bims-chumac Biomed News
on Context effects on human mate choice
Issue of 2022–01–23
eight papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. Commitment and Extra-Dyadic Sexual Activity in College Students' Friends with Benefits Relationships: Moderating Effects of Gender.
  2. Mate-value and relationship satisfaction: The moderating roles of mate retention behaviors.
  3. Why People Keep an Intimate Relationship : Investigating Ultimate and Proximate Reasons.
  4. Sexual Communal Strength Partially Mediates the Associations between Mate Retention Behaviors and Relationship Satisfaction.
  5. An Empirical Examination of Hookup Definitions Across the Literature, 2000-2019.
  6. Skin Color and Attractiveness Modulate Empathy for Pain: An Event-Related Potential Study.
  7. Sexual selection and the ascent of women: Mate choice research since Darwin.
  8. Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships.
  1. J Sex Res. 2022 Jan 18. 1-12
    Commitment and Extra-Dyadic Sexual Activity in College Students' Friends with Benefits Relationships: Moderating Effects of Gender.
    Rebecca A Thomas, Monica C Yndo, Rebecca Weston.
      Friends with benefits relationships (FWBRs) are a common form of relationship for college students that combine aspects of friendship with sex, yet little is known about commitment in these relationships and whether they are more similar to casual relationships or to romantic relationships. We investigated associations between investment, alternatives, and satisfaction, with commitment (per the Investment Model) in college students' FWBRs and examined how associations between variables differ by participant and partner gender. Primary analyses were conducted with male-female FWBRs (n = 252). Male-male (n = 19) and female-female (n = 4) FWBRs are described. Investment was the strongest predictor of commitment for participants in male-female FWBRs, with commitment higher among women than men when investment was high. Additionally, participants' perceptions that their own and their partners' commitment was asymmetrical, as well as reports of extra-dyadic sexual activity (i.e., sex outside the FWBR) correlated with lower commitment to the FWBR. Overall, results suggest that FWBRs can be distinguished not only from other casual sexual relationships such as hookups but can also be differentiated from romantic relationships. Future research and intervention work should measure commitment and investment to predict how these relationships can persist, as well as transition, over time.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.2022585
  2. PLoS One. 2022 ;17(1): e0262154
    Mate-value and relationship satisfaction: The moderating roles of mate retention behaviors.
    Ali Babaeizad, Reza Fallahchai, Tayebeh Abbasnejad.
      Previous research indicates that mate retention strategies are associated with mate value and affect relationship satisfaction. The current research aimed to replicate previous findings in a non-WEIRD society (Iran) and to extend this research by investigating the moderating roles of individual and coalitional mate retention. Participants (n = 754; 416 women) in a committed, heterosexual relationship from two independent samples reported (1) their relationship satisfaction, (2) their partner's mate value, (3) the frequency of performing individual mate retention, and (4) the frequency of requesting coalitional mate retention. Results indicated that there were positive associations between mate value, individual and coalitional Benefit-Provisioning mate retention behaviors, and relationship satisfaction. We found negative associations between individual and coalitional Cost-Inflicting mate retention behaviors and relationship satisfaction. We found that mate retention moderated the relationship between mate value and relationship satisfaction. Limitations of the current study are noted, and future directions are discussed.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262154
  3. Hum Nat. 2022 Jan 17.
    Why People Keep an Intimate Relationship : Investigating Ultimate and Proximate Reasons.
    Menelaos Apostolou.
      Forming long-term intimate relationships constitutes an important aspect of human nature. Within the context of an evolutionary theoretical framework, the current research has attempted to investigate what motivates people to keep an intimate relationship. Using a combination of qualitative research methods in a sample of 131 Greek-speaking participants, 58 reasons that motivated individuals to keep their intimate relationship were identified. Using quantitative research methods in a sample of 789 Greek-speaking participants who were in an intimate relationship, these reasons were classified in nine broad factors and two broader domains. Having a supporting and compatible partner with whom one shares similar goals, and with whom one has good sex and a strong emotional attachment, were rated among the most important factors motivating participants to keep their relationship. Moreover, as indicated by the domain means, participants were more strongly motivated to keep their intimate relationship if their partners had desirable attributes, such as providing them with support, and less so by their own attributes, such as fear of loneliness. Significant effects of sex, age, marital status, presence of children, and years in a relationship were found for several factors.
    Keywords:  Intimate relationships; Mating; Relationship motivation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09421-9
  4. J Sex Res. 2022 Jan 18. 1-10
    Sexual Communal Strength Partially Mediates the Associations between Mate Retention Behaviors and Relationship Satisfaction.
    Gavin Vance, Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Madeleine M Meehan, Gracynn Young, Todd K Shackelford.
