Presenter(s): Mariah Bloom – Biological Anthropology
Faculty Mentor(s): Lawrence Sugiyama, Frances White
Poster 127
Research Area: Social Science
Human reproduction is costly, involving both mating (e.g., finding, acquiring, and guarding a mate) and parental effort. The minimal parental investment necessary for women includes egg production, gestation and lactation. Even after weaning, human children require support over an an extended period of juvenile dependence. In ancestral contexts this could not be provided by the mother (or any individual) alone. Women are thus expected to have adaptations motivating them to seek mates who are likely willing and able to invest in her offspring, as well as to seek high genetic quality mates. Women thus deploy complex mating strategies to optimize these qualities, including a strategic mix of both long and short-term mating. The emergence of dating apps may affect the costs of women’s mating effort by allowing them to pre-screen potential mates, with cheaper and easier access to, communication with, and selection among potential long and short-term mates. Sex bias in the number of men and women users may also affect women’s mating strategies. Interestingly, there is limited evolutionarily informed research on how these dating apps have affected women’s mating behavior. This research reviews the literature on women’s use of dating apps & websites through an evolutionary lens: who uses them and why, changing views toward their use, the main mating costs and benefits of their use, and how their use might change women’s sexual behavior over time. Review of this literature will form the basis for generating hypotheses to be tested in the authors senior honors thesis next year.