Individual Differences in How Desirable People Think They Are as a Mate.

Mate value is an important concept in mate choice research although its operationalization and understanding are limited. Here, we reviewed and evaluated previously established conceptual and methodological approaches measuring mate value and presented original research using individual differences in how people view themselves as a face-valid proxy for mate value in long- and short-term contexts. In data from 41 nations (N = 3895, Mage = 24.71, 63% women, 47% single), we tested sex, age, and relationship status effects on self-perceived mate desirability, along with individual differences in the Dark Triad traits, life history strategies, peer-based comparison of desirability, and self-reported mating success. Both sexes indicated more short-term than long-term mate desirability; however, men reported more long-term mate desirability than women, whereas women reported more short-term mate desirability than men. Further, individuals who were in a committed relationship felt more desirable than those who were not. Concerning the cross-sectional stability of mate desirability across the lifespan, in men, short- and long-term desirability rose to the age of 40 and 50, respectively, and decreased afterward. In women, short-term desirability rose to the age of 38 and decreased afterward, whereas long-term desirability remained stable over time. Our results suggest that measuring long- and short-term self-perceived mate desirability reveals predictable correlates.

Factors Influencing the Intended Likelihood of Exposing Sexual Infidelity.

There is a considerable body of literature on infidelity within romantic relationships. However, there is a gap in the scientific literature on factors influencing the likelihood of uninvolved individuals exposing sexual infidelity. Therefore, we devised an exploratory study examining a wide range of potentially relevant factors. Based in part on evolutionary theory, we anticipated nine potential domains or types of influences on the likelihoods of exposing or protecting cheaters, including kinship, strong social alliances, financial support, previous relationship behaviors (including infidelity and abuse), potential relationship transitions, stronger sexual and emotional aspects of the extra-pair relationship, and disease risk. The pattern of results supported these predictions (N = 159 men, 328 women). In addition, there appeared to be a small positive bias for participants to report infidelity when provided with any additional information about the situation. Overall, this study contributes a broad initial description of factors influencing the predicted likelihood of exposing sexual infidelity and encourages further studies in this area.

"Our" food versus "my" food. Investigating the relation between childhood shared food practices and adult prosocial behavior in Belgium.

This study focuses on the connection between prosocial behavior, defined as acting in ways that benefit others, and shared meals, defined as meals that consist of food(s) shared with others. In contrast to individual meals, where consumers eat their own food and perhaps take a sample of someone else's dish as a taste, shared meals are essentially about sharing all the food with all individuals. Consequently, these meals create situations where consumers are confronted with issues of fairness and respect. One should not be greedy and consume most of a dish; instead, rules of polite food sharing need to be obeyed. It is therefore proposed that those who have often engaged in shared meals during childhood will have a more prosocial personality, as compared to those who less often took part in shared meals during childhood. To test this hypothesis, data about frequency of shared meals during childhood and altruistic personality in early adulthood were collected using a cross-sectional survey in Belgium (n = 487). Results confirm that higher levels of shared meal consumption correspond to higher scores on the self-report altruism scale among students.

Feelings of regret following uncommitted sexual encounters in Canadian university students.

In this study we explored the prevalence of regret following uncommitted sexual encounters (i.e., casual sex that occurs with someone once and only once or with someone known for less than 24 hours) among 138 female and 62 male Canadian university students, who were approximately 21 years of age. The majority of participants self-reported that they had experienced feelings of regret after an uncommitted sexual encounter. We found women reported feeling significantly more regret than men. However, men's regret was more closely tied to physical attributes than women's regrets. Regret was also influenced by the quality of the sex: high-quality sex rarely led to regret, while the reverse was true for poor-quality sex. In keeping with past studies, intoxication by alcohol and/or drugs was often listed as a source of regret by both men and women.

Dependents as Signals of Mate Value: Long-term Mating Strategy Predicts Displays on Online Dating Profiles for Men.

