Female Manipulation of Men

Introduction

Errors in judgment can either be a false positive (incorrect judgment that something is present) or a false negative (incorrect judgment that something is not present). Error management theory suggests that these overestimation or underestimation errors in judgments or choices may be adaptive (Haselton and Buss 2000) and are sometimes referred to as adaptive biases. In the context of mating, it is possible that females may manipulate particular male biases.

One bias that may be manipulated is men’s overperception of female sexual interest (see “Male Sexual Overperception Bias” entry). According to error management theory (see “Error Management Theory” entry), it would have been adaptive for men to err on assuming women are sexually interested when they are not, because it would be costly to err on assuming women are not sexually interested when they are. Men, for example, are prone to misperceiving women’s friendliness as sexual interest (Abbey 1982). Men, also, will...