Human Nonindependent Mate Choice: Is Model Female Attractiveness Everything?

Vakirtzis, Antonios; Roberts, S. Craig

doi:10.1177/147470491201000205

Cited by 20 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…This is argued to be because, while most individuals form partnerships, only individuals of high mate quality are likely to have highly attractive partners: an attractive individual’s mate choices are therefore potentially the best indicator of mate quality (e.g. 11 , 13 , 14 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our study, like many others in the human 6 , 7 , 13 and animal 30 literature, focuses on the choices of females. The reason for this focus is that previous work suggests that mate-choice copying is more likely to be adaptive for women than for men, because long-term ‘mate value’ is more difficult to assess in men 13 . Any content-specific social learning mechanisms for mate choice should, therefore, be particularly detectable in women.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human mate-choice copying is domain-general social learning

Street

Morgan

Thornton

et al. 2018

Sci Rep

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Women appear to copy other women's preferences for men's faces. This 'mate-choice copying' is often taken as evidence of psychological adaptations for processing social information related to mate choice, for which facial information is assumed to be particularly salient. No experiment, however, has directly investigated whether women preferentially copy each other's face preferences more than other preferences. Further, because prior experimental studies used artificial social information, the effect of real social information on attractiveness preferences is unknown. We collected attractiveness ratings of pictures of men's faces, men's hands, and abstract art given by heterosexual women, before and after they saw genuine social information gathered in real time from their peers. Ratings of faces were influenced by social information, but no more or less than were images of hands and abstract art. Our results suggest that evidence for domain-specific social learning mechanisms in humans is weaker than previously suggested.The extent to which the decision making of animals is fine-tuned by natural selection in response to specific adaptive challenges or fashioned by general processes applying broadly across domains is a matter of ongoing debate 1,2 . Addressing this issue is central to the development of the fields of evolutionary psychology 1,3 , cognitive ecology 4 , and cultural evolution 5 , and human mate-choice copying represents a high-profile case in point. Evolutionary psychologists commonly argue that humans copy the apparent mate choices of others because doing so provides a selective advantage by reducing the search costs associated with finding a mate (e.g. 6-8 ). The extent to which this process is underpinned by a domain-specific mechanism, however, is open to debate. It has been argued that humans select partners using domain-specific mental adaptations, specialised to process sexual cues 2,7,9 . Conversely, other work has applied theoretical work on domain-general social learning strategies to the specific question of mate choice 6,10 . Studies of mate-choice copying typically present heterosexual women with a photograph of a male face (hereafter a 'target') paired with one or more female faces (hereafter a 'demonstrator') and the participant is asked to rate the attractiveness of the target. The presence of the female faces is assumed to imply that the depicted females have selected the target as a mate, with facial cues commonly regarded as highly salient information in mate choice decision making. In such studies, an attractiveness rating given by a participant to a target is taken as a proxy for sexual interest in that individual.By manipulating the conditions of mate-choice copying experiments, researchers have attempted to show that human mate-choice copying is attuned to the challenges of selecting a high-quality mate, when mate quality is largely determined by characteristics difficult to ascertain by personal observation alone. For example: participants' ratings of attractiveness are in...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human mate-choice copying is domain-general social learning

Street

Morgan

Thornton

et al. 2018

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our first hypothesis was that we would successfully replicate Hill and Buss (2008)'s Experiment 1 (both the desirability enhancement effect in females and the desirability diminution effect in males). Vakirtzis and Roberts (2012) found evidence that desirability ratings between heterosexual men's and homosexual women's rating of a target woman did not differ, and while differences in sexual orientation exist, a large portion of male and female homosexual preferences tend to line up with their respective same-sex heterosexual counterparts. By extending Hill and Buss to include homosexual participants, we therefore also predicted in our second hypothesis that homosexual males would exhibit desirability diminution effects (similar to heterosexual males) when viewing male targets surrounded by females.…”

Section: Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 95%

How the Presence of Others Affects Desirability Judgments in Heterosexual and Homosexual Participants

2019

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Mate-choice copying is a mating strategy wherein females 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 project successfully replicated these findings with 44 heterosexual females and 73 heterosexual males, finding support for the desirability enhancement effect in female participants and the desirability diminution effect in male participants. The current project also extended these findings to include 73 male and 32 female participants identifying as homosexual. Homosexual men exhibited the desirability enhancement effect, and homosexual women exhibited the desirability diminution effect, revealing sex differences in mate-choice copying spanning different sexual orientations.

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“…Mate-copying tendencies can be manifested in various forms of behavior. Research by Vakirtzis and Roberts (2012) used marital status of the male model to evaluate how women rate the attractiveness of the male model and found that married men are more desirable than single men. Other methods used to provide evidence for matecopying tendencies include forming simulated attraction (Dunn & Doria, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of Mate Copying Tendencies through Simulated Attraction towards Perceived Physical Attractiveness of Opposite Sex in Women

Hanipraja¹,

Deminiz²,

Dinda³

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the Universitas Indonesia International Psychology Symposium for Undergraduate Research (UIPSUR 2017)

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This study is a replication of Dunn and Doria"s (2010) research, which intends to see the effect of matecopying tendencies among young adult women in perceiving the level of physical attractiveness of the opposite sex. Mate-copying tendencies can emerge in various forms, one of which is through simulated attraction that is shown through a photograph of a man surrounded by several women who show interested gestures towards him. The dependent variable was measured using a single item that measured perceived physical attractiveness of the male model in Likert scale (1-10). A total of 73 undergraduate students from Universitas Indonesia (average age = 19.6, SD = 1.48) participated in this study. The statistical analysis result using independent sample t-test showed a significant difference in perceived physical attractiveness score between the experimental group and control group (t (71) = 2.048, p = 0.044). The females who were given a photograph of the male model posing with several female models had a higher perceived physical attractiveness score for the male (M = 5.24, SD = 1.342) than those who were given a stand-alone male model photo (M = 4.61, SD = 1.293). The implications of this study on interpersonal relationships may explain why sometimes men who are engaged with other women are viewed as more attractive.

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Human Nonindependent Mate Choice: Is Model Female Attractiveness Everything?

Cited by 20 publications

References 39 publications

Human mate-choice copying is domain-general social learning

Human mate-choice copying is domain-general social learning

How the Presence of Others Affects Desirability Judgments in Heterosexual and Homosexual Participants

Influence of Mate Copying Tendencies through Simulated Attraction towards Perceived Physical Attractiveness of Opposite Sex in Women

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