Attractive Rivals Research Articles

The Disney ‘Princess Bubble’ as a Cultural Influencer

The Disney ‘Princess Bubble’ as a Cultural Influencer

Romantic Love and Attentional Biases Toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Long-Term Relationship Maintenance Among FemaleChineseCollegeStudents.

Studies about heterosexual individuals' long-term relationship maintenance have indicated that committed individuals possess evolved psychological mechanisms that help protect their ongoing romantic relationships against threats from attractive others during early stage attentional processing when mating-related motivation is activated. In this study, two experiments tested the relationship maintenance mechanism among committed female college students in the Chinese cultural context under different love priming conditions. Committed Chinese women displayed inattention to attractive alternatives in positive love-scenario priming (Study 1: 114 female undergraduates, age range = 18-26 years), subliminal semantic love priming (Study 2: 110 female undergraduates, age range = 18-25 years), and baseline conditions (Studies 1 and 2). Those with high levels of chronic jealousy showed significantly increased attention to and difficulty disengaging attention from attractive rivals when subliminally primed with love. This provides further evidence, from an Eastern cultural context, for the existence of attentional biases toward attractive alternatives and rivals in early stage attentional processes for relationship maintenance. This research also illustrates the important role of romantic love in maintaining long-term romantic relationships.

Staying ahead of the game—plasticity in chorusing behavior allows males to remain attractive in different social environments

The dynamic nature of many breeding aggregations, where the composition and attractiveness of a male’s competitors are ever changing, places extreme pressure on advertising males to remain competitive. In response to this challenge, males may adjust the properties of their calls or change when they signal relative to their nearest neighbors, which are likely their strongest competitors. We used two playback experiments—one simulating a conspecific environment and the other simulating a mixed-species environment—to test the hypothesis that males use social plasticity in signal features, signal timing, or both, to remain attractive. Further, we examined whether this plasticity is mediated by selective attention, through which males change calling behavior in response to the most relevant competitors, while disregarding less relevant rivals. We find that males change some temporal call features, but rely strongly on signal timing to remain attractive relative to rivals. Simultaneous assessment of both types of calling plasticity allowed us to makes sense of counterintuitive responses of male calling behavior that would otherwise appear non-adaptive. We further show that this plasticity is most pronounced in response to attractive/conspecific males. We discuss how sexual selection by female choice may influence the trade-off between call feature and call timing plasticity, as well as how competitive interactions on a local scale may affect the overall acoustic environment in the chorus. Males of group-signaling species face intense pressure to stand out from the crowd to attract mates—not only must they produce attractive signals, those signals must also be perceived clearly above the din. As signaling is a costly endeavor, it would be adaptive for males to recognize the relative attractiveness of their competitors and to adjust signaling behavior as the social environment changes. Using playback experiments, we show that male treefrogs modify call features and call timing in response to more attractive rivals. Our study also highlights that when studying chorusing species, the dual demands of producing attractive calls and placing them in attractive positions require simultaneous attention to both aspects of calling behavior. Only then is it possible to appreciate the potential trade-offs involved: males lengthening their call period when interacting with attractive rivals would appear maladaptive without the knowledge that this behavior results in reduced call overlap.

Gender differences in response to infidelity types and rival attractiveness

Some evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that women are more upset by their partners’ emotional infidelity than men, and men are more upset by sexual infidelity than women. In addition, other evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that women are more distressed than men when their partners are unfaithful with a very attractive rival (lover). However, according to the imagination hypothesis, these sexual differences can be explained by gender differences in the “imagination of infidelity.” Based on this context, we hypothesized that gender differences would not be observed when controlling for the effects of infidelity imagination. Participants consisted of 288 college students who were in serious committed relationships. Photographs of attractive and unattractive rival were presented, and participants rated how upset they would be by their partner’s infidelity with the rival. A 2 (gender) × 2 (infidelity type) × 2 (rival attractiveness) factorial design was employed. Analysis of variance for the group who had lower levels of infidelity imagination revealed a significant interaction between gender and infidelity type. However, analyses of covariance with vividness of the partner’s infidelity as a covariate revealed that there were no differences between the genders. Therefore, the imagination hypothesis was supported while the evolutionary explanation for gender differences was not.

