The sexual overperception bias is associated with sociosexuality

As reproductive rates have the potential to be higher in men than women, it is more costly (from an evolutionary perspective) for men to miss a mating opportunity than women. This asymmetry in costs has been proposed to result in men being more sensitive to cues to sexual opportunity than women, and thus men are more likely than women to misperceive sexual interest from opposite sex others. To investigate this sexual misperception bias, smiling male and female faces were presented to participants who were asked to judge whether the face appeared friendly or flirtatious. Participants also completed a sociosexual orientation questionnaire in order to assess their current attitudes towards sexual relationships. In general, we found that males perceive female faces as flirtatious significantly more often than females. However, our results also suggested that people with high scores on the sociosexuality inventory (who rated themselves as more likely to engage in short-term, casual relationships), regardless of sex, had a tendency to perceive the faces of potential mates as more flirtatious, and that this variable explained more variance than sex alone. Our findings demonstrate that sociosexuality may mediate biases in perceiving the sexual intent of others.

► We look at effects of sociosexual orientation (SO) on the sexual misperception bias. ► Participants asked to rate flirtatiousness of faces in a ‘speed dating’ task. ► Regression analyses used to see what predicts ratings of flirtatiousness in faces. ► Attitudes towards casual sexual relationships predict flirtatiousness ratings. ► SO explains more variance in flirtatiousness ratings than rater sex alone.