Human Mating Research Articles

The first characterization of multidrug and toxin extrusion (MATE/SLC47) proteins in zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Multidrug and toxin extrusion (MATE) proteins are involved in the extrusion of endogenous compounds and xenobiotics across the plasma membrane. They are conserved from bacteria to mammals, with different numbers of genes within groups. Here, we present the first data on identification and functional characterization of Mate proteins in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Phylogenetic analysis revealed six Mates in teleost fish, annotated as Mate3–8, which form a distinct cluster separated from the tetrapod MATEs/Mates. Synteny analysis showed that zebrafish mate genes are orthologous to human MATEs. Gene expression analysis revealed that all the mate transcripts were constitutively and differentially expressed during embryonic development, followed by pronounced and tissue-specific expression in adults. Functional analyses were performed using transport activity assays with model substrates after heterologous overexpression of five zebrafish Mates in HEK293T cells. The results showed that zebrafish Mates interact with both physiological and xenobiotic substances but also substantially differ with respect to the interacting compounds and interaction strength in comparison to mammalian MATEs/Mates. Taken together, our data clearly indicate a potentially important role for zebrafish Mate transporters in zebrafish embryos and adults and provide a basis for detailed functional characterizations of single zebrafish Mate transporters.

Monogamy and Nonmonogamy: Evolutionary Considerations and Treatment Challenges.

Few topics generate such controversy and emotional reactivity as the nature of human mating behavior. Unfortunately, and potentially to the detriment of good patient care, sexual medicine practitioners havelargely avoided this matter. An understanding of the scientific literature can empower practitioners to moreeffectively confront the inevitable monogamy and nonmonogamy challenges present in research and clinicalpractice. To review and summarize relevant scientific literature as a context to evaluate the more common myths and misunderstanding relating to the practice of monogamy and nonmonogamy in humans. This review also is intended to promote a discussion of the ways human mating strategies may impact sexual function and dysfunction for the individual and couple. A review of English written peer-reviewed evolutionary, anthropological, neuropsychiatric, zoological research, and other scholarly texts was conducted. Work published between 2000 and 2016 concentrating on evolutionary theory, long- and short-term mating strategies in primates and most specifically in humans, and consensual nonmonogamy was highlighted. Main outcomes included a brief explanation of evolutionary theory and a review of relevant literature regarding long- and short-term mating behaviors and consensual nonmonogamy. Serial sexual and social monogamy is the norm for humans. Across time and cultures, humans have adapted both long- and short-term mating strategies that are used flexibly, and sometimes simultaneously, based on unique personal, social, and environmental circumstances. Human mating behavior is individualistic, the result of numerous biopsychosocial influences. The clinician cannot assume that an individual presenting as a patient maintains a monogamy-valued view of his or her intimate relationship. Patients may experience conflict between the cultural monogamous ideal and their actual sexual behaviors. This conflict may be critical in understanding a patient's sexual concerns and in treatment planning. Awareness of these issues will aid the practitioner in sexual medicine.

A Role of DLPFC in the Learning Process of Human Mate Copying

In the current study, we conducted a behavioral experiment to test the mate coping effect and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to test the neural basis involved in the social learning process of mate copying. In the behavioral experiment, participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of isolated opposite-sex (potential mates) facial photographs, then shown the targets associating with a neutral-faced model with textual cues indicating the models’ attitude (interested vs. not-interested) toward the potential mates, and then asked to re-evaluate the potential mates’ attractiveness. Using a similar procedure as the behavioral experiment, participants were scanned while observing the compound images in the fMRI experiment. The mate copying effect was confirmed in the behavioral experiment –greater increase in attractiveness ratings was observed for opposite-sex photographs in the interested than in the not-interested condition. The fMRI results showed that the dorsolateral prefrontal gyrus (DLPFC) was significantly active in the comparison of interested > not-interested condition, suggesting that a cognitive integration and selection function may be involved when participants process information from conditions related to mate copying.

When Love Meets Money: Priming the Possession of Money Influences Mating Strategies.

