Definition
Romantic or sexual partner selection by men; characteristics that guide male choice of their romantic or sexual partners.
Introduction
According to the Parental Investment Theory (Trivers 1972), males and females present their mating strategies related to the investment they make in their offspring. In general, females tend to invest more time and energy in their children. Males, on the other hand, do not invest in offspring as much as females do, and the low paternal investment necessity allows them to invest more time and energy in mating effort. For them, engaging more in short-term relationships, with different sexual partners, increases their probability of having a greater reproductive success since they can have more children in a short period of time. Therefore, men’s reproductive success is limited by their access to women, which leads them to compete to have access to females, a limiting resource.
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References
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Mafra, A.L. (2019). Male Mate Choice. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1410-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1410-1
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