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General discussion2079One important assumption that underlies evolutionary approaches to cognition, is that cognitive adaptations or biases also translate into behavioural differentiation (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992). For example, attentional sensitivity to threats in the environment can guide avoidance behaviour, and thereby increase an individual’s fitness. Such a link has not been established yet in the context of sexually selective cognition. However, Chapter 5 suggests that a link between attentional biases may exist. While many studies have investigated the interplay between cognition and attractiveness, very few studies have linked cognition to real-world mate choice. Admittedly, many studies have established a link between attentional processes and sexual behaviour, to the extent that heterosexual and homosexual participants show differential attention towards same- and opposite-sex stimuli (Dawson & Chivers, 2016, 2018). In addition, with regard to other topics, evidence suggests a strong link between substance abuse and attentional biases towards these substances (Field & Cox, 2008; Sharbanee et al., 2013; Weafer & Fillmore, 2013), suggesting a direct link between attentional biases and behaviours. However, these attentional biases all relate to general perceiver behaviour, and not specifically to an interactive effect of perceiver and stimulus on behaviour. Nevertheless, if sexually selective cognition would indeed aid people to identify suitable mates, a link between cognitive measures and valid measures of mate choice need to be firmly established. Recently, it has been established that initial impressions have a lasting effect on long-term mate choice in humans (Baxter et al., 2022), and functional cognitive biases potentially play a role in this. Accordingly, the results of Chapter 5 of this thesis are a first attempt to establish a link between attentional biases to preferred mates and mate choice based on speed-dates. Future work could try to further explore this line of research by combining cognitive tasks and speed-dating in order to get a better insight into the link between cognitive biases and mate choice. Such knowledge is essential to understand the role of cognitive processes in the first attraction filter. The attraction filter in regard to orang-utan mate choiceWith regard to this filter, it still has to be established whether such a multistage model applies to non-human primates as well, and whether they possess sexually selective cognition. In Chapter 1, I suggested that orang-utans very likely only possess an attraction-filter, because they do not form long-term pair bonds. If they indeed possess such a filter, the most likely visual traits that would be “filtered”, would be traits of fully developed flanged males, such as large cheek Tom Roth.indd 207 08-01-2024 10:42