J Soc Psychol. 2021 Jan 27.
1-6
Research has long noted that there are differences between men's and women's responses to casual sexual requests. In this study, we sought to replicate and extend the Clark and Hatfield paradigm while exploring the influence of requestor attractiveness, sexual orientation, and two individual difference measures: sociosexuality (which is how open to sexuality a person is) and personal mate value (which is how high quality of a mate the person is). We found that attractiveness matters in the likelihood of a request being accepted (the more attractive the requester, the higher the proportion of agreement); sexual orientation matters for the overall proportion of responses agreed to (heterosexuals were most impacted by the attractiveness of the target), and that sociosexuality moderates the likelihood of agreeing to the requests (such that participants with higher sociosexuality scores were more likely to agree to requests).
Keywords: Sexual orientation; casual sex; mate value; sociosexuality