Do Transgender People Respond According to Their Biological Sex or Their Gender Identity When Confronted With Romantic Rivals?

This study examined the hypothesis that gender identity and biological sex represent independent modules and that transgender individuals respond to romantic rivals in line with their gender identity and not with their biological sex. Additionally, associations of jealousy with intrasexual competitiveness (ISC) and social comparison orientation (SCO) were explored. A total of 134 male-to-female and 94 female-to-male transgender individuals from Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, responded to a questionnaire. In line with the predictions, female-to-male transgender individuals experienced more jealousy than male-to-female transgender individuals in response to a physically dominant rival, whereas male-to-female individuals experienced more jealousy than female-to-male individuals in response to a physically attractive rival. Regardless of their gender identity, in both groups social-communal attributes were the most jealousy-evoking characteristic. Overall, the results indicate that transgender individuals mainly respond in line with their gender identity and not in line with their biological sex when facing romantic rivals. In addition, transgender individuals high in ISC experienced relatively more jealousy in response to all rival characteristics, whereas SCO was only among male-to-female individuals associated with jealousy.

Expecting and Competing? Jealous Responses Among Pregnant and Nonpregnant Women.

In the current study, we reasoned that when pregnant, women should be especially motivated to protect their reproductive investments as well as their pair bond and be vigilant about intrasexual competitors. To investigate this, pregnant women ( n = 66) and nonpregnant women ( n = 59; age M = 27.41, SD = 3.36) in committed relationships read a jealousy-evoking scenario that was accompanied by a picture of either an attractive or an unattractive woman, after which they indicated their jealousy about such a situation. Moreover, we asked whether a mate's emotional infidelity would evoke more jealousy than his sexual infidelity. The results showed that for pregnant women, both rivals evoked similar amounts of jealousy, whereas nonpregnant women's jealousy was mainly evoked by the attractive rival. Moreover, pregnant women indicated they would be most upset by their partner's emotional infidelity, and especially if they were previously exposed to the attractive rival. Nonpregnant women considered both types of infidelity equally upsetting. These results emphasize the adaptive function of jealousy and extend the literature on the influence of a rival's attractiveness on women's jealousy by focusing on the experiences of pregnant women.

There is more: Intrasexual competitiveness, physical dominance, and intrasexual collaboration.

It is emphasized that in organizational settings, the responses to same-sex attractive others are enhanced among individuals high in intrasexual competitiveness; that especially attractive rivals who are perceived as unfriendly will induce competition; that among males, physical dominance may induce more competition than physical attractiveness; and that especially males may prefer to associate with attractive same-sex others for intrasexual collaboration.

Do Males Form Social Associations Based on Sexual Attractiveness in a Fission-Fusion Fish Society?

Recent theory predicts that males should choose social environments that maximize their relative attractiveness to females by preferentially associating with less attractive rivals, so as to enhance their mating success. Using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a highly social species, we tested for non-random social associations among males in mixed-sex groups based on two phenotypic traits (body length and coloration) that predict relative sexual attractiveness to females and sexual (sperm) competitiveness. Based on a well-replicated laboratory dichotomous-choice test of social group preference, we could not reject the null hypothesis that focal males chose randomly between a mixed-sex group that comprised a female and a rival male that was less sexually attractive than themselves and another mixed-sex group containing a sexually more attractive male. The same conclusion was reached when females were absent from the two groups. As might be expected from these laboratory findings, free-ranging males in the field were not assorted by either body length or colour in mixed-sex shoals. The apparent lack of an evolved and expressed preference in wild male guppies from our study population to form social associations with other males based on their relative sexual attractiveness and competitiveness might be due to the fission-fusion dynamics of guppy shoals in nature. Such social dynamics likely places constraints on the formation of stable phenotype-based social associations among males. This possibility is supported by a simulation model which assumes group departure rules based on relative body size and coloration in males.

