Selection criteria in the search for a sperm donor: behavioural traits versus physical appearance

Stephen Whyte () and Benno Torgler ()

Journal of Bioeconomics, 2015, vol. 17, issue 2, 171 pages

Abstract: Despite extensive literature on female mate choice, empirical evidence on women’s mating preferences in the search for a sperm donor is scarce, even though this search, by isolating a male’s genetic impact on offspring from other factors like paternal investment, offers a naturally ”controlled” research setting. In this paper, we work to fill this void by examining the rapidly growing online sperm donor market, which is raising new challenges by offering women novel ways to seek out donor sperm. We not only identify individual factors that influence women’s mating preferences but find strong support for the proposition that behavioural traits (inner values) are more important in these choices than physical appearance (exterior values). We also report evidence that physical factors matter more than resources or other external cues of material success, perhaps because the relevance of good character in donor selection is part of a female psychological adaptation throughout evolutionary history. The lack of evidence on a preference for material resources, on the other hand, may indicate the ability of peer socialization and better access to resources to rapidly shape the female decision process. Overall, the paper makes useful contributions to both the literature on human behaviour and that on decision-making in extreme and highly important situations. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Online sperm donor market; Informal donation; Donation recipients mating preferences; Mate choice; Sexual selection; Evolutionary psychology; J13; D10; Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10818-014-9193-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:17:y:2015:i:2:p:151-171

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10818/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10818-014-9193-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Bioeconomics is currently edited by Ulrich Witt, Michael T. Ghiselin and David Sloan Wilson

More articles in Journal of Bioeconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().