“Trait/Financial Information of Potential Male Mate Eliminates Mate-Choice Copying by Women: Trade-Off Between Social Information and Personal Information in Mate Selection”, 2021-11-02 (; similar):
Mate-choice copying occurs when people rely on the mate choices of others (social information) to inform their own mate decisions. The present study investigated women’s strategic trade-off between such social learning and using the personal information of a potential mate.
We conducted 2 experiments to investigate how mate-choice copying was affected by the personal information (eg. trait/financial information, negative/positive valence of this information, and attractiveness) of a potential male mate in short-term/long-term mate selection.
The results demonstrated that when women had no trait/financial information other than photos of potential mates, they showed mate-choice copying, but when women obtained personality trait or financial situation information (no matter negative or positive) of a potential mate, their mate-choice copying disappeared; this effect was only observed for low-attractiveness and long-term potential partners.
These results demonstrated human social learning strategies in mate selection through a trade-off between social information and personal information.
[Typical Bayesian reasoning: freeriding off priors/stereotypes (mate-copying), but updating as individuating information is available.]