Sexual strategies theory indicates women prefer mates who show the ability and willingness to invest in a long-term mate due to asymmetries in obligate parental care of children. Consequently, women's potential mates must show they can provide investment - especially when women are seeking a long-term mate. Investment may be exhibited through financial and social status, and the ability to care for a mate and any resulting offspring. Men who care for children and pets (hereafter "dependents") are perceived as high-quality mates, given that dependents signal an ability to invest; however, no studies have examined how dependents are associated with short-term and long-term mating strategies. Here, online dating profiles were used to test the predictions that an interactive effect between sex and mating strategy will predict displays of dependents, with long-term mating strategy predicting for men but not women. Moreover, this pattern should hold for all dependent types and, due to relative asymmetries in required investment, differences will be strongest regarding displays of children and least in non-canine pets. As expected, men seeking long-term mates displayed dependents more than men seeking short-term mates, but both men and women seeking long-term mates displayed dependents similarly. This pattern was driven mostly by canines. These findings indicate that men adopting a long-term mating strategy display their investment capabilities more compared to those seeking short-term mates, which may be used to signal their mate value.

Evolution of Artistic and Athletic Propensities: Testing of Intersexual Selection and Intrasexual Competition.

Since Darwin proposed that human musicality evolved through sexual selection, empirical evidence has supported intersexual selection as one of the adaptive functions of artistic propensities. However, intrasexual competition has been overlooked. We tested their relative importance by investigating the relationship between the self-perceived talent/expertise in 16 artistic and 2 sports modalities and proxies of intersexual selection (i.e., mate value, mating and parenting efforts, sociosexuality, and number of sexual partners) and intrasexual competition (i.e., aggressiveness, intrasexual competitiveness) in heterosexuals. Participants were 82 Brazilian men, 166 Brazilian women, 146 Czech men, and 458 Czech women (Mage = 26.48, SD = 7.12). Factor analysis revealed five factors: Literary-arts (creative writing, humor, acting/theater/film, poetry, storytelling), Visual-arts (painting/drawing, sculpting, handcrafting, culinary arts, architecture design), Musical-arts (playing/instruments, singing, dance, whistling), Circus-arts (juggling, acrobatics), and Sports (individual, collective). Multivariate General Linear Model (GLM) showed more associations of the arts to intersexual selection in women and to intrasexual selection in men, and overall more relationships in women than in men. In women, literary and musical-arts were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selections proxies, visual and circus-arts were related to elevated intersexual selection proxies, and sports were related to intrasexual selection proxies. In men, literary-arts and sports were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selection proxies, musical-arts were related to intrasexual proxies, and circus-arts were related to intersexual proxies; visual-arts did not have predictors. Although present in both sexes, each sexual selection component has different relative importance in each sex. Artisticality functions to attract and maintain long/short-term partners, and to compete with mating rivals.

Cross-cultural comparison of nudging effects for environmental protection: A case-study of risk-averse attitudes toward disposable plastics.

Disposable plastics are drawing considerable attention as a source of environmental risk despite their benefits in daily life. Banning the use of disposable plastics could increase other types of risks, which may damage the public good in the long run. Considering the trade-off of the risks and benefits, one way to improve social welfare is to conduct proper recycling and to continue using plastics but limit them to essential use, avoiding an unnecessary ban. A potential barrier to such a policy might be risk-averse attitudes toward actions that are perceived to threaten future generations, which is a well-known phenomenon. We previously designed a framework for information provision using messages that remind individuals about familial support, which had significant effects in multiple countries on increasing positive attitudes toward air pollution caused by industrialization. We hypothesized that this information provision could also be effective for disposable plastic use. Thus, we conducted a randomized controlled trial via online surveys in Japan, Canada, and the US to identify the effects of our designed messages about recycling on increasing positive attitudes toward disposable plastics. The intervention effects were measured by the difference-in-difference method and panel analysis based on linear regression models using the respondents' attributes and personality traits. The effects were consistently correlated with a sense of familial support, with the effect sizes varying according to country (US > Japan > Canada). Attributes that positively contributed to the message being more effective were higher agreeableness, lower Machiavellianism, lower psychopathy, and being a woman. Although personal fear about COVID-19 moderated the message effects, concern about the threats to relatives and family boosted the effects. Although the effect sizes were influenced by external factors, the results suggested that our proposed framework for information provision has the potential to be applied to a wider variety of risk-related topics.

Searching for the universality of nudging: A cross-cultural comparison of the information effects of reminding people about familial support.

