A Pilot Test on the Role of Power in Mate Choice

To test two competing theories, social role and sexual strategies, a study was proposed to have participants evaluate dating profiles that varied in agency, communion, and status. Power was also manipulated to test for effects on likelihood to date an individual. To test methods used for the proposed study, a pilot study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a power prime task, a manipulation check for the power prime task, the attractiveness of 24 pictures, and an analysis of 12 profiles. The study found that power priming with analogies did not significantly lead to participants feeling powerful. This finding was also connected to the manipulation check, which may not have been effective. The profiles created were mostly found to be agentic or communal. Participants’ ratings of the 12 female pictures showed they were statistically similar and ratings for the 12 male pictures were significantly different. These results partially demonstrated the potential for re-use of these stimuli in the proposed study. POWER AND MATE CHOICE 3 A Pilot Test on the Role of Power in Mate Choice Psychologists have long debated the causes for human mating behavior. This topic has interested psychologists for decades because of personal interests, political implications, popular discussions, and the unending desire to find the answer to, “Why doesn’t he/she like me? ” (Smith & Konik, 2011). The literature on this topic has been divided into two major viewpoints: evolutionary and social. Both evolutionary psychologists and social psychologists attempt to describe the distal causes for the existence of sex differences in mating behaviors. From findings such as men desiring almost three times more mates than women (Schmitt, 2002) to women’s history of being at-home caretakers, both sub-disciplines have attempted to tackle the answers. Evolutionary psychologists believe that mate choice results from years of mating behaviors that have survived through natural and sexual selection (Buss & Schmitt 2012). Social psychologists argue that mating behaviors are a result of years of socialization and divisions of labor (Eagly 1987; Eagly & Wood 2012). To date, both evolutionary and social psychologists provide evidence for and against each other’s theories. Neither social psychology’s social role theory (Eagly 1987; Eagly & Wood 2012) nor evolutionary psychology’s sexual strategies theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), however, has determined the effects of agency, communion, or power in mate choice. Agency and communion are two motives for behavior adopted widely by social psychologists. Power is a concept mentioned in evolutionary and social theories when discussing the possibility that power might have led to a distinction in behaviors but testing this possibility has not been difficult. The proposed study looks to evaluate the links between agency, communion, and power on mate choice, and the current study served as a manipulation check of materials to be used in the proposed study. As such, a discussion about both sexual strategies POWER AND MATE CHOICE 4 theory and social role theory is presented as well as a summary of power and its effects on behavior. Evolutionary Psychology Evolutionary psychology is the study of evolved behaviors that are unconscious and passed on through reproduction. These behaviors can range from finding mates, altruism, consumption, sexual aggression, and dreaming (Smith & Konik, 2011). Evolutionary psychology research seeks to explain how behaviors that occur because evolutionary pressure from natural selection lead to the continued persistence of such behavior (Buss and Schmitt 1993; Trivers 1972). The proposed study will examine the evolutionary claims and research on human mate choice and attraction, and will look at what behavioral patterns are evident when choosing a mate. The major tenet in evolutionary psychology is that behavior depends on hidden psychological mechanisms that have evolved over time and its interaction with the environment (e.g., social or ecological factors; Buss & Schmitt, 1993). No behaviors, however, are “genetically determined” as all behavior must interact with the environment before it is manifested. Psychological mechanisms that lead to such behavior are constantly flexible, activating and combining with the environment to produce the variability evident in human behavior (Buss & Schmitt, 2011). In discussing mate choice behavior, evolutionary psychologists propose two major strategies: increasing the number of offspring or increasing parental investment for offspring (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Trivers,1978). Sexual Strategies Theory Sexual Strategies Theory (SST) by Buss and Schmitt (1993) has been a leading theory in understanding human sexual behavior. Their theory posits that men and women have two mating POWER AND MATE CHOICE 5 strategies: longand short-term. Long-term mating strategies highlight resource control and