      Mate retention behaviors are associated with several aspects of romantic relationships, but different categories of mate retention behaviors have divergent associations with relationship satisfaction. The present studies examined whether sexual communal strength - which refers to the motivation to meet the sexual needs of one's partner - mediated the associations that benefit-provisioning and cost-inflicting mate retention behaviors had with relationship satisfaction. We investigated the associations that mate retention behaviors had with relationship satisfaction through sexual communal strength using men's self-reports (Study 1) and women's partner-reports (Study 2). We found that sexual communal strength partially mediated the associations that mate retention behaviors had with relationship satisfaction in both studies. Benefit-provisioning mate retention behaviors had a positive indirect association with relationship satisfaction through sexual communal strength in both studies, whereas cost-inflicting mate retention behaviors had a negative indirect association with relationship satisfaction through sexual communal strength in Study 1 but not in Study 2. We explore the reasons why sexual communal strength may play an important role in the connections that mate retention behaviors have with relationship satisfaction.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.2023856
  5. Arch Sex Behav. 2022 Jan 17.
    An Empirical Examination of Hookup Definitions Across the Literature, 2000-2019.
    Jacqueline Bible, Kristin Matera, Brad van Eeden-Moorefield.
      There has been a longstanding debate about what constitutes hooking up. To date, little research has analyzed how hookups are being defined such that the field can foster consistency across definitions. To inform this debate, we conducted a content analysis of 122 empirical articles across disciplines (e.g., human sexuality, public health) from 2000 to 2019 by systematically coding conceptual definitions of hooking up contained in the articles using five commonly discussed dimensions of hooking up (behaviors, nature of partner relationship, span of hookup interaction, frequency of hookup behavior, and level of romantic commitment expectation). Unspecified sexual intercourse (52.5%) was the most frequently identified behavior in definitions. The majority of hookup definitions did not mention the nature of partner relationship (e.g., acquaintance, friend), the duration of the hookup interaction, or the frequency of hookup behavior. Additionally, most conceptual definitions (82.0%) mentioned that the relationship was uncommitted, but only half discussed the level of romantic commitment expectations. Overall, most conceptual definitions relied on behaviors rather than all five dimensions, resulting in broad and non-descript definitions of hookups. We suggest that future hookup definitions explicitly reference behaviors, nature of partner relationship, span of hookup interaction, frequency of hookup behavior, and level of romantic commitment expectation to provide clarity, comparability, and validity across future research.
    Keywords:  Casual sex; Content analysis; Friends with benefits; Hookup
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02115-4
  6. Front Psychol. 2021 ;12 780633
    Skin Color and Attractiveness Modulate Empathy for Pain: An Event-Related Potential Study.
    Di Yang, Xiong Li, Yinya Zhang, Zuoshan Li, Jing Meng.
      Although racial in-group bias in empathy for pain has been reported, empathic responses to others' pain may be influenced by other characteristics besides race. To explore whether skin color and attractiveness modulate empathy for pain, we recorded 24 participants' reactions to painful faces from racial in-group members with different skin color (fair, wheatish, or dark) and attractiveness (more or less attractive) using event-related potentials (ERPs). Results showed that, for more attractive painful faces, dark skin faces were judged as less painful and elicited smaller N2 amplitudes than fair- and wheatish-skinned faces. However, for less attractive faces, there were no significant differences among the three skin colors. Our findings suggest that empathy for pain toward racial in-group members may be influenced by skin color and attractiveness.
    Keywords:  attractiveness; empathy; event-related potentials; pain; skin color
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.780633
  7. Science. 2022 Jan 21. 375(6578): eabi6308
    Sexual selection and the ascent of women: Mate choice research since Darwin.
    Gil G Rosenthal, Michael J Ryan.
      Darwin's theory of sexual selection fundamentally changed how we think about sex and evolution. The struggle over mating and fertilization is a powerful driver of diversification within and among species. Contemporaries dismissed Darwin's conjecture of a "taste for the beautiful" as favoring particular mates over others, but there is now overwhelming evidence for a primary role of both male and female mate choice in sexual selection. Darwin's misogyny precluded much analysis of the "taste"; an increasing focus on mate choice mechanisms before, during, and after mating reveals that these often evolve in response to selection pressures that have little to do with sexual selection on chosen traits. Where traits and preferences do coevolve, they can do so whether fitness effects on choosers are positive, neutral, or negative. The spectrum of selection on traits and preferences, and how traits and preferences respond to social effects, determine how sexual selection and mate choice influence broader-scale processes like reproductive isolation and population responses to environmental change.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi6308
  8. Science. 2022 Jan 21. 375(6578): 311-315
    Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships.
    Ashley J Thomas, Brandon Woo, Daniel Nettle, Elizabeth Spelke, Rebecca Saxe.
      Across human societies, people form "thick" relationships characterized by strong attachments, obligations, and mutual responsiveness. People in thick relationships share food utensils, kiss, or engage in other distinctive interactions that involve sharing saliva. We found that children, toddlers, and infants infer that dyads who share saliva (as opposed to other positive social interactions) have a distinct relationship. Children expect saliva sharing to happen in nuclear families. Toddlers and infants expect that people who share saliva will respond to one another in distress. Parents confirm that saliva sharing is a valid cue of relationship thickness in their children's social environments. The ability to use distinctive interactions to infer categories of relationships thus emerges early in life, without explicit teaching; this enables young humans to rapidly identify close relationships, both within and beyond families.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh1054
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