When it Comes to Courtship, Gifts Matter
August 2, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- To win a girl's heart, gifts matter. A new mathematical model developed at University College London shows expensive but worthless gifts may help facilitate courtship.
According to researchers, gift-giving by males is a feature of human courtship and mating systems in a number of species. Females invest in more resources than males in offspring, so they must take care to pick the best partner possible.
"In humans, a girl wants a guy who is attractive to her and will help raise their children. The worst pay-off, reproductively, is if she hooks up with an unattractive male who, literally, leaves her holding the baby," says Dr. Peter Sozou, lead researcher.
"Guys are less likely to offer expensive gifts to females they don't have a long-term interest in. And girls won't be impressed by cheap gifts," Dr. Sozou says. "By offering expensive but worthless gifts, such as dinner and theatre trips, the male pays no cost if the invitation isn't accepted. Girls that don't find a guy attractive are less likely to take up the invitation because it would mean spending time with a person they aren't interested in."
For the study, researchers constructed two versions of a game with different biological assumptions based on whether the male is involved with parental care. Factors in the game such as whether the male and female found each other attractive were given a probability. The possible outcomes of the interaction, either positive or negative for each player, were given scores to represent the consequences of their decisions.
"We assumed a male's expected pay-off from mating with a female is positive; but it's greater if he finds her attractive and then it's worth him staying around after mating, so we'd give it a high score," a researcher explained. "Our analysis shows there is evolutionary logic in men 'burning money' to impress the girl."
SOURCE: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 2005;3152:1-9
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