Did you choose your partner or did your friends choose for you?

What if I told you that your peers influenced who you decided to be in a relationship with regardless if it is long term or short term? You would probably think that I am crazy, you chose the person, and it was your decision. Well according to a study by psychologist Skyler Place, Peter Todd, Lars Penke and Jens Asendropf, humans tend to shift their preference to partners who are considered desirable their peers (Place, et al. 2010). Do not fret humans are not the only animals who participate in this phenomenon mate copying. Mate copying is where one’s choice of partners is influenced by the success of the potential partners or qualities that have been chosen by others (Place, et al. 2010). Meaning if the person you are interested in has other people also interested in them they are more desirable to you. Sounds crazy right, but Place, Todd, Penke and Asendropf wanted not just to study mate copying in humans, but to improve on it by testing this phenomenon in both males and females.

To test this phenomenon, the psychologist recruited eighty observers, 40 women and 40 men from the Indiana University psychology participant pool. The stipulation to participate was that the participants had to; be over 18, heterosexual, and no knowledge of the German language (Place, et al. 2010). The psychologist then used photos of 16 individuals, 8 men, and 8 women, and videos of the same individuals on speed dates taken from the Berlin Speed Dating Study (BSDS) which were controlled speed dating sessions run at Humboldt University in Berlin a year before by Place, Todd, Penke and Asendorpf (Place, et al. 2010).

After filling out a questionnaire about their age, sex and relationship status participants were asked to rate how attractive they think they are on a scale from 1- unattractive to 9 attractive (Place, et al. 2010).  The participants then saw a randomly chosen photo of the opposite-sex dater from the BSDS study. They were then asked to rate interest from 1- not very interested to 9- very interested for each: short-term relationship rating, “how interested would you be in this person as a short-term partner for a brief affair..” and a long-term relationship rating “ how interested would you be in this person as a long-term partner for a committed exclusive relationship” (Place, et al. 2010). The participants were then shown a video clip of the person they rated interacting with another person on a speed date. After the video the participants were then asked to judge the “mutual romantic interest, they saw by answering yes or no to the question “Do you think the couple was interested in/ attracted to each other” (Place, et al. 2010). The participants then were shown the photo of the same person and asked to re-rate the individual on the three measures. The process then was repeated eight times so that the participant saw four interactions were the date went well and four interactions where the date was poor.

After testing the 80 participants, the psychologist found that in both male and females who rated having no interest in the presented speed dater, after viewing the videos re-rated the speed dater and had some interest in them for both short-term and long-term relationships. The psychologist also found that for males mate copying is influenced by attractiveness. If the male rated their attractiveness higher than the presented speed dater, then his changes to relationship interest decreased (Place, et al. 2010). If the male rated the speed dater attractiveness higher than his own, then the changed to relationship interest increased (Place, et al. 2010). For women, attractiveness did not affect mate copying.

These results do suggest that humans do make choices on mate possibilities based on how their mate interacts with others. Also for males the more attractive the potential partner, the more he is interested. Unfortunately, this study did not test mate copying in LGBT couples. So think about your relationships. Did you choose your partner based upon how attractive others saw them, or how well received they are by others? Probably, thus we are influenced by our peers on with whom we should be in a relationship. We like other animals participate in mate copying.

References

Place, Skyler S, Peter M Todd, Lars Penke, and Jens B Asendorpf. 2010. “Humans Show Mate Copying After Observing Real Mate Choices.” Evolution and Human Behavior 320-325.