The Ash Twins Blog

The literature on sex differences in human risk-taking explains these differences as the product of sexual selection resulting from reproductive dynamics in the adaptively relevant environment. Males generally faced a winner-take-all market in mating, since females can be fertilized by strictly one male’s sperm (this contrasts with the mating dynamics of felines, for example, which–because they release multiple eggs during estrus–can be fertilized by multiple males). Winner-take-all markets reward risk-seeking, so males adapted a preference for risk-seeking.

Studies have found that males’ risk-seeking disposition diminshes with age. It is worth finding out whether this moderation of riskiness is due to differences in age or differences in fatherhood. While both effects would be adaptive, an experiment teasing out the relative strengths of these effects would be helpful. On this view, one might predict that fathering a child or children and undergoing the paternal bonding experience triggers hormonal or other releases that induce durable changes in risk attitudes. This paternity effect on moderating risk would likely enhance the welfare of offspring by encouraging a stable flow of paternal resources. One could test this prediction by comparing the risk attitudes of males who have fathered children and who have not fathered children, but are otherwise similar. To my knowledge this experiment has not been performed.