Nudging is a method for eliciting a desired behavior. One approach to nudging involves information provision. When information presented for this purpose is designed from an evolutionary perspective, it may reveal a deeper level of rationality within human decision-making that might otherwise appear to be irrational. Based on insights from the evolution of altruism, we previously designed a message to remind people of the benefits they have received from the actions of relatives to realize industrialization. We then demonstrated that using this message in Japan was effective at moderating extreme risk-averse attitudes toward air pollution resulting from industrialization. However, the universality of the intervention effect, including whether it could be affected by exogenous factors, was not explored. Therefore, in the present study, we conducted a randomized controlled trial based on an online survey carried out in Japan, Canada, and the US. The intervention was shown to be effective in all the three countries, but the effect size varied according to segment. Although women showed more intervention effects than men in Japan and the US, no significant sex difference was observed in Canada. In terms of personality traits, higher agreeableness significantly contributed to the intervention effects. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated many lifestyle changes, was found to weaken the intervention effect by increasing the message effect in the control group. We propose that this effect was caused by an increased perception of familial support in everyday life. These results suggest that the nudge message was universally effective, although the effect size might have been affected by cultural factors and social events.

Factors Associated With Highest Symptoms of Anxiety During COVID-19: Cross-Cultural Study of 23 Countries.

The COVID-19 restrictions have impacted people's lifestyles in all spheres (social, psychological, political, economic, and others). This study explored which factors affected the level of anxiety during the time of the first wave of COVID-19 and subsequent quarantine in a substantial proportion of 23 countries, included in this study. The data was collected from May to August 2020 (5 June 2020). The sample included 15,375 participants from 23 countries: (seven from Europe: Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia; 11 from West, South and Southeast Asia: Armenia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey; two African: Nigeria and Tanzania; and three from North, South, and Central America: Brazil, Canada, United States). Level of anxiety was measured by means of the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and the 20-item first part of The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)-State Anxiety Inventory (SAI). Respondents were also asked about their personal experiences with COVID-19, attitudes toward measures introduced by governments, changes in attitudes toward migrants during a pandemic, family income, isolation conditions, etc. The factor analysis revealed that four factors explained 45.08% of variance in increase of anxiety, and these components were interpreted as follows: (1) personal awareness of the threat of COVID-19, (2) personal reaction toward officially undertaken measures and attitudes to foreigners, (3) personal trust in official sources, (4) personal experience with COVID-19. Three out of four factors demonstrated strong associations with both scales of anxiety: high level of anxiety was significantly correlated with high level of personal awareness of the threat of COVID-19, low level of personal reaction toward officially undertaken measures and attitudes to foreigners, and high level of presence of personal experience with COVID-19. Our study revealed significant main effects of sex, country, and all four factors on the level of anxiety. It was demonstrated that countries with higher levels of anxiety assessed the real danger of a pandemic as higher, and had more personal experience with COVID-19. Respondents who trusted the government demonstrated lower levels of anxiety. Finally, foreigners were perceived as the cause of epidemic spread.

Beliefs about the genetics of suicide in Canadian students: cross-language validation of the Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale (BIRFSS).

AIM: The genetics underlying suicidal behavior is becoming increasingly recognized and investigated. Convergent evidence towards this end has emerged from numerous research strategies (adoption, family, genome-scan, geographic, immigrant, molecular genetic, surname, and twin studies of suicide). The topic-related mental-health literacy (i.e. knowledge and beliefs) of professionals and laypersons, however, may lag behind this research progress, and data on this question are scant. The aim of the present study was therefore to further validate, in a cross-language setting, the novel 22-item Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale (BIRFSS), originally developed in German, which assesses beliefs about the genetics of suicide. METHODS: Data were collected from a mixed student sample from Canada (n = 288; 70.5% females, 58.0% studying psychology as a major or minor). RESULTS: Factor analysis of BIRFSS items yielded a dominant first factor. Internal scale consistency was, however, only middling (lower than previously observed in Austrian samples). Although the structure of beliefs about the genetics of suicide seems to be complex, the Canadian sample's item-performance indicators corresponded strongly to those obtained in Austrian samples, thus indicating cross-sample and cross-language robustness of item statistics. CONCLUSION: For the Canadian sample, BIRFSS scores were positively related to overall and specific knowledge about suicide and general beliefs about genetic determinism (convergent validity), whereas they were not (or only trivially) related to the Big Five personality dimensions, lay theories of suicide, locus of control, social desirability, religiosity, and political orientation (discriminant validity), and to several key demographic variables. Supplemental findings, study limitations, application possibilities, user recommendations, and avenues for further inquiry are discussed.

