From vigilance to violence : Tactics of mate retention in American undergraduates

Abstract

Although the attraction and selection of mates are central to human reproduction, the retention of acquired mates is often necessary to actualize the promise of reproductive effort. Three empirical studies used act frequency methods to identify, assess the reported performance frequencies of, and evaluate the perceived effectiveness of 19 tactics and 104 acts of human mate guarding and retention. In Study 1 (N = 105), a hierarchical taxonomy of tactics was developed from a pool of nominated acts. We then assessed the reported performance frequencies of 19 retention tactics and 104 acts and tested three hypotheses derived from evolutionary models in an undergraduate sample (N = 102). Study 2 (N = 46) provided an independent test of these hypotheses by assessing the perceived effectiveness of each tactic. Discussion draws implications for sexual poaching, susceptibility to pair-bond defection, and the power of act frequency methods for preserving the proximate specificity and systemic complexity inherent in human mating processes.