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53How attractiveness preferences influence attention3tiveness is especially pronounced when it is adaptive, i.e., for people thatmight be looking for a partner.It has been suggested that men are more attuned to physical attractive,ness than women (Buss, 1989). This has been supported by questionnairestudies, where women seem to place less emphasis on physical attractionof their partner than men do (Bech-Sørensen & Pollet, 2016). This is alsoreflected in cognition: men show a stronger correlation between stimulusattractiveness and preferential looking (Mitrovic et al., 2018). Similar pat,terns have been found in immediate attention studies (Maner, Gailliot, &DeWall, 2007; Zhang, Maner, Xu, & Zheng, 2017), although this finding isnot always replicated (Roth et al., 2022). However, these sex differencesdo not always become apparent in studies that investigate real-life inter,actions. On the contrary, both women and men seem to rely mostly onphysical attractiveness of their partners to make mate choice decisions dur,ing speed-dates (Roth, Samara, & Kret, 2021a; Eastwick & Finkel, 2008a;Luo & Zhang, 2009). Thus, while some studies report sex differences inattractiveness bias in attentional paradigms, these differences do not seemto be reflected in dating decisions. This raises the question whether thesedifferent approaches to studying mate choice capture the same processes andto what extent they are actually informative with regard to real-life matechoice.Here, we therefore combined two paradigms that have been used fre,quently to study immediate and voluntary attention in the context of humanmate choice with a realistic paradigm to study human mate choice, namelyspeed-dating. More specifically, we investigated the association between in,dividual preferences for attractiveness and date outcome, respectively, onimmediate and voluntary attention in non-committed young adults. To testimmediate attention, we employed a dot-probe task (MacLeod, Mathews, &Tata, 1986). In the dot-probe task, participants briefly view two picturespresented on the display, one of which is then replaced by a dot. Partici,pants are asked to indicate the location of the dot (right vs. left) using thecorresponding keyboard keys. To investigate voluntary attention, we used apreferential looking task, where participants can freely view two stimuli ineach trial (Leder et al., 2016), while their eye movements were recorded withan eye tracker. We combined these two cognitive tasks with a speed-dateparadigm in order to create a realistic mate-choice context. Speed-datinghas been shown to have strong ecological validity, as participation in a speed,dating experiment can translate into real-world romantic relationships 55.Furthermore, we aimed to examine how the results of two different but well,established types of paradigms (i.e., speed dating and cognitive tasks) relateto each other. This is because these two pervasive paradigms may be cap,turing fundamentally different processes relevant to mate choice that are,nonetheless, relevant to understanding the role of perceived attractiveness.As such, we believe the integration of these paradigms has the potentialtiveness is especially pronounced when it is adaptive, i.e., for people thatmight be looking for a partner.It has been suggested that men are more attuned to physical attractive,ness than women (Buss, 1989). This has been supported by questionnairestudies, where women seem to place less emphasis on physical attractionof their partner than men do (Bech-Sørensen & Pollet, 2016). This is alsoreflected in cognition: men show a stronger correlation between stimulusattractiveness and preferential looking (Mitrovic et al., 2018). Similar pat,terns have been found in immediate attention studies (Maner, Gailliot, &DeWall, 2007; Zhang, Maner, Xu, & Zheng, 2017), although this finding isnot always replicated (Roth et al., 2022). However, these sex differencesdo not always become apparent in studies that investigate real-life inter,actions. On the contrary, both women and men seem to rely mostly onphysical attractiveness of their partners to make mate choice decisions dur,ing speed-dates (Roth, Samara, & Kret, 2021a; Eastwick & Finkel, 2008a;Luo & Zhang, 2009). Thus, while some studies report sex differences inattractiveness bias in attentional paradigms, these differences do not seemto be reflected in dating decisions. This raises the question whether thesedifferent approaches to studying mate choice capture the same processes andto what extent they are actually informative with regard to real-life matechoice.Here, we therefore combined two paradigms that have been used fre,quently to study immediate and voluntary attention in the context of humanmate choice with a realistic paradigm to study human mate choice, namelyspeed-dating. More specifically, we investigated the association between in,dividual preferences for attractiveness and date outcome, respectively, onimmediate and voluntary attention in non-committed young adults. To testimmediate attention, we employed a dot-probe task (MacLeod, Mathews, &Tata, 1986). In the dot-probe task, participants briefly view two picturespresented on the display, one of which is then replaced by a dot. Partici,pants are asked to indicate the location of the dot (right vs. left) using thecorresponding keyboard keys. To investigate voluntary attention, we used apreferential looking task, where participants can freely view two stimuli ineach trial (Leder et al., 2016), while their eye movements were recorded withan eye tracker. We combined these two cognitive tasks with a speed-dateparadigm in order to create a realistic mate-choice context. Speed-datinghas been shown to have strong ecological validity, as participation in a speed,dating experiment can translate into real-world romantic relationships 55.Furthermore, we aimed to examine how the results of two different but well,established types of paradigms (i.e., speed dating and cognitive tasks) relateto each other. This is because these two pervasive paradigms may be cap,turing fundamentally different processes relevant to mate choice that are,nonetheless, relevant to understanding the role of perceived attractiveness.As such, we believe the integration of these paradigms has the potentialto more holistically inform the complex phenomenon that is human matechoice.Our study aimed to contribute to the understanding of the interplay between cognition, attractiveness, and mate choice in two main ways. First,we linked idiosyncratic attractiveness preferences not only to voluntary, butalso immediate attention. Second, we studied whether attractiveness-relatedattentional biases are indeed reflective of actual mate choice. Regarding ouranalyses, we first explored whether there were idiosyncratic differences inattractiveness ratings in our sample, as reflected in inter-rater reliability ofattractiveness ratings. With regards to individual attractiveness preferencesand the dot-probe task, we expected that participants would respond fasterto the dot when it replaced a picture they themselves had previously ratedas highly attractive; whereas they would respond slower to the dot when thedistractor was a picture they had rated as highly attractive. With regards todate outcome and the dot-probe task, we expected people to respond fasterto the dot when it replaced a picture of a person they later felt attractedto on a speed-date. However, we expected them to respond slower whenthe distractor was a picture of a person they later felt attracted to whileon a speed-date. With regard to individual attractiveness preferences andpreferential looking, we expected a positive association between individualattractiveness rating and looking time. Furthermore, regarding date outcome and looking time, we expected participants to look longer at peoplethey later felt attracted to on a speed-date. For each analysis, we also explored whether the relationships would be more pronounced for men thanfor women.MethodsParticipantsEighty (N = 80) participants were recruited for a speed-dating event anddivided into four groups of 10 male and 10 female participants. In linewith the inclusion criteria, all participants reported that they were between18 and 26 years old, heterosexual, single, Dutch-speaking, and not undertreatment for psychiatric disorders. All but 2 participants indicated thatthey were interested in pursuing a long-term relationship. Ten participantsdid not attend the experimental session and three participants (1 woman)withdrew their participation before the speed-dating sessions, leading to afinal sample of 67 (N = 67; 35 women: Mage = 22.03, SD = 2.26; men:Mage = 22.61, SD = 1.75). All participants provided informed consent inaccordance with the declaration of Helsinki. Participants received a complementary ticket to Apenheul Primate Park (Apeldoorn, the Netherlands)for their participation. The study was approved by the Leiden UniversityEthics Committee (CEP: 2020-02-20-M.E.Kret-V1-2169).Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 53 08-04-2024 16:35