bims-chumac Biomed News
on Context effects on human mate choice
Issue of 2022–01–30
twelve papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. Moderators of Sexual Interest in Opposite-sex Friends.
  2. Unattractive faces are more attractive when the bottom-half is masked, an effect that reverses when the top-half is concealed.
  3. "May I present you: my disgust!" - Declared disgust sensitivity in the presence of attractive models.
  4. Adolescents' Partner Search in the Digital Age: Correlates and Characteristics of Relationships Initiated Online.
  5. Hong Kong Women Project a Larger Body When Speaking to Attractive Men.
  6. Commitment, pro-relationship behaviors, and marital quality among Arab married couples in Israel.
  7. Longitudinal Associations Between Primary and Secondary Psychopathic Traits, Delinquency, and Current Dating Status in Adolescence.
  8. Adult Romantic Attachment, Electronic Messaging, and Relationship Quality.
  9. What Motives Do People Most Want to Know About When Meeting Another Person? An Investigation Into Prioritization of Information About Seven Fundamental Motives.
  10. The Effectiveness of Mating Induction on Men's Financial Risk-Taking: Relationship Experience Matters.
  11. Electrophysiological Correlates of Shyness Affected by Facial Attractiveness.
  12. Lover, Mentor, or Exploiter: Retrospective Perspectives of the Older Person Following Sexual Relationships with Adults During Adolescence.
  1. Evol Psychol. 2022 Jan-Mar;20(1):20(1): 14747049211068672
    Moderators of Sexual Interest in Opposite-sex Friends.
    Aleksandra Szymkow, Natalia Frankowska.
      The fact that men and women experience sexual attraction toward their opposite-sex friends has been evidenced in various studies. It has also been shown that there is a close parallel between preferences for opposite-sex friends and mate preferences, i.e., that men prioritize physical attractiveness of their OSFs, while women prioritize their male friends' ability to provide protection and economic resources. Although this mating activation hypothesis has been validated to an extent, there is hardly any research that points to moderating factors which would define the boundary conditions for these effects. We present two studies that involved heterosexual participants who were in a committed relationship and at the same time had a heterosexual opposite-sex friend. We investigated how both the qualities of one's current partner and the qualities of one's opposite-sex friend shape sexual interest in opposite-sex friends for men and women. Results mostly support the mating activation hypothesis. We show that within actual cross-sex friendships: 1) physical attractiveness of opposite-sex friends predicts sexual interest toward them, and this effect is stronger for men than women, 2) current partner's attractiveness, provided support, and relationship satisfaction moderate this effect only for women, and not men, 3) perceived financial resources of opposite-sex friends predict sexual interest toward them for highly sexually unrestricted women, and, surprisingly, for those who are in committed relationships with high-income men. The results reaffirm previous evidence indicating that perceptions of opposite-sex friends can be viewed as a manifestation of evolved human mating strategies.
    Keywords:  back-up mates; evolutionary psychology; mate-switching; opposite-sex friends; sexual interest
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/14747049211068672
  2. Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2022 01 24. 7(1): 6
    Unattractive faces are more attractive when the bottom-half is masked, an effect that reverses when the top-half is concealed.
    Farid Pazhoohi, Alan Kingstone.
      Facial attractiveness in humans signals an individual's genetic condition, underlying physiology and health status, serving as a cue to one's mate value. The practice of wearing face masks for prevention of transmission of airborne infections may disrupt one's ability to evaluate facial attractiveness, and with it, cues to an individual's health and genetic condition. The current research investigated the effect of face masks on the perception of face attractiveness. Across four studies, we tested if below- and above-average attractive full faces are equally affected by wearing facial masks. The results reveal that for young faces (Study 1) and old faces (Study 2) a facial mask increases the perceived attractiveness of relatively unattractive faces, but there is no effect of wearing a face mask for highly attractive faces. Study 3 shows that the same pattern of ratings emerged when the bottom-half of the faces are cropped rather than masked, indicating that the effect is not mask-specific. Our final Study 4, in which information from only the lower half of the faces was made available, showed that contrary to our previous findings, highly attractive half-faces are perceived to be less attractive than their full-face counterpart; but there is no such effect for the less attractive faces. This demonstrates the importance of the eye-region in the perception of attractiveness, especially for highly attractive faces. Collectively these findings suggest that a positivity-bias enhances the perception of unattractive faces when only the upper face is visible, a finding that may not extend to attractive faces because of the perceptual weight placed on their eye-region.
