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One of the most important decisions an individual can make is to invest in a relationship. As with any important decision it pays to be careful. Imagine for a moment that you are wanting to buy a car: this is a pretty important purchase for most people, so you don’t want to be flippant about it. What you wouldn't do is wander on to a random car lot and throw fistfuls of money at whatever shiny four-wheeled object happened to catch your eye.
Rather, you would probably do your research and hope to arrive at a prudent decision. You would gather information. You might read about certain cars, you might even talk to people. Imagine if you came across someone who had an opinion about the car. But this wasn’t just some stumbling vagrant wreaking of tequila; maybe this person had some relevant knowledge of the car. Would this information be relevant to you?
But what does the purchase of a new car have to do with choosing a relationship partner? In both cases, you are making an important decision with serious implications for you personally. In both cases, the sensible thing to do would be to gather information about the ‘product’ in question.
Mate copying broadly refers to a propensity to be influenced by another person’s choice of mate. For women, the process of mate selection can be time-intensive, and fraught with costs and dangers. However, these risks can be minimised by modelling the mate choices of others.
Consider a hypothetical situation where you have a choice between Alan and Blake. You know that Alan has been in a relationship with another woman (we’ll call her Charlotte). He is implicitly demonstrating that he has at least some desirable relationship qualities (for if he didn’t why would Charlotte have gone out with him?). Blake, on the other hand, is a wildcard. You know nothing about him. He might not have ever had a girlfriend; he might be violent; he might be an asshole; he might even be a flat-earther (the horror). The point is that Blake is an unknown quantity and, all else being equal, Alan is the safer bet. If you choose Alan you are ‘copying’ Charlotte, because she chose him, too.
My colleague Emily Scammell and I did a study where we looked at whether or not women are influenced by information from other women. We initially showed 750 women pictures of four different men and had them rate how desirable they found each. The men were all quite similar looking so unsurprisingly they rated them as equally desirable. That was at Time 1. After about 10 minutes of doing a similar task, we had the women re-rate all four of the men, only this time we presented each man alongside information provided by a former romantic partner. All men were described as heterosexual and single. These hypothetical ex’s said their particular man was either a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ partner, and also that the breakup was ‘mutual’ or that ‘she had broken up with him’.
It’s probably not a huge surprise that, compared to when nothing was known about him, a man’s desirability went way down if he was described as a ‘bad’ partner. It might be slightly more surprising that it only really increases a little bit if he is described as ‘good’. Women (and possibly men also, our study only looked at women) are particularly sensitive to negative information about a prospective partner. This makes perfect sense because failing to reject an asshole could have pretty serious consequences, but merely failing to recognise the hidden splendour in someone is nowhere near as bad.
A man’s desirability also dropped a fair bit if he was the one that was dumped, but only went down a tiny bit if the breakup was mutual. Desirability essentially bottomed out when a man was described as a ‘bad’ partner and he was dumped by his ex.
We know from previous research that men definitely mate copy also but what isn’t clear is whether or not men similarly attend to such information from other men. For example, are men as sensitive to negative information about a potential mate? One could imagine that this may not be the case due to their larger body mass and generally increased willingness to enter into a physical relationship. It would be interesting to look at how a man being the breakup-initiator influences his desirability. This may not bode well for him either as it may indicate aggression or emotional instability in a man.
Overall the results suggest that women do pay a lot of attention to the mate-relevant decisions made by other women, and incorporate both social learning and innate evolutionary drives to facilitate decision making and behaviour relating to mate selection.
I guess the message here for women might be that finding out about a man’s romantic past might be valuable as it may tell you something good or bad about him. For men the message is simple: just don’t be a crappy partner: not only will it hurt your current partner, but once word gets around, your dating stock will plummet.
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