Blind dates
Sarah Hill, Marjorie Prokosch & Danielle DelPriore
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers in the evolutionary sciences have long understood men's desire to mate with a variety of women. Because men's obligatory investment in offspring production is relatively small, men can directly increase their number of descendants by mating with multiple partners. Relatively less is known, however, about the conditions that favor sexual variety seeking in women. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, we examined the relationship between the perceived pathogen load in an environment and women's desire for sexual variety. Across 5 experiments, we primed women with cues indicating that the rate of disease is increasing in their environment. We then measured their desire for novel sexual and dating partners. Results revealed that women with a history of vulnerability to illness respond to these cues by desiring a greater number of novel partners. This shift was not found in men and did not predict variety seeking in a nonsexual domain. In addition to providing evidence of a novel conceptual link between the pathogen load and patterns of human mating behavior, this research also provides new insights into women's mating psychology and the conditions that favor sexual variety seeking in the greater investing sex.
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Terrence Horgan et al.
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does women's memory for a man's features and verbal statements vary as a function of whether they are thinking about him as a short- versus long-term mate? Evolutionary psychology suggests that a man's physical attributes might matter more to women seeking a short- versus a long-term mate. In a laboratory experiment, female undergraduates watched a videotaped male introducing himself after they had been encouraged to think of him as either a short- or long-term mate. Women's memory for his features and verbal statements was then tested. Compared to women in the long-term context, women in the short-term context demonstrated better memory for his features and worse memory for his verbal statements. The implications of these findings for adaptive memory are discussed.
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Lucy Hunt, Paul Eastwick & Eli Finkel
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Clear empirical demonstrations of the theoretical principles underlying assortative mating remain elusive. This article examines a moderator of assortative mating - how well couple members knew each other before dating - suggested by recent findings related to market-based (i.e., competition) theories. Specifically, competition is pervasive to the extent that people achieve consensus about who possesses desirable qualities (e.g., attractiveness) and who does not. Because consensus is stronger earlier in the acquaintance process, assortative mating based on attractiveness should be stronger among couples who formed a relationship after a short period rather than a long period of acquaintance. A study of 167 couples included measures of how long partners had known each other before dating and whether they had been friends before dating, as well as coders' ratings of physical attractiveness. As predicted, couples revealed stronger evidence of assortative mating to the extent that they knew each other for a short time and were not friends before initiating a romantic relationship.
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Wilco van Dijk, Jaap Ouwerkerk & Richard Smith
Personal Relationships, June 2015, Pages 299-307
Abstract:
The present research provides a replication and extension of L. A. Colyn and A. K. Gordon's (2013) study on gender differences in schadenfreude. An experiment - in which both the gender of the unfortunate other and the dimension on which the misfortune occurred were manipulated - showed that female participants reported more schadenfreude when a same-gender other (vs. an opposite-gender other) experienced a misfortune on the dimension of physical attractiveness (vs. social status), whereas male participants reported more schadenfreude when a same-gender other (vs. an opposite-gender other) experienced a misfortune on the dimension of social status (vs. physical attractiveness). In the discussion, differences between our results and those of Colyn and Gordon are discussed.
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How Status Inheritance Rules Affect Marital Sorting: Theory and Evidence from Urban China
Li Han, Tao Li & Yaohui Zhao
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a matching model, we show that marital sorting by status tends to decline as parental statuses become less complementary in determining their children's status. Our test explores a policy change in China in which men are granted the same rights as women in passing residency permits (hukou) to their children regardless of their spouse's hukou - a change resulting in a less complementary status inheritance technology. We find that this change disrupted the previously rigid sorting by hukou and that the position of local men in the urban marriage market improved, whereas that of local women deteriorated.
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How Sexually Dimorphic Are Human Mate Preferences?
Daniel Conroy-Beam et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies on sex-differentiated mate preferences have focused on univariate analyses. However, because mate selection is inherently multidimensional, a multivariate analysis more appropriately measures sex differences in mate preferences. We used the Mahalanobis distance (D) and logistic regression to investigate sex differences in mate preferences with data secured from participants residing in 37 cultures (n = 10,153). Sex differences are large in multivariate terms, yielding an overall D = 2.41, corresponding to overlap between the sexes of just 22.8%. Moreover, knowledge of mate preferences alone affords correct classification of sex with 92.2% accuracy. Finally, pattern-wise sex differences are negatively correlated with gender equality across cultures but are nonetheless cross-culturally robust. Discussion focuses on implications in evaluating the importance and magnitude of sex differences in mate preferences.
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The Role of Overconfidence in Romantic Desirability and Competition
Sean Murphy et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four studies and a computer simulation tested the hypothesis that people who are overconfident in their self-assessments may be more successful in attracting mates. In Study 1, overconfident people were perceived as more confident in their dating profiles, and this perceived confidence predicted increased romantic desirability. Study 2 revealed that overconfident people also tend to be perceived as arrogant, which counteracts the positive effects of perceived confidence. However, Study 3 revealed that overconfidence might confer an advantage in intrasexual competition, as people were less likely to compete with overconfident individuals by virtue of their perceived confidence and arrogance. Study 4 showed that overconfident raters were also more likely to choose to compete for romantic partners. In Study 5, agent-based modeling incorporating the coefficients from these studies suggested that overconfidence facilitates mate acquisition in the presence of intrasexual competition.
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Emotion Expression and Color: Their Joint Influence on Perceived Attractiveness and Social Position
Vanessa Buechner et al.
Current Psychology, June 2015, Pages 422-433
Abstract:
This research examined the joint influence of emotion expression (pride vs. shame) and color (red vs. blue) on female and male perceptions of the attractiveness and social position of a male target. In female perceivers, we observed an Emotion Expression x Color interaction: for women viewing a man displaying pride, the color red increased their perceptions of his attractiveness, but for women viewing a man displaying shame, the color red tended to decrease their perceptions of his attractiveness. Male perceivers did not show this Emotion Expression x Color interaction. A main effect of emotion expression was observed for both male and female perceivers on both status and dominance ratings, independent of color. These findings point to a moderator of the influence of the color red in female mate evaluation, and illustrate the powerful, embodied connection between emotion expression and social position.