Justin K Mogilski

University of South Carolina Salkehatchie | USC Salkehatchie

Evolutionary psychological research has studied romantic jealousy extensively within monogamous relationships, but has largely ignored jealousy among partners who mutually consent to forming extra-pair relationships (i.e., consensual non-monogamy; CNM). We examined monogamous (n = 529) and CNM (n = 159) individuals’ reactions to imagining their rom...

Life history theory (LHT) predicts that individuals vary in their sexual, reproductive, parental, familial, and social behavior according to the physical and social challenges imposed upon them throughout development. LHT provides a framework for understanding why non-monogamy may be the target of significant moral condemnation: individuals who hab...

Humans maintain romantic relationships for sexual gratification, childcare assistance, intimate friendship, and a host of other interpersonal benefits. In monogamous relationships (i.e., exclusive courtship between two people) individuals agree that certain benefits of the relationship (i.e., sexual contact, material resources, emotional support) m...

Consensual non-monogamy (CNM) refers to any intimate relationship where partners agree to form multiple, concurrent intimate relationships. Stigma against CNM is well-documented, but its antecedents are unclear. Here, we test how apprehension toward CNM is related to moral reasoning. In Study 1, participants (N = 229) identified reasons why people...

Polygamy is a form of “one-sided” consensually non-monogamous relationship where one person has multiple committed partners, each of whom is only involved with that one person. It was likely a reoccurring feature of ancestral mating that posed adaptive problems for our ancestors. Yet polygamy, and multi-partnering more generally, is understudied in...

Satisfying intimate relationships are typically marked by sexual and emotional intimacy (i.e., eroticism and nurturance). Individuals may experience eroticism and nurturance differently when engaged in one (i.e., single-partnered) versus multiple (i.e., multi-partnered) relationships (e.g., polyamory or swinging). To investigate this, we explored h...

Various psychological predictors of mate preference have been identified in prior research that when accounted for simultaneously could reveal the unique contributions of each. This study aimed to explore the extent to which perceived attractiveness, personality characteristics, and attachment styles are associated with young Iranian adults' mate p...

The evolutionary advantages behind the leading mating strategy in humans—serial monogamy, often paired with infidelity—have been discussed at length in evolutionary psychological literature. Alternative mating strategies have received less attention from evolutionary psychological and relationship science researchers alike. That is until the recent...

Evolutionary social science is having a renaissance. This volume showcases the empirical and theoretical advancements produced by the evolutionary study of romantic relationships. The editors assembled an international collection of contributors to trace how evolved psychological mechanisms shape strategic computation and behavior across the life s...

This chapter outlines how Robert Trivers’ Parental Investment Theory (PIT) has progressed from its original publication in Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man through its expansive application to research in the evolutionary psychological sciences. I begin with an abridged redux of the theory’s claims and predictions as they appeared within the...

Background Previous research has found differences in sexual motives and, separately, sexual satisfaction in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) and monogamous individuals and that these constructs are related to relationship outcomes (eg, relationship quality). Aims The present study sought to refine and expand on previous research by (i) using a m...

The Environmental Security Hypothesis (ESH) proposes that an individual’s mate preferences should shift depending on how secure they perceive their surroundings to be. Here, we extend previous work by leading participants to believe they would be required to handle either a snake (threat condition) or tame rabbit (control condition) and measuring v...

Prior research has evaluated which personality traits predict mate poaching behavior (i.e., attempts to attract an individual known to be in a relationship with another person) by soliciting retrospective reports of mate poaching success. Here we investigate differences in personality among those who are presently within poached versus non-poached...

Mate preference research often focuses on traits that indicate a romantic partner's personal worth (e.g., their physical attractiveness, resource potential) rather than their tendency to leverage that worth for mutual vs. zero-sum benefit (i.e., their trustworthiness). No one has assessed the contribution of trustworthiness to perceived mate value...

Stress, be it physical or psychological, can have a devastating long-term impact on an individual’s development, health, and well-being, and yet can be adaptive in the short-term (e.g., promoting immediate survival, triggering the desire to remedy social conflict). The stress response system involves physiological processes in reaction to a real or...

