The high cost of being cuckolded has been a source of a strong selective pressure on reproductive competition among human males. Although evidence for preferential investment in offspring based on paternal resemblance is well established, men may have undergone selective pressure to take into account behavioral resemblance as well. We tested this hypothesis using 277 undergraduate university students who responded to an anonymous survey about how they were treated by their father and their physical and behavioral resemblance to him. We replicated the effect of physical resemblance on paternal investment, and found that behavioral resemblance accounted for even more variance in paternal investment than physical resemblance. Furthermore, mediation analyses revealed that both physical resemblance and behavioral resemblance acted primarily by improving relationship quality between the child and the father. These findings are considered in relation to an attempt to develop more detailed analytical categories of paternity assurance tactics (Gallup & Burch, 2006).

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