Motivations for mate choice discrimination in an intergroup dating context

Social psychological approaches to understanding intergroup bias often assume that the motivations underlying intergroup bias are the same for both men and women (e.g. Tajfel & Turner, 1979). An interdisciplinary perspective that integrates social psychological perspectives with evolutionary theory provides a framework for making predictions about instances in which the motivations for intergroup bias may differ between men and women. Over the course of human evolutionary history men and women have faced unique adaptive challenges in their interactions with outgroups, particularly with outgroup men. Many intergroup interactions occur during times of intergroup conflict. For men, these interactions are typically characterized by aggressive and competitive striving for access to resources, but women's interactions often take the form of sexual victimization at the hands of the invading group. These distinct adaptive challenges likely gave rise to different psychological mechanisms for processing and responding to information about members of different groups, particularly men of the outgroup. Given the importance of reproductive choice in female mating strategies, women may have evolved psychological mechanisms for avoiding outgroup men in the service of protecting reproductive choice. Previous research has documented preliminary evidence for such mechanisms, finding that women's bias against outgroup men increases when threats to reproductive choice would be most costly, such as when women are in the fertile window of their menstrual cycle, when they appraise themselves as particularly vulnerable to sexual coercion, and when they assess the outgroup as physically formidable or threatening. The present research builds on these findings by examining the influence of these mechanisms in an intergroup mating context. Specifically, the research examines gender differences in responses to unsolicited dating requests made by experimentally manipulated opposite-sex ingroup and outgroup members, with a particular emphasis on the unique motivations that underlie women's intergroup dating preferences. Results indicate that men are more willing to say yes to date requests overall, but neither men nor women show a strong ingroup dating preference. However, consistent with predictions, women that appraise themselves as being particularly vulnerable to sexual coercion and who are also in the fertile window of their menstrual cycle are less likely to say yes to date requests from outgroup members, but not ingroup members. This research builds on a growing body of literature providing evidence for a suite of psychological adaptations in women to protect reproductive choice.