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Intuitive Perceptions of the Relationship Between Mating Strategies and Religiosity: Participant Religiosity Influences Perceptions, but Not Gender

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Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that the adoption of religious beliefs and values may be used strategically to enhance long-term mating strategies, which implies an intuitive connection between differences in mating strategy and religiosity. This connection was investigated in a two-part primary hypothesis: perception of long-term mating strategies should increase association with religiosity and decrease association with nonreligiosity, while perception of short-term mating strategies should decrease association with religiosity and increase association with nonreligiosity. This was studied using a novel methodology of developing two mating strategy narratives (short-term vs. long-term) constructed from a preestablished measure and exploiting the tendency to use the representativeness heuristic and conjunction error to study the intuitive links between mating strategies and religiosity. Study 1 served as a pilot study using undergraduates and confirmed the primary hypothesis. Studies 2 and 3 expanded on study 1 by using a more representative sample through a larger Qualtrics panel of participants more closely matched to the general US population and also added the variables of participant religiosity and gender to the analysis. These studies not only confirmed the primary hypothesis but also demonstrated that how religiosity is described has an effect on whether or not it is associated with long-term strategies. Gender did not have an effect on the association between mating strategy and religiosity, but in study 3, nonreligious individuals did not associate long-term mating strategies with religiosity.

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Data Availability

All data used in the study is available via the following website: https://osf.io/kmsxa/.

Code Availability

All calculations were performed using SPSS.

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Acknowledgements

Data collection and preliminary analysis were sponsored by a grant given by Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and the Humanities II, a project run by Scholarship and Christianity in Oxford, the UK subsidiary of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Special thanks to Dr. Jonathan Jong for mentorship and financial support related to this research.

Funding

This research was supported in part by a grant given by Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and the Humanities II, a project run by Scholarship and Christianity in Oxford, the UK subsidiary of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Fresno Pacific University, 1717 S. Chestnut, Fresno, CA, 93702, USA

    James A. Van Slyke

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Study conception and design was conducted by the primary author. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by the primary author as well as writing of all drafts of the manuscript. The author would like to thank his research assistants who helped with data collection.

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Correspondence to James A. Van Slyke.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the IRB committee at Fresno Pacific University on March 6, 2019, No. 1819.129.

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Van Slyke, J.A. Intuitive Perceptions of the Relationship Between Mating Strategies and Religiosity: Participant Religiosity Influences Perceptions, but Not Gender. Evolutionary Psychological Science 7, 390–400 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-021-00286-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-021-00286-w

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