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Sexually selective cognition in primates412study only presented participants with opposite-sex pictures. Therefore, a similar study presented same-sex and opposite-sex pictures to participants and found that only men showed an opposite-sex bias for attractive faces in the effort task, while women exerted more effort to see attractive same-sex and opposite-sex pictures. In addition, the amount of effort exerted by males to see attractive females was substantially higher than that exerted by females for attractive faces (Levy et al., 2008). Thus, motivational salience seems to depend on the interaction effect among participant sex, stimulus sex, and stimulus attractiveness.In conclusion, these studies demonstrate that men and women are willing to exert effort to view attractive individuals. However, while men are specifically motivated to watch opposite-sex individuals, women do not show a sexrelated bias in effort. These findings illustrate a discrepancy between “liking” and “wanting” in men. Specifically, men rate attractive males and females as more attractive than unattractive males and females but will work only to view attractive females. For women, on the other hand, “liking” and “wanting” seem to be more positively associated than for men, as women exert effort to see both attractive males and females (Levy et al., 2008). Thus, there seems to be a sex difference in the motivation to see attractive faces.Sexually selective cognition in primatesWhile sexual selection and mate choice have been widely studied in primates (e.g., Dixson, 2012; Paul, 2002), relatively few studies have investigated how mate choice is related to cognitive processes, such as memory, attention, and motivation. To date, sexually selective cognition in primates has mostly been studied through preferential looking experiments (Winters et al., 2015). In these experiments, individuals are confronted with different types of pictures presented either sequentially or simultaneously during a trial. In the case of sequential presentation, the visual preference can be deduced from the average attention in trials showing picture type 1 vs. the average attention in trials showing picture type 2. In the case of simultaneous presentation, visual preference becomes apparent when looking at the attention relative to each picture. This method has not only been used in the context of mate choice, but has also elucidated the effects of familiarity (Hanazuka et al., 2013; Lewis et al., 2021) and emotions (Pritsch et al., 2017; Roth et al., 2023; van Berlo et al., 2023) on visual attention.Tom Roth.indd 41 08-01-2024 10:41