Who Creates Warrior Women? An Investigation of the Warrior Characteristics of Fictional Female Heroes Based on the Sex of the Author

Previous research has found that the sex of the author can influence the characteristics of their fictional hero and that these differences can be predicted using evolutionary psychology. According to sexual selection theory, males and females evolve different behavioral strategies, and thus different psychologies, in order to maximize reproductive success; thus, humans will have behavioral tendencies influenced by subconscious mechanisms that would have aided fitness in the ancestral environment. This study focuses on how the characteristics of the female hero may differ based on the sex of the author using 30 fantasy series written for children ages 10-17. Male authors are predicted to create female heroes who are more physically powerful and more likely to engage in physical conflicts than female authors, because males benefit more than females from physical battle. Although not all comparisons produced statistically significant differences, all data produced trends in the predicted directions. A closer analysis found that female authors created female heroes who were more likely to be human girls without superhuman abilities, while males created female heroes who were unlikely to be fully human. When examining male-female hero teams, it was found that female authors tended to make the male hero more powerful than his female teammate, which was not true for male authors. This may be because females benefit when their mate can dominate other males. These results suggest that males and females create different traits in their heroes, irrespective of the hero's sex, and that female-created heroes achieve their goals without resorting to physical violence. Public Significance Statement An examination of recent children's fantasy literature finds that male authors make their central or primary female heroes more physically powerful and more likely to be engaged in a physical battle than do female authors, and for series that have male-female hero teams, female authors make their male hero more powerful than the female teammate, which is not true of male authors. These results are expected using evolutionary psychology and indicate that hero characteristics are not universal, but are influenced by the sex of the author imagining the hero.