Page 124 - Demo

Chapter 5122We also found that date outcome was substantially associated with voluntary attention: participants indicated that they wanted to date again with people that they looked at for longer during the preferential looking task. This again highlights the strong association between attractiveness ratings and initial partner preferences: especially on first dates people seem to employ physical attractiveness as their main selection criterion (Luo & Zhang, 2009; Roth, Samara, & Kret, 2021). Given the strong association between attractiveness rating and voluntary attention, it is not surprising that the association between date outcome and voluntary attention is also robust. An exploratory analysis showed that the associations were not modulated by gender: both men and women showed highly similar trajectories with regard to attractiveness-contingent voluntary attention. Importantly, we consider it unlikely that this effect is driven by uncertainty in the parameter estimates, given that the credible intervals for the interactions between attractiveness rating and gender were very narrow (see Figure 3). Despite the fact that this finding is somewhat inconsistent with evolutionary theories of human mate choice that emphasize sex differences in attractiveness appraisal (Buss & Barnes, 1986; Li & Meltzer, 2015), it is in line with previous speed-dating studies that failed to find gender differences in the appreciation of physical attractiveness (Eastwick & Finkel, 2008; Luo & Zhang, 2009; Roth, Samara, & Kret, 2021). Here, we have extended these findings by showing that both individual attractiveness ratings and date outcome are associated with voluntary visual attention in both men and women. Nonetheless, it should be noted that these analyses were exploratory in nature, and thus no strict inference can be drawn.One could argue that it is not readily clear whether our findings (both in immediate and voluntary attention tasks) reflect long-term or short-term mate choice dynamics. Previous studies have questioned the ecological validity of speed-date paradigms to capture long-term mate choice processes (Li et al., 2013; Li & Meltzer, 2015). Specifically, Li et al. (2013) argue that speed-date designs might attract people that are not necessarily considering their interaction partners as long-term mates. Thus, they posit that the unique effects of shortterm and long-term mate choice cannot be disentangled in speed-date designs, and that it is unclear whether such designs more closely resemble short-term or long-term mate choice contexts. However, it should be noted that almost all of our participants (except for 2) reported that they were interested in pursuing a long-term relationship and, in line with other speed-date events (Asendorpf et al., 2011; Luo & Zhang, 2009), still seemed to value physical attractiveness, although Tom Roth.indd 122 08-01-2024 10:41