I forget the reference, but I read an evolutionary psychology argument somewhere that supports User and Margaret Clinton. Take it with a grain of salt, like all evolutionary psychology arguments. It is not a particularly pleasant state of affairs. But it supports the idea that men value risk-taking a lot more than women.

It comes down to a basic asymmetry. You really only need 1-2 men to perpetuate the human species, but the number of women you need is proportionate to the number of children you need, which in turn is determined by survival conditions. So even though humans are fundamentally more monogamous/pair-bonding based than most other apes (due to the long, neoteny-crippled childhood of human offspring, which requires more nurture investment), they do have a basic tendency towards polygamy and alpha male dominance like all such "1 male is enough" species (bees are an example of the opposite dynamic, since one queen makes all the eggs after an early orgy of fertilization with a bunch of males).

There have been documented cultures in Africa for instance, where nearly everybody is royalty because a few men (nominally*) fathered most of the offspring. All the other men were basically (nominally*) cut out of the gene pool.

This creates a weird landscape of genetic investment opportunities for men. You either wander off as a celibate outcaste with no women/offspring, or you take on the high-risk task of challenging the current alpha, that could very well get you killed, but if you win makes you dominate the gene pool for a generation. It's a go-big-or-go-home situation (or rather go-big-or-get-out-of-home situation).

Keep in mind that this is just a tendency in that direction. Actual cultures that exhibit this are the exception in humans, but the rule in species like gorillas.

But the tendency is enough. Men are therefore more likely to take apparently irrational risks and ignore self-preservation instincts.

*They are also far more likely to turn into delinquent drifters on the margins, or as exiles, content to steal whatever sex they can through cuckoldry and cheating members of the harems of alphas.

In fact, there have also been cultures where direct and open challenges to alphas are strongly suppressed, but the alphas deliberately turn a blind eye to non-public cheating. Then there are other weird cultures where the alphas don't maintain harems, and the population is monogamous, but the alphas reserve the right to deflower new brides (there is a term for this cultural practice that I am forgetting...).


Matt Ridley, in his book about sexual selection, The Red Queen, described the human species as being fundamentally monogamous, but with a strong predisposition towards cheating. This nominal-dad-alpha+cheater-margins dynamic is one way that predisposition plays out.

This male investment profile also partly seems to explain the two poles that women seem to be attracted to: the true alpha (wealth, power, mainstream-defining good looks and status) and the true outsider-delinquent, the bad boy archetype. Most men with even a vague sense of how to make themselves attractive to women seem to instinctively gravitate to one of the poles, at least in their youth. The middle is the genetic kiss of death for males. Being the responsible and hard-working guy, with a good education and job, is usually seen as a liability in early youth. It only becomes an advantage later in life when both men and women decide to "settle."

Thanks to the social contract and the recent emergence of a middle class with a script that enough women have bought into, the low-risk/low-return type male has also found a genetic foothold. But he is always at risk from alphas and marginal delinquents. Or to put it in popular terms, the rich guy who can steal your wife and the pool boy she might cheat on you with. The PUA community is based on choosing one of these modes to fake (you either act alpha, or act delinquent).

In a way, being in an alpha's harem, while cheating with a bad boy on the margins is the perfect hedging strategy for women. You've got your current needs taken care of, AND you have a strategic bet placed on the inevitable future contest where the current alpha is going to be toppled by a challenger from the margins.

Finally a counter-argument that this may not be genetic. In our equal-opportunity times, women also seem capable of playing the bipolar high-risk alpha/margins game with safe, middle-risk type middle-class guys if they choose to forgo having babies. Hence the modern tropes of alpha-entrepreneur women (think Disclosure or that recent Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds comedy) preying on "nice" guys OR the alternative gal who drags a nice guy off the straight-and-narrow track (Along Came Polly or Sweet November). The fact that women seem able to do this suggests that it may not be a purely genetic thing.

Once you add babies to the mix, both men and women become far more risk averse. It is not clear to me whether women become more risk averse than men.