# Is a man's wealth attractive, independent of his other attributes? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2019, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836 "2019-05-31T16:58:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/181 "2019-06-03T21:16:40Z")
Ah. Your conscious biases impose images on you even though the hypothetical includes they otherwise look the same. But interesting how much your tingle correlated with caricatured masculinity. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/182 "2019-06-03T21:21:02Z")
**thorny locust** , you said you didn’t understand how prosocial behaviors could evolve without group selection. I pointed out that mainstream evolutionary theory says that they did, and… > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > That’s fair. I ought to read up on that some more. How does that sensibly lead into this in the same post: > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > ``` > -- For one thing: human males do, and did, fairly often help raise other men's children. Whether that's a matter of straight out adoption of non-relatives, or of raising one's brother's children or one's sister's children, or of beliefs in partible paternity, or of helping raise the children of one's wife which she had with a previous husband before the mammoth fell on him or he drowned in a storm or slipped on the ice and fell off a cliff or died of an infected wound, or just of contributing to the food supplies of the tribe in general: it's a thing that happens. > > ``` > > _And that is also evolved behavior_. It didn’t get beamed into our conscious minds from outer space in 1950, or in 1950BCE. It evolved, just as much as parental preference did. We’ve inherited both of those impulses… …where you’re describing prosocial behaviors, and ranting that I don’t understand that they evolved? Of course prosocial behavior is instinctive. I’ve said 4 or 5 times in this thread that prosocial behavior and preference for one’s own kin are not mutually exclusive, and that both are adaptive. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/183 "2019-06-03T22:00:13Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > But interesting how much your tingle correlated with caricatured masculinity. It’s as much “caricatured” as the idea that wealth sends women swooning. I won’t pretend there isn’t a good reason to seek brave, selfless men during times of strife. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/184 "2019-06-03T22:41:16Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I appreciate the great in-depth posts but this is really veering off into evolutionary-psychology stuff. To get back on track, monstro mentioned the difference between visceral attraction and cerebral attraction (the former being “panties getting wet” and the latter being knowing that someone would make a responsible mate) - does the visceral attraction get triggered by money (i.e., when some male lottery winners get mobbed by women, is it really only the latter factor; the cerebral knowledge that he’d have the resources to sustain a family, or are they truly actually “feeling hot for him?”) > Edit: using Elliot Rodger as an additional example again per OP, one of his main goals (as outlined in his manifesto) was to strike it rich in the lottery. Had he actually hitten the numbers, would he have indeed become much more appealing to women, as he imagined he would have been? I think it’s a bit of both, because you can think yourself into feeling more or less attracted than your initial response. I’m not sure if there is a bright line between ‘cerebral knowledge’ and ‘actually feeling’. Also, it’s nice to think of living a wealthy lifestyle, so a guy with money is relationshiply attractive. That’s not the same as sexually attractive, but it might be hard to disentangle. Looking Elliot Rodgers specifically, he had other issues that would override wealth even if he had it. So he is not maybe the best example. ---
**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/185 "2019-06-03T22:54:41Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > I think I already answered the question about wealth and attractiveness. When I think “wealthy man”, my forebrain lights up. Not my nether regions. I think opportunity and stability, not sexy times. > > And when I imagine what the hypothetical Bunker Dude looks like, I’m not thinking of a handsome, young guy with a nice set of broad shoulders and biceps. I’m think of a pudgy middle aged man with a receding hairline. Which is not exactly porn fodder. > > So no, attraction isn’t occurring for me subconsciously or not. It’s pragmatism. > > (The idea of a man risking his life slaying zombies for me does give me a tingle, though. I’m just saying.) But isn’t being attractive for pragmatic reasons still being attractive, nonetheless? And do you think there are NO women who find wealth to be an actual turn on, or that a minority of women find it to be a turn on, or that it’s possible that a majority of women are turned on by wealth, and you’re just not one of them? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/186 "2019-06-03T23:02:54Z")
> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#): > > And do you think there are NO women who find wealth to be an actual turn on, or that a minority of women find it to be a turn on, or that it’s possible that a majority of women are turned on by wealth, and you’re just not one of them? Not trying to speak for **you with the face** , but I don’t think anyone here has said that no woman is attracted to men because of their wealth. Gold-diggers are certainly a thing. What people are quibbling over is whether women with this type of attraction are acting out biological imperatives resulting from millions of years of selective pressure. