Incel Activity on Social Media Linked to Local Mating Ecology

Young men with few prospects of attracting a mate have historically threatened the internal peace and stability of societies. In some contemporary societies, such involuntary celibate—or incel—men promote much online misogyny and perpetrate real-world violence. We tested the prediction that online incel activity arises via local real-world mating-market forces that affect relationship formation. From a database of 4 billion Twitter posts (2012–2018), we geolocated 321 million tweets to 582 commuting zones in the continental United States, of which 3,649 tweets used words peculiar to incels and 3,745 were about incels. We show that such tweets arise disproportionately within places where mating competition among men is likely to be high because of male-biased sex ratios, few single women, high income inequality, and small gender gaps in income. Our results suggest a role for social media in monitoring and mitigating factors that lead young men toward antisocial behavior in real-world societies.

Mate choice enhances pro-environmentalism

Previous research shows that altruistic behaviour is important in mate choice. A plethora of research shows that people are attracted to altruistic mates, and in turn, display altruistic behaviours towards those they find attractive. However, most of this research has focused on everyday altruism. Here, we apply this theoretical framework to pro-environmental behaviours, which are important altruistic behaviours, considering there is a time cost involved in engaging in such behaviours. In addition, encouraging people to engage in pro-environmental behaviours has great implications for the protection of our planet. Here, across two experiments, we successfully show that engaging in pro-environmental behaviours can increase one’s desirability in the mating market (experiment 1, n = 157) and that people display a motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviours in the presence of attractive, opposite sex targets (experiment 2, n= 307). These are exciting and novel research findings, whereby we show that we can increase pro-environmental behaviours via mate choice motivation and also demonstrate their positive role in mate evaluation. These findings have implications for marketing and increasing environmental behaviour through the lens of evolutionary theory.

Women’s Intrasexual Competition Results in Beautification

Psychology research focuses primarily on male competition. This research, however, investigates women’s competition for love and the ideal partner in the mating market and reveals one psychological consequence for women, that is, beautification. This is demonstrated with ecologically valid, real-world archive and online search query data, a quasi-experiment, and a series of controlled experiments with random assignments. Intrasexual competition, indexed by the operational sex ratio (OSR) and income inequality (GINI), predicts women’s beautification reflected by Google search queries for cosmetic surgery terms (Study 1) and the density of certificated plastic surgeons (Study 2). Female college students from faculties with female-biased OSRs exhibit greater appearance focus than women from male-biased faculties (Study 3). A causal relationship, between women’s intrasexual competition and beautification (and even self-objectification), is subsequently demonstrated in experiments (Studies 4–6). Additionally, self-objectification due to intrasexual competition leads to women’s preference for appearance-oriented products (Study 6). Implications are discussed.

A brief report on the role of self-perceived mate value in attitudes towards sunbed use

Prior research suggests that women engage in attractiveness enhancing techniques to increase their mate value. This hypothesis suggests that attractiveness enhancing techniques are driven by evolutionary mechanisms in relation to increasing one’s mate value in the mating market. Therefore, people can engage in risky behaviours to achieve this goal, which can involve the use of sunbeds. We explored whether there was a mating motivation in a sample of sunbed users by exploring whether intrasexual competition, mate value, and self-esteem predicted attitudes towards sunbed use (n=98). We find that the only predictor of attitudes towards sunbed use was self-perceived mate value, in that those with higher self-perceived mate value reported negative attitudes towards sunbed use. We discuss these findings in light of evolutionary psychology.

The Influence of Women’s Mate Value on Intrasexual Competition

In order to engage in assortative mating, people must be accurate in self-assessments of their current worth on the mating market. We argue that people intrinsically know their worth (i.e., mate value), and that this knowledge has far-reaching implications on a variety of behaviors and decisions. Here our focus is on women’s mate value and how it relates to their intrasexual competition for access to, and retention of, romantic partners. We start with a review of definitions and the components of female mate value, discuss mate preferences in relation to assessment of mate value, and then briefly provide a sample of some auxiliary issues, such as how feelings of control over mate value influence one’s well-being. We then turn to female intrasexual competition and specifically review competitive strategy use in relation to mate value. In the last section, we provide areas for further investigation.