Attractive rivals may undermine the expectation of career advancement and enhance jealousy. An experimental study

This experiment with 119 adult females examined the effect of a rival’s attractiveness on jealousy and career advancement expectations in a simulated work setting where individuals had to compete for a job promotion. We hypothesized that an attractive rival would evoke relatively more jealousy and lower career advancement expectations, especially in individuals high in Intrasexual Competitiveness (ISC). In addition, we examined the moderating effects of characteristics attributed to the rival in terms of popularity, professionalism, and unfriendliness. The results showed that, overall, an attractive rival induced more jealousy and lower career advancement expectations than an unattractive rival. Especially among women who attributed unfriendliness to their rival, the attractiveness of the rival induced higher levels of jealousy and lower career advancement expectations. Among women high in ISC, the rival’s attractiveness induced lower career advancement expectations. It is recommended that managers and human resource officials pay particular attention to how physical attractiveness may interfere with female employees’ professional development, and to the important role of emotions in the workplace.

Attentional Biases toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Mechanisms Involved in Relationship Maintenance among Chinese Women.

A long-term romantic relationship can offer many benefits to committed individuals. Thus, humans possess relationship maintenance mechanisms to protect against threats from those who serve as attractive alternatives or intrasexual rivals. Many studies have indicated that romantic love can act as a commitment device to activate these mechanisms. To examine the attentional bias associated with relationship maintenance among 108 college students (49 single and 59 committed females) in China, we used a semantic priming procedure to activate mental representations associated with romantic love and then asked participants to complete a dot-probe task for the purpose of making a distinction between the engage and disengage components of attention. No significant engaging effects toward attractive faces were observed among committed females, but the following significant disengaging effects were found: when primed with romantic love, single females showed increased attention toward and difficulty in disengaging from attractive male faces, whereas females already in a committed relationship did not alter their attention, remaining as inattentive to attractive alternatives as they were in the baseline condition. In addition, committed females responded to love priming by exhibiting difficulty in disengaging from attractive rivals. The present findings provide evidence in the Chinese cultural context for the existence of early-stage attentional processes in the domain of relationship maintenance that committed Chinese females protected an ongoing relationship by not only being inattentive to attractive males who could serve as attractive alternatives, but also being more attentive to attractive females who could be potential rivals when mental representations associated with romantic love were primed.

Height predicts jealousy differently for men and women

Because male height is associated with attractiveness, dominance, and reproductive success, taller men may be less jealous. And because female height has a curvilinear relationship with health and reproductive success (with average-height females having the advantages), female height may have a curvilinear relationship with jealousy. In Study 1, male height was found to be negatively correlated with self-reported global jealousy, whereas female height was curvilinearly related to jealousy, with average-height women reporting the lowest levels of jealousy. In Study 2, male height was found to be negatively correlated with jealousy in response to socially influential, physically dominant, and physically attractive rivals. Female height was negatively correlated with jealousy in response to physically attractive, physically dominant, and high-social-status rivals; in addition, quadratic effects revealed that approximately average-height women tend to be less jealous of physically attractive rivals but more jealous of rivals with “masculine” characteristics of physical dominance and social status.

Sex-specific relationship between digit ratio (2D:4D) and romantic jealousy

The ratio of index finger length to ring finger length (2D:4D) is an index of prenatal androgen exposure. In a study with 71 female and 52 male undergraduate students, we assessed the relationship between 2D:4D and jealousy with respect to various dimensions of rival characteristics. Following the presentation of a jealousy-evoking scenario, participants rated the extent to which they would feel jealous if the rival possessed various characteristics (some which have been found to be more jealousy evoking for men, others which have been found to be more jealousy evoking for women). Men with higher, more feminine 2D:4D reacted more jealously toward more socially dominant rivals. Women with lower, more masculine 2D:4D reacted more jealously toward more physically attractive rivals. These results show that the level of prenatal testosterone affects which rival characteristics elicit the highest level of jealousy, which are different for men and women.

