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Mate Selection Strategy (Version of Sexy Sons Hypothesis)

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
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Evolutionary psychology; Good genes theory; Good-sperm models; Human sexual activity; Mate selection strategy; Reproductive strategy; Sexual conflict; Sexual selection hypothesis; Sexy son hypothesis

Definition

Mate selection has been a topic of great interest and has gained much attention from diverse fields (Zhang et al. 2015, 2016). Mate selection strategies overlap with reproductive strategies that encompass a broad set of behaviors involving the timing of reproduction and the trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring (Buss and Schmitt 1993). Weatherhead and Robertson (1979) proposed the sexy son hypothesis claiming that females are assumed to compensate for the survival of their offspring by increasing the number of descendants produced (Huk and Winkel 2008). The sexy son hypothesis also implies that a potential mate’s capability as a parental care-giver are irrelevant to his value as the potential father or the female’s descendant.

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Darwin’s theory...

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Correspondence to Shen Liu or Xiaochu Zhang .

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Liu, S., Zhang, C., Chen, Y., Guo, W., Zhang, X. (2019). Mate Selection Strategy (Version of Sexy Sons Hypothesis). In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1762-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1762-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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