Fun and games
Mismatches in the Marriage Market
Daniel Lichter, Joseph Price & Jeffrey Swigert
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming
Methods: This study identifies recent marriages from the 2008 to 2012 and 2013 to 2017 cumulative 5‐year files of the American Community Survey. Data imputation methods provide estimates of the sociodemographic characteristics of unmarried women's potential (or synthetic) spouses who resemble the husbands of otherwise comparable married women. These estimates are compared with the actual distribution of unmarried men at the national, state, and local area levels to identify marriage market imbalances.
Results: These synthetic husbands have an average income that is about 58% higher than the actual unmarried men that are currently available to unmarried women. They also are 30% more likely to be employed (90% vs. 70%) and 19% more likely to have a college degree (30% vs. 25%). Racial and ethnic minorities, especially Black women, face serious shortages of potential marital partners, as do low socioeconomic status and high socioeconomic status unmarried women, both at the national and subnational levels.
Neural Responses to Sexual Stimuli in Heterosexual and Homosexual Men and Women: Men’s Responses Are More Specific
Adam Safron et al.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Patterns of genital arousal in response to gendered sexual stimuli (i.e., sexual stimuli presenting members of only one sex at a time) are more predictive of men’s than of women’s sexual orientations. Additional lines of evidence may shed light on the nature of these differences. We measured neural activation in homosexual and heterosexual men and women using fMRI while they viewed three kinds of gendered sexual stimuli: pictures of nude individuals, pictures of same-sex couples interacting, and videos of individuals self-stimulating. The primary neural region of interest was the ventral striatum (VS), an area of central importance for reward processing. For all three kinds of stimuli and for both VS activation and self-report, men’s responses were more closely related to their sexual orientations compared with women’s. Furthermore, men showed a much greater tendency to respond more positively to stimuli featuring one sex than to stimuli featuring the other sex, leading to higher correlations among men’s responses as well as higher correlations between men’s responses and their sexual orientations. Whole-brain analyses identified several other regions showing a similar pattern to the VS, and none showed an opposite pattern. Because fMRI is measured identically in men and women, our results provide the most direct evidence to date that men’s sexual arousal patterns are more gender specific than women’s.
Visual cues to fertility are in the eye (movements) of the beholder
Elizabeth Necka et al.
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past work demonstrates that humans behave differently towards women across their menstrual cycles, even after exclusively visual exposure to women's faces. People may look at women's faces differently as a function of women's menstrual cycles. Analyses of participants' scanpaths (eye movement patterns) while they looked at women at different phases of their menstrual cycles revealed that observers exhibit more consistent scanpaths when examining women's faces when women are in a menstrual cycle phase that typically corresponds with peak fertility, whereas they exhibit more variable patterns when looking at women's faces when they are in phases that do not correspond with fertility. A multivariate classifier on participants' scanpaths predicted whether they were looking at the face of a woman in a more typically fertile- versus non-fertile-phase of her menstrual cycle with above-chance accuracy. These findings demonstrate that people look at women's faces differently as a function of women's menstrual cycles, and suggest that people are sensitive to fluctuating visual cues associated with women's menstrual cycle phase.
Perceptions of a mismatched couple: The role of attractiveness on mate poaching and copying
James Moran & Joel Wade
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research investigated how a couple’s discrepancy in attractiveness influences men’s decision to mate poach or mate copy. The participants (N = 97 heterosexual men) were presented with 3 photos of a quasi couple in which the woman was consistent, and the 3 men were unattractive, equally, or more attractive than her. This study used ranking questions to assess heterosexual men’s perception of a couple. Participants were asked to drag and drop the 3 randomized photos in order of preference for 8 randomized questions regarding mate poaching and mate copying. Eight Friedman tests were conducted and revealed a significant difference between the rankings of the photos for each situation. These findings suggest that there are clear differences between the conditional mating strategies men use. Results revealed that when a woman is more attractive than her mate, men desire to mate poach, and if a woman is less attractive than her partner, men desire to mate copy.
How the Presence of Others Affects Desirability Judgments in Heterosexual and Homosexual Participants
John Scofield, Bogdan Kostic & Erin Buchanan
Archives of Sexual Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Mate-choice copying is a mating strategy wherein women rely on contextual information to assist in securing accurate assessments of potential mates. Mate-choice copying has been extensively studied in non-human species and has begun to be examined in humans as well. Hill and Buss (2008) found evidence of opposing effects for men and women in desirability judgments based on the presence of other opposite-sex people. The current study successfully replicated these findings with 73 and 44 heterosexual men and women, respectively. Heterosexual men exhibited the desirability diminution effect, and heterosexual women exhibited the desirability enhancement effect. The current study also extended these findings to include 73 gay men and 32 lesbian women. Findings for gay and lesbian participants were inverted compared to heterosexual participants. Gay men exhibited the desirability enhancement effect, and lesbian women exhibited the desirability diminution effect, revealing sex differences in mate-choice copying spanning different sexual orientations.