Short-Term Sexual Strategies PDF

6 ShORT-TERM SExuAL STRATEGiES 165 and seeking sexual intercourse. College men and women rated how likely they would be to consent to sex with someone they viewed as desirable if they had known the person for only an hour, a day, a week, a month, 6 months, a year, 2 years, or 5 years (Buss & Schm...

6 ShORT-TERM SExuAL STRATEGiES 165 and seeking sexual intercourse. College men and women rated how likely they would be to consent to sex with someone they viewed as desirable if they had known the person for only an hour, a day, a week, a month, 6 months, a year, 2 years, or 5 years (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Both men and women say that they would probably have sex after knowing a desirable potential mate for 5 years (see Figure 6.2). At every shorter interval, however, men exceeded women in the reported likelihood of having sex. As with their desires, men’s inclination to let little time elapse before seeking sexual intercourse ofers a partial solution to the adaptive problem of gaining sexual access to a variety of partners. Men’s greater likelihood of consenting to sexual intercourse after little time has elapsed has now been extensively replicated in samples of varying ages and geographical locations within the United States (Schmitt, Shackelford, & Buss, 2001) and Norway (Kennair et al., 2009). Evolutionary psychologists Michele Surbey and Colette Conohan found similar results when they explored “willingness to engage in casual sex” across a variety of conditions, such as a partner’s level of physical attractiveness, personality, and behavioral characteristics (Surbey & Conohan, 2000). They concluded that “men reported a greater anticipated willingness to engage in sexual intercourse across all conditions compared with women” (2000, p. 367), suggesting that men lower their standards for casual sex. In fve laboratory experiments, targets who displayed cues to “easy sexual access” were judged to be far more desirable by men than by women but only in the context of short-term mating (Schmitt, Couden, & Baker, 2001). The Lowering of Standards in Short-Term Mating Yet another psychological solution to securing a variety of casual sex partners is a relaxation of standards imposed by men for acceptable partners. High standards for attributes such as age, intelligence, personality, and marital status function to exclude the majority of potential mates from consideration. Relaxed standards ensure more numerous potential sex partners. Figure 6.2 Probability of Consenting to Sexual Intercourse Source: Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204–232. Copyright © 1993 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission. Subjects rated the probability that they would consent to sexual intercourse afer having known an attractive member of the opposite sex for each of a specifed set of time intervals. ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 166 College students provided information about the minimum and maximum acceptable ages of a partner for temporary and permanent sexual relationships (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). College men accept an age range roughly 4 years wider than do women for a sexual hookup. Men at this age are willing to mate in the short run with members of the opposite sex who are as young as 16 and as old as 28, whereas women prefer men who are at least 18 but no older than 26. This relaxation of age restrictions by men does not apply to committed mating. Men also express signifcantly lower standards than the women on 41 of the 67 characteristics named as potentially desirable in a casual mate. For brief encounters, men require a lower level of assets such as charming, athletic, educated, generous, honest, independent, kind, intellectual, loyal, sense of humor, sociable, wealthy, responsible, spontaneous, cooperative, and emotionally stable. Men’s relaxation of standards across a range of attributes helps to solve the problem of gaining access to a variety of sex partners. Mate Preferences The relaxation of standards does not mean that men have no standards. Indeed, the standards that men hold for casual sex reveal a precise strategy to gain a variety of partners. Compared with their long-term preferences, for casual sex, men dislike women who are prudish, conservative, or have a low sex drive (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Men value sexual experience in a potential sex partner, refecting a belief that experienced women are more sexually accessible. Promiscuity, high sex drive, and sexual experience in a woman are probabilistic cues of an increased likelihood of successful short-term mating. Prudishness and low sex drive, in contrast, signal difculty in gaining sexual access and thus interfere with men’s short-term sexual strategy. Evolutionary psychologists have also hypothesized that men seeking short-term sex would prioritize women’s bodies, since a body cues provide possibly the most powerful cues to her fertility (Confer et al., 2010; Currie & Little, 2009; see Chapter 5 on WHR, BMI, and other bodily cues to fertility). In one experiment, participants viewed an image of an opposite-sex individual whose face was occluded by a “face box” and whose body was occluded by a “body box” (Confer et al., 2010). Participants then were instructed to imagine themselves having either a one-night stand or a committed relationship with the person and were then asked to decide on which box they would remove to inform their decision—they could only remove one box (see Figure 6.3). Compared to the long-term mating context in which men prioritized facial information, men considering casual sex shifted signifcantly in the direction of prioritizing body information—a fnding also discovered by Currie and Little (2009) using a diferent methodology. Women, in contrast, do not show this shift and tend to prioritize a man’s face in both short-term and long-term mating contexts. These fndings are consistent with the hypothesis that men prioritize cues to fertility in short-term sex partners. Minimizing Commitment Afer Sex: The Attraction-Reduction Efect and Avoiding Entangling Commitments One possible adaptation in