The influence of relationship status, mate seeking, and sex on intrasexual competition.

Researchers have little explored individuals' perceptions of same-sex attractiveness in terms of the influence of relationship status. By using intrasexual competition as a conceptual framework, the authors predicted that romantically involved individuals would protect their relationship by derogating competitors. Although previous researchers have strongly predicted this result, in the present study the relationship status had a negligible impact on competition, for which relationship commitment, sociosexual orientation, and self-monitoring did not account. Also, among uninvolved individuals, the authors expected those individuals seeking mates would use competitor derogation more than would those individuals not seeking mates, but there was no significant difference. Finally, because the vehicle for this investigation was attractiveness, an area in which women compete, the authors proposed that women would derogate more fiercely than would men. However, the results did not support this hypothesis either. The authors discuss future directions for research.

Recent decline in nonpaternity rates: a cross-temporal meta-analysis.

Nonpaternity (i.e., discrepant biological versus social fatherhood) affects many issues of interests to psychologists, including familial dynamics, interpersonal relationships, sexuality, and fertility, and therefore represents an important topic for psychological research. The advent of modern contraceptive methods, particularly the market launch of the birth-control pill in the early 1960s and its increased use ever since, should have affected rates of nonpaternity (i.e., discrepant genetic and social fatherhood). This cross-temporal meta-analysis investigated whether there has been a recent decline in nonpaternity rates in the western industrialized nations. The eligible database comprised 32 published samples unbiased towards nonpaternity for which nonoverlapping data from more than 24,000 subjects from nine (mostly Anglo-Saxon heritage) countries with primarily Caucasian populations are reported. Publication years ranged from 1932 to 1999, and estimated years of the reported nonpaternity events (i.e., the temporal occurrence of nonpaternity) ranged from 1895 to 1993. In support of the hypothesis, weighted meta-regression models showed a significant decrease (r = -.41) of log-transformed nonpaternity rates with publication years and also a decrease, albeit not significant (r = -.17), with estimated years of nonpaternity events. These results transform into an estimated absolute decline in untransformed nonpaternity rates of 0.83% and 0.91% per decade, respectively. Across studies, the mean (and median) nonpaternity rate was 3.1% (2.1%). This estimate is consistent with estimates of 2 to 3% from recent reviews on the topic that were based on fewer primary studies. This estimate also rebuts the beliefs and hearsay data widespread among both the public and researchers which contend nonpaternity rates in modern populations might be as high as about 10%.

Sex differences in relative foot length and perceived attractiveness of female feet: relationships among anthropometry, physique, and preference ratings.

Foot size proportionate to stature is smaller in women than in men, and small feet apparently contribute to perceived physical attractiveness of females. This exploratory study investigated the sex difference in relative foot length and interrelations among foot length, physique, and foot preference ratings in samples from Austria and Canada, each comprised of 75 men and 75 women. The findings included the following lines of evidence: the sex difference in relative foot length replicated in both data sets; the magnitude of this sex effect was large. Relative foot length was smaller in young, nulliparous, and slim women. Pointed-toe and high-heel shoes were more likely worn by smaller, lighter, and slimmer women. Men reported liking women's feet in general more than vice versa. A vast majority of both men and women favored small feet in women, but large feet in men. One's own foot size appeared to correspond to evaluations of attractiveness; particularly, women with small feet preferred small feet in women in general. The preference for small feet in women was convergent across different methods of evaluating attractiveness. Directions for investigations in this emerging field of research on physical attractiveness are discussed.

"I find you to be very attractive..." Biases in compliance estimates to sexual offers.

The classic experiments by Clark and Hatfield on sex differences in compliance to offers of dates, apartment visits, and casual sex, and the related informal project of Molzer served as the foundation for the present study. However, whereas individuals in these previous investigations directly approached opposite-sex participants, our research employed surveys to gauge compliance. A sample of 195 male and 179 female Austrian adults were provided with written forms of the Clark and Hatfield scenarios and asked to predict the rates of compliance on a thermometer scale ranging from 0% to 100%. Results indicated that compliance estimates are largely effected by the sex of the receiver to these offers, and to a lesser degree, participants' age and relationship status. The sex of the participant did not significantly effect the results. Relative to the previous work, the compliance rate of males was overestimated, while that of females was underestimated. We offer explanations for the differences in findings between the original investigations and our research, discuss the importance of contextual factors as well as the generality of the Clark-Hatfield findings, especially with respect to females' near-zero receptivity to explicit sexual offers, and point out the relevance of the current findings for health psychology.

