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106Chapter 5investigate the effect of sexual desire and its association with sociosexualityand sex on attraction detection accuracy.In addition, we found no effect of self-rated attractiveness on accuracy, incontrast with previous research (A. J. Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012).A potential explanation for this finding could be that in the present study,we examined physical attractiveness exclusively. We could therefore onlyspeculate that our sample was similar to previous research in terms of otherfactors that can constitute attractiveness (e.g., personality). Nevertheless,previous research has shown that personality has negligible effects on bothmen and women’s desirability (Kurzban & Weeden, 2005). Furthermore,self-rated attractiveness has been found to play a role in overperception together with short-term mating styles (Howell et al., 2012; A. J. Lee et al.,2020; Perilloux et al., 2012). However, in our sample, most participantsindicated they were searching for a long-term relationship. Thus, this pronounced long-term relationship focus might have prevented the interplaybetween self-attractiveness and mating strategy to emerge.One crucial point that cannot be disentangled in the context of thepresent study is whether women and men interpreted the question regardingthe wish to go on another date with their partner similarly. Specifically, inprevious studies, participants were asked to indicate how sexually interestedthey were in their partner (A. J. Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012).However, in the present study, participants were asked to indicate whetherthey would like to go on another date with their partner (see also Asendorpfet al., 2011; Overbeek et al., 2013; Todd et al., 2007, for similar setups).It could be argued that this question led female participants to respond tothe perceived question of “Are you romantically interested in your partner?”and male participants to respond to the question of “Are you sexually interested in your partner?” Even though this cannot be tested in the presentstudy, it is quite likely that the response pattern would have remained thesame. Previous research has shown that romantic interest and sexual interest follow the same sex differences, where women are choosier than men(Fletcher et al., 2014). Crucially, asking about the wish to go on anotherdate rather than sexual interest is a strength of the current study, as it increases its ecological validity, given that it resembles real-life situations moreclosely (e.g., online dating sites; Kurzban & Weeden, 2005).It should be noted that in the present study, we examined only heterosexual participants; therefore, our findings cannot be directly generalizableto non-heterosexual populations. Furthermore, our sample consisted predominantly of university students. University students offer a prime targetsample for sexuality research given the greater interaction frequency withopposite-sex partners and the increased necessity to infer sexual interest(Perilloux et al., 2012) and are commonly the primary target for such studies (e.g., A. J. Lee et al., 2020). Importantly, most participants in our studywere interested in a committed relationship (only 2 participants were not),Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 106 08-04-2024 16:36