Domain-Specific Studies Of Human Mate-Choice Copying

When individuals choose a partner,their attitude towards the opposite sex will be affected by other same-sex behaviors,which is called mate choice copying.A large amount of evidence shows that mate choice copying is a non-independent mate choice strategy,which is a kind of learning from others' decision-making behavior.However,the nature of this learning is controversial.Previous studies have suggested that mate choice copying is domain-specific.Recent research suggests that mate choice copying may be subordinate to the larger field of general social learning.The purpose of this study is to explore the differences between mate selection replication and general social learning represented by conformity effect by functional magnetic resonance(fmri)technology and attractiveness judgment task,so as to provide evidence for whether mate selection replication is domain-specific.In this study,77 female subjects were recruited through the campus recruitment platform,and three learning conditions,positive,neutral and negative,were set to compare the changes in the attractiveness scores of the target opposite sex before and after the subjects received the information provided under different learning conditions.The results showed that there were differences in behavioral data and neural correlation between mate choice task and conformity task.The conformity task activated more brain regions than the mate selection task,which was consistent with the resource-saving characteristics of mate selection.In addition,the neutral condition was used as the baseline,and the positive condition and the negative condition were compared with the baseline level respectively.The positive condition and the negative condition activated different brain regions in mate selection replication.In conformity task,both positive and negative conditions belong to general social learning,and there is no significant difference in activated brain regions.This study provides more evidence to support the domain specificity of mate choice copying.