Here, we identify a novel reason why women are often criticized and condemned for (allegedly) sexually permissive behavior due to their choice of clothing. Combining principles from coordinated ...condemnation and sexual economics theory, we developed a model of competition that helps explain this behavior. We hypothesized that women collectively condemn other women who appear to be sexually permissive (based on their choice of clothing). Study 1 (N = 712) demonstrated that women perceived a rival with visible cleavage more negatively. These perceptions were ultimately driven by the belief that “provocatively” dressed women are more likely to have one-night stands. Study 2 (N = 341) demonstrated that women criticized provocatively dressed women, even when these women were not direct sexual rivals (e.g., her boyfriend's sister). Our findings suggest that future research should investigate competition outside of mating-relevant domains to understand women's intrasexual competition fully.
•Potentially sexually permissive women are negatively judged across traits (Study 1).•Negative mating judgments “leak” into non-mating-related judgments (Study 1)•Controlling for mating judgments reduces negative non-mating judgments (Study 1).•Women mentally represent other women's judgments of permissive rivals (Study 2).
Rape myth acceptance (RMA) is the acceptance of false beliefs, stereotypes, and statements about rape, victims, and perpetrators (Burt, 1980). Rape myths become outdated as we learn more about sexual ...violence. Therefore, psychometric scales should be updated periodically to reflect the more nuanced phenomenon of rape myth acceptance. Several items in the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMA; Payne et al., 1999; McMahon & Farmer, 2011) may measure knowledge about the rape perpetrator's psychology rather than rape myth acceptance. In current studies we developed and validated an updated rape myth acceptance scale called the Rape Excusing Attitudes and Language (REAL) Scale without items measuring knowledge about rape. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on two separate datasets (N = 663), the REAL Scale presents a four factor, 20-item scale. We provide evidence of validation through demonstrating the Scale's convergent and discriminative validity by correlating the REAL Scale with the IRMA and the Rape Victim Empathy Scale (RVES; Smith & Frieze, 2003). We argue that the REAL Scale should be adopted in future studies assessing rape myth acceptance because the items explain the same amount of variance in the RVES as the IRMA, but the REAL Scale displays more face validity.
•RMA scales often contain empirically supported statements.•We developed and validated an updated RMA scale across two studies (N = 665).•Our REAL Scale predicted the same amount of variance in the RVES as revised IRMA.•Our REAL Scale contained no empirically supported items – unlike other RMA scales.
Research on men's sexual exploitation of women has documented that men's psychology tracks cues associated with the ease of women's exploitability. In the current studies, we examined a different ...class of cues hypothesized to aid men's use of sexually exploitative strategies: environmental cues to the likelihood of discovery. We defined likelihood of discovery as the perceived probability of identification when engaging in exploitative behavior (e.g., presence of others). We test the hypothesis that men's likelihood to rape increases when their perception of the likelihood of discovery is low in three studies. In Study 1, we conducted a content analysis of individuals’ responses (N = 1,881) when asked what one would do if they could stop time or be invisible. Besides the “other” category whereby there were no specific category for nominated behaviors, the most nominated category included sexually exploitative behavior—representing 15.3% of reported behaviors. Both Studies 2 (N = 672) and 3 (N = 614) were preregistered manipulations of likelihood of discovery surreptitiously testing men's rape likelihood to rape across varying levels of discovery. We found men, compared to women, reported a statistically higher likelihood to rape in both Studies 2 and 3: 48% compared to 39.7% and 19% compared to 6.8%, respectively. Across Studies 2 and 3, we found no statistical effect of the likelihood of discovery on participants’ likelihood to rape. We discuss how the presence of one's peers may provide social protection against the costs of using an exploitative sexual strategy if a perpetrator is caught.
Landscapes varied throughout human history, some offering more fitness benefits than others. Therefore, natural selection has likely designed in us landscape preferences that motivated us to seek ...some environments over others (Orians, 1980). These evolved landscape preferences may influence several aspects of modern-day society, including how we manipulate our urban environment. In Study 1, we conducted a content analysis of the naming conventions of apartment buildings and residential neighborhoods. We hypothesized that there would be more nature words (e.g., valley, river, arbor) in apartment and neighborhood names than nonnature words (e.g., 4th Street; Renaissance, Washington). Names of 2,980 apartment buildings and neighborhoods were collected with a program that uses Google Maps from each of the 48 contiguous United States. Results strongly supported our hypothesis; There were 52% more nature words than nonnature words in the names of apartment buildings and residential neighborhoods. Study 2 used a mixed-subjects experimental design to determine if apartments and neighborhoods with nature names were perceived as more valuable than those without nature names. Participants rated five photographs of apartments and five photographs of neighborhoods photoshopped to display nature or nonnature names for their price (in monthly rent or home's mortgage) and perceived rate of vacancy. Apartments and neighborhoods with manipulated nature names were rated as statistically more expensive. There were no statistical differences between perceived vacancy rates in apartments or neighborhoods named after nature compared with those not named after nature. The current preregistered studies are the first to document that our evolved landscape preferences may affect how developers name our homesteads, further exploiting biophilia.
Researchers studying the proximate (or immediate) causes of sexual coercion have proposed that partner rape is motivated by a man’s attempt to dominate and control his partner and that this ...expression of power is the product of men’s social roles. Researchers studying the ultimate (or evolutionary) causes, in contrast, have proposed that partner rape may function as an anti-cuckoldry tactic, with its occurrence related to a man’s suspicions of his partner’s sexual infidelity. In two studies, we collected data relevant to both perspectives to explore how these variables interact with men’s sexual coercion in an intimate relationship. Regression analyses from Study 1 (self-reports from 256 men) and Study 2 (partner-reports from 290 women) indicated that men’s sexual coercion of their partners was consistently predicted by female infidelity and men’s controlling behavior, suggesting that both variables are necessary to explain men’s sexual coercion. Discussion addressed limitations of the current research and highlighted the importance of integrating multiple levels of analysis when studying men’s sexual coercion of their intimate partners.