    Keywords:  Age; Face mask; Facial attractiveness; Full and half human faces; Positivity bias; Upper- and lower-face
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00359-9
  3. Br J Psychol. 2022 Jan 24.
    "May I present you: my disgust!" - Declared disgust sensitivity in the presence of attractive models.
    Michal Mikolaj Stefanczyk, Katarzyna Lizak, Marta Kowal, Agnieszka Sorokowska.
      Disgust sensitivity differs among men and women, and this phenomenon has been observed across numerous cultures. It remains unknown why such sex differences occur, but one of the reasons may relate to differences in self-presentation. We tested that hypothesis in an experiment comprising 299 participants (49% women) randomly allocated into three groups. Each group completed the Three Domains Disgust Scale (TDDS) and rated how disgusting they found olfactory, visual, gustatory, and tactile disgust elicitors either when a male experimenter was present, a female experimenter was present, or no experimenter was present. We hypothesised that male participants in the female experimenter group would declare decreased levels of disgust sensitivity, and female participants in the male experimenter group would declare increased levels of disgust sensitivity. Results showed that despite sex differences in pathogen and sexual disgust, attractive experimenters did not evoke any differences in declared disgust across groups with one exception-both men and women self-presented as more sensitive to sexual disgust in the presence of the female experimenter. We discuss our findings in the light of evolutionary and social theories.
    Keywords:  disgust; disgust sensitivity; evolutionary psychology; self-presentation; sex differences
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12556
  4. J Youth Adolesc. 2022 Jan 23.
    Adolescents' Partner Search in the Digital Age: Correlates and Characteristics of Relationships Initiated Online.
    Marta Tienda, Rachel E Goldberg, Jay R Westreich.
      Digital technology and social media platforms have transformed the ways adolescents communicate and cultivate romantic relationships, but few studies consider whether relationships initiated online are less salutary than those formed in person. A sample of 531 adolescents (Mean age = 16.7 years, SD = 0.358; 55% female) was recruited from an ongoing birth cohort study and administered bi-weekly diaries over a year to evaluate the circumstances associated with adolescents' romantic relationship formation and relationship quality. Two-thirds of respondents initiated one or more romantic relationships during the study, of which 15% were initiated online. Girls who did not fit in well at school and who had difficulty making friends were more likely to initiate romantic relationships online than their more sociable peers who fit in well at school; for boys, however, access to mobile devices increased the odds that romantic relationships were initiated online. The diaries captured considerable flux in the evolution of romantic relationships, but there was limited evidence that relationships initiated online involved greater risks, with the notable exception of greater age asymmetry.
    Keywords:  Adolescent romantic relationships; Diary study; Gender differences; Online partner search; Relationship quality
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01557-2
  5. Front Psychol. 2021 ;12 786507
    Hong Kong Women Project a Larger Body When Speaking to Attractive Men.
    Albert Lee, Eva Ng.
      In this pilot study we investigated the vocal strategies of Cantonese women when addressing an attractive vs. unattractive male. We recruited 19 young female native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese who completed an attractiveness rating task, followed by a speech production task where they were presented a subset of the same faces. By comparing the rating results and corresponding acoustic data of the facial stimuli, we found that when young Cantonese women spoke to an attractive male, they were less breathy, lower in fundamental frequency, and with denser formants, all of which are considered to project a larger body. Participants who were more satisfied with their own height used these vocal strategies more actively. These results are discussed in terms of the body size projection principle.
    Keywords:  Cantonese; body size projection; sexual selection; sociophonetics; vocal attractiveness
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.786507
  6. J Fam Psychol. 2022 Jan 27.
    Commitment, pro-relationship behaviors, and marital quality among Arab married couples in Israel.
    Niveen Hassan-Abbas, Tammie Ronen.
