Original article
Male sexual attractiveness predicts differential ovulatory shifts in female extra-pair attraction and male mate retention

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.10.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Because ancestral women faced trade-offs in choosing mates, they may have evolved to pursue a dual-mating strategy in which they secured investment through one partner and obtained good genes through others. The dual-mating theory predicts that women will display greater interest in extra-pair sex near ovulation, especially if they are mated to a primary male partner who is low in sexual attractiveness. Forty-three normally ovulating women rated their partner's sexual attractiveness and separately reported their own desires and their partner's mate retention behaviors at high and low fertility (confirmed using luteinizing hormone tests). In the high-fertility session relative to the low, women who assessed their partners as being lower in sexual attractiveness reported greater extra-pair desires and more expressed love and attention from their male partners. Women's desire for their own partners did not differ significantly between high and low-fertility sessions.

Introduction

Females can benefit by selecting mates who offer material benefits to offspring, such as parental care and food resources (Trivers, 1972), and by selecting mates who offer benefits that can be genetically transmitted to offspring (Jennions & Petrie, 2000, Kokko et al., 2003, Møller & Alatalo, 1999). In principle, women could benefit from both material and heritable benefits conferred by male partners, but both sets of features may be difficult to find in the same mate. Men who display indicators of good genes are highly attractive as sex partners; hence, they can, and often do, pursue a short-term mating strategy that tends to be associated with reduced investment in mates and offspring (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000, Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997). Therefore, women may often be forced to make strategic trade-offs by selecting long-term social partners who are higher in investment attractiveness than sexual attractiveness (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000).

These trade-offs may have selected for a psychology of dual mating, which leads women to seek primary partners who provide investment while seeking good genes through extra-pair mating. Indeed, rates of human extra-pair paternity are substantial, with current estimates ranging from lows around 1% to highs of more than 55% in some populations (Anderson, 2005). In sum, there are conditions under which a dual-mating strategy may have evolved, and there is evidence that human extra-pair mating occurs.

A key prediction of the dual-mating hypothesis is that attraction to extra-pair mates should increase as women near ovulation. Results from previous studies have been somewhat mixed, with most documenting greater attraction to extra-pair mates when women are in the ovulatory phase of their cycles (Gangestad et al., 2002, Haselton & Gangestad, in press) and one suggesting that women are more attracted to their primary partner at peak fertility within the cycle (Pillsworth, Haselton, & Buss, 2004). In light of these conflicting findings, Pillsworth et al. (2004) suggested that future research should explicitly examine male sexual attractiveness to test the hypothesis that a woman's pursuit of an extra-pair vs. an in-pair conceptive strategy is conditional on how sexually attractive her partner is relative to other men. Consistent with this proposal, in a daily diary study, Haselton and Gangestad (in press) found that increases in extra-pair desires at high fertility were greatest for women who rated their partners as low in sexual vs. investment attractiveness. Similarly, Gangestad et al. (2005) found that women with partners high in fluctuating asymmetry reported greater attraction to extra-pair men, and less attraction to their own partners, when near ovulation. In the current study, we further examined this hypothesis by seeking to replicate the finding of Haselton and Gangestad (in press) using a more rigorous luteinizing hormone (LH) method of fertility assessment. We also advanced two additional predictions, which are discussed hereafter.

According to the good genes model, women whose long-term partners display indicators of good genes do not benefit from engaging in a dual-mating strategy; thus, we predicted that women's reported desire for their primary partner would also result from the interaction of fertility and partner's sexual attractiveness, such that ovulatory increases in in-pair desires will be reported more by women with partners who are high in sexual attractiveness.

Female affairs can be extremely costly to male partners, and men are therefore expected to possess evolved counter-strategies designed to protect them from cuckoldry. Mate retention strategies may be either prohibitive—such as restricting a partner's movements—or persuasive—such as engaging in attentive and solicitous behavior toward the partner. Gangestad et al. (2002) found that women reported increases in both their partners' proprietary behaviors and attentiveness as a function of fertility. In the current study, we predicted that women's reports of their partners' mate-guarding tactics would increase during the fertile phase of the cycle, and that this effect would be stronger for women who rated their partners as less sexually attractive, as these are the women most likely to pursue a dual-mating strategy.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 43 women recruited from a large university in the Southwestern United States who either satisfied a research requirement or were paid for their participation, and who reported that they were currently involved in a romantic relationship. None had used hormonal contraceptives in the 3 months prior to participation, and all reported having regular menstrual cycles between 24 and 36 days in length (mean=29.56, S.D.=2.95). Using a nationally marketed ovulation test (ClearBlue),

Statistical analyses

We conducted analyses using repeated general linear models (SPSS 12.0) on the dependent variables of interest. Fertility status (measured as low vs. high phases of the cycle) was a repeated factor in all analyses. In our focal analyses, we entered partner's sexual attractiveness and investment attractiveness—which were of primary interest in tests of predictions—as quantitative predictor variables, along with the number of days prior to ovulation in the high-fertility session, and session order

Discussion

According to the good genes model, a dual-mating strategy is advantageous only if a woman's partner lacks cues to good genes. We therefore predicted that women with less sexually attractive partners (those likely to display fewer cues to good genes) would show ovulatory increases in extra-pair desires. The good-genes model predicts that this effect will be specific to sexual attractiveness and will not be observed for partners lacking investment cues. This differential pattern of effects is, in

Acknowledgments

We thank Dave Frederick, Sheila Allameh, Anna Berezovskaya, Lani Cante, Elizabeth Carlin, Sarah Dodd, Bahar Ebrat, Erika Forster, Lisa Marchlewicz, Lisa Newon, and Carolyn Pratt for their generous assistance in collecting the data; Paul Andrews, Steve Gangestad, and Christine Garver-Apgar for helpful advice on high-and low-fertility scheduling; April Bleske-Rechek, Dan Fessler, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft; the UCLA Experimental Biological Anthropology group for

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