bims-chumac Biomed News
on Context effects on human mate choice
Issue of 2021–11–21
eleven papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. Romantic and Sexual Relationships with Adult Partners Among Pedohebephilic Men.
  2. Examining Rules in Friends with Benefits Relationships.
  3. The Autumn Years: Age Differences in Preferences for Sexually Dimorphic Faces.
  4. The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others.
  5. Facial threat affects trust more strongly than facial attractiveness in women than it does in men.
  6. Relationship Match: The Neural Underpinnings of Social Feedback in Romantic Couples.
  7. College Students' Motives for In-Person Meetings with Dating Application Matches.
  8. The Relationship Context of Early Transitions to Parenthood: The Influence of Arrest.
  9. Does Re-Partnering Behavior Spread Among Former Spouses?
  10. Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation.
  11. Corrigendum: Styling the Self: Clothing Practices, Personality Traits, and Body Image Among Israeli Women.
  1. Arch Sex Behav. 2021 Nov 19.
    Romantic and Sexual Relationships with Adult Partners Among Pedohebephilic Men.
    Crystal L Mundy, Hailee L Lewis, Jan D Cioe.
      This study examined reasons for romantic and sexual relationships with adult partners among men with pedohebephilic preferences (N = 125). We also explored whether age sexual orientation impacted reasons for engaging in sex with adult partners. Pedohebephilic men endorsed both non-sexual and sexual reasons for engaging in adult-partnered relationships. The top reasons for sexual relationships with adult partners were pleasure, love and commitment, physical desirability, experience seeking, and practicality. The top reasons for romantic relationships with adult partners were to gain companionship, love toward romantic partner, to escape loneliness, to engage in sexual activities, and it seemed natural. The exclusivity of attraction to children was found to be significantly related to some of the factors. These findings support differential reasons for pedophilic men engaging in adult-partnered relationships. Professionals should seek to understand the nature of their clients' relationships and age sexual orientation to determine whether such factors are relevant. Professionals can then support clients in their search for meaningful relationships.
    Keywords:  DSM-5; Hebephilia; Minor-attracted persons; Pedophilia; Romantic attraction; Sexual attraction
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02108-3
  2. Arch Sex Behav. 2021 Nov 15.
    Examining Rules in Friends with Benefits Relationships.
    Lisa J van Raalte, Lori A Bednarchik, Mark A Generous, Paul A Mongeau.
      Establishing communicative and behavioral boundaries in romantic relationships provides partners with a greater sense of relational stability and certainty. For romantic relationships, these boundaries, such as sexual exclusivity, are relatively straightforward. For casual sex relationships, however, the relational rules are less stable and certain. This exploratory study examined rules in friends with benefits relationships (FWBRs) for 109 college students in the USA. Responses to open-ended questions were collected through an online questionnaire, and data were qualitatively analyzed through an inductive thematic analysis. The data were structured into communication rules, sexual rules, and relational definition rules. Results provide overlap and extension of previous work investigating rules in FWBRs. Notably, participants reported sexual exclusivity as an important rule. Additionally, potentially competing discourses in FWBR rules were best understood through the lens of relational dialectics. Findings reflect a tension in terms of relational work, as partners struggle with maintaining their sexual and friendship relationship while not falling into the "territory" of romantic relationships.
    Keywords:  Friends with benefits relationships; Relational dialectics; Relational rules; Relationship talk; Sexual communication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02114-5
  3. Arch Sex Behav. 2021 Nov 17.
    The Autumn Years: Age Differences in Preferences for Sexually Dimorphic Faces.
    Chengyang Han, Xiangqian Li, Xiyue Chen, Xue Lei, Chuanjing Liao, Lingshan Zhang, Bingxin Li, Xian Peng, Edward R Morrison.
      Life history theory proposes that it is adaptive for older people to shift investment away from reproductive effort (such as mating) to survivorship. However, it remains unclear whether the shift is also present at the psychological level. We investigated this question by comparing preferences for mate choice-relevant cues, sexually dimorphic facial images, between older (60 years and older, n = 92) and younger adults (18-40 years, n = 86). Results showed that older adults had significantly smaller preferences for sexually dimorphic faces of both sexes than young adults. Specifically, both older men and women showed no significant preferences for sexually dimorphic traits when judging opposite-sex faces, and smaller preferences for masculine male faces and feminine female faces when judging same-sex faces. Young adults generally showed strong preferences for masculine male faces and feminine female faces. In Study 2, we confirmed that the absent/reduced preferences in older adults for sexually dimorphic faces did not result from poor visual ability. The smaller preferences for sexually dimorphic facial cues in older adults compared to young adults suggest that older adults may shift away from mating-oriented psychology as they become less fertile.
