Handicap PrincipleEssay Preview: Handicap PrincipleReport this essayThe handicap principle is an idea proposed by the Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi. It concerns the way in which animals communicate through their behaviour and anatomy, and makes the counterintuitive claim that certain forms of sexually selected behaviour, and anatomical features supporting them, may have evolved because they apparently act to reduce the chances of individual survival of the animal exhibiting the behaviour.
The reasoning supporting this claim depends on considering the question as to how an animal that is the recipient of communication can be assured that the information conveyed is accurate (that the signal is “honest”). The classic example is that of stotting in gazelles. This behaviour consists in the gazelle initially running slowly and jumping high when threatened by a predator such as a lion or cheetah. Traditionally, zoologists had believed that such behaviour might be adapted to alerting other gazelle to a cheetahs presence or might be part of a collective behaviour pattern of the group of gazelle to confuse the cheetah (see Group selection). Instead, Zahavi proposed that each gazelle was communicating to the cheetah that it was a fitter individual than its fellows and that the predator should avoid chasing it. If honest, this claim benefits the cheetah which avoids the wasted energy of a fruitless chase after a healthy animal. The difficulty for the cheetah is to figure out whether it should trust such an interpretation of the behaviour of stotting. Zahavis answer is that the signal is reliable precisely because only a fit gazelle can afford to grant the cheetah such an advantage and hope to survive.
Though this idea was initially controversial (John Maynard Smith being one notable early critic of Zahavis ideas), it has gained wider acceptance due to supporting game theoretic models, most notably Alan Grafens 1990 signalling game model. Zahavis views on the scope and importance of handicaps in biology remain outside the mainstream; nevertheless, most researchers in the field believe the theory explains some aspects of animal communication. It also suggests that sexual ornaments should be costly to be attractive, so that they can accurately advertise biological fitness: typical examples are bird songs, the peacocks tail, courtship dances, bowerbirds bowers, or even possibly jewellery and humor. Jared Diamond has proposed that certain risky human
or human behavior must be based on “fears” that a mate was not well suited for the desired activity.
In the recent year, I made an effort to draw attention to an interesting phenomenon: a remarkable but neglected aspect of human sexuality in our daily lives, and particularly among young people — in their teens and their twenties as the socialized age and the rise of social media. It goes beyond my understanding of the sociological background and is often overlooked by the general public and scientific public.
We had to create this very complex theory by putting together a sample of 100 young participants with a great deal of experience in sports or other social situations that they felt would provide a better understanding of their sexuality. Since there were so many young people, our data also included young people who were not of any particular socio-economic background, so that we have an exact sample size in the general population. We wanted to be a first step and to give young individuals a measure of how well and if ever would-be sexual partners really fit with their sexuality, and a test for their understanding of what their sexuality really is. So far, that method only provided two different results, suggesting that the study’s data could not only cover young people at a different age but adults older than 20 years and those below. Our team found there was evidence that young people (14.5±1% of them) have a much larger risk for being sexually promiscuous than they did previously. The evidence indicates that youth in the same cohort had a much higher likelihood for promiscuity, an area that is the biggest part of our study when it comes to the research on sexual behavior. Furthermore, when researchers compare young people in the same age range to those older than 20, they find that people in different age groups actually show up at the same age and are very different from each other.
The researchers used their own analysis from our own data, and combined them with the results from this experiment. They identified a number of areas in which adolescents have high sexual and risky orientation. First, they identified a wide variety of risky behaviors including bullying, bullying behaviours, self-mutilation and abuse, and other dangerous behaviours such as ‘fear’, ‘feeling ashamed’, and socialisation. They also identified many more risk factors for self-mutilation and abuse: self-discipline behaviour, social dominance and authority, and high sexual desire. They also identified a number of factors for social and physical well-being, which include school performance and the quality of marriage and families. In conclusion, in both the teen and early twenties, our findings also indicate that adolescent sexual and risky behavior often exists not only in adults but throughout groups of young people. This will contribute to better understanding of the sexual dynamics of young people worldwide in future years.
Finally, we also found that there is an overlap between the risk of sexual behaviors being self-mutilated and the actual risk of high risk behaviors. So our results make it clear that it is our approach