Money is an important factor that influences the development of romantic relationships. The current paper examines how the feeling of having relatively more or less money influences human mating strategies in long-term and short-term mating contexts under the framework of evolutionary psychology. We recruited mainland Chinese college students involved in steady, heterosexual romantic relationships to participate in two experiments. In each study, we experimentally triggered participants' feelings of having relatively more or less money and then examined their thoughts and behaviors related to mating. Results of Study 1 showed that men who were primed to feel that they had relatively more money were less satisfied with their partners' physical attractiveness than those primed to feel that they had less money, suggesting that the subjective feeling of having more or less money may affect men's preferences regarding the physical appearance of a mate in a long-term relationship. Interestingly, this difference was not significant for women. Results of Study 2 indicated that both men and women who were primed to feel that they had relatively more money exhibited a greater “behavioral approach tendency” toward an attractive member of the opposite sex than those primed to feel that they had less money. This finding suggests that people who feel they have relatively more money may have more interest in an attractive alternative than those who feel they have relatively less money. The differences in mating strategies between and within the genders brought about by money support the evolutionary hypothesis that individuals adopt conditional mating strategies in response to environmental conditions. Additionally, the results of experimental studies provide evidence for the causal effects of money on mating strategies. These findings have both conceptual and practical implications for the psychology of evolution and romantic relationships.

The validity and structure of mating intelligence

Mating Intelligence (MI) is a hypothesized constellation of mental adaptations that generate adaptive strategies in human mating (Geher & Miller, 2008). Although past research has theoretically explored and empirically evaluated the construct, using a MI scale that was borne of the ideas from Geher and Miller’s work, this study seeks further understanding of this construct by demonstrating incremental validity. Two studies, each with large samples, demonstrate that MI predicts important outcomes beyond traditional conceptions of personality and intelligence. Exploratory factor analyses revealed that the factor structure suggested in previous work was generally congruent with predictions. Further, MI accounted for a significant portion of variance in mating success after controlling for age, the five-factor model of personality and general intelligence.

Human Mate Poaching Tactics Are Effective

Mate poaching refers to efforts to attract people who are already involved in committed relationships. The current dyadic, 5-week prospective study examined mate poaching behaviors in the context of opposite-sex friendships. Actors’ mate poaching behaviors predicted decreases in their friend’s commitment to their romantic partners, increases in their friend’s perceptions of actors’ mate value, and increases in their friend’s romantic desire for actors over time. These results are the first to suggest an interpersonal process in which mate poaching behaviors elicit psychological changes in targets that facilitate actors’ mate poaching goals. Furthermore, these results are the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of mate poaching tactics in friendships.

Assortative Mating for Educational Level in Parents of Public School Children (N>7000 Individuals) in the Lagos State, Nigeria.

Assortative mating for educational level is a widespread phenomenon in Western industrialized societies. However, whether or not the results from Western samples can be generalizable to populations in developing countries in Africa remains to be seen. The present study investigated assortative mating for educational level in parents of public school children (N>7000) in the Lagos State in Nigeria. Approximately 61.5% of the parents had spouses at the same level of education. More mothers than fathers married upward in educational level. The assortative mating coefficients for educational level were .52-.61 across respondents' classes, .51-.62 across six school districts, and .57 (.55-.59) in the total sample. Overall, these results were very similar to the findings from Western or Asian samples, providing evidence to support the robustness of human mating pattern in educational attainment across different cultures and ethnic groups. The present findings should be incorporated in future quantitative and molecular genetic studies on Africans.

Does human ejaculate quality relate to phenotypic traits?

A given man's phenotype embodies cues of his ancestral ability to effectively defend himself and his kin from harm, to survive adverse conditions, and to acquire status and mating opportunities. In this review, we explore the hypothesis that a man's phenotype also embodies cues to fertility or the probability that an ejaculate will fertilize ova. Female mate choice depends on the ability to discern the quality of a male reproductive partner through his phenotype, and male fertility may be among the traits that females have evolved to detect. A female who selects as mates males that deliver higher quality ejaculates will, on average, be more fecund than her competitors. Data on several non-human species demonstrate correlations between ejaculate quality and secondary sexual characteristics that inform female mate choice, suggesting that females may select mates in part on the basis of fertility. While the non-human literature on this topic has advanced, the human literature remains limited in scope and there is no clear consensus on appropriate methodologies or theoretical positions. We provide a comprehensive review and meta-analysis of this literature, and conclude by proposing solutions to the many issues that impede progress in the field. In the process, we hope to encourage interest and insight from investigators in other areas of human mating and reproductive biology. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 28:318-329, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Mating and Memory

The literature on sexual selection and the social brain hypothesis suggest that human cognition and communication evolved, in part, for the purpose of displaying desirable cognitive abilities to potential mates. An evolutionary approach to social cognition implies that proximate mating motives may lead people to display desirable mental traits. In signaling such traits, one can increase the likelihood of attracting a potential mate. Two experiments demonstrated that exposure to mating cues—highly attractive opposite-sex faces—led people to display enhancements in declarative memory—a process underlying a variety of abilities such as resource acquisition, intelligence, and creativity. Experiment 1 showed that men (but not women) displayed enhanced memory for details of a story that was presented during exposure to highly attractive opposite-sex faces. Experiment 2 demonstrated that heightened displays of declarative memory reflect an enhancement in retrieval rather than in encoding. Findings contribute to the literatures on human mating and cognitive performance and provide novel insight into links between social processes and basic cognition.