    Keywords:  Chinese; Facial attractiveness; Mate preferences; Sexual dimorphism
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02168-5
  4. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(11): e0258773
    The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others.
    Ilja Croijmans, Daniel Beetsma, Henk Aarts, Ilse Gortemaker, Monique Smeets.
      Human sweat odor serves as social communication signal for a person's traits and emotional states. This study explored whether body odors can also communicate information about one's self-esteem, and the role of applied fragrance in this relationship. Female participants were asked to rate self-esteem and attractiveness of different male contestants of a dating show, while being exposed to male participant's body odors differing in self-esteem. High self-esteem sweat was rated more pleasant and less intense than low self-esteem sweat. However, there was no difference in perceived self-esteem and attractiveness of male contestants in videos, hence explicit differences in body odor did not transfer to judgments of related person characteristics. When the body odor was fragranced using a fragranced body spray, male contestants were rated as having higher self-esteem and being more attractive. The finding that body odors from male participants differing in self-esteem are rated differently and can be discriminated suggests self-esteem has distinct perceivable olfactory features, but the remaining findings imply that only fragrance affect the psychological impression someone makes. These findings are discussed in the context of the role of body odor and fragrance in human perception and social communication.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258773
  5. Sci Rep. 2021 Nov 18. 11(1): 22475
    Facial threat affects trust more strongly than facial attractiveness in women than it does in men.
    Johanna Brustkern, Markus Heinrichs, Mirella Walker, Bastian Schiller.
      Trust is essential in initiating social relationships. Due to the differential evolution of sex hormones as well as the fitness burdens of producing offspring, evaluations of a potential mating partner's trustworthiness likely differ across sexes. Here, we explore unknown sex-specific effects of facial attractiveness and threat on trusting other-sex individuals. Ninety-three participants (singles; 46 women) attracted by the other sex performed an incentivized trust game. They had to decide whether to trust individuals of the other sex represented by a priori-created face stimuli gradually varying in the intensities of both attractiveness and threat. Male and female participants trusted attractive and unthreatening-looking individuals more often. However, whereas male participants' trust behavior was affected equally by attractiveness and threat, female participants' trust behavior was more strongly affected by threat than by attractiveness. This indicates that a partner's high facial attractiveness might compensate for high facial threat in male but not female participants. Our findings suggest that men and women prioritize attractiveness and threat differentially, with women paying relatively more attention to threat cues inversely signaling parental investment than to attractiveness cues signaling reproductive fitness. This difference might be attributable to an evolutionary, biologically sex-specific decision regarding parental investment and reproduction behavior.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01775-5
  6. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Nov 11. pii: nsab121. [Epub ahead of print]
    Relationship Match: The Neural Underpinnings of Social Feedback in Romantic Couples.
    Thao Ha, Ryan S Hampton.
      Romantic love involves an evaluative process in which couples weigh similarities and differences that facilitates pair bonding. We investigated neural attentive processes (P3) during evaluative relationship feedback within existing romantic couples using the Relationship Match Game. This paradigm included participant driven expectations about relationship matching as well as relationship feedback from an expert panel of fictive peers and their romantic partner. In total, 49 couples participated who had dated less than one year. Participants showed significantly larger P3s in anticipation of feedback when they expected a mismatch, especially when supported by panel feedback. P3 amplitudes were also greater when participants received feedback from their partner congruent with their own assessment of compatibility. This was moderated by relational ambiguity, or one's preference to keep the relationship's status vague. We discuss how insecurity about the relationship is costly in terms of attentional resources contributing to an over-alertness to cues of relationship evaluation.
    Keywords:  ERP; P3; Relational Ambiguity; Romantic Evaluation; Social Feedback
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab121
  7. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2021 Nov 16.
    College Students' Motives for In-Person Meetings with Dating Application Matches.
    Meredith G Harrison, Richard D McAnulty, Amy Canevello.
