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Target Specific Attractiveness

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Experiment 2 was conducted to further examine the same predictions from Experiment 1 employing the more appropriate design suited with the nature of food sharing; target-specific willingness was consistently signaled via constant acts of sharing over time. The newly adopted willingness manipulation seemed to successfully convey a high level of target-specific willingness to surpass the threshold in the partner choice mechanisms. The results supported most of the five key predictions and the percentages of variance in attractiveness explained by willingness and ability increased from Experiment 1. Plus, in contrast to Experiment 1, the interaction between willingness and ability in men’s mate choice was not observed, probably due to the sufficient strength of willingness cues in Experiment 2.
With the adequately displayed willingness cues, …show more content…

Target-irrelevant ability increased attractiveness only as a male romantic partner (Prediction 2). Same as in Experiment 1, these results possibly suggest that people have relaxed standard for ability of friends and female mates to offer resources when willingness to offer such benefits is properly controlled for. If so, this null effect of ability on friend choice and men’s mate choice is consistent with Prediction 4 and 5. Moreover, both men and women can downplay the information value of target-irrelevant ability when target-specific willingness is already known (the same logic behind Prediction 3 that willingness will have a stronger influence on attractiveness of a partner). However, in women’s mate choice where stake size is large (the largest of the four types of partner choice covered in this paper), it is reasonable for women to be deliberate and demanding in choosing a mate. This might be the reason why women took target-irrelevant ability into consideration even though target-specific willingness was already

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