Sex Differences in Short-term Mate Preferences and Behavorial Mimicry

So they tested which factors are important for short term mating by throwing a few participants under false pretenses in a "bar lab" to observe their behaviour. That bar lab is just like a real bar with an actual counter, bar stools, a billiard table, a table soccer, some beer posters, etc. but also with some hidden video cameras. It has been shown that such a natural looking environment helps to have them behave as they would naturally because they don't feel as if they are part of an experiment as much.

They let the participants watch ads together with somone else that they would expect is also just a participant, but those were actually involved in the experiment. Those confederates were of the opposite sex and of varying attractiveness ratings and different status. Those were instructed to play with their pen at random intervals, to change their posture, etc

At the end they were questioned the participants and two questiones were if they would date or sleep with them and they could rate the likelyhood of doing so from 1-7.

Here I'd like to mention another study on mimicking attractive opposite-sex others that showed that people nonconsciously mimick the behaviour of members of the opposite sex they find attractive. (which isn't surprising to TRPers considering that those non-naturals have to learn this part of game) and another one that showed that people naturally and nonconciously engage in mimicking behaviour if they have the desire to create rapport.

This study relied to a part on this effect to measure how attractive the participants found the confederates.

  • Results

Surprisingly women were more likely to state that they would date/sleep with the unattracive members than men, but unsurprisingly men are way more likely than women to sleep with the highly attractive ones.

For men the status of the women made practically no difference, while for women it increased the likelyhood of wanting to go on dates and to have sex (but only if the attractiveness was already high).

When it comes to mimickry it primarly depended on status for women and on attractiveness for men.