      Although some research has explored emerging adults' motives for using mobile dating applications, no studies have investigated motives for in-person (or offline) meetings with dating app matches. A sample of 267 U.S. college students completed an online survey, 138 of whom were dating app users and 80 of those had met at least one match in person. Contrary to the popular view that dating apps promote casual sex, love was the top motive for in-person meeting with matches. Our findings are consistent with the idea that dating apps are used to connect with others, not just for hookups.
    Keywords:  college students; dating apps; hookup apps
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2021.0031
  8. Popul Res Policy Rev. 2021 Aug;40(4): 723-746
    The Relationship Context of Early Transitions to Parenthood: The Influence of Arrest.
    Marissa Landeis, Wendy D Manning, Monica A Longmore, Peggy C Giordano, Kara Joyner.
      In the U.S., many young adults who have had contact with the criminal justice system are parents. Using the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (n = 1321), we drew on family demography and criminology literatures to examine the association between arrest, an understudied indicator of contact with the criminal justice system, and transitions to early parenthood. We also distinguished transitions to parenthood that occurred within four different relationship contexts: (1) single; (2) dating; (3) cohabiting; and (4) married. Using event history analyses, we found that young men and women who experienced an arrest transitioned to parenthood earlier than their counterparts who were not arrested. Further, men with an arrest, compared to men who had not been arrested, were more likely to report that they were dating the biological mother of their first child around the time of birth. In contrast, women with an arrest had an increased likelihood of having their first birth while cohabiting with the biological father. Our results highlighted the importance of a prior arrest for early transitions to parenthood and are relevant for understanding the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage and the diverging destinies of children and parents. Furthermore, the gender differences in the results illustrated the importance of including women in criminal justice analyses and men in fertility analyses.
    Keywords:  Arrest; Criminal justice contact; Early parenthood; Family formation; Non-marital fertility
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-020-09597-5
  9. Eur J Popul. 2021 Nov;37(4-5): 799-824
    Does Re-Partnering Behavior Spread Among Former Spouses?
    Zafer Buyukkececi.
      This study focused on individuals' re-partnering behavior following a divorce and asked whether divorcees influence each other's new union formation. By exploiting the System of Social statistical Datasets (SSD) of Statistics Netherlands, I identified divorced dyads and examined interdependencies in their re-partnering behavior. Discrete-time event history models accounting for shared characteristics of divorcees that are likely to influence their divorce and re-partnering behavior simultaneously were estimated. Findings showed that the probability of re-partnering increased within the first two years following a former spouse's new union formation. Further analyses focusing on formerly cohabiting couples rather than divorcees also revealed significant associations in re-partnering behavior. Following a former romantic partner's new union formation, women were exposed to risk longer than men, due to men's quicker re-partnering. These results were robust to the falsification tests. Overall, findings indicate that the consequences of a divorce or breakup are not limited to the incidence itself and former romantic partners remain important in each other's life courses even after a breakup. With the increasing number of divorcees and changing family structures, it is important to consider former spouses as active network partners that may influence individual life courses.
    Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10680-021-09589-x.
    Keywords:  Cohabitation; Marriage; Post-divorce relationships; Re-partnering
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-021-09589-x
  10. Eur J Popul. 2021 Nov;37(4-5): 851-876
    Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation.
    Giulia Corti, Stefani Scherer.
      The paper investigates the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of unions in Germany (1985-2018). We integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating, with a focus on mating dynamics and the measurement of the partner market over the life course. We concentrate on two particular educational groups, low-educated men and highly educated women, those with worsening mating prospects and more subject to experience hypogamous unions. Our results show that the local education-specific mating squeeze influences union formation, its timing, and educational sorting. Indeed, for the two groups, the increasing supply of highly educated women in the partner market increases the likelihood of remaining single or establishing an hypogamous union, where she is higher educated than he. In line with search theory, we find the effects of the mating squeeze to become particularly visible after people turn 30 years of age. This is true for the risk of remaining single and forming an hypogamous union. We underline the necessity to study assortative mating and union formation from a dynamic perspective, taking into account changing structural conditions during the partner search process.
    Keywords:  Assortative mating; Hypogamy; Mating market; Reversed gender gap in education; Union formation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-021-09592-2
  11. Front Psychol. 2021 ;12 789720
    Corrigendum: Styling the Self: Clothing Practices, Personality Traits, and Body Image Among Israeli Women.
    Tali Stolovy.
      [This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.719318.].
    Keywords:  body image; clothing practices; clothing styles; personality traits; women–clothing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.789720
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