ArticlePDF Available

Human Mate Poaching: Tactics and Temptations for Infiltrating Existing Mateships

Authors:
David Schmitt at Kansas State University
David Schmitt
David M Buss at University of Texas at Austin
David M Buss
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

The authors explored the psychology of romantically attracting someone who is already in a relationship--what can be called the process of human mate poaching. In Study 1 (N = 236), they found that attempts at poaching were relatively common and were linked with distinctive personality dispositions. Study 2 (N = 220) documented that the perceived costs and benefits of poaching differed somewhat for men and women and depended on whether short-term or long-term poaching outcomes were targeted. Study 3 (N = 453) found support for 5 evolution-based hypotheses about the perceived effectiveness of poaching tactics. Study 4 (N = 333) found that poaching effectiveness was influenced by the type of relationship being encroached on-marital, dating, long distance, highly committed, just beginning, or about to end. Discussion focuses on the importance of placing mate poaching within the broader context of human sexual strategies.
Content uploaded by David M Buss
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by David M Buss
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of this full-text is provided by American Psychological Association.
Learn more
Content available from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
... Indirect strategies are highly effective in women's competition, and they are often directed against women who are considered threats to themselves or to their current relationship. It has been suggested that women have evolved mechanisms that increase their vigilance to potential threats [10], and this is amplified by the features that men find important in other women [11], such as physical attractiveness. For instance, women consider attractive features, such as lower waist-to-hip ratios, facial femininity, and larger breasts, as potential threats [12]. ...
... It has been suggested that women have psychological mechanisms that prompt them to compete with other women, primarily in the mating arena [10]. If men consider women with large non-ptotic breasts attractive [21], women may be more vigilant to those with such a breast morphology and engage in tactics to mitigate the risk of competition those ...
... It has been suggested that women have psychological mechanisms that prompt them to compete with other women, primarily in the mating arena [10]. If men consider women with large non-ptotic breasts attractive [21], women may be more vigilant to those with such a breast morphology and engage in tactics to mitigate the risk of competition those women present [27]. ...
The Role of Breast Morphology in Women's Rival Derogation Tactics
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2024
Physical features that are desired by the opposite sex may drive competition between members of the same sex to gain access to potential mates. Women's breasts are considered sexually attractive to men, and it has been shown that women may engage in competitive tactics to compete with or derogate women with ideal physical traits (i.e., physically attractive features). In the current online study, we investigated Hispanic women's (n = 114) perceptions of breast stimuli that had been manipulated to display four levels of breast size (A-, B-, C-, and D-cup) and three levels of ptosis (i.e., levels of sagginess: non, low, and high) and their likelihood of engaging in rival derogation tactics, such as verbal and indirect aggression. The findings demonstrated that women were more likely to engage in rival derogation towards women with larger breast sizes. Women's dispositional level of intrasexual competition did not play a role in rival derogation tactics. The results are in line with previous research suggesting that women's rival derogation tactics are likely to be targeted towards women with attractive features that are desired by men.
View
Paranoia moderates the relationship between digital jealousy and psychological cyber dating abuse in young UK adults
Preprint
Full-text available
  • Sep 2024
Word count: 9900 Data availability statement: Data are available upon request. Funding statement: Study 2 was funded by the staff scholarship scheme at the University of Wolverhampton Conflict of interest disclosure: The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest. Ethics approval statement: Ethical approval for both studies was granted by the psychology ethics committee at the host institution.
View
Mate value discrepancies and mate retention behaviors: A cubic response surface analysis
Article
  • May 2024
This study used cubic polynomial regression with response surface analysis to examine the associations that mate value discrepancies (i.e., the difference between an individual's self‐reported mate value and their perceptions of their partner's mate value) had with mate retention behaviors performed by the individual and their perceptions of the mate retention behaviors performed by their partner. The sample included 1083 undergraduates, and the results revealed a congruence effect such that participants who perceived themselves and their romantic partners to have similarly low levels of mate value reported high levels of cost‐inflicting behaviors by themselves and their partners. There was also a curvilinear association that emerged for mate value discrepancies such that individuals who perceived themselves to have higher levels of mate value than their partners reported higher levels of cost‐inflicting behaviors by themselves and their romantic partners. These results demonstrate how cubic response surface analysis can allow for a better understanding of the connections that mate value discrepancies have with outcomes in romantic relationships.
View
View
View
View
View
View
View
View
The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Aug 1992
