Is your partner better looking than you are? It’s a hard question to answer but what does your gut tell you? Are you the person in the relationship punching above their weight? If the answer to that question is ‘Yes’, you may want to stop reading this blog right now.
Three researchers from the University of Victoria conducted an experiment to explore whether men will try to lure a more-attractive woman away from her less-attractive partner (Hoplock, Stinson,& Joordens, 2019). Their experiment was elaborate, yet direct: posing as an undergraduate student, a female actress named “Alice” would approach potential male participants in communal areas of campus to ask them to help her with a class project. Meanwhile, researchers would be covertly measuring the physical attractiveness of the male participants, from a distance. After the participant agreed to help, Alice called over a male confederate (another actor involved in the experiment) who handed her a questionnaire package. She would then smile at him and say “Thanks hun!” After he walked away, Alice would tell the participant, “That’s my boyfriend, he’s helping me out.”
Alice would then explain that her class project required her to give a 30-second speech about on-campus events and collect feedback about her performance. Following the speech, the participant completed a short questionnaire, which they believed would only be seen by Alice’s professor. This questionnaire was actually measuring the males’ evaluations of, and desire to spend time with, Alice. The cunning part was that the actor playing Alice’s boyfriend was played alternately by 2 different people; one who was matched with Alice for physical attractiveness and one who was considerably less attractive than Alice. There was also a control condition in which Alice was unaccompanied and participants did not have any information about her relationship status.
Highly-attractive men engaged in mate-poaching behaviour when a romantically-involved woman was accompanied by a less-attractive boyfriend. However, these highly-attractive men would not engage in mate-poaching behaviour when the female was accompanied by a boyfriend who matched her attractiveness, or even when the female was alone. It seems that the presence of a less attractive partner inspires lust in these men!
Let’s explore these results a little more.
Firstly, these findings support the idea that observers assume that the more attractive partner in a romantic couple is relatively uncommitted to their relationship. Thus, Alice, when accompanied by her less-attractive partner, is surely uncommitted to her relationship and therefore is a prime candidate for poaching. Secondly, with regards to why men don’t engage in this behaviour when Alice is unaccompanied, the researchers’ best guess is that participants believe a woman as beautiful as Alice must be in a relationship already, almost certainly with a man who matches her attractiveness.
There were, of course, issues with the research. For example, Alice’s behaviour may have been subtlety different across interactions, only one ‘Alice’ was used (and of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder), and the individual characteristics of the participants were not measured (high levels of narcissism seem to be related to mate-poaching behaviour).
Nevertheless, the results are still very interesting. They mean that those of you with more attractive partners might want to be on the lookout for potential poachers when you’re out and about. Well, that’s one approach. Based on the results of this study another strategy would simply be to distance yourself from your partner in public, so that would-be poachers will assume that your partner has a better looking version of you back at the house. Ouch! That might not feel too good!
References
References
Hoplock, L., Stinson, D., & Joordens, C.
(2019). ‘Is she really going out with him?’: Attractiveness exchange and
commitment scripts for romantic relationships. Personality
And Individual Differences, 139, 181-190. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2018.11.014