Abstract
Mate-choice copying is a mating strategy wherein women 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 study successfully replicated these findings with 73 and 44 heterosexual men and women, respectively. Heterosexual men exhibited the desirability diminution effect, and heterosexual women exhibited the desirability enhancement effect. The current study also extended these findings to include 73 gay men and 32 lesbian women. Findings for gay and lesbian participants were inverted compared to heterosexual participants. Gay men exhibited the desirability enhancement effect, and lesbian women exhibited the desirability diminution effect, revealing sex differences in mate-choice copying spanning different sexual orientations.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Notes
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
There was reasonable variation of the random intercept at the participant level, SD = 0.95 (e.g., SDs closer to zero might suggest dropping that random factor), and best linear unbiased predictions for intercepts by participant can be found online (https://osf.io/c7exj).
Additionally, the online supplementary materials show models including a second covariate. Participants were asked to rate the amount of sexual attraction between people in stimulus photographs, and overall conclusions did not change. Different types of analyses are also presented (repeated measures ANCOVA and Bayes factors) online and show that conclusions generally stay the same regardless of the type of analysis used.
Variation of the random intercept at the participant level was reasonable (SD = 0.94), and best linear unbiased predictions for intercepts by participant can be found online.
References
Andersson, M. B. (1994). Sexual selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bailey, J. M., Gaulin, S., Agyei, Y., & Gladue, B. A. (1994). Effects of gender and sexual orientation on evolutionarily relevant aspects of human mating psychology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,66(6), 1081–1093. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.66.6.1081.
Bailey, J. M., Kim, P. Y., Hills, A., & Linsenmeier, J. A. (1997). Butch, femme, or straight acting? Partner preferences of gay men and lesbians. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,73(5), 960–973. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.5.960.
Bailey, J. M., & Zucker, K. J. (1995). Childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation: A conceptual analysis and quantitative review. Developmental Psychology,31(1), 43–55. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.31.1.43.
Bowers, R. I., Place, S. S., Todd, P. M., Penke, L., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2011). Generalization in mate-choice copying in humans. Behavioral Ecology,23(1), 112–124. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arr164.
Bressan, P., & Stranieri, D. (2008). The best men are (not always) already taken: Female preferences for single versus attached males depends on conception risk. Psychological Science,19(2), 145–151. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02060.x.
Briggs, S. E., Godin, J.-G. J., & Dugatkin, L. A. (1996). Mate-choice copying under predation risk in the Trinigad guppy (Poecilia reticulate). Behavioral Ecology,7(2), 151–157. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/7.2.151.
Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science,6(1), 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393980.
Buss, D. M. (2015). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind. New York, NY: Routledge.
Buss, D. M., Larsen, R. J., Westen, D., & Semmelroth, J. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science,3(4), 251–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00038.x.
Deng, Y., & Zheng, Y. (2015). Mate-choice copying in single and coupled women: The influence of mate acceptance and mate rejection decisions of other women. Evolutionary Psychology,13(1), 89–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470481501300106.
Dugatkin, L. A. (1996). Copying and mate choice. In B. G. Galef (Ed.), Social learning in animals: The roots of culture (pp. 85–105). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Dugatkin, L. A. (2000). The imitation factor: Evolution beyond the gene. New York, NY: Free Press.
Dugatkin, L. A., & Godin, J.-G. J. (1993). Female mate copying in the guppy (Poecilia reticulate): Age-dependent effects. Behavioral Ecology,4(4), 289–292. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/4.4.289.
Eva, K. W., & Wood, T. J. (2006). Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans. Canadian Medical Association Journal,175(12), 1573–1574. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.061367.
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods,39(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03193146.
Field, A., Miles, J., & Field, Z. (2012). Discovering statistics using R. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Galef, B. G., Lim, T. C., & Gilbert, G. S. (2008). Evidence of mate choice copying in Norway rats, Rattus norvegicus. Animal Behaviour,75(3), 1117–1123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.08.026.
Galef, B. G., & White, D. J. (2000). Evidence of social effects on mate choice in vertebrates. Behavioural Processes,51(1–3), 167–175. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0376-6357(00)00126-1.
Hill, S. E., & Buss, D. M. (2008). The mere presence of opposite-sex others on judgments of sexual and romantic desirability: Opposite effects for men and women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,34(5), 635–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207313728.
Hill, S. E., & Ryan, M. J. (2006). The role of model female quality in the mate choice copying behaviour of sailfin mollies. Biology Letters,2(2), 203–205. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0423.
Jankowiak, W. R., Hill, E. M., & Donovan, J. M. (1992). The effects of sex and sexual orientation on attractiveness judgments: An evolutionary interpretation. Ethology and Sociobiology,13(2), 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/062-3095(92)90019-z.
Kenrick, D. T., Keefe, R. C., Bryan, A., Barr, A., & Brown, S. (1995). Age preferences and mate choice among homosexuals and heterosexuals: A case for modular psychological mechanisms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,69(6), 1166–1172. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.6.1166.
