How Humans Cognitively Manage an Abundance of Mate Options

Alison P. Lenton · Marco Francesconi

88 citations0/0 files storedPsychological Science

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Animal Behavior and Reproduction

Abstract

To contribute to researchers' understanding of how humans choose mates, we examined how the number of mate options influenced the dating decisions made by 1,868 women and 1,870 men across 84 speed-dating events. Multilevel modeling of these decisions revealed that when faced with abundant choice, choosers paid less attention to characteristics requiring more time to elicit and evaluate (e.g., occupational status and educational attainment) and more attention to characteristics that are quickly and easily assessed (e.g., height and weight). Human mate choice sits squarely within the domain of general cognition, as this study shows it to be constrained by bounds on cognitive resources.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 88 citations exist upstream.

References

1993The Adaptive Decision Maker 1994The Adaptive Decision Maker 2000When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing?1998The social brain hypothesis 2000When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing?1990Handbook of social psychology 1990Invariants Of Human Behavior 1998Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.

Cited by

2020Less is more: The paradox of choice in voting behavior 2019Evolutionary Mismatch in Mating 2013Modeling reproductive decisions with simple heuristics 2023Cohort Size and the Marriage Market: Explaining Nearly a Century of Changes in US Marriage Rates 2015Illusion of variety: Lower readability enhances perceived variety 2012Why Simple Heuristics Make Life Both Easier and Harder: A Social–Psychological Perspective 2012

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.