A willingness to protect enhances attractiveness

From An Instinct That's Basic and Deeper by Rob Henderson.  The subheading is The willingness to physically protect.

I am in the process capturing the sixteen years of Thingfinder posts, transferring it all over to paper so that there is a physical record of that which is only digital at the moment.  

I am up to 2012 and a couple of days ago transferred over the July 24, 2012 post, We are rich and blessed to have such young men, a celebration of the young men who gave their lives at the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting in Colorado so that their dates might live.  Having just revisited that old post, this morning I come across Rob Henderson's most recent post, An Instinct That's Basic and Deeper which starts with the same tragedy.

Henderson is addressing some recent research which explores why men are willing to sacrifice for others.

At a population level, there is simply the biological reality that men are the disposable sex.  A village of two hundred who suffered some tragedy and ended up with 100 women and one man, might conceivably still survive as a community.  With 100 men and one woman, there would be no future community.  Men are far more disposable than women from nature's perspective.

The research Henderson is discussing approaches from a slightly different angle.  Their question is whether willingness to sacrifice might not be a mate selection strategy.  That both men and women, but especially women, are strongly attracted to partners who are willing to sacrifice for them.

Here you see that women rate male dates (described in this particular version of the study as average in physical strength and average in physical attractiveness) who make no attempt to protect them as a 2 out of 10 in attractiveness. Women rate a man who attempts to protect them but fails as a 7.5 out of 10. And a man who attempts to protect them and succeeds is an 8 out of 10.

So the major bump in attractiveness comes from willingness, rather than ability.

The paper also finds that people judge same and opposite-sex individuals as more desirable as friends if they show a willingness to protect them. The most extreme real-world cases of this may be the documented accounts of military members who intentionally use their bodies to absorb blasts from explosive devices to protect their friends, as in the case of detonated grenades.

Overall, people (especially women), prefer romantic partners (and friends) who are willing to protect them. The ability to protect is a factor in desirability ratings. But people assign more importance to willingness.

More from the paper:

“Discovering that a person is willing to physically protect you, independent of their ability to do so, is very attractive in both mates and friends…especially when women are judging targets and when the target judged is a man…Conversely, unwillingness to protect was unattractive. In fact, it was a deal-breaker for women rating male dates: male dates who stepped away when a woman was being attacked were rated near the floor of the scale.”

In short, willingness to protect gives people (especially men) a strong boost in attractiveness.

In contrast, the ability to protect gives a small (and mostly statistically insignificant) boost. The drive to protect seems to matter most for attractiveness judgments.  

Mate choice has been a powerful force in shaping human evolution. And mate choice has been sensitive to cues of violence in the ancestral environment.

It is likely that the preference for partners who are willing to protect us has led to humans becoming particularly willing (relative to our primate relatives) to incur costs to help others.