Recent work demonstrates the methodological rigor of a type of data-driven analysis (i.e., conjoint analysis; CA), which accounts for the relative contribution of different facial morphological cues to interpersonal perceptions of romantic partner quality. This study extends this literature by using a conjoint face ranking task to predict the relat...

Purpose: Intra-group and inter-group conflict are likely to have been recurrent features of human evolutionary history. Little research has investigated the factors that affect men’s combat alliance decisions, however. The current study investigated whether features of previous one-on-one combat with an opponent affects men’s interest in allying wi...

Romantic relationships with a large age difference between partners are judged to be less acceptable, more disgusting, and less likely to succeed than age-similar relationships. We investigated the role of strategic moralization in condemnation of man-older age-discrepant relationships. We hypothesized that (1) this condemnation promotes self-servi...

Prior research examining mate expulsion indicates that women are more likely to expel a mate due to deficits in emotional access while men are more likely to expel a mate due to deficits in sexual access. Prior research highlights the importance of accounting for measurement limitations (e.g., the use of incremental vs. forced-choice measures) when...

Prior research shows that patterns of mate selection, attraction, and expulsion are the product of evolved sex differences in computational adaptations. Within long-term romantic relationships, men typically prioritize information relevant to a mate’s reproductive (i.e., sexual) value whereas women more often prioritize a mate’s willingness to inve...

Sperm competition theory can be used to generate the hypothesis that men alter the quality of their ejaculates as a function of sperm competition risk. Using a repeated-measures experimental design, we investigated whether men produce a higher-quality ejaculate when primed with cues to sperm competition (i.e., imagined partner infidelity), relative...

Sexual dimorphism, symmetry, and coloration in human faces putatively signal information relevant to mate selection and reproduction. Although the independent contributions of these characteristics to judgments of attractiveness are well established, relatively few studies have examined whether individuals prioritize certain features over others. H...

The current research explores whether humans process inputs about combat (e.g., assessments of formidability) that produce outputs of post-fight respect (e.g., shaking an opponent’s hand when the fight ends). Using an online questionnaire (Study 1, n=132), an in-person questionnaire (Study 2, n=131), and an in-lab fight simulation (Study 3, n=58),...

Entry on Social Darwinism in the Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Objective: To investigate the relationship between perceived mate value discrepancy (i.e., the difference between an individual's mate value and their partner's mate value) and perceived frequency of mate retention performed by an individual relative to their partner. Method: In two studies, participants in long-term, exclusive, sexual, heterose...

Compared to motivations for cross-sex friendship, little research has examined motivations for friendship between ex-partners after romantic relationship dissolution (i.e., post-relationship friendship; PRF). In Study 1, participants (N = 348) act nominated reasons for why someone might remain friends with an ex-partner. In Study 2, participants (N...

This study examined the frequency of partner-directed mate retention behaviors and several self- and partner-rated romantic relationship evaluations (i.e., sociosexuality, relationship satisfaction, mate value, and partner ideal measures) within monogamous and consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships. Measures were compared (1) between monog...

Friendship solved adaptive problems over human evolutionary history, including cooperative hunting and alloparenting. Pham, Barbaro, and Shackelford (in press) investigated another potential function of friendship: the provision of coalitional mate retention, whereby individuals ask an ally to assist with thwarting their romantic partner’s infideli...

This series of studies is the first to use conjoint analysis to examine how individuals make trade-offs during mate selection when provided information about a partner's history of sexual infidelity. Across three studies, participants ranked profiles of potential mates, with each profile varying across five attributes: financial stability, physical...

Evidence suggests that people can manipulate their vocal intonations to convey a host of emotional, trait, and situational images. We asked 40 participants (20 men and 20 women) to intentionally manipulate the sound of their voices in order to portray four traits: attractiveness, confidence, dominance, and intelligence to compare these samples to t...

Previous research has characterized human mate poaching as a prevalent alternative mating strategy that entails risks and costs typically not present during general romantic courtship and attraction. This study is the first to experimentally investigate friendship between a poacher and his/her target as a risk mitigation tactic. Participants (N = 3...