Intimate Relationship Maintenance Mechanisms Of Highly Attractive Men In The Face Of Attractive Alternatives

Attractive alternatives mainly refer to the potential highly attractive heterosexuals that individuals can choose from in addition to their current relationship.According to the investment theory believes if the attractive alternative is more satisfying or attractive than the existing partner,the individual is more inclined to end the existing relationship and choose the attractive alternatives.Highly attractive alternatives threaten an individual's satisfaction,investment,and commitment to existing relationships.It can be seen that the attractive alternative is a powerful threat to both partners in a relationship.So how do individuals in intimate relationships remove the threat of high-face attractiveness of the opposite sex to existing intimate relationships,so as to effectively maintain long-term stable intimate relationships? Fortunately,a large number of studies have proved that committed individuals in often use adaptive psychological mechanisms that subconsciously "devalue" or unconsciously "ignore" to resist the threat of high-face attractiveness of the opposite sex.However,in order to ensure the reproduction and prosperity of the race,individuals tend to choose the opposite sex with high facial attractiveness as their future partners to find a better partner.Both sexes regarded the facial attractiveness of their partners as an important criterion for mate choice,but the facial attractiveness had a greater impact on the male's willingness to choose a mate.In a word,men paid more attention to the facial attractiveness of their partners than women.In short-term intimate relationships(sexual relationships or one-night stands),both sexes prefer highly attractive individuals.Men with more facial attractiveness had more short-term partners and were more likely to attract more highly attractive opposite sexes.At the same time,Men who had more short-term sexual partners rated attractive alternatives more positively and were slower to shift attention away from attractive alternatives.So will men with more attractive have less of a devaluing effect on women with high facial attractiveness? Is it harder to show attentional disengagement to highly attractive heterosexual faces? Based on this,the core question of this series of research focuses on is whether the level of male facial attractiveness can affect men's cognition of women with high facial attractiveness,and what factors can affect men's perception of high-face attractive woman.The first experiment aims to explore the differences in the "devaluing effect” of attractive alternatives on the conscious level by men with different levels of facial attractiveness.In the experiment,male subjects at different levels of facial attractiveness were asked to evaluate the attractiveness of the opposite sex,and the different cognitive assessment responses of singles and lovers were compared.The first study found that the relationship status was not related to participants' assessment for pictures of opposite sex in terms of facial attractiveness.When the relationship status was love,the average facial attractiveness male scored significantly lower than the highly facial attractive male.It can be seen that the level of male facial attractiveness rating does affect the evaluation of heterosexual attractiveness,while the "devaluing effect" of the males with highly facial attractiveness is weaker when faced with the attractive alternative.In addition,narcissism and machiavellianism in the dark triad personality traits can significantly predict the high-face heterosexual scores of single men,while attachment anxiety can significantly negatively predict the scores of committed people with rating attractive alternative.The second experiment was designed to explore whether relationship-related prejudice occurs during the early stages of cognitive processing? The neutral priming and mating priming were set by the scene imaging task to compare the differences in attentional bias responses of subjects with different face attractiveness levels to female images with different face attractiveness levels under different priming conditions.An improved version of the visual dot-probe procedure was used to investigate the attention preference of single and committed people to the opposite sex,in order to explore the relationship maintenance response of committed individuals at the early stage of social cognition.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the attentional adhesion time of attractive opposite sex of males with high facial attractiveness and average facial attractiveness at neutral primes.When the participants were at the mating prime,the average facial attractiveness males' responded greater selective attention to attractive opposite-sex target,the highly facial attractiveness males showed no such bias.It is explained that when attractive men perceived attractive alternative as a threat to current intimacy,they tend to move their attention away from attractive alternative more quickly,thereby avoiding temptation and protecting intimacy.In addition,partner's facial attractiveness can significantly negatively predict committed people's attention to attractive relationship alternatives,while attachment avoidance can significantly positively predict the attention preference of attractive opposite-sex subjects.The purpose of experiment three is to explore how men perceive the importance and influence of male facial attractiveness through qualitative interview research,and highlight the different perspectives of the above-mentioned issues on highly facial attractiveness men and average facialattractiveness men.The results of experiment three show that majority of the subjects considered that facial attractiveness was important.The degree of recognition of the importance of male facial attractiveness has an impact on the male's own facial attractiveness,experience,social sexual orientation and other aspects,which verifies many existing experimental research results.In conclusion,there were five conclusions as following:(1)Men's perception of heterosexual attraction is not affected by the state of relationships;(2)The "devaluation effect" of facial attractiveness men in love on attractive alternatives was weaker;(3)After mating prime,men with high facial attractiveness are more likely to disengaged from the high facial attractiveness women;(4)The lower the attractiveness of the partner,the stronger the attention adhesion of committed people to the attractive alternatives;(5)Men with higher facial attractiveness have a higher degree of identification with male face attractiveness.When intimate relationships are established,they are more inclined to face the impact of gender attractiveness on intimate relationships.