On the varieties of sexual experience: Cross-cultural links between religiosity and human mating strategies.

On the varieties of sexual experience: Cross-cultural links between religiosity and human mating strategies.

Laughter as a scientific problem: An adventure in sidewalk neuroscience.

Laughter is a stereotyped, innate, human play vocalization that provides an ideal simple system for neurobehavioral analyses of the sort usually associated with such animal models as walking, wing-flapping, and bird song. Laughter research is in its early stages, where the frontiers are near and accessible to simple observational procedures termed "sidewalk neuroscience." The basic, nontechnical approach of describing the act of laughter and when humans do it has revealed a variety of phenomena of social and neurological significance. Findings include the acoustic structure of laughter, the minimal voluntary control of laughter, contagiousness, the "punctuation effect" that describes the placement of laughter in conversation, the dominance of speech over laughter, the role of breath control in the evolution of speech, the evolutionary trajectory of laughter in primates, and the role of laughter in human matching and mating. If one knows where to look and how to see, advances in neuroscience are accessible to anyone and require minimal resources.

Development of Japanese version of the long-term mating orientation scale (LTMO-J)

The purpose of this study was to validate the 7-item long-term mating orientation scale (LTMO) as translated into Japanese. Two samples of Japanese adults (N = 2000; 50.0% male; Mage = 40.9 for the first survey; N = 300; 54.7% male; Mage = 42.4 for the second survey) completed a web-based questionnaire, including the Japanese translation of the LTMO. The results showed that the psychometric properties of the Japanese LTMO scale were comparable to those of the original English version. The scale had adequate reliability based on Cronbach's α and McDonald's ω. Convergent validity was demonstrated by the correlation between the LTMO scores and related variables: human life history strategies, short-term sociosexual orientation, attitude to infidelity, romantic attachment style, and so on. The translated scale provides a valid and reliable instrument in Japanese that measures human mating strategy.

How Sexually Dimorphic Are Human Mate Preferences?

Previous studies on sex-differentiated mate preferences have focused on univariate analyses. However, because mate selection is inherently multidimensional, a multivariate analysis more appropriately measures sex differences in mate preferences. We used the Mahalanobis distance (D) and logistic regression to investigate sex differences in mate preferences with data secured from participants residing in 37 cultures (n = 10,153). Sex differences are large in multivariate terms, yielding an overall D = 2.41, corresponding to overlap between the sexes of just 22.8%. Moreover, knowledge of mate preferences alone affords correct classification of sex with 92.2% accuracy. Finally, pattern-wise sex differences are negatively correlated with gender equality across cultures but are nonetheless cross-culturally robust. Discussion focuses on implications in evaluating the importance and magnitude of sex differences in mate preferences.

Inferring parental genomic ancestries using pooled semi-Markov processes.

Motivation: A basic problem of broad public and scientific interest is to use the DNA of an individual to infer the genomic ancestries of the parents. In particular, we are often interested in the fraction of each parent’s genome that comes from specific ancestries (e.g. European, African, Native American, etc). This has many applications ranging from understanding the inheritance of ancestry-related risks and traits to quantifying human assortative mating patterns.Results: We model the problem of parental genomic ancestry inference as a pooled semi-Markov process. We develop a general mathematical framework for pooled semi-Markov processes and construct efficient inference algorithms for these models. Applying our inference algorithm to genotype data from 231 Mexican trios and 258 Puerto Rican trios where we have the true genomic ancestry of each parent, we demonstrate that our method accurately infers parameters of the semi-Markov processes and parents’ genomic ancestries. We additionally validated the method on simulations. Our model of pooled semi-Markov process and inference algorithms may be of independent interest in other settings in genomics and machine learning.Contact: jazo@microsoft.com

Testocap – a herbal solution for erectile dysfuncyion and premature ejaculation

Sexual activity is a vital principle of human living that connects the desire, energy and pleasure of the body to a knowledge of human intimacy, for the sake of erotic love, intimate friendship, human mating and procreation. Sexuality is the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. According to Masters and Johnson, the human sexual response cycle consists of four phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. The World Health Organization's International Classifications of Diseases defines sexual problems as ways in which an individual is unable to participate in a sexual relationship as he or she would wish. There are four major categories of sexual problems: desire disorders, arousal disorders, orgasmic disorders, and sexual pain disorders. Sexual arousal disorder in men, erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction (ED) or impotence is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual activity.Orgasmic disorders In men, premature ejaculation Premature ejaculation (PE) occurs when a man experiences orgasm and expels semen soon after sexual activity and with minimal penile stimulation. Sexuality has been explained in the Ayurveda classics in detail along with the various disorders related to desire, arousal, orgasmic and sexual pain disorders. The various formulations have been explained in classics to relieve these disorders and help the man to enjoy their sexual life.Considering these issues the need of hour this conceptual study has been carried out to help, support and provide enhanced sexual life with readily available pure botanicals which are time tested evidenced based and 100% safe and effective.

