The Strategies For Women To Cope With Their Male Intimate Partner’s Stalking Behaviors In Two Different Conditions

Men are faced with many adaptive problems in intimate partner relationships, such as sexual infidelity and mate reacquisition. And to solve these problems, humans have evolved a range of exploitative tactics, among which stalking is common. Women, from an evolutionary perspective, should have an adaptation to cope with the aggression they are facing with, for there being pressure of evolution to defense when the aggression proves inevitable. In other words, women wouldn’t be the passive recipient of the aggression. They should take measures to minimize the costs. As for stalking, the common form of intimate partner violence, there should be different tactics for women to cope with male intimate partners’stalking deriving from different adaptive problems. This study aims at exploring whether women have an adaptation, with which women can automatically adopt corresponding tactics to cope with the two different stalking situations.This study including two experiments:study 1 explores whether women would adopt corresponding coping strategies forthe male intimate partners’stalking in two conditions at the explicit level. And once the coping strategies are behavior output of adaptation, women would process the strategies automatically. In this cues, study 2 investigates whether male intimate partners’stalking in two different conditions would influence the coping strategies women adopt at the implicit level, with an IAT experimental paradigm.Through the two experiments, the following main conclusions can be drawn:(1) Either at the explicit or implicit level, for male intimate partner’s stalking in the sexual jealousy condition, women are more likely to choose negotiation strategies and impression management strategies.(2) Either at the explicit or implicit level, for male intimate partner’s stalking in the mate reacquisition condition, women are more likely to choose negotiation strategies and seeking third-party help strategies.(3) From the evolutionary perspective, the strategies for women to cope with their male intimate partner’s stalking in two different conditions are an output of adaptation.