The Handicap Principle

What does an antelope do when it sees a lion in the distance?

Counterintuitively, it doesn’t run away, it jumps in the air to draw attention to itself. This behaviour, known as stotting, signals to the lion “I have already seen you and have enough energy to waste on jumping in the air, so don’t even bother trying to chase me.” It’s more efficient than running away.

Israeli ornithologist Amotz Zahavi, following the behaviour of the Arabian warbler, drew lots of animal (and plant) behaviours together and defined what he called the handicap principle. In its simplest form this says that in nature for a signal to carry any weight, it must impose a handicap on the signaller. Thus, almost universally, plants and animals that are poisonous announce the fact by being brightly coloured. In effect, the colours impose a handicap on the signaller and predators take the announcement that the signaller is toxic seriously. (“If I wasn’t really toxic, I wouldn’t dare to dispay these colours.") This might also be said to apply to politicians of species such as Paulinus Hansonus and Julia Gillarda

The best example of the principle, when applied to fitness for mating, is probably that of peafoul. The tail of the peacock imposes an enormous handicap, making it impossible to fly and demonstrating the health history of the bird. (Since the feathers collectively form a pattern, any disruption to healthy growth will be demonstrated by the pattern being disturbed.)

Now, obviously it might be better for a species not to impose such handicaps on itself, but if the female was to select mates that could fly instead of demonstrating a fine tail, she would have male offspring unlikely to breed and female offspring with a tendency to select for the wrong type of male for genetic fitness. The female has an advantage in selecting for tails and a self-promoting cycle is set in place.

All this relates very directly to several aspects of TRP. The abundance mentality demonstrates not just pre-selection, but post selection. I.e. a man with abundant opportunities will have the probablility of producing sons with the same characteristic. Shit tests also impose a handicap on the candidate: can you take the hits?

It doesn’t work perfectly. Just as in nature there are non-poisonous species that use bright colours to pretend, so in human society there are fraudulent displays of fitness. As Neil Strauss in particular has demonstrated, the process of human mate selection can be over-ridden by effective game. But nature has a tendency to build in tests to avoid the principles of selection for genetic fitness being over-ridden. It can be done both ways; a relatively unfit character like Roosh and an extremely fit one like Arnold Schwarzenegger can both succeed. But the latter type will always have far better options.