An Experimental Study On Cognitive Style And Social Distance Influencing Mate Choice Copying

Mate choice copying refers to social transmission of mate preferences. Research on mate choice copying originates from the observation of animal. Later studies found that human mate choice copying also exists. A common paradigm of human is firstly show subjects the target (such as photographs) as the evaluation object; then presents information about the target (such as wearing a wedding ring); finally, subjects are asked to evaluate the target again. We can make a judgment about whether mate choice copying phenomenon occurs or not according to the change of the evaluation results.Now researchers are trying to use different experimental materials to explore factors that influencing mate choice copying and its internal mechanisms. The influencing factors of mate choice copying can be summarized into several categories such as the gender of the subjects, physical attractiveness (including physical attractiveness of the target and role model), subjects’age and sexual experiences. Researches in this field are still in primary stage. Based on the previous studies, this paper aims to explore the influence of two new factors-cognitive style and social distance on mate choice copying phenomenon.Cognitive style is a constant and habitual personal pattern in the process of organizing and processing of information. People put forward various cognitive styles type according to different theories so far. The field cognitive style theory is put forward first, but also the core of these theories. Social distance refers to the differences of social object and individual in size. Social distance is seen as a dimension of psychological distance in construal level theory. Research results indicate that cognitive style, psychological distance has an impact on individual decision-making. We can see the process that subjects evaluate the target as a decision making process. So it could be concluded that cognitive style and psychological distance has influence on mate choice copying effect. We design two experiments in this study to explore the influence of two new factors-cognitive style and social distance on mate choice copying phenomenon.The results of the experiments show that:(1) People’s cognitive style have an impact on mate choice copying phenomenon.(2) Under the condition of YES judgment, field-dependence subjects show stronger mate choice copying effect than field-independence subjects.(3) Mate choice copying phenomenon doesn’t show significant gender differences.(4) People don’t show mate choice copying for the psychologically closer ones.