Came across this paper a while back. It's from the Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2004. Archive.is won't store it but if you search for "PSPR0804.vp" it'll come up as a result.

It's basically a high-brow scientific study confirming everything taught on TRP. Some excerpts below.


"The gender difference in sex drive applies both to new and established relationships. Therefore the principle of least interest might predict that men would continue to give resources for sex throughout the relationship. Within established relationships, however, the rules of exchange may be blurred by several factors. In modern marriage, for example, resources are generally jointly owned by both couples, and so the woman already technically has claim to all her husband’s resources. This limits what more he can offer her, thereby removing the basis for exchange or negotiation. *Possibly her role is simply to give him enough sex to sustain the marriage." - Starfish duty sex


As social exchange theorists emphasize, the value of any commodity rises and falls with scarcity. Even such fully renewable resources as praise can rise or fall in value as a function of how widely they are distributed. A compliment may have only modest value from someone who praises everybody liberally, whereas the exact same compliment might have much higher value if given by someone who is perceived as rarely praising anyone. - Stop showering women with validation


Put another way, a woman has two resources to consider. Actual sexual activity is a fully renewable resource, insofar as her ability to engage in sex is not heavily dependent on what she has done previously. In contrast, her reputation is a nonrenewable resource. A fully rational approach to social exchange would therefore cause the woman to care less about what she actually does than about what she is perceived by the community as doing. Whenever she engages in sex, she should seek to keep it somewhat secret and deniable, so that her reputation is that of someone whose sexual favors are highly exclusive and therefore of high value - Make sure to give her plausible deniability


In short, we may regard a local sexual marketplace as a loose community in which men and women act as individual agents seeking to find an advantageous deal. Men will act like buyers who want to get good sex or plenty of sex without spending too much (in terms of time, effort, money, or commitment). Women will act like sellers who want to get a high price for their sexual favors. Each couple may negotiate its own price, but whether this price is a better deal for the man or for the woman depends on how it compares to the going rate within their community. Because much sexual activity is conducted in secret, there is likely to be considerable ambiguity about what the actual norms are. Another prediction is therefore that men and women will seek to convey different impressions. Men would be likely to try to create the impression that many couples are having sex at a low price. *Women are more likely to emphasize that sex is unusual outside of serious, committed relationships.* Male conversation may feature and exaggerate sexual activity, whereas female conversation should conceal and understate sex.* - Lying about N-count, publicly slut shaming while secretly riding the CC, "OMG I never do this kind of thing on the first date!"


Assuming that most men would prefer to have sex with affectionate female partners (as opposed to prostitutes or by masturbating while watching pornography), the women in a community would potentially have a monopoly if they could band together to reduce competition among themselves. A rational economic strategy that many monopolies or cartels have pursued is to try to increase the price of their assets by artificially restricting the supply. With sex, this would entail having the women put pressure on each other to exercise sexual restraint and hold out for a high price (such as a commitment to marriage) before engaging in sex. - More slut shaming


Patterns of sexual activity should change drastically with the balance between supply and demand, such as the sex ratio. When the pool of eligible women (i.e., young, unattached female adults) is much larger than the pool of eligible men, supply can be said to exceed demand. The price will therefore drop, which means that men will be able to obtain sex without giving or promising much in return. In contrast, a shortage of eligible women relative to men means that demand outstrips supply, and so the price is likely to be high. - The reason post wall hags and college campuses with high female-to-male ratios are easy sex


Feminists have long objected, with considerable justification, to the fact that women who wear sexy clothes sometimes become the targets of male harassment (or worse). They assert that women should be permitted to dress however they please without attracting unwelcome male attention. Opponents point out that wearing sexually revealing or enticing clothes may convey an impression that some men might reasonably misperceive as indicating that she is sexually available. After all, they say, why dress in such a sexually revealing fashion if she does not want to attract sexual attention? The social exchange analysis makes it understandable that it is fully rational for a woman to seek to stimulate more male desire than she wishes to satisfy. By analogy, a house seller may want to have many different interested parties to bid up the price even though he or she ultimately can only sell a given house to one person. If men could be brought to understand this, they might recognize that a woman may dress in a sexy manner without it meaning that she wants to have sex with all of them or even with any particular one of them. Given her role in the sexual marketplace, she will rationally seek to get many men to desire her, but she does not want to have sex with most of them.