Abstract
Men expend significant amounts of time, effort, and resources on finding, attracting, and sustaining a relationship with a mate. Those resources may have been used in vain, however, if the woman in which he invested those resources defects from the relationship, even temporarily. Consequently, men are hypothesized to have evolved psychological mechanisms that motivate the production of behaviors dedicated to the detection of such risks and the prevention of such losses. These mate retention behaviors may be directed at rival males or the man’s partner and may inflict costs for her defection or reward her fidelity, but they all function by increasing the cost-to-benefit ratio of a woman’s continued devotion to the existing relationship. This ratio, and men’s use of different categories of mate retention behaviors, is influenced by a wide variety of variables, including men’s and women’s mate value and characteristics of the existing relationship.
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Starratt, V.G., Alesia, M.N. (2014). Male Adaptations to Retain a Mate. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Sexual Psychology and Behavior. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0314-6_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0314-6_10
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