Does perceiver sex or target sex determine biases in sexual and commitment intent perception? A critical investigation with a homosexual sample

Error management theory (EMT) posits that when there are asymmetrical costs of falsepositive and false-negative errors over evolutionary history, selection will favor psychological mechanisms biased toward less costly errors. In the mating domain, EMT explains the fact that men consistently overperceive women's sexual intent (SI), while women consistently underestimate men's commitment (CI). From a sexual selection perspective, underestimating women’s SI (false-negative) is more costly for men than overestimating (false-positive); whereas overestimating a man’s CI (false-positive) would have been more costly for women than underestimating (false-negative). Though the pattern of sex differences in SI and CI perception has been replicated many times, it is unknown whether sex of the perceiver or sex of the target mate (or perhaps even sexual orientation) determines the type of error-minimizing strategy employed (overor underestimation). Collecting data from homosexual and heterosexual samples allowed us to examine these previously untested distinctions. Participants rated the degree to which various behaviors indicated one’s own, or a potential mate’s, SI and CI. Results indicated that heterosexual women and lesbians perceived SI and CI similarly, whereas heterosexual and gay men did not. We conclude that homosexual mating strategy is complex: it is neither a simple continuation of heterosexual evolved mating psychology nor a gender-role reversal. iii. INTENT PERCEPTION DETERMINED BY PERCIEVER SEX AND TARGET SEX 4 Introduction Within the past fifty years, researchers have begun to examine sex differences in sexual and commitment intent perception and how they relate to a variety of social issues from sexual assault and harassment to building romantic relationships (e.g. Berkowitz, 1992; Farris, Treat, Viken, & McFall, 2008; Lindgren, Jacques-Tiura, & Westgate, 2012), yet, there remains a definitive hole in the literature regarding same-sex intent perception. The lack of research including both heterosexual and homosexual participants prevents us from isolating whether it is the sex of the perceiver or the sex of the target mate that determines the biases evident in intent perception. Identifying these differences is important as it will help to indicate the degree to which men and women have evolved distinctive mating psychologies. This investigation contributes to the literature by employing previously tested sexual perception research methods using both heterosexual and homosexual participants. We hypothesize that mating psychology has evolved based on the sex of the initiator and not the target, so that biological sex will predict sexual intent and commitment intent perception errors regardless of sexual orientation. A History of Sexual Misperception Research Empirical sexual perception research began in the early 1980s when Antonia Abbey began to study whether men overperceive women’s friendly cues as sexual interest. In her original investigation, Abbey (1982) paired unacquainted college-aged men and women and instructed them to engage in a conversation about school while another male-female pair watched them through a one-way mirror. The participants estimated their conversation partner’s sexual attraction to them, as well as how much their own behaviors indicated their level of sexual interest. The participants who INTENT PERCEPTION DETERMINED BY PERCIEVER SEX AND TARGET SEX 5 observed also rated the intentions and level of attraction of the participants who conversed. Both the male observer and male conversation partner rated the female conversation partner as higher in sexual interest, flirtatiousness, and attractiveness than either the female observers rated her or the female conversation partner rated herself. Since this pioneering result, men's heightened perception of women’s sexual interest has been repeatedly documented in correlational studies using self-report measures, as well as a variety of laboratory experimental designs. Similar to Abbey’s original study design, in the majority of laboratory investigations third-party perceivers rate the sexual interest of target men and women to determine sex differences. For instance, when male and female college students watched short video clips of student-professor interactions in which the level of professor harassment and student acceptance varied, men rated the female student and female professor as more sexy, promiscuous, and seductive than women rated them (Johnson, Stockdale & Saal, 1991). A similar pattern of results emerged when college students rated photographs of male-female dyads studying together that depicted varying levels of interpersonal distance, eye contact, and touch (Abbey & Melby, 1986). Across conditions, men rated female targets as more sexy, promiscuous, and seductive than women did, and were also more likely to report that the female target was sexually