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107Underlying factors of the sexual overperception bias 5which limited our ability to investigate whether different mating strategiesmight influence attraction detection accuracy (e.g., A. J. Lee et al., 2020;Perilloux et al., 2012). Crucially, a limitation that stems from the use of aspeed-dating setup is that we cannot assess whether the personality characteristics and social skills of our sample are representative of a wider population (Finkel & Eastwick, 2008). Future research should investigate moreheterogeneous samples in terms of educational background and age.The current study shed light on several factors that underlie the sexualoverperception bias. Given that this bias is linked to the likelihood of assault (Abbey et al., 1998), the study’s findings are crucial in elucidating andreducing miscommunication between the sexes in dating contexts (Perillouxet al., 2012). Crucially, we showed that sex and projection of own interestare intertwined and should not be seen as competing, but rather as complementary explanations. Importantly, our findings cast doubt on previousresearch suggesting that one’s own interest, sexual desire, and self-rated attractiveness might fully explain the sexual overperception bias (A. J. Lee etal., 2020; Roth, Samara, & Kret, 2021b). Therefore, our results not onlysupport the EMT framework, but further suggest that the incorporation ofsex differences in projection of own interest might be a useful addition tothe EMT framework.Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 107 08-04-2024 16:36