Pietro Pollo, Michael M. Kasumovic

The traditional theory of sexual selection posits the idea of sex roles: females should be choosy and caring, while males should be competitive and promiscuous. Despite criticism of these stereotypes from some evolutionary biologists, sex roles still appear as a norm in the literature. This may be because scientists anthropomorphize animal behaviours, which raises the question of whether human traits and experiences can influence one’s perception regarding sex differences in nature. Here we test whether age, gender, country, and research experiences are associated with different perceptions of sex roles in nature. We conducted a survey in which we asked participants about their perception of the frequency that certain behaviours associated with sex roles (promiscuity, mate choice, intrasexual competition, and parental care) occur in non-human animals for each sex. We found that participants’ country, research experience with certain taxonomic groups and research experience with sex-specific topics were associated with different perceptions of sex differences in non-human animals. Participants from more gender unequal countries showed greater agreement with the idea of sex roles. In contrast, participants who had experience with mechanisms not predicted by the idea of sex roles such as male mate choice, paternal care, and female-female competition, showed greater disagreement with the idea of sex roles than other participants. Our study reveals that personal experiences from inside and outside of academia are associated with different perspectives on sex roles. We suggest that increasing social and research diversity may benefit the study of behavioural patterns related to reproduction.