genetic fitness in order to successfully raise a child. Short-term strategies focus on maximizing the quantity and/or quality of offspring. Regardless of the strategy, Buss and Schmitt propose that strategies are highly context dependent. They also argue that men and women have developed different preferences of strategy for mate choice. The major tenets of their theory highlight that men are more likely to utilize short-term mating strategies in order to increase the likelihood of passing on their genes. For women, long-term mating strategies are utilized more often in order to secure resources to foster their young, given that women are more invested in their offspring because they give birth to the child. When men use a short-term strategy, they are expected to lower their qualitative standards (e.g., attractiveness, intelligence, age) and amount of time invested in a relationship in order to increase the number of partners they have access to. Men can achieve these goals by looking for signs of promiscuity and fertility, namely by looking for physical signs in a woman’s body, seeking social information about a woman’s sex life, and discerning behavior that might suggest readiness for sex. Buss and Schmitt (1993) argue that men who are short-term sexual strategists will have evolved means to detect the signs allowing them to meet multiple women. Analogous to the evolved mate selection mechanisms are evolved mechanisms in eating, such that the people who were able to detect non-deadly foods to eat were the ones more likely to survive and pass on their knowledge and preferences to kin. Likewise, men who are able to detect fertile and sexually willing women may be able to help produce children who have the same abilities. Empirical tests of these hypotheses stemmed from a survey asking undergraduates questions regarding: length of time before intercourse with a person, number of partners desired POWER AND MATE CHOICE 6 over a lifetime, and desire for a long versus short-term mate. Men in these studies desired a short-term mate more than women while there was no difference in desire for a long-term mate. Men were also willing to accept intercourse with a woman earlier in the relationship and expected to have more partners in a lifetime. Another study found that when people were approached by strangers on a university campus, men were more likely than women to agree to have sex with a stranger (Clark & Hatfield, 1989). Buss and Schmitt (1993) also looked at men’s preferences for promiscuity, low sex drive, prudishness, and lack of sexual experience and compared the means for each trait. They found men desired promiscuity in short-term but not long-term mates and desired lack of sexual experience in long-term but not short-term mates. In both longand short-term mates, men did not desire low sex drive or prudishness. Men were also found to rate physical attractiveness as more desirable in longand short-term mates while rating physical unattractiveness as undesirable in long or short-term mates. When considering long-term strategies, the researchers argued that men should adopt them in order to maximize a woman’s reproductive fitness, allow more confidence in paternity, lead to more viable offspring, and allow a division of labor for childcare. Buss and Schmitt (1993) further suggest that uncertainty in paternity and maximizing a woman’s reproductive fitness are problems that are resolved by evolved mechanisms such as sexual jealousy, the ability to identify faithful and unfaithful characteristics, as well as a heightened ability to predict health through physical attractiveness. Evidence for their claims included both psychological and physiological testing. For sexual jealousy, the researchers found men and women asymmetrically concerned about physical and emotional infidelity. Men were found to self-report more concern for physical infidelity as well as have increased heart rate, skin conductance, and facial frowning POWER AND MATE CHOICE 7 when imaging physical infidelity by their long-term partner. Women were not found to have the physiological or psychological responses men had to physical infidelity. While women are expected under SST to be more likely to adopt a long-term mating strategy, adopting a short-term strategy is still plausible. Buss and Schmitt’s (1993) theory states that women who undergo a short-term strategy will likely benefit from immediate resource extraction, a means to evaluate long-term mate value, and gaining increased protection. Comparably, adopting a long-term strategy would allow a woman long-term material advantage for herself and her children, acquisition of social and economic benefits to aid in her children’s future reproduction, and possible genetic advantages if the aforementioned benefits were heritable. For women, adopting short-term mating strategies allow for a quick way to gather resources given that men are willing to exchange their resources for sex. To test their hypothesis, Buss and Schmitt (1993) looked at whether wome