The vertical-horizontal illusion is the overestimation of a vertical line compared to a horizontal line of the same length. Jackson and Cormack (2007) proposed that the vertical-horizontal illusion ...might be a byproduct of the mechanisms that generate the environmental vertical illusion, which is the tendency to overestimate vertical distances (i.e., heights) relative to horizontal distances the same length. In our study, 326 undergraduate participants stood atop an 18.6-meter parking structure and estimated both the height of the structure and the horizontal distance of a target placed 18.6 meters away, using a moveable horizontal target across the length of the structure. Participants also completed a vertical-horizontal illusion task by drawing a horizontal line below a 9.1 cm vertical line. We correlated vertical distance estimates with vertical line estimates to test Jackson and Cormack’s byproduct hypothesis. This hypothesis was very weakly—if at all—supported by the data: Participants’ overestimations in the vertical-horizontal illusion task explained 1% of the variance associated with their overestimations in the environmental vertical illusion task. Additionally, to test whether the environmental vertical illusion is impervious to explicit awareness, a random half of our participants were advised to be mindful that people tend to overestimate heights. The results supported our second hypothesis: Even when participants were made aware of the environmental vertical illusion, they still reliably overestimated heights. Discussion addressed implications for the robustness of the environmental vertical illusion (e.g., treatment of those with acrophobia).
From Mate Retention to Murder Kaighobadi, Farnaz; Shackelford, Todd K; Goetz, Aaron T
Review of general psychology,
12/2009, Volume:
13, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In response to the tragically high incidence and negative consequences of female-directed violence in intimate relationships, a large literature has been dedicated to the investigation of the ...proximate and the ultimate or evolutionary predictors of men's partner-directed violence. Evolutionary psychology offers a framework for investigating the design of evolved information-processing mechanisms that motivate costly behaviors such as men's partner-directed violence. We review several forms of men's partner-directed violence, including insults, sexual coercion, physical violence, and homicide, from an evolutionary psychological perspective and with a particular focus on the adaptive problem of paternity uncertainty. The problem of paternity uncertainty is hypothesized to have selected for the emotion of male sexual jealousy, which in turn motivates men's nonviolent and violent mate retention behaviors. We review empirical evidence for the relationships among paternity uncertainty, male sexual jealousy, and men's partner-directed violence. We propose that a comprehensive understanding of men's partner-directed violence will be achieved only by careful consideration of both proximate and ultimate causes.
Research suggests that near ovulation women tend to consume fewer calories and engage in more physical activity; they are judged to be more attractive, express greater preferences for masculine and ...symmetrical men, and experience increases in sexual desire for men other than their primary partners. Some of these cycle phase shifts are moderated by partner attractiveness and interpreted as strategic responses to women's current reproductive context. The present study investigated changes in sleep across the ovulatory cycle, based on the hypothesis that changes in sleep may reflect ancestral strategic shifts of time and energy toward reproductive activities. Participants completed a 32-day daily diary in which they recorded their sleep time and quality for each day, yielding over 1,000 observations of sleep time and quality. Results indicated that, when the probability of conception was high, women partnered with less attractive men slept more, while women with more attractive partners slept less.
Abstract Visible white sclera (i.e., the opaque white outer coat enclosing the eyeball) is a uniquely human trait. An explanation for why such coloration evolved has been put forward by the ...Cooperative Eye Hypothesis (Kobayashi and Hashiya, 2011; Kobayashi and Kohshima, 1997, 2001; Tomasello et al., 2007), which states that visible white sclera evolved to facilitate communication via joint attention and signaling of gaze direction. Therefore, we hypothesized that viewers comprised of both typically developing children and adults would show reliable preferences for stimuli with visible white sclera. However, because autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals have impaired social cognition and show gaze aversion, we also hypothesized that ASD children would show no consistent preference for eyes with visible white sclera. We tested these hypotheses by obtaining participants’ preferences across six sets of stuffed animals, identical but for the manipulation of eye size, eye color, and presence of visible sclera. Both hypotheses were supported. In addition to providing evidence consistent with the Cooperative Eye Hypothesis, our results also suggest that eyes and gaze serve a central role in social cognition. Furthermore, our results from ASD children have practical applications for therapeutic practices and evidence-based interventions.
Rape of women by men might be generated either by a specialized rape adaptation or as a by-product of other psychological adaptations. Although increasing number of sexual partners is a proposed ...benefit of rape according to the "rape as an adaptation" and the "rape as a by-product" hypotheses, neither hypothesis addresses directly why some men rape their long-term partners, to whom they already have sexual access. In two studies we tested specific hypotheses derived from the general hypothesis that sexual coercion in the context of an intimate relationship may function as a sperm competition tactic. We hypothesized that men's sexual coercion in the context of an intimate relationship is related positively to his partner's perceived infidelities and that men's sexual coercion is related positively to their mate retention behaviors (behaviors designed to prevent a partner's infidelity). The results from Study 1 (self-reports from 246 men) and Study 2 (partner-reports from 276 women) supported the hypotheses. The Discussion section addresses limitations of this research and highlights future directions for research on sexual coercion in intimate relationships.
PDF
