Sex differences in perceptions of benefits and costs of mate poaching

Mate poaching occurs when an individual is aware that the person with whom he or she has sexual relations is already in a nominally exclusive relationship with someone else. The current study extends the results of the only previous study (Davies et al., 2007) to investigate the motivations of mate poachers by investigating a comprehensive list of benefits and costs exclusively associated with poaching. Ratings provided by 125 men and 90 women indicated hypothesized sex differences in the likelihood that benefits and costs would motivate them to attract an attached individual (i.e. to poach) versus an unattached individual (i.e. to avoid poaching). Additional results suggested that both sexes avoid poaching if equally attracted to the attached and unattached individuals. This led us to formulate the novel hypothesis that poaching lies between attracting unattached individuals and coercion in a hierarchy of conditional mating strategies.