Abstract: It has been well documented that men are much more likely to provide heroic helping in emergencies (Johnson, 1996). However, such heroic helping disobeys the theory of evolution (Darwin, 1871). Research investigated charitable donations suggested that public prosocial behaviors may be considered as a costly signaling behavior, serving the function of displaying one’s wealth and generosity, with the ultimate goal of attracting potential mates (Griskevicius et al., 2007). Although heroic helping meets the four criterion of costly signaling behavior, yet there is no direct evidence supporting the notion that heroic helping, like public charity, also serves the function of attracting potential mates. The present study directly testing this possibility by examining the effect of mating motivation on men and women’s heroic helping in emergent situations The present study used a 2 (gender: male vs. female) ×2 (mating motivation induction vs. control condition) study design, participants ( N= 196, 90 males and 106 females; Mage=22.36，SD = 2.89) were randomly assigned to the mating condition and control condition. Following previous studies (Durante, 2009; Griskevicius et al., 2007; Roney, 2003; M. Wilson & Daly, 2004; Hill & Durante, 2011), mating motivation was induced by photographs of highly attractive opposite sex, which is an well established methodology in this field. Then, heroic helping 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 that there was a significant interaction between gender and mating priming on heroic behaviors: after mating motivation induction, male participants showed higher intentions of heroic helping, whereas female participants showed lower intentions of heroic helping. The present study also replicate pasting 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 Costly Signaling Theory (Smith & Bird, 2001), these results concur with the hypotheses that heroic behaviors serve 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 entails potential harm to their offspring and is unattractive to men (Taylor et al., 2000). Thus, after eliciting the mating motivation, women would avoid the risk and reduce their intentions to offer heroic helping in emergencies.

Key words: 危机救助, 亲社会行为, 求偶动机, 冒险行为, 进化心理学

摘要： 危机救助指冒着生命危险去保护和拯救他人，这种行为多见于男性，但无法用进化论的个体选择观点解释。本研究基于进化心理学中代价信号理论，探索启动求偶动机对个体在危机情境下的冒险救助意愿的影响。结果表明，启动择偶动机会导致男性的危机救助意愿上升；而女性的危机救助意愿则在启动择偶动机后下降。这一结果支持如下观点：男性在危机情境下冒险救助的行为是一种代价信号行为，具有为吸引异性这一目标服务的功能。

关键词: heroic helping, prosocial behavior, mating motivation, risk taking, evolutionary psychology