Mating Strategies in Mozart’s Figaro

Since its first performance in 1786, Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, written in close cooperation with opera’s librettist Da Ponte, has inspired a wealth of research in musicology and cultural studies. We study the social relationships of this opera using an evolutionary framework. The protagonists are analysed with respect to biologically-relevant individual traits like gender, social status and reproductive value and via the dyadic ties of sexuality, kinship and friendship. We argue that The Marriage of Figaro displays the major human male and female mating strategies with regards to long and short-term relationships. The biological relevance of the dense social network may explain part of this opera’s popularity across centuries, together with its musical, dramaturgical, and overall aesthetical qualities.

Mate preferences toward agency and communion

Agency and communion constitute two fundamental dimensions of social perception. Universal dimensions of mate preferences represent both agentic and communal content, but a direct test of mate preferences toward agency and communion is lacking. The present study examined preferences toward agentic and communal traits in mate preferences among 206 heterosexual individuals (112 females), analysing the role of the target's sex and actor's sexual strategy. Results showed that women demonstrated higher expectations toward agentic and communal traits in a potential partner than men. Preference for agency in short-term relationships did not differ from preferences toward agency and communion in long-term relationships, but preferences toward communion of partner in short-term relationships was significantly lower. These results were discussed in light of the signaling role of agency and communion in human mating behavior.

The effect of red on male perceptions of female attractiveness: Moderation by baseline attractiveness of female faces

AbstractPast research has demonstrated the importance of color in a variety of social contexts, including human mating. For example, red increases heterosexual men's feelings of attraction toward women. In the current work, this basic red‐attraction link is qualified by the initial attractiveness of female faces. In two experiments, red enhanced men's ratings of female attractiveness, but only for faces pre‐rated as attractive; red had no influence on perceptions of initially unattractive faces. Additionally, Experiment 1 manipulated how long participants viewed attractive and unattractive faces as an exploratory test of when color and face features are integrated. The findings show that initial female attractiveness moderates the influence of red on judgments of attractiveness even when the faces are viewed for extremely short exposures. The present findings identify an important boundary condition of the red‐attractiveness effect and provide an initial indication of where in the processing stream color impacts social judgments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Is human mating for height associated with fertility? Results from a British National Cohort Study.

Very few studies have investigated whether spousal similarity for height is related to fertility. This study examined the relationship between mating for height and fertility after correction for spousal age, social class, education, and region. The data used were collected as part of the British National Child Development Study and 6,535 husband-wife pairs for whom data were available on measured height, spousal age, education, social class, region, and the number of children were studied. Fertility varied between the regions with the highest fertility in Scotland. Fertility tended to increase from more to less educated and from higher to lower social classes in both sexes. These relationships remained significant after correction for mean age. A negative association between husband's height in relation to fertility was noted as well as the negative and the quadratic term for wife's height. Both the linear as well as the quadratic effects of parental height difference were significantly related to fertility, but after removing the effects of mean age, age difference and mean height these effects disappeared. Analysis of region, mean age, social class, education, height, and differences in age, social class, education, and height together revealed that 32.4% of variation in fertility was explained but only mean age, mean social class and mean height and difference in social class remained significant. The results did not provide any evidence that differential fertility was associated with spousal height difference after taking into account age, social class, education and region.

The impact of perceived disease threat on women's desire for novel dating and sexual partners: is variety the best medicine?

Researchers in the evolutionary sciences have long understood men's desire to mate with a variety of women. Because men's obligatory investment in offspring production is relatively small, men can directly increase their number of descendants by mating with multiple partners. Relatively less is known, however, about the conditions that favor sexual variety seeking in women. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, we examined the relationship between the perceived pathogen load in an environment and women's desire for sexual variety. Across 5 experiments, we primed women with cues indicating that the rate of disease is increasing in their environment. We then measured their desire for novel sexual and dating partners. Results revealed that women with a history of vulnerability to illness respond to these cues by desiring a greater number of novel partners. This shift was not found in men and did not predict variety seeking in a nonsexual domain. In addition to providing evidence of a novel conceptual link between the pathogen load and patterns of human mating behavior, this research also provides new insights into women's mating psychology and the conditions that favor sexual variety seeking in the greater investing sex.