      While most of the work on factors influencing marital quality focuses on conflict reduction, research shows that positive interactions are also significant. Still, few studies have examined the effects of couple behavior in negative and positive contexts in a single theoretical model. Here, we tested whether pro-relationship behaviors in negative and positive contexts, namely accommodation and capitalization-support, respectively, mediate the positive association between commitment and marital quality. We investigated each partner separately before addressing reciprocal relationships between partners. Given our sample of Arab couples in Israel, we further asked whether reciprocity patterns reflect patriarchal values. A total of 156 couples completed self-report questionnaires. Our novel Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediation Model was supported among wives and partially among husbands. We found reciprocity in the associations between capitalization-support and marital quality but not between accommodation and marital quality. For wives, marital quality was more closely related to their own accommodation than to their husbands'. For husbands, marital quality was mainly related to their wives' accommodation, supporting presumably culture-based gender differences. The results with respect to conflict appeared indicative of traditional Arab family values that give wives responsibility for family well-being, reflecting asymmetrical relationships based on unequal status or power. With respect to mutual joy under positive conditions, results were more indicative of reciprocity in modern Western cultures. This finding might reflect gradual changes and modernization in Israel's Arabic society, despite maintenance of a predominantly traditional culture. The study highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity in addressing marital behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000941
  7. Evol Psychol. 2022 Jan-Mar;20(1):20(1): 14747049211068670
    Longitudinal Associations Between Primary and Secondary Psychopathic Traits, Delinquency, and Current Dating Status in Adolescence.
    Adam C Davis, Heather Brittain, Steven Arnocky, Tracy Vaillancourt.
      Many have examined the desirability and mate competition tactics of adults higher on psychopathy using cross-sectional data, but few have studied the longitudinal associations between the lower-order factors of psychopathy (e.g., primary and secondary psychopathy) with indices of mating behavior in adolescents. More work is also needed to unravel how psychopathic youth outcompete rivals for mates. Delinquency has long been associated with dating and sexual behavior in adolescents, which may help to explain the competitive success of youth higher in psychopathic traits in vying for mates. We used cross-lagged panel modeling with three waves of data from a randomly drawn sample of 514 Canadian adolescents who provided annual self-reports of primary and secondary psychopathy, delinquency, and dating involvement from Grades 10 to 12 (15-18 years of age). Constructs were temporally stable. Secondary psychopathy and delinquency had positive within-time correlations with current dating status in Grade 10. A cross-lagged pathway from delinquency to dating involvement was supported from Grade 10 to 11, which replicated from Grade 11 to 12. However, this effect was specific to boys and not girls. An indirect effect also emerged whereby secondary psychopathy in Grade 10 increased the likelihood of being in a dating relationship in Grade 12 via heightened delinquency in Grade 11.
    Keywords:  adolescence; cross-lagged panel modeling; dating; delinquency; longitudinal; primary psychopathy; secondary psychopathy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/14747049211068670
  8. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2022 Jan 26.
    Adult Romantic Attachment, Electronic Messaging, and Relationship Quality.
    Prit Y Patel, Elizabeth A Mahar, Gregory D Webster.
      The present study examined associations among adult romantic attachment, relationship quality, and electronic messaging frequency/preferences in 302 romantically partnered undergraduates. Anxious people desired more frequent messages than they received, whereas avoidant people desired less frequent messages than they received. Anxious people received fewer messages from their partners, whereas avoidant people sent fewer messages to their partners. Additionally, anxious people took less time to respond to their partner than their partners took to respond to them, whereas avoidant people took more time to respond to their partner than their partners did to respond to them. Finally, the relation between message frequency satisfaction and relationship quality was stronger for more anxious people. These results suggest that individual differences in attachment dimensions related to differences in romantic messaging behavior in theoretically consistent ways.
    Keywords:  anxious attachment; attachment; avoidant attachment; messaging; romantic relationships; texting
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2021.0060
  9. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2022 Jan 26. 1461672211069468
    What Motives Do People Most Want to Know About When Meeting Another Person? An Investigation Into Prioritization of Information About Seven Fundamental Motives.
    Matthew I Billet, Hugh C McCall, Mark Schaller.
      What information about a person's personality do people want to know? Prior research has focused on behavioral traits, but personality is also characterized in terms of motives. Four studies (N = 1,502) assessed participants' interest in information about seven fundamental social motives (self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate seeking, mate retention, kin care) across 12 experimental conditions that presented details about the person or situation. In the absence of details about specific situations, participants most highly prioritized learning about kin care and mate retention motives. There was some variability across conditions, but the kin care motive was consistently highly prioritized. Additional results from Studies 1 to 4 and Study 5 (N = 174) showed the most highly prioritized motives were perceived to be stable across time and to be especially diagnostic of a person's trustworthiness, warmth, competence, and dependability. Findings are discussed in relation to research on fundamental social motives and pragmatic perspectives on person perception.
