Female mate copying explored: an inconsistent effect
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Female mate copying explored: an inconsistent effect Linda Taimre 1
&
Ryan C. Anderson 1
&
Olivia Paisley 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Mate copying is a social phenomenon whereby individuals differentially evaluate opposite-sex others based on their relationship history. Here we report two studies that aimed to look at mate copying in closer detail. In Study 1, women (N = 121) saw vignettes of men and women and made romantic evaluations of the pictured men. It was found that when women are evaluating prospective male romantic partners, they are aware of how much they consider the man’s relationship history, suggesting an awareness of mate copying. Study 2 used a similar methodology and found that women (N = 736) do not gain any additional information about a man’s specific traits from seeing him pictured alongside another woman, although the age of the evaluator does significantly affect how they perceive the man. The findings contribute to our understanding of mate copying as a nuanced phenomenon. Keywords Mate copying . Mate selection . Observable traits . Unobservable traits . Awareness . Nonindependent mate choice
Choosing a romantic partner is an important life decision and making a poor choice may be costly. Many factors influence whether a mate is perceived as desirable (Dunn & Doria, 2010; Ryan, 1997). Mate copying (MC) is the phenomenon whereby individuals are considered to be more attractive to others if they have already been chosen as a mate by another individual (Pruett-Jones, 1992). This is a type of nonindependent mate choice where an individual (typically a woman) is influenced by the mate choices of same-sex others (Waynforth, 2007). When a woman is perceived to be romantically associated with a man, she is implicitly providing positive information to other women about the quality of that man, and thereby increasing the likelihood that he will be chosen as a mate by other women (Eva & Wood, 2006). The information provided is thought to be about the potential mate’s unobservable traits (Kavaliers, Matta, & Choleris, 2017). While desirable, observable traits (e.g., being physically attractive) are easy to discern by simply observing the target mate, desirable, unobservable traits (e.g., intelligence) involve a potentially costly investment of time/energy to find out if the target possesses them (Little et al., 2008). In this way, MC means that those searching for a mate can minimise such
* Ryan C. Anderson [email protected] 1
School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, & Health Sciences, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
costly investments by targeting mates that have already been ‘pre-screened’ by another female (Pruett-Jones, 1992). Research into MC has been firmly established over the past 20 years across various nonhuman species, with reports of it occurring in species such as the black grouse (Höglund, Alatalo, Gibson, & Lundberg, 1995), fruit fly (Mery et al., 2009), gupp
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