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/187 "2019-06-03T23:18:32Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Incidentally, recent studies claim that cuckoldry rates are astonishingly low in all known human societies, of the order of 1-3% > [@Riemann](#): > > On low cuckoldry rates in humans, see this review, and references therein. Will read it more thoroughly later. However, on a fast glance, it isn’t describing anything remotely like “all known human societies”. It’s five different groups on two continents: a Dogon population in Mali; Flanders, Belgium; an Afrikaner population in South Africa; a North Italian population; and Catalonia. Still kind of interesting; but not nearly as much so. Part of what I was trying to figure out was how they’d managed to get anything resembling that information for “all known human societies” in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/188 "2019-06-03T23:29:58Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > What people are quibbling over is whether women with this type of attraction are acting out **biological imperatives** resulting from millions of years of selective pressure. Given the discussion we’ve had already in this thread, this choice of new vocabulary suggests to me that you’re not discussing this in good faith. We’ve already untangled the derailment that you initiated by misinterpreting “hard wired” to imply absolute genetic determinism, rather than the more usual meaning, where it’s simply synonymous with “innate”. I and others have explained that all behavioral traits are _probabilistic predispositions_ to act in certain ways, rather than absolute universals that are beyond our control; and that specific instances of behavior will always involve a complex interplay of innate & cultural influences, along with reasoning. And yet you now seem to want to resurrect your tiresome straw man with the use of a new and misleading term (in this context), “biological imperative” - something that implies absolute genetic determinism. So no - nobody is quibbling over what _you_ say they are quibbling over. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/189 "2019-06-03T23:30:57Z")
> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#): > > But isn’t being attractive for pragmatic reasons still being attractive, nonetheless? It depends on what one means by attractive, as pointed out earlier. All other things being equal, a woman who can cook fetches more value than a woman who can’t. But this value isn’t sexual value. Its practical value. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/190 "2019-06-03T23:39:32Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > However, on a fast glance, it isn’t describing anything remotely like “all known human societies”. Oh, obviously I misstated that. All societies where he have the genetic data to be able to measure it, of course. But in any event I wasn’t suggesting that it implied any universal trait in humans. I don’t know what it means, there are some ideas in that review, but I don’t think anyone has a clear idea, it’s quite surprising. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/191 "2019-06-03T23:40:11Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Given the discussion we’ve had already in this thread, this choice of new vocabulary suggests to me that you’re not discussing this in good faith. We’ve already untangled the derailment that you initiated by misinterpreting “hard wired” to imply absolute genetic determinism, rather than the more usual meaning, where it’s simply synonymous with “innate”. I and others have explained that all behavioral traits are _probabilistic predispositions_ to act in certain ways, rather than absolute universals that are beyond our control; and that specific instances of behavior will always involve a complex interplay of innate & cultural influences, along with reasoning. How about you stop putting words in **PunditLisa’s** mouth? She has had ample opportunity to clarify exactly what she meant, but she hasn’t. > [@](#): > > And yet you now seem to want to resurrect your tiresome straw man with the use of a misleading term “biological imperative”. So no - nobody is quibbling over what _you_ say they are quibbling over. How is “hard wired” not 100% equivalent to “biological imperative” in the context of sexual attraction? I agree that if someone had said that humans are “hard wired” to walk on two feet, then swapping in “biological imperative” doesn’t make any sense. But “Women are hard wired to be attracted to good providers” is not substantively different from “Women have a biological imperative to be attracted to good providers.” I hate semantic games like this, so I’m through with you for the time being. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/192 "2019-06-03T23:54:31Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > But “Women are hard wired to be attracted to good providers” is not substantively different from “Women have a biological imperative to be attracted to good providers.” Sure, “biological imperative” tends to imply the same thing as your **incorrect overinterpretation** of the term “hard wired”. That’s why it’s a problem. Few behavioral traits other than things like eating and breathing are absolute imperatives. Nobody has claimed that attraction to wealth is an “imperative”. We have claimed that there is likely to be instinctive _predisposition_ for women to be attracted to wealthy men _other things being equal_, and some compelling studies have been cited in support of that view; you have cited none in refutation. So I’ll keep calling out your straw manning until you stop. As I said earlier: Our heritable instincts are a component influencing our behavior, but they certainly do not constrain us. Our greatest defining features as a species are a huge and complex culture, and extremely high intelligence - and these are the ultimate determinants of our behavior and our ideals. We may have instincts, but we are unique among animals in that we are not constrained by them. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/193 "2019-06-04T00:05:31Z")
I just wanted to say that I feel bad about starting all this and disappearing. I posted late Saturday night then jumped on a plane at dawn Sunday and have been at a conference ever since. I don’t think I can catch up enough to jump back in, but I think my thoughts have been well-expanded on by monstro and you with the face. