Abstract
Evolutionary approaches to human mating strategies have associated facial and physical attractiveness with cues of health, fertility, and personality traits both in men and women. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that these associations may be mediated by psychological flexibility (an indicator of mental health) and/or sociosexual orientation (an indicator of mating strategy). Study aims were: (1) to examine potential correlations between self-perceived attractiveness, self-reported health, minor ailments, mating effort, sociosexual orientation, and psychological flexibility, (2) to test whether psychological flexibility and sociosexual orientation mediate these associations, and (3) to explore potential directional relationships between the study variables. A mixed-sex sample of 211 young adults completed an online battery of questionnaires that gathered demographic, personality, and behavioral data. We found low-to-moderate positive partial correlations (controlling for age, sex, and BMI) between self-perceived attractiveness, self-reported health, mating effort, sociosexual orientation, and psychological flexibility. In contrast, minor ailments were negatively correlated with self-reported health and psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility and sociosexual orientation independently and partially mediated the association between self-perceived attractiveness and mating effort. Potential causal effects between all the study variables were also discussed. This study contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary aspects of human attractiveness and mating strategies. Further studies are needed to test causality and covariation between these variables to disentangle their potential bidirectional impact on mental health and psychological wellbeing.
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Acknowledgements
We want to acknowledge Dr. Dario Maestripieri for thoughtful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this manuscript. We are thankful to all volunteers who participated in this research. Javier I. Borráz-León deeply acknowledges the support from the Programa de Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas, UNAM. Finally, we acknowledge the contributions of two anonymous referees for improving the presentation of the manuscript.
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Javier I. Borráz-León was supported by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) through a 2020 postdoctoral fellowship grant. Indrikis A. Krams was supported by grants by the Latvian Council of Science (Izp-2018/1-0393; Izp-2018/2–0057; Izp-2020/2-0271) and the Estonian Research Council (PUT1223).
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Javier I. Borráz-León: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft. Indrikis A. Krams: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Original Draft. Ana Lilia Cerda-Molina: Methodology, Investigation, Writing – Review & Editing. Markus J. Rantala: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Writing – Review & Editing.
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Borráz-León, J.I., Krams, I.A., Cerda-Molina, A.L. et al. Psychological flexibility and sociosexual orientation mediate the association between self-perceived attractiveness and mating effort. Curr Psychol 42, 31998–32007 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04155-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04155-y