men to facilitate the success of a short-term mating strategy is an attraction-reduction shif right afer sexual intercourse (Haselton & Buss, 2001). Men with more sex partners (indicating a short-term mating strategy) experienced a sharp decline in how sexually attractive they found their partner immediately following intercourse, whereas neither women nor men with less sexual experience showed this decline. One woman described her experiences in this way: “He is most passionate and all over me just as we meet; afer we have sex he is content and doesn’t seem to miss me that much any more.” This work on the attraction-reduction efect supports the hypothesis that men have yet another psychological adaptation designed 6 ShORT-TERM SExuAL STRATEGiES 167 to promote the success of a casual sexual strategy, one that motivates either a hasty post-copulatory departure to minimize investment in any one woman or, alternatively, a roving eye within the context of an existing long-term mateship. Figure 6.3 Which Box Would You Remove When Seeking a Long-Term Mate versus a Short-Term Mate? Source: Confer, J. C., Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (2010). More than just a pretty face: Men’s priority shifs toward bodily attractiveness in short-term mating contexts. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31, 349–353. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier. Participants could decide to remove only one box, the face box or body box, in order to inform their decision about whether they would be interested in having a short-term sexual or long-term romantic relationship with the person. Compared to the long-term mating context, men considering short-term sex were signifcantly more interested in fnding out information about the potential mate’s body—hypothesized to provide important information about a woman’s fertility. Another pair of studies directly examined tactics people use to avoid entangling commitments (Jonason & Buss, 2012). The frst study used a nomination procedure to generate 71 acts “people who pursue short-term sexual encounters [and to] Avoid becoming entangled in unwanted commitments with their sex partners” (p. 607). Interestingly, women and men both used tactics to prevent a sexual encounter from escalating to a romantic relationship. Women were more likely than men to use acts such as “giving the wrong phone number,” “avoid holding hands,” and “not bringing the person home.” Men, in contrast, were signifcantly more likely to “keep the conversation sexual in nature,” “have sex with someone else,” and “maintain multiple sex partners.” These fndings suggest that some men and some women sometimes pursue shortterm sexual strategies, but they use somewhat diferent tactics to avoid unwanted entangling commitments. Moreover, men seem to avoid entanglements in order to maintain the ability to mate with others when using a short-term mating strategy. The Closing Time Phenomenon Do people experience changes in how attractive they perceive members of the opposite sex to be over the course of an evening at singles bars (Gladue & Delaney, 1990; Nida & Koon, 1983; Pennebaker et al., 1979)? In one study, 137 men and 80 women in a bar were approached at 9:00 P.M., 10:30 P.M., and 12:00 A.M. and asked to rate the attractiveness of members of the opposite sex in the bar using a 10-point scale (Gladue & Delaney, 1990). As closing time approached, men viewed women as increasingly attractive. The average judgment at 9:00 P.M. was 5.5, but by midnight, it had increased to more than 6.5. Women’s judgments of men’s attractiveness also increased over time, but women perceived the male bar patrons as less attractive overall compared with the men’s perceptions of the women. Women rated the men at the bar as just below the average of 5.0 at 9:00 P.M., increasing near the midnight closing time to only 5.5. ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 168 Men’s shift in perceptions of attractiveness near closing time occurs regardless of how much alcohol they have consumed. Whether a man consumed a single drink or six drinks had little efect on the shift in viewing women as more attractive. The often-noted “beer goggles” phenomenon, whereby women are presumed to be viewed as more attractive with men’s increasing intoxication, may instead be attributable to a psychological mechanism that is sensitive to decreasing opportunities over the course of the evening for casual sex. As the evening progresses and a man has not yet been successful in picking up a woman, he views the remaining women in the bar as increasingly attractive, a shift that presumably increases his attempts to seek sex from those women. The closing time phenomenon may represent a psychological solution to the problem of sexual accessibility—a context-specifc lowering of standards as the likelihood of sexual opportunities starts to drop. The ancestral conditions that may have selected for the closing time phenomenon are not clear, since singles bars did not exist then. One speculation is that ancestral feasts or celebrations might have provided opportunities for short-term mating, ancestral analogues of modern-day singles bars. Sexual Fantasies and Sex Drive Sexual fantasies provide another psychological clue to an evolutionary history of men’s proclivity to casual mating. Fantasies reveal the nature of desires that motivate men’s and women’s behaviors. Studies document large diferences between male and female sexual fantasies. Research conducted in Japan, Great Britain, and the United States showed that men have roughly twice as many sexual fantasies as women (Ellis & Symons, 1990; Wilson, 1987). When asleep, men are more likely than women to dream about sexual events. Men’s sexual fantasies more ofen include strangers, multiple partners, or anonymous partners. During a single fantasy episode, for example, most men report that they sometimes change sexual partners, whereas most women report that they rarely change sexual partners. Forty-three percent of women but only 12 percent of men report that they never substitute or switch sexual partners during a fantasy episode. Thirty-two percent of men but only 8 percent of women report having imagined sexual