Parental Investment and Resemblance: Replications, Refinements, and Revisions

Abstract

Evolutionary theory predicts that men should be more concerned with issues of false paternity than women should be concerned with false maternity. In an earlier study ( Volk and Quinsey, 2002 ), we studied how infant cues of resemblance influenced adults' hypothetical adoption decisions. We found that self-perceived cues of resemblance were significantly more important in men's decisions than in women's. Since that study was published, conflicting results have been reported regarding a sex-difference in the importance of cues of resemblance for adoption preference. We therefore sought to replicate our findings in three new studies. In all three studies, we replicated the initial finding of a larger correlation between ratings of resemblance and ratings of adoption preference among men than among women. We also found a trend towards slightly higher global resemblance scores in younger children, suggesting that adults view infants as more anonymous and/or less uniquely distinctive than older children. However, there was wide variance in both the global resemblance and developmental changes in resemblance amongst the different child stimuli used.