interested in the male target. This pattern of male overperception was replicated in another study using written description in which college students read vignettes and rated the sexual interest of men and women during fictional interactions such as attending a baseball game or cocktail party together (Abbey & Harnish, 1995). INTENT PERCEPTION DETERMINED BY PERCIEVER SEX AND TARGET SEX 6 In addition to laboratory investigations, self-report studies have also indicated that men tend to naturally overperceive women’s friendly cues. Female college students who were asked to recall every instance in their lifetime when men misperceived their sexual interest were more likely to report intent misperceptions and were more likely to be insulted or upset by these occurrences than were male college students (Abbey, 1987). Male students who were given the same instructions were less likely to report sexual intent misperception and were more likely to report that they enjoyed or were indifferent to female overperception of sexual interest. Haselton (2003) came to similar conclusions after asking college students to recall their misperception experiences within the past year alone. While men reported that women were equally likely to underperceive and overperceive their interest, women recounted that men were more likely to overperceive interest than to underperceive it. Furthermore, sex remained a significant predictor of false alarm rates even after controlling for additional factors, such as mate value, sociosexuality, and relationship experience. In a more recent self-report procedure, opposite-sex friend pairs indicated their sexual and romantic interest in each other as well as the degree to which they believed their friend had sexual and romantic interest in them (Koenig, Kirkpatrick & Ketelaar, 2007). Yet again, men overperceived and women underperceived sexual interest. Real-world occurrences also provide an interesting glimpse into the implications of male sexual overperception. For example, Safeway supermarket chain made national news in 1998 when a group of female employees filed complaints that the company’s newly reinstated “service-with-a-smile” policy, which required all employees to smile, make eye contact with, and call customers by name, was encouraging sexual harassment INTENT PERCEPTION DETERMINED BY PERCIEVER SEX AND TARGET SEX 7 (Haselton, 2007). The women reported that they were touched, grabbed, asked about their martial status, propositioned for dates, and even followed to their cars by interested men as a result of the new policy (Shackelford & Goetz, 2012). In light of the lawsuit, news outlets across the country began to interview women in customer service positions and uncovered the anecdotal consistency with which male customers misperceived friendliness, attentiveness, and professionalism as sexual interest (Mendell & Bigness, 1998). Female clerks recounted a wide variety of negative experiences such as being physically pulled into a dressing room by a male customer who misinterpreted her attentiveness to feeling so threatened by the unwavering advances of a patron that she called the police. Previous Explanations of Misperception Researchers have developed several hypotheses to attempt to explain men’s consistent overperception of women's sexual intent; however these explanations are unable to incorporate more recently identified nuances of sexual misperception. For example, Abbey’s (1982) “general oversexualization hypothesis” proposed that because men are socialized to be sexual (whereas women are socialized to be demure) they overinterpret sexuality across contexts. But, if it is true that men are socialized to be overtly sexual whereas women are socialized to be sexually restricted—as the oversexualization hypothesis states—then it would follow that men might be less unlikely to overperceive women’s sexual interest as they would be familiar with the idea that women tend not to be sexually interested; this is obviously not supported by empirical evidence (e.g., Haselton & Buss, 2000). Another variation proposed by Abbey (1991), the “media hypothesis” attributes men’s overperception bias to their exposure to media portrayals of INTENT PERCEPTION DETERMINED BY PERCIEVER SEX AND TARGET SEX 8 women who, despite appearing initially modest or hesitant, eventually become overcome with sexual desire for their male pursuer. However, more recent data challenges the media hypothesis and the general oversexualization hypothesis’s shared assumption that societal influences cause men to overperceive the sexual intent of all women. In particular, Haselton and Buss (2000) found that men do not overperceive the sexual intent of their sisters. Another antiquated explanation of sexual misperception, the “default model hypothesis” suggests that men’s overestimation of female sexual interest is merely a function of men assuming that women’s levels of sexual desire match their own (Shotland & Craig, 1988). However, experiments using same-sex third party perceivers revealed t