encounters with more than 1,000 diferent partners in their lifetime. Men are also more than four times as likely as women to have fantasies about group sex (Wilson, 1997). And 78 percent of men versus 32 percent of women answered “yes” to the question, “Would you ever engage in a threesome sexual situation?” (Hughes, Harrison, & Gallup, 2004). A sample male fantasy is “being the mayor of a small town flled with nude girls from 20 to 24. I like to take walks, and pick out the best-looking one that day, and she engages in intercourse with me. All the women have sex with me any time I want” (Barclay, 1973, p. 209). Numbers and novelty are key ingredients of men’s fantasy lives. As evolutionary psychologists Bruce Ellis and Donald Symons observed, “The most striking feature of [male fantasy] is that sex is sheer lust and physical gratifcation, devoid of encumbering relationships, emotional elaboration, complicated plot lines, firtation, courtship, and extended foreplay” (Ellis & Symons, 1990, p. 544). These fantasies reveal a psychology attuned to sexual access to a variety of partners. Women’s sexual fantasies, in contrast, often contain familiar partners. Fifty-nine percent of American women but only 28 percent of American men report that their sexual fantasies typically focus on someone with whom they were already romantically and sexually involved. Emotions and personality are crucial for women. Forty-one percent of the women but only 16 percent of the men report that they focus most heavily on the personal and emotional characteristics of the fantasized partner. As one woman observed, “I usually think about the guy I am with. Sometimes I realize that the feelings will overwhelm me, envelop me, sweep me away” (Barclay, 1973, p. 211). Women are more likely than men to emphasize tenderness, romance, and personal involvement in their sexual fantasies. Nonetheless, there are large individual diferences 6 ShORT-TERM SExuAL STRATEGiES within each gender in the nature of their sexual fantasies. Some women have fantasies about sex with strangers, and some men’s fantasies center around their current romantic partner. Studies of sex drive also reveal on-average sex diferences. The largest study, involving more than 200,000 from 53 nations, measured sex drive with these statements: “I have a strong sex drive” and “It doesn’t take me much to get sexually excited” (Lippa, 2009). In every nation, from Thailand to Croatia to Trinidad, men reported having a higher sex drive than did women. Similar fndings also show up in masturbation rates and pornography consumption, both of which also show large sex diferences (Petersen & Hyde, 2010). The sex diference in sex drive proved just as large in nations with high levels of gender equality such as Sweden and Denmark as it did in nations with lower levels of gender equality, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia—a fnding that contradicts the notion that these sex diferences are caused by economic gender inequality. Cues to Sexual Exploitability Cari Goetz and her colleagues hypothesized that men oriented toward short-term mating should be especially sensitive to detecting and fnding sexually attractive women who give of cues to being vulnerable to being sexually seduced or deceived (Goetz, Easton, Lewis, & Buss, 2012). They had photos of 36 women rated for diferent cues, and a separate group of men evaluated those photos for attractiveness as a short-term mate and as a long-term mate. Cues to sexual exploitability included seeming immature, intoxicated, reckless, firtatious, young, sleepy, wearing skimpy clothing, and showing an open body posture. Men found women displaying these cues to be sexually attractive for a short-term mateship but actually unattractive for a long-term mate. These fndings point to one possible evolved solution to the problem of detecting which women are sexually accessible—fnding attractive women who display cues to sexual exploitability. Sexual exploitation, of course, is highly unethical, and a deeper understanding of men’s sexual psychology around these issues can potentially lead to a reduction of this form of conduct. Sexual Regret Another potential design feature of men’s short-term sexual psychology centers on feelings of regret. Regret—feelings of sorrow about something in the past—is hypothesized to function to improve future decision making by motivating people to avoid prior mistakes (Poore, Haselton, von Hippel, & Buss, 2005). Sexual regret could operate over two classes of actions—missed sexual opportunities (sexual omission) or sexual actions taken (sexual commission). Two independent groups of researchers have documented that men more than women regret missed sexual opportunities (Galperin et al., 2013; Roese et al., 2006). One study presented men and women with descriptions of regret such as “Should have tried harder to sleep with ___,” “Kicked myself for missing out on a chance to have sex with ___” (Roese et al., 2006). Men regretted acts of sexual omission—failures to act on sexual opportunities—signifcantly more than did women. Women were more likely to have regretted acts of sexual commission—wishing that they had not had sex with someone that they did have sex with (Galperin et al., 2013). These gender diferences have been replicated several times in Norway, which is widely regarded as one of the most sexually egalitarian countries in the world (Kennair, Bendixen, & Buss, 2016). Studies of actual hooking up revealed similar sex diferences, with women more likely to experience negative emotions afterward, whereas men experienced regret when the women they hooked up with wanted a more serious relationship (Lambert, Kahn, & Apple, 2003). Sexual regret, in short, has the hallmarks of an evolved feature in men designed to facilitate acting on future sexual opportunities and avoid entangling commitments. Behavioral Evidence of Short-Term Mating Physiological and psychological evidence both point strongly to a long evolutionary history in which men sought short-term mating with a variety of women. In this section, we complete the picture by presenting behavioral evidence that men across cultures actually pursue short-term mating more than women do. 169