Browsing by Subject "Sexual attraction"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Sexual attraction to exploitability(2014-05) Goetz, Cari Debora; Buss, David M.This research explores the relationship between sexual exploitability and sexual attractiveness. Sexual exploitability describes the ease with which a woman could be pressured, deceived, or coerced into sex, or sexually assaulted. Study 1 documented novel cues to sexual exploitability. Moreover, men found women displaying these cues to be attractive as short-term mates, supporting the hypothesis that men’s attraction functions to motivate the pursuit of sexually accessible women. In Study 2, it was determined that women also perceived other women who displayed cues to exploitability as sexually attractive to men. Because displaying exploitability enhances a woman’s sexual attractiveness, women may have co-evolved mate attraction mechanisms designed to capitalize on this feature of male sexual psychology. In Study 3, it was hypothesized that three individual differences would predict which women would be more likely to signal exploitability as a mate attraction tactic: propensity towards short-term mating, relationship status, and self-perceived mate value. Women self-reported their likelihood of using mate attraction tactics involving the intentional display of exploitability cues. Women inclined toward casual sex were more likely to report using such tactics. In Study 4, a separate set of female participants made a hypothetical video dating profile to provide a record of their actual behavior in a mate attraction scenario. Women inclined toward short-term mating and high in the personality characteristic of Openness to Experience were more likely than their female counterparts to display exploitability cues in their videos. These convergent results across studies support the hypothesis that women pursuing short-term mating capitalize on the relationship between exploitability and attractiveness to achieve their mating goals. Results from these studies expand our knowledge of sexual exploitability and mate attraction. Documentation of a comprehensive list of cues to exploitability expands our knowledge of potential predictors of sexual victimization. Identification of individual differences that predict which women may functionally display exploitability cues increases our understanding of which women may be at greater risk for sexual exploitation.Item Sexual misperception : individual differences and context effects(2011-05) Perilloux, Carin Jeanne; Buss, David M.; Gosling, Samuel D.; Henderson, Marlone D.; Loving, Timothy J.; Meston, Cindy M.The current research evaluated individual differences and contextual effects on men’s robust sexual overperception bias and on women’s tendency to be misperceived. Study 1 pioneered the use of a “speed-meeting” methodology which allowed for a direct calculation of sexual misperception by comparing measures of actual interest to measures of estimated interest across five interactions. As predicted, men demonstrated a robust sexual over-perception bias, a bias that was influenced by their mating strategy and physical attractiveness. Women, on the other hand, consistently underestimated men’s sexual interest in them, and physical attractiveness was a key predictor of their likelihood of being overperceived. Study 2 replicated the prediction tests from Study 1 and narrowed down the exploratory regression models to the most specific and robust effects, namely mating strategy and physical attractiveness. Study 3 examined the effects of testosterone (T) on men’s sexual misperception by manipulating intrasexual competition in the lab. Men engaged in a computer game, which randomly assigned them to win or lose, against an unseen male competitor. After the game, each participant interacted with a trained female confederate posing as a participant, after which they rated her on multiple traits, including interest in her and his estimate of her interest in him. Salivary assays for T were collected before and after the game, and after interacting with the confederate. The results of the experiment demonstrated that although the competition outcome did not affect men’s T, changes in T during the interaction with the woman predicted men’s sexual misperception. The more attractive the man found her, and the more interested he was in her, the more his T increased during their interaction and the more he overperceived her interest. Taken together, these studies indicate that far from a simple sex difference, men’s overperception bias is predictably nuanced and specific.