Male proneness to verbal display production

Abstract

The Darwinian theory of sexual selection predicts language-related sex differences in humans originating from and relevant for mate choice. Due to past sex-different selection pressures, it can be assumed that men are more prone to verbal displays than women, both in intrasexual competition and in intersexual selection (i.e., courtship). They should benefit more from high verbal proficiency in mate choice than women. Several hypotheses in the framework of these general evolutionary assumptions were tested using two questionnaires with a total sample of 234 participants