Mate-Value Moderates the Relationship between Intrasexual Competitiveness and Successful Mate Poaching

Abstract

Mate poaching has long been described as an intrasexually competitive tactic for acquiring new mating opportunities (Buss, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 616–628, 1988); one that confers increased risk or rejection, retaliation, or reputational damage, and thus should be most successful when implemented by those who are most desirable to members of the opposite sex. From this perspective, mate poaching should be predicted by trait differences in intrasexual competitiveness, and this link should be moderated by one’s own mate value as an index of the ability to succeed in poaching efforts and to bear the burden of the associated risks. Undergraduate men and women (N = 292) completed measures of intrasexual competitiveness, mate value, and mate poaching (successful and unsuccessful). Results showed that intrasexual competitiveness predicted a greater number of both successful and unsuccessful poaching attempts. Mate value moderated this relationship for successful, but not unsuccessful, mate poaching, such that individuals who were both intrasexually competitive and high in mate value reported the greatest success. Results suggest that mate poaching is an intrasexually competitive mating tactic; the success of which depends in part upon the mate value of the perpetrator.