Page 32 - Demo

Chapter 230AbstractRecent psychological research has suggested an important role for cognitive processes in human mate choice. The extent to which a person is attractive has a strong influence on whether humans attend to this person, remember their face, or are motivated to keep watching them. Despite the flourishing research on primate cognition in recent years, studies examining sexually selective cognition in primates are still relatively scarce. However, a better comparative understanding of sexually selective cognition is important to gain better understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying the attractiveness biases we observe in humans. Furthermore, existing techniques for evaluating sexually selective cognition in primates could have practical applications for conservation breeding programs by allowing for identification of individual mate preferences. In this review, we therefore discuss evidence for sexually selective cognition in humans and the scant work in primates, adopting a comparative perspective. Based on our review, we suggest experimental paradigms that can be used to study sexually selective cognition in primates, and the potential application of these paradigms to inform conservation breeding programs. We emphasize that beyond informing our evolutionary understanding of the interplay between mate choice and cognition, studying sexually selective cognition in primates can help improve well-being and potentially increase reproductive success in captive primates.Based on: Roth, T. S., Samara, I., Perea-García, J. O., & Kret, M. E. (in preparation). “I go bananas for you”: Extending sexually selective cognition to non-human primates.Tom Roth.indd 30 08-01-2024 10:41