differ between the sexes
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