Prosocial Behaviors in Emergencies: Mating Motive Changes Men and Women’s Heroic Helping Tendencies Differently

It has been well documented that men are much more likely to provide heroic assistance in emergencies (Johnson, 1996). However, such heroic rescue disobeys the theory of evolution (Darwin, 1871). Studies investigated charitable donations suggested that public prosocial behaviors might be considered as costly signaling behaviors, serving the function of displaying one’s wealth and generosity, with the ultimate goal of attracting potential mates (Griskevicius et al., 2007). Although heroic rescue meets the four criteria of costly signaling behaviors, there was no direct evidence supporting the notion that heroic rescue, like public charity, also serves the function of attracting potential mates. The present study directly tests this possibility by examining the effect of mating motivation on men and women’s heroic rescue tendencies in emergent situations. The present study used a 2 (gender: male vs. female) × 2 (mating motivation induction vs. control condition) study design, and participants (N = 196, 90 males and 106 females; Mage = 22.36, SD = 2.89) were randomly assigned to the mating condition and control condition. In line with the previous studies (Durante & Li, 2009; Griskevicius et al., 2007; Hill & Durante, 2011; Roney, 2003; Wilson & Daly, 2004), mating motivation was induced by photographs of highly attractive opposite sex. Then, heroic rescue tendencies were measured by the questionnaire of Griskevicius et al. (2007), which consisted of five emergent situations. Participants’ risk-taking tendencies on financial decisions were also measured by a 10-item questionnaire developed by Liu (2010). The total scores of each of these two questionnaires served as the dependent variables. The results of the experiments showed a significant interaction between gender and mating priming on heroic behaviors: after mating motivation induction, male participants showed higher intentions of heroic rescue, whereas female participants showed lower intentions of heroic rescue. The present study also replicated previous findings (McAlvanah, 2009; Li & Zhang, 2010) regarding the effect of mating motivation priming on financial risk taking: mating motivation induction increased risk-taking tendency in financial decisions, males tend to be more risk seeking in making financial decisions, and there was no significant interaction between gender and mating priming on financial risk-taking decisions. Results from the financial decisions further confirmed the representativeness of the sample recruited in the current study and further validated the results on heroic behaviors. Based on the Costly Signaling Theory (Smith & Bird, 2001), these results concurred with the hypotheses that heroic behaviors served the function of displaying men’s advantages, such as vigor and responsibility, to potential mates and winning the intersexual selection (Farthing, 2005; Kelly & Dunbar, 2001). However, for women, the high-risk of heroic behaviors have potential harm to their offspring and are unattractive to men (Taylor et al., 2000). Thus, after eliciting the mating motivation, women would avoid the risk and reduced their intentions to offer heroic rescue in emergencies.