For most sexually reproducing species all conspecifics of the other sex are not equally valuable as mates: that is, they differ in “mate value.” In many species selection has produced mechanisms to detect potential mates of high mate value. In other words, just as the taste of fruit varies with food value. in a natural setting, sexual attractiveness varies with mate value. What do women find attractive in men? Many writers who have addressed this issue have concluded that female preferences are so diverse and idiosyncratic as to defy systematic explanation. I will argue, however, that general principles guiding female mate preferences can be discerned at the appropriate level of abstraction and that the evolution-based concept of “mate value” (Symons 1987a) provides a useful heuristic in this endeavor.
View
View
From Vigilance to Violence: Mate Retention Tactics in Married Couples
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 1997
Although much research has explored the adaptive problems of mate selection and mate attraction, little research has investigated the adaptive problem of mate retention. We tested several evolutionary psychological hypotheses about the determinants of mate retention in 214 married people. We assessed the usage of 19 mate retention tactics ranging from vigilance to violence. Key hypothesized findings include the following: Men's, but not women's, mate retention positively covaried with partner's youth and physical attractiveness. Women's, but not men's, mate retention positively covaried with partner's income and status striving. Men's mate retention positively covaried with perceived probability of partner's infidelity. Men, more than women, reported using resource display, submission and debasement, and intrasexual threats to retain their mates. Women, more than men, reported using appearance enhancement and verbal signals of possession. Discussion includes an evolutionary psychological analysis of mate retention in married couples.
View
Psychological Sex Differences
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 1995
Men and women clearly differ in some psychological domains. A. H. Eagly (1995) shows that these differences are not artifactual or unstable. Ideally, the next scientific step is to develop a cogent explanatory framework for understanding why the sexes differ in some psychological domains and not in others and for generating accurate predictions about sex differences as yet undiscovered. This article offers a brief outline of an explanatory framework for psychological sex differences—one that is anchored in the new theoretical paradigm of evolutionary psychology. Men and women differ, in this view, in domains in which they have faced different adaptive problems over human evolutionary history. In all other domains, the sexes are predicted to be psychologically similar. Evolutionary psychology jettisons the false dichotomy between biology and environment and provides a powerful metatheory of why sex differences exist, where they exist, and in what contexts they are expressed (D. M. Buss, 1995).
View
Adaptive Significance of Female Physical Attractiveness: Role of Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 1993
Evidence is presented showing that body fat distribution as measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is correlated with youthfulness, reproductive endocrinologic status, and long-term health risk in women. Three studies show that men judge women with low WHR as attractive. Study 1 documents that minor changes in WHRs of Miss America winners and Playboy playmates have occurred over the past 30-60 years. Study 2 shows that college-age men find female figures with low WHR more attractive, healthier, and of greater reproductive value than figures with a higher WHR. In Study 3, 25- to 85-year-old men were found to prefer female figures with lower WHR and assign them higher ratings of attractiveness and reproductive potential. It is suggested that WHR represents an important bodily feature associated with physical attractiveness as well as with health and reproductive potential. A hypothesis is proposed to explain how WHR influences female attractiveness and its role in mate selection.
View
The Psychological Foundations of Culture
Chapter
  • Aug 1992
Anthropologists have long recognized that cultural evolution critically depends on the transmission and generation of information. However, between the selection pressures of evolution and the actual behaviour of individuals, scientists have suspected that other processes are at work. With the advent of what has come to be known as the cognitive revolution, psychologists are now exploring the evolved problem-solving and information-processing mechanisms that allow humans to absorb and generate culture. The purpose of this book is to introduce the newly crystallizing field of evolutionary psychology, which supplied the necessary connection between the underlying evolutionary biology and the complex and irreducible social phenomena studied by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians.
View
View
View
View
Extramarital Sexual Permissiveness: Conditions and Contingencies
Article
  • Nov 1976
This paper examines the relationship of some social factors with extramarital sexual permissiveness. The theoretical model tested is an adaptation of a middle-range theory of social factors and premarital sexual permissiveness. The major modification entails substituting extramarital sexual permissiveness for premarital sexual permissiveness as the dependent variable. Data used to test this theoretical model are from the 1974 NORC survey. Findings indicate that the best variable to explain extramarital sexual permissiveness is premarital sexual permissiveness. Social class as an independent variable offers very little in the way of an explanation of extramarital sexual permissiveness. The effects of religiosity on extramarital sexual permissiveness are usually negative with one exception: i.e., under conditions of highest liberality. A causal model of extramarital sexual permissiveness is tested and certain revisions are suggested for future research.
View