It's not what it looks like!
The notion of extra pair mating interests is seen as controversial in Western societies where monogamy is the dominant mating system. Attending to attractive others is often seen as an indicator of, or antecedent to engaging in infidelity. However, we argue that attending to attractive others is an adaptive and automatic process because it informs and maintains plasticity in mating strategies. Previous research has examined later attentional processes in relation to potential mates, but not early attentional capture which is beyond conscious control. Participants indicated whether they were predominantly attracted to male or female faces, then completed two flicker tasks, each consisting of faces of the gender the participants indicated they were most attracted to; one consisted of a grid of attractive faces and the other consisted of unattractive faces. Time taken to detect changes to the attractive or unattractive faces was measured as an indication of attentional bias towards potential mates. Sociosexual desires and self reported romantic interests outside of the primary relationship predicted a quicker response time to attractive faces relative to unattractive faces. Relationship status, sex of the participant, sociosexual attitudes, sociosexual behaviours, and self reported sexual interests outside of the primary relationship did not predict response time on the flicker tasks. The results suggest early attentional processes are biased towards potential mates in a given environment which calibrates and maintains plasticity in mating strategies, however this does not necessarily indicate an inclination towards infidelity.