Romantic jealousy as a social comparison outcome: When similarity stings

Two studies examined the role of perceived self-rival similarity in the experience of romantic jealousy, which is assumed to reflect threats to self-evaluation. Self–other similarity is one factor that determines whether social comparison yields assimilation or contrast. Based on the premise that people want their romantic partners to see themselves positively, it is predicted that people experience greater jealousy when comparing with an attractive rival in terms of similarities because similarity challenges one’s positive distinctiveness. People should also experience greater jealousy, however, when they compare themselves with an unattractive rival in a manner that renders their own weaknesses salient during the comparison process. The results support the ‘distinctiveness hypothesis,’ but are inconsistent with cognitive models of social comparison, which posit that people see themselves more positively either when their self-evaluations are assimilated to superior others or contrasted away from inferior others.

Evidence from a homosexual sample for a sex‐specific rival‐oriented mechanism: Jealousy as a function of a rival's physical attractiveness and dominance

AbstractAmong heterosexual women in particular, a rival's physical attractiveness evokes jealousy, whereas among heterosexual men in particular, a rival's dominance evokes feelings of jealousy. The present study conducted with gay men and lesbian women examined whether these sex‐differentiated responses reflect an evolved sex‐specific rival‐oriented mechanism according to which males and females pay attention to different rival characteristics or an evolved general partner‐oriented mechanism, according to which males and females pay attention to those characteristics that their actual and potential partners find important. In an experiment, using a 2 (Participant Sex) × 2 (Rival Physical Attractiveness) × 2 (Rival Dominance) mixed factor design, homosexual participants were presented with a scenario in which their partners were flirting with an individual of the same sex. Lesbian women, but not gay men, reported more jealousy when they were exposed to a physically attractive rival as compared with a physically unattractive rival. Gay males, but not lesbian women, reported more jealousy when they were exposed to a rival high in dominance as compared with a rival low in dominance, especially when exposed to a physically unattractive rival. In addition, among women high in dominance, a dominant rival evoked relatively less jealousy, and among women high in social comparison orientation, an unattractive rival evoked relatively more jealousy. It is concluded that males and females posses an evolved sex‐specific rival‐oriented mechanism through which they respond more or less automatically to those rival characteristics that have been important in sexual selection in our evolutionary past.

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Jealousy as a Function of Rival Characteristics: An Evolutionary Perspective

Following from evolutionary psychology, men and women differ in the characteristics they value in a partner. Men value physical attractiveness in women because a woman's physical attractiveness is related to her fertility, whereas women value dominance in men since dominance is related to a man's ability to provide resources. As jealousy is evoked by characteristics of the rival that are believed to be important to the other sex, it was predicted that jealousy in males would be influenced by the rival's dominance, whereas jealousy in females would be influenced by the rival's physical attractiveness. In an experiment, participants were presented with a scenario in which the participants' partners were flirting with an individual of the opposite sex. Each participant then received one of four profiles of rivals for the partner's attentions consisting of a photograph (low or high in attractiveness) and a personality description (low or high in dominance). Results showed that the hypotheses were supported. In addition, the rival's dominance had a greater impact on males' jealousy if males were exposed to a physically unattractive rival compared with a physically attractive rival.

Analysis of the particle dynamics of a curvilinear accelerator

The curvilinear particle accelerator, proposed by Gallop (1953) is analysed for lowenergy acceleration, in particular for the acceleration of deuterons from 2.4 to 21.6 MeV. The stability of the particle motion is investigated and an estimate made of the beam current. An order of magnitude calculation indicates a limiting current of 25 mA in the pulse (average current similar 1 mA). The high beam current, together with the low-energy spread and end-extraction of the beam possessed by this accelerator, renders it an attractive rival to other low-energy machines.

Analysis of the particle dynamics of a curvilinear accelerator

The curvilinear particle accelerator, proposed by Gallop (1953) is analysed for lowenergy acceleration, in particular for the acceleration of deuterons from 2.4 to 21.6 MeV. The stability of the particle motion is investigated and an estimate made of the beam current. An order of magnitude calculation indicates a limiting current of 25 mA in the pulse (average current similar 1 mA). The high beam current, together with the low-energy spread and end-extraction of the beam possessed by this accelerator, renders it an attractive rival to other low-energy machines.