Clark and Hatfield's evidence of women's low receptivity to male strangers' sexual offers revisited.

Although frequently cited, there has been no published scientific replication of Clark and Hatfield's (1989) and Clark's (1990) findings concerning women's low receptivity to male strangers' offers of casual sex. Consistently across three identically designed naturalistic experiments (aggregated N = 144), these authors reported a 0% acceptance rate by women. The present research analyzed an informal "real-life" journalistic project (N= 100) initiated by an Austrian magazine, in which results indicated a 6.1% acceptance rate (95% CI: 2.8-12.6%) for a complete stranger offering women immediate sexual involvement. Various contextual differences, such as setting, subjects' age and attractiveness, and age differences between requestor and receiver, probably contributed to the observed difference in outcome between the journalistic project and the original experiments. The present findings point to the importance of contextual effects in naturalistic investigations of women's receptivity to sexual offers.

Female intrasexual competition decreases female facial attractiveness.

Evolutionary theory predicts that female intrasexual competition will occur when males of high genetic quality are considered to be a resource. It is probable that women compete in terms of attractiveness since this is one of the primary criteria used by men when selecting mates. Furthermore, because hormones influence the mate-selection process, they may also mediate competition. One competitive strategy that women use is derogation--any act intended to decrease a rival's perceived value. To investigate intrasexual competition through derogation, the influence of oestrogen on women's ratings of female facial attractiveness was examined. During periods of high oestrogen, competition, and hence derogation, increased, as evidenced by lower ratings of female facial attractiveness. By contrast, oestrogen levels did not significantly affect ratings of male faces. These findings support the theory of female intrasexual competition with respect to attractiveness.

Patterns and universals of mate poaching across 53 nations: the effects of sex, culture, and personality on romantically attracting another person's partner.

As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, 16,954 participants from 53 nations were administered an anonymous survey about experiences with romantic attraction. Mate poaching--romantically attracting someone who is already in a relationship--was most common in Southern Europe, South America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe and was relatively infrequent in Africa, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Evolutionary and social-role hypotheses received empirical support. Men were more likely than women to report having made and succumbed to short-term poaching across all regions, but differences between men and women were often smaller in more gender-egalitarian regions. People who try to steal another's mate possess similar personality traits across all regions, as do those who frequently receive and succumb to the poaching attempts by others. The authors conclude that human mate-poaching experiences are universally linked to sex, culture, and the robust influence of personal dispositions.

Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands.

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that men and women possess both long-term and short-term mating strategies, with men's short-term strategy differentially rooted in the desire for sexual variety. In this article, findings from a cross-cultural survey of 16,288 people across 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) demonstrate that sex differences in the desire for sexual variety are culturally universal throughout these world regions. Sex differences were evident regardless of whether mean, median, distributional, or categorical indexes of sexual differentiation were evaluated. Sex differences were evident regardless of the measures used to evaluate them. Among contemporary theories of human mating, pluralistic approaches that hypothesize sex differences in the evolved design of short-term mating provide the most compelling account of these robust empirical findings.

The birth of a confounded idea: The joys and pitfalls of self-experimentation.

According to Roberts, self-experimentation is a viable tool for idea generation in the behavioral sciences. Here we discuss some limitations of this assertion, as well as particular design and data-analytic shortcomings of his experiments.

The Finno-Ugrian suicide hypothesis: variation in European suicide rates by latitude and longitude.

The marked variation regarding the suicide rate in 34 European countries is well described by regressing the national suicide rate on the capital cities' latitudes and on an interaction term of squared latitude multiplied with longitude. The interaction term explains 40.8% and 29.1% of men's and women's suicide rate, respectively, and latitude explains a further significant increment of 10.9% and 10.6% variance of men's and women's suicide rate, respectively. This regression model quantifies the Finno-Ugrian suicide hypothesis of Kondrichin and of Marusic and Farmer. The European countries highest in suicide rate constitute a contiguous, J-shaped belt, spanning from Finland to Austria. This area maps onto the second principal component identified for European gene distribution, representing ancestral adaptation to cold climates and the Uralic language dispersion. Thus, population differences in genetic risk factors may account for the spatial pattern in European suicide rates.