    Keywords:  fundamental social motives; motivation; person perception; social cognition
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211069468
  10. Front Psychol. 2021 ;12 787686
    The Effectiveness of Mating Induction on Men's Financial Risk-Taking: Relationship Experience Matters.
    Tingting Liu, Zhuanzhuan Wang, Anrun Zhu, Xi Zhang, Cai Xing.
      Substantial evidence from experimental studies has shown that mating motivation increases men's financial risk-taking behaviors. The present study proposed a new moderator, men's past relationship experience, for this well-accepted link between mating motivation and financial risk-taking tendency. Heterosexual young men were randomly assigned to the mating condition and control condition, and they completed a set of financial risk-taking tasks and reported their past relationship experience. A significant main effect of mating motivation and a significant interaction effect between experimental conditions (mating group and control group) and relationship experience emerged, suggesting that mating motivation increased financial risk-taking tendency only among men who have never been committed in a romantic relationship, rather than those who have had such experience. This moderating effect was replicated in two experiments. The present study contributed to the understanding of individual differences in the relationship between mating motivation and male financial risk-taking. The present findings also have important implications for financial industry and gambling companies to better target clients and advertise their high-risk products.
    Keywords:  evolutionary psychology; mating induction; mating motivation; relationship experience; risk-taking
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.787686
  11. Front Psychol. 2021 ;12 739585
    Electrophysiological Correlates of Shyness Affected by Facial Attractiveness.
    Xiaofan Xu, Bingbing Li, Ping Liu, Dan Li.
      Previous neurological studies of shyness have focused on the hemispheric asymmetry of alpha spectral power. To the best of our knowledge, few studies have focused on the interaction between different frequencies bands in the brain of shyness. Additionally, shy individuals are even shyer when confronted with a group of people they consider superior to them. This study aimed to reveal the neural basis of shy individuals using the delta-beta correlation. Further, it aimed to investigate the effect of evaluators' facial attractiveness on the delta-beta correlation of shyness during the speech anticipation phase. We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) activity of 94 participants during rest and anticipation of the public speaking phase. Moreover, during the speech anticipation phase, participants were presented with high or low facial attractiveness. The results showed that, as predicted, the delta-beta correlation in the frontal region was more robust for high shyness than for low shyness during the speech anticipation phase. However, no significant differences were observed in the delta-beta correlation during the baseline phase. Further exploration found that the delta-beta correlation was more robust for high facial attractiveness than low facial attractiveness in the high shyness group. However, no significant difference was found in the low-shyness group. This study suggests that a stronger delta-beta correlation might be the neural basis for shy individuals. Moreover, high facial attractiveness might enhance the delta-beta correlation of high shyness in anticipation of public speaking.
    Keywords:  EEG; delta-beta correlation; facial attractiveness; public speaking; shyness
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.739585
  12. Arch Sex Behav. 2022 Jan 24.
    Lover, Mentor, or Exploiter: Retrospective Perspectives of the Older Person Following Sexual Relationships with Adults During Adolescence.
    Dana Lassri, Ortal Wasser, Dafna Tener.
      Sexual relationships between an adolescent and an older person are considered controversial and in many countries are conceptualized under the legal definition of statutory relationship/rape. Despite the consensus regarding their potential negative implications, little is known about how adolescents perceive and construct them. To address this lacuna, the current exploratory study examined how individuals who have experienced sexual relationships with an adult while growing up perceived the older person and the meaning they ascribed to the age gap (M age gap, 7.78 years; range, 2-18 years). A qualitative thematic methodology was incorporated in analyzing in-depth semi-structured interviews with 28 individuals (M age, 29.89 years) who had experienced sexual relationships with an (at least 2 years) older person during adolescence (M age, 14.78 years). Participants described five different perceptions of the older persons: romantic partner; sexual partner; authority figure; complex/unstable figure; and exploiter. Subsequent analysis, focusing on the role participants assigned to age when describing these different images of older persons, shed additional light on their subjective perceptions; namely, for each image, age had a particular meaning. This paper may contribute to the understanding of individuals' experiences of sexual relationships with an older person by emphasizing the complexity of such relationships, as reflected in the participants' construction of the older person's image, potentially providing important information that can inform best practice for professionals working with this population. Findings highlight the need to address diversity and ambiguity rather than the uniform dichotomy that characterizes the legal framing of automatically constructing these relationships as statutory. Further implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.
    Keywords:  Adolescent-adult sexual relationships; Offender image; Sexual relationships; Statutory relationships; Thematic analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02233-z
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