Impact Factors On The Effect Of Human Male Mate Copying

Previous study primarily focus on mate choice coping in females, current studies predict that women will prefer more to choose those men that are loved by other women through observing explicitly or seeking useful cues or learning from the judgment of others. However, it still remains unclear that whether mate choice copying also exists in human male and how it occurs.To address this question, in a sample of college male students, we conducted three experiments with different hypotheses. In experiment 1, we found that men also showed mate choice copying when observing a highly-attractive same-sex model express interest or no-interest to a potential mate with medium-attractiveness.In experiment 2, we examined how cognitive style, gender roles and demographic variables(including age, marriage, attractiveness, romantic experiences) influence the effect of male mate copying. As a result, we found that older, married, highly attractive and more experienced men had a greater tendency to copying. And the traditional sex role(Masculinity and Femininity) also plays an important role in male mate copying.According to the conclusions above, in experiment 3 we further examined the influences of both traditional sex role and demographic variables such as age, marriage, self-evaluation of attractiveness and romantic experience to male mate choice copying effect. Results showed that men also showed greater interest in engaging in a romantic relationship or a greater aversion in different conditions when observing a highly-attractive same-sex model expressed different preferences to a potential mate with medium-attractiveness. To explain more specifically, in traditional sex role, masculinity men paid more attentions to the negative judgements made by highly-attractive same-sex models, this effect particularly stronger when these masculinity men with characteristics that are younger, single, lower self-evaluation.Similar to this, to femininity men which paid more attentions to the positive judgements made by highly-attractive same-sex models, this effect particularly stronger when these femininity men with characteristics that are younger, single, lower self-evaluation. However, both masculinity men and femininity men which are older, married, higher self-evaluation paid both attentions to the negative and positive judgements made by highly-attractive same-sex models. What’s more, the mate copying decisions made by femininity men in each variables play a more important role in all groups of male. In addition, femininity men have a more strict criteria when made mate decisions, especially in older, married, higher self-evaluation and more experienced groups.All these results revealed that males also made mate decisions non-independently and this copying effect showed different characters in different conditions and will be more apparent especially in some specific conditions.