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Cited by 325

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 46 of the 46 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

SEXUAL SELECTION FOR MORAL VIRTUES

Miller, Geoffrey F.·2007·The Quarterly Review of Biology

Abstract

Moral evolution theories have emphasized kinship, reciprocity, group selection, and equilibrium selection. Yet, moral virtues are also sexually attractive. Darwin suggested that sexual attractiveness may explain many aspects of human morality. This paper updates his argument by integrating recent research on mate choice, person perception, individual differences, costly signaling, and virtue ethics. Many human virtues may have evolved in both sexes through mutual mate choice to advertise good genetic quality, parenting abilities, and/or partner traits. Such virtues may include kindness, fidelity, magnanimity, and heroism, as well as quasi-moral traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness, mental health, and intelligence. This theory leads to many testable predictions about the phenotypic features, genetic bases, and social-cognitive responses to human moral virtues.

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Metadata

Authors
Miller, G. F.
Venue
The Quarterly Review of Biology
Published
2007-06
Volume
82
Issue
2
Pages
97-125
ISSN
  • 0033-5770 (ISSN-L)
  • 1539-7718
OpenAlex
W2142153104
Cited by
325
References
46
FWCI
27.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: SEXUAL SELECTION FOR MORAL VIRTUES. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/517857
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Miller, G. F. (2007). SEXUAL SELECTION FOR MORAL VIRTUES. The Quarterly Review of Biology. https://doi.org/10.1086/517857

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.