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(Mis)reading the Signs: Men’s Perception of Women’s Sexual Interest

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Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Sexual Psychology and Behavior

Part of the book series: Evolutionary Psychology ((EVOLPSYCH))

Abstract

For over 30 years, researchers have documented men’s tendency to overestimate women’s sexual interest. While there is little dispute regarding the existence of the phenomenon itself, the nature of the psychological mechanisms that give rise to this propensity remains contentious. The predominant view has been that men’s over-perception of women’s sexual interest represents a cognitive bias designed around the asymmetry in the costs of errors, namely, the high cost of missing a sexual opportunity compared to the low cost of pursuing an uninterested women. Recently, theorists have proposed an alternative view postulating that men address these asymmetrical costs through a behavioral rather than cognitive bias. This chapter describes and compares these two perspectives from the standpoints of both theory and data. In addition, the influence of individual differences and contextual effects on men’s tendency to overestimate women’s sexual interest are described. The chapter ends with suggestions for further investigation of factors that affect misperception, with an emphasis on ways to distinguish between competing theories that attempt to characterize men’s evolved psychological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Alternative accounts that invoke socialization or general learning models as explanations for men’s overperception claim that men learn that women often express less sexual intent than they actually feel (e.g., Abbey, 1982; Abbey, 1991). Following this same logic, then, if men have “learned” that false alarms are more costly than misses, then these same accounts would have to explain why men continue to err more toward false alarms than misses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Union College, 807 Union Street, Schenectady, NY, 12308, USA

    Carin Perilloux

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  1. Carin Perilloux
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Correspondence to Carin Perilloux .

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  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

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Perilloux, C. (2014). (Mis)reading the Signs: Men’s Perception of Women’s Sexual Interest. 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_6

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