Women are more attracted to men who are surrounded by other females, according to a study conducted by researchers at Texas Christian University.
The female participants found men more desirable when they were in the company of an attractive woman or an apparent partner, rather than men flying solo.
The results suggest that “women infer that a partnered man must possess unobservable, positive qualities that make him an appropriate match for his attractive mate,” the conclusion of the report reads.
The researchers embarked on the study “because of the common phrase you hear young women say, ‘All the good guys are taken,'” one of the authors of the study, Randi Proffitt Leyva, said in an interview with PsyPost. “This phrase assumes that if all the good guys are taken, then the women dating them must be keen on perceiving the qualities that make the men ‘good’ and worth hanging on to.”
Leyva says there are so many various elements that go into human dating and mating decisions that it’s not as random as people think. These types of human behaviors, she says, are “heavily influenced by social factors such as perceived quality of the partner by the self and others,” but also “physical attractiveness, social status, and resource acquisition abilities.”
Leyva did tell PsyPost that further research is needed to see if “mate choice copying” occurs as much for men, and if this female perception of men means a higher likelihood of pursuit for mating opportunities, not just recognition.
Overall, by viewing a man with other women surrounding them, the female onlookers are, to some degree, able to get “a seal of approval” without having to completely incur the costs of “mate search.”
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