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/194 "2019-06-04T01:16:05Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > It’s as much “caricatured” as the idea that wealth sends women swooning. … Good thing no one has claimed that then … Not to worry, the positions can be consistent. Both getting that tingle from a masculinity caricature, and finding wealth/power as attractive, can be either all cultural or all “hard-wired”, or, as several of us have argued, wired as one factor as the result of evolution, modified in practice by culture and by personal experiences. **Reimann** made the point fairly early on, that predispositions are not predeterminations, and human culture used by human brains allows us to over-rule those predispositions. “We may have instincts, but we are unique among animals in that we are not constrained by them.” If not unique then minimally particularly not so constrained. It is part of how our brains have impacted our evolution, by the group ability to use our brains to change the environments we function and compete in (the physical environment and the cultures themselves), and our brains ability to adapt to these changing demands and behave in ways that even conflict with some of our biological predispositions. [Actual experimental data](https://akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/JEP.12.2014.1.1) varying only signifiers of wealth on rating levels of attractiveness of otherwise the exact same picture of men by women (and not of women by men) are not going to convince those whose minds have conclusions in place, but the data is pretty straight forward, and of the same sort that documents implicit bias for race and gender issues. The bias is across human cultures and real. It is consistent with other species in which one gender makes a significantly higher investment than the other in the process of having offspring. It is not swooning and is not to the exclusion of other factors. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/195 "2019-06-04T02:29:00Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > **thorny locust** Of course prosocial behavior is instinctive. I’ve said 4 or 5 times in this thread that prosocial behavior and preference for one’s own kin are not mutually exclusive, and that both are adaptive. Even when the prosocial behavior involves treating and caring for other people’s biological children as well as one does one’s own biological children? If so, then I don’t understand what you mean by “preference for one’s own kin”. If not, then what I was trying to point out is that human males do sometimes behave like that. And, DSeid, humans often respond very differently to actual other humans than they do to pictures. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/196 "2019-06-04T03:11:43Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Even when the prosocial behavior involves treating and caring for other people’s biological children as well as one does one’s own biological children? > > If so, then I don’t understand what you mean by “preference for one’s own kin”. If not, then what I was trying to point out is that human males do sometimes behave like that. Well, no. But that prosocial behavior is not present in humans. We don’t, on average, tend commit _exactly the same_ effort and resources to caring for other people’s children as we do our own. Suppose I come across a large food resource in time of famine. I bring it to the village and share it among all the children, because that’s how I roll - I’m a cooperative member of the village society, and we all help each other out in difficult times. But if I can get away with it without reducing my social standing as a good member of the community, maybe I will hold a little back to give a little extra to my own kid if he gets hungry again later in the evening. And in most societies that would be fine - so long as you’re contributing and sharing, people would understand that it’s only right that your own kid gets a little extra. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/197 "2019-06-04T03:38:00Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Even when the prosocial behavior involves treating and caring for other people’s biological children as well as one does one’s own biological children? > > If so, then I don’t understand what you mean by “preference for one’s own kin”. If not, then what I was trying to point out is that human males do sometimes behave like that. > And, DSeid, humans often respond very differently to actual other humans than they do to pictures. I’d disagree with **Riemann** and argue a qualified yes on the prosocial bit. First because for much of history we were in small enough groups that some of your genes were in those other people’s biological children, and as pointed out by Reimann, because helping others in groups often resulted in others later helping you and your more direct genetic progeny. And in adoption because we are responding to the relationship of parent with traits out of the context in which they evolved. There was no reason to selct against that because adopting a completely unrelated child was not something that commonly occurred. It even served as a signifier of your “health” and wealth that you could afford to use some up for a prosocial function, making you a more attractive higher status choice. That said **Riemann** ’s point is valid as a general principle: we do not tend to help others to a degree that it puts our own children at significant risk of harm and often help others in ways that over evolutionary history may have helped our own genes pass on more. Human nature includes caring most about your own children, then your nieces and nephews, then those of your tribe, then others. The less sense of relatedness we have to others the less willing we tend to be to help. That’s why calls for charitable help focus on telling the individual stories that help make the relatedness connection. Yes, people respond differently to pictures than to real people - mainly because real people have more factors varying at a time. The point of the experiment is to control for everything else and vary _only the one factor_. Are you at all familiar with the studies that do things like present job or housing applications that are identical except that one has a name that sounds like a woman’s name or is more commonly a Black person’s name, and document the biases associated with changing just that factor? Of course when evaluating job applicants you are not really only looking at the application and you may respond differently in real life … does that fact invalidate the studies’ significances documenting that bias exists based on those factors in isolation, that with everything else being equal a white, or a male, or a white male, candidate has a leg up, even if the prospective employer or landlord is unaware of the biases they have? ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/198 "2019-06-04T10:32:42Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Well, no. But that prosocial behavior is not present in humans. We don’t, on average, tend commit _exactly the same_ effort and resources to caring for other people’s children as we do our own. > > Suppose I come across a large food resource in time of famine. I bring it to the village and share it among all the children, because that’s how I roll - I’m a cooperative member of the village society, and we all help each other out in difficult times. But if I can get away with it without reducing my social standing as a good member of the community, maybe I will hold a little back to give a little extra to my own kid if he gets hungry again later in the evening. And in most societies that would be fine - so long as you’re contributing and sharing, people would understand that it’s only right that your own kid gets a little extra. Remember that other men in the pack—other fathers—are also sharing with women they are related to or have sex with. So even if it is true that dad#1 reduces his investment in non-kin children by 12%, dad#2 and dad#3 can make up the difference. This is exactly what happens in blended families today: step kids receive care from step fathers _and_ biological fathers via child support. When I asked you to describe the mechanism by which selective pressure for paternity concern would emerge, this is the kind of thing I was hoping you could walk us through. There’s another issue worth pointing out that, fortunately, is presented in one of your previous [cites](https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/control-paternity). > [@](#): > > A review of 67 human paternity studies revealed that when males think they are the biological father, they typically are (1.7% false paternity estimate in 22 studies); **when they think they might not be the father, they often aren’t (29.8% false paternity in 31 studies);** and in more ambiguous studies, an intermediate rate of false paternity applies (16.7% in 14 studies) (Anderson 2006). The part in bold allows us to conclude that men are not good at telling which kids are his and which are someone else’s. When he thinks he’s been cuckolded, he’s wrong 70% of the time. So a man who is concerned enough about paternity to reduce care to some of his kids (most of whom he’s wrongly pegged as someone else’s) will likely have less reproductive success than a man that is generous with all kids associated with his lover. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/199 "2019-06-04T10:51:20Z")
It’s really not that hard to imagine how being at least receptive to raising unrelated children could be very adaptive. Children allow an entire family to harness more resources via division of labor. Unrelated “kin” may be the ones you send out into the dangerous, snake-infested jungle for food, while keeping your biological kin closer to the hut. Maybe your bio kids have inherited the same condition that keeps them from being able to work as hard as you, but the adoptee is strong and eager to join you out on the hunt. If your adopted kids grow up to form relationships with folks in other clans, that could result in potential wealth and stability for your clan. Older adoptees can help take care of your younger bio kids so you can expend more resources finding food or having sex. They can take care of you lest you fall ill or become injured. And of course, just having another individual to love could promote happiness and well-being, which would correlate with health and thus fitness. I think humans’ receptiveness to animal “kin” (e.g., pets) could be similarly adaptive. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836/200 "2019-06-04T14:39:08Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Well, no. But that prosocial behavior is not present in humans. We don’t, on average, tend commit _exactly the same_ effort and resources to caring for other people’s children as we do our own.. Sure, if you roll us into a lump and take the average, humans on average favor their biological children. But that’s not at all the same thing as “that prosocial behavior is not present in humans”. Men in societies that believe in partible paternity think children are biologically theirs even when those children aren’t. So they don’t treat their biological children differently than other children from a woman they’ve had sex with; because they can’t tell the difference. Men in avuncular societies put those extra efforts and resources into their sisters’ children instead of into their own. So into the less related rather than into the more related. And, even more to the point: both men who help raise stepchildren, and people of any gender who adopt children, do often love and provide for those children just as well as they do those they engendered. It doesn’t always happen, no. But it most certainly does happen. And in those cases there are men who know the children aren’t biologically theirs but who nevertheless say, and feel, that those are their children, and just as deserving of whatever preferential treatment is available as are their biological descendents. So that particular prosocial behavior is indeed present in humans. Some people are more capable of it than others, and some societies reinforce it more than others. But it’s there. > [@DSeid](#): > > Yes, people respond differently to pictures than to real people - mainly because real people have more factors varying at a time. The point of the experiment is to control for everything else and vary _only the one factor_. Are you at all familiar with the studies that do things like present job or housing applications that are identical except that one has a name that sounds like a woman’s name or is more commonly a Black person’s name, and document the biases associated with changing just that factor? Of course when evaluating job applicants you are not really only looking at the application and you may respond differently in real life … does that fact invalidate the studies’ significances documenting that bias exists based on those factors in isolation, that with everything else being equal a white, or a male, or a white male, candidate has a leg up, even if the prospective employer or landlord is unaware of the biases they have? The studies about bias are, in our current society, a useful question. I already said, about this particular issue: > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > the OP question isn’t really a useful question; at any rate, if it’s being posed in the hope of getting a guide to recommended behavior or of getting an explanation as to why somebody’s not popular. If the question’s only ‘is this one of a myriad of factors that may affect sexual attraction in humans?’ then the answer is ‘yes, but it may affect people of any gender’. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-mans-wealth-attractive-independent-of-his-other-attributes/834836.md?page=11)