A study recently found that men searching for long-term partners showcased dogs, children, or other pets identified as "dependent" in their dating profiles online, compared to men who seek short-term partners.
A PsyPost report said there were no differences in the frequency of exhibited dependents men and women searching for long-term partners.
Evolutionary theories on mating behavior propose that the different challenges each gender are facing in relation to obligatory parental investment "give rise to gender-specific preferences in mates, strategies, as well as interests.
In connection to this, women are found to have invested more so biologically, including metabolically costly egg production, a comparatively small number of viable ova, and gestation and lactation.
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A study recently found that men searching for long-term partners showcased dogs, children, or other pets identified as ‘dependent’ in their dating profiles online, compared to men who seek short-term partners.
Type of Relationship Sought
In their study published in the Evolutionary Psychological Science journal, the researchers created a male and female account on a famous Canada-based online socialization platform.
Such a platform encourages users to discuss many facets connected to family, occupational, and personal lives. They used the said accounts to access the opposite sex's profiles.
Individuals on the said platform were classified according to the connection type they were searching for, like long-term relationships against casual encounter minus commitment, which were used as substitutes of mating strategies, which are long- and short-term relationships.
Moreover, all participants were located in Nova Scotia, Canada. Each second profile was chosen to increase the coverage of those engaged in the socialization platform, in case the site sorted profiles according to similarity to the profiles the researchers simulated.
'Dependent'
Information from chosen profiles was recorded as long as it comprised images of the individual. Profiles used in the study were generic photos like stock photos and nature scenes, among others, spam accounts, and profiles that have an unclear specification of what connection type these people were looking for, which were ignored.
Meanwhile, displays of dependents were measured using photographs or written statements that specified the type of dependents like dogs, other pets, and children. Age, education level, and desire to have children were also documented.
The total sample comprised 250 males and 250 females in all, who seek a relationship, and 250 men not in search for a relationship, a similar Rappler report specified.
Female participants who were not searching for a relationship were also sampled for data completeness. Nonetheless, only 46 of these women living in Nova Scotia had profiles on the said platform.
This, the researchers said, is consistent with previous work that demonstrated women are less interested in short-term mating.
Study Findings
In the said research, Mackenzie Zinck and colleagues investigated how dependents are promoted to indicate mate quality in the background of online socialization.
As a result, the team discovered that men searching for long-term mates exhibited dependents on their profile "to a greater extent" compared to men who sought short-term partners.
Both men and women who sought long-term mates exhibited dependents in a similar way, as in, there were no gender differences in this regard.
Furthermore, men and women searching for long-term mates most often displayed children in their profiles. Among males who sought long-term partners, dogs, alongside children, were the most frequently displayed dependent, more so than males and females who sought short-term mates and women searching for long-term partners.
Related information about socializing online is shown on The Atlantic's YouTube video below:
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