Behaviour and beliefs related to male aggression: Evidence of intrasexual selection in humans?

Sexual selection favors traits that increase mating and, thus, reproductive success. Some scholars have suggested that intrasexual selection driven by contest competition has shaped human male aggression. If this is the case, one testable hypothesis is that beliefs and behavior related to male aggression should be more prevalent in societies where the intensity and strength of sexual selection is higher, as measured by factors such as the presence and scope of polygyny, the number of same-sex competitors relative to potential mates, and the amount of effort males have available to allocate to mating. Using mixed-effect linear regression models with data from 78 societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, we found strong support for this hypothesis. We were able to rule out some potential alternative explanations by controlling for confounding variables such as political complexity, warfare and geographic clustering.