Sexual selection feedback loops amplify male aggressiveness across generations

Evidence

Such strategies are thought to result from the evolutionary process of sexual selection—a form of natural selection that leads to the evolution of traits or strategies that have little to do with survival but more to do with increasing one’s ability to attract or gain access to mates. Sexual selection can operate on traits or strategies that make one more successful in competition with others of the same sex (intrasexual selection), such as contesting for territory, food, status, mates, and other resources, or it can operate between the sexes (intersexual selection) where the preferences of one sex produces characteristics in the other sex that satiate that preference (e.g., nuptial gifts, peacock tails). With respect to violent conflict, intrasexual and intersexual selection may operate via a feedback loop to produce more violent, aggressive, and risky behaviors among males than among females. Males with attributes that provide them with an advantage in intrasexual competition may be more likely to be preferred as mates by females, who then pass the genes for those male attributes and their own preferences for them on to future generations. It is this process of sexual selection that results in the dimorphic phenotypes observed in many species, such that males tend to be larger, more heavily muscled, better armed (e.g., larger teeth and horns), and more prone to lethal aggression (Daly & Wilson, 1988). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1185 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Biology refutes both the female-passivity bias and the male-effervescence bias at the gamete level — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 85; Sexual selection produces dimorphic male aggression through a mate-preference feedback loop — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1185; Reproductive investment asymmetry drives sex differences in mate selection and aggression — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1181 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Sexual selection produces dimorphic male aggression through a mate-preference feedback loop #expands (0.95) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1185