Is the Grass Really Greener? The Influence of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation on Mate Copying Behaviors

ABSTRACT

Mate copying is a sexual strategy whereby individuals attend to socially available information about their prospective mate. This allows for more accurate decision making in regard to mating. This phenomenon was originally demonstrated among nonhumans, but there is an increasing weight of evidence suggesting that humans also engage in mate copying. Research typically focuses on heterosexual cisgender women, with no previous studies having looked at those identifying outside of the traditional gender binary. The current study aimed to address this gap by examining the impact of gender identity and sexual orientation on the propensity to engage in mate copying. Participants (N = 831) completed an online survey providing desirability ratings for photographs alone (T₁) and then rated the same photographs after receiving social information about the relationship status and previous relationship history of the pictured individual (T₂). It was found that both gender identity (F(4, 713) = 3.94, η_p² = .02) and sexual orientation (F(4, 713) = 4.40, η_p² = .02) influenced an individual’s overall propensity to mate copy, and that desirability patterns for individuals were very different depending on these variables. It was concluded that while mate copying certainly is evident among humans, the phenomenon is extremely nuanced and sensitive.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availabiltiy

Data on which this study is based can be found at https://osf.io/b46ty/?view_only=f36899ca729c4d9f931fa07bac8fa5a6

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed jointly. The first draft of the manuscript was written jointly and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this project.