Mery, F., Varela, S. A. M., Danchin, E., Blanchet, S., Parejo, D., Coolen, I., & Wagner, R. H. (2009). Public versus personal information for mate copying in an invertebrate. Current Biology,19(9), 730–734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.02.064.
Miller, G. A., & Chapman, J. P. (2001). Misunderstanding analysis of covariance. Journal of Abnormal Psychology,110(1), 40–48. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.110.1.40.
Milonoff, M., Nummi, P., Nummi, O., & Pienmunne, E. (2007). Male friends, not female company, make a man more attractive. Annales Zoologici Fennici,44(5), 348–354.
Nakagawa, S., & Schielzeth, H. (2012). A general and simple method for obtaining R2 from generalized linear mixed-effects models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution,4(2), 133–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-210x.2012.00261.x.
Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science,349(6251), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716.
Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. G. (2010). Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgment and Decision Making,5(5), 411–419.
Parker, J., & Burkley, M. (2009). Who’s chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on mate poaching. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,45(4), 1016–1019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.022.
Pinheiro, J., Bates, D., DebRoy, S., & Sarkar, D. (2014). R Core Team (2014) nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. R package version 3.1-117. Available at http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=nlme.
Place, S. S., Todd, P. M., Penke, L., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2010). Humans show mate copying after observing real mate choices. Evolution and Human Behavior,31(5), 320–325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.02.001.
R Core Team. (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Regan, P. C., Medina, R., & Joshi, A. (2001). Partner preferences among homosexual men and women: What is desirable in a sex partner is not necessarily desirable in a romantic partner. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal,29(7), 625–633. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2001.29.7.625.
Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: Harper Collins.
Shapiro, D. N., Chandler, J., & Mueller, P. A. (2013). Using Mechanical Turk to study clinical populations. Clinical Psychological Science,1(2), 213–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702612469015.
Sigall, H., & Landy, D. (1973). Radiating beauty: Effects of having a physically attractive partner on person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,28(2), 218–224. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0035740.
Swaddle, J. P., Cathey, M. G., Correll, M., & Hodkinson, B. P. (2005). Socially transmitted mate preferences in a monogamous bird: A non-genetic mechanism of sexual selection. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,272(1567), 1053–1058. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3054.
Uller, T., & Johansson, L. C. (2003). Human mate choice and the wedding ring effect. Human Nature,14(3), 267–276. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1006-0.
Vakirtzis, A., & Roberts, S. C. (2009). Mate choice copying and mate quality bias: Different processes, different species. Behavioral Ecology,20(4), 908–911. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arp073.
Vakirtzis, A., & Roberts, S. C. (2012). Human nonindependent mate choice: Is model female attractiveness everything? Evolutionary Psychology,10(2), 225–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491201000205.
Valentova, J. V., Stulp, G., Třebický, V., & Havlíček, J. (2014). Preferred and actual relative height among homosexual male partners vary with preferred dominance and sex role. PLoS ONE,9(1), e86534. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0086534.
Wade, M. J., & Pruett-Jones, S. G. (1990). Female copying increases the variance in male mating success. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,87(15), 5749–5753. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.87.15.5749.
Waynforth, D. (2007). Mate choice copying in humans. Human Nature,18(3), 264–271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-007-9004-2.
Westneat, D. F., Walters, A., McCarthy, T. M., Hatch, M. I., & Hein, W. K. (2000). Alternative mechanisms of nonindependent mate choice. Animal Behaviour,59(3), 467–476. https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1999.1341.
White, D. J., & Galef, B. G. (1998). Social influence on avoidance of dangerous stimuli by rats. Animal Learning & Behavior,26(4), 433–438. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199236.
Yorzinski, J. L., & Platt, M. L. (2010). Same-sex gaze attraction influences mate-choice copying in humans. PLoS ONE,5(2), e9115. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009115.
Acknowledgements
This project was in partial fulfillment of the thesis requirements for a Master of Science in Experimental Psychology at Missouri State University. Funding for this project was provided by the Graduate College at Missouri State University. We would like to thank Sarah E. Hill for sharing experimental materials.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. This study was approved by Missouri State University’s Institutional Review Board.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, and all data upon analysis were completely anonymous.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Characteristics Pertaining to Desirability as a Romantic Partner.
All questions were on 10-point rating scales. Ratings range from 1 (not at all attractive, desirable, likely) to 10 (very attractive, desirable, likely).
-
1.
How attractive do you find this person?
-
2.
How desirable is this person to you as a prospective sexual partner?
-
3.
How desirable is this person to you as a prospective long-term romantic partner (i.e., a committed romantic partner)?
-
4.
If this person were to ask you on a date, what is the likelihood that you would say yes?
-
5.
In general, how desirable do you find this person?
-
6.
Rate the amount of sexual attraction between people in this scene overall.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Scofield, J.E., Kostic, B. & Buchanan, E.M. How the Presence of Others Affects Desirability Judgments in Heterosexual and Homosexual Participants. Arch Sex Behav 49, 623–633 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01516-w
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01516-w
Keywords
- Desirability judgments
- Mate-choice copying
- Sexual orientation