Mate choice is an important decision in sexually reproducing species, affecting the genes passed on to offspring, as well as the amount of investment partners and offspring receive. However, mate quality may not be readily observable, making effective mate-choice a potentially challenging endeavor. To improve their mate choices, individuals can learn from the choices of others, a process referred to as “mate choice copying” (Waynforth, 2007) which often generates a generalized preference for traits observed in chosen individuals (Bowers, Place, Todd, Penke, and Asendorpf, 2012; Jones and DuVal, 2019; Kavaliers, Matta, and Choleris, 2017).

Many empirical studies have documented mate choice copying in humans (Gouda-Vossos, Nakagawa, Dixson, and Brooks, 2018; Scammell and Anderson, 2020). For instance, Eva and Wood (2006) found that women perceive photos of men labeled as “married” more attractive than those labeled as “single”. Similarly, the presence of a female partner, or other women, near a potential mate causes observing women to perceive them as more desirable (Hill and Buss, 2008; Little, Caldwell, Jones, and DeBruine, 2015; Rodeheffer, Leyva, and Hill, 2016; Waynforth, 2007). Similar effects have been observed in speed dating (Bowers et al., 2012) and in self-reports of third-party romantic interest (Vakirtzis and Roberts, 2012). While mate poaching (attracting someone who is already in a romantic relationship) does occur in humans (Schmitt and Buss, 2001), it is not the norm or a necessary consequence of mate choice copying (Thompson and O'Sullivan, 2016).

Mate-choice is not the only important decision that organisms make and so individuals can, and do, benefit from learning from others across a wide variety of contexts (Hoppitt and Laland, 2013). For instance, in addition to mate-choice copying, humans acquire adaptive dietary taboos through social learning (Henrich and Henrich, 2010). However, that copying occurs across contexts does not imply that the same psychological mechanisms are involved in different contexts. Thus, it remains unclear whether mate choice copying is guided by narrow-context copying mechanisms that evolved specifically for mate choice, or if it is instead affected by a broader capacity to learn socially. Evolutionary thinking alone cannot resolve this as many aspects of copying can be explained via narrow-context or broad-context adaptive reasoning. For instance, the increased use of social information when making long-term, as opposed to short-term, partnership decisions might be a feature of a mate-choice specific mechanism or a broad-context tendency to copy more when risks are higher (Hare, 2017; Street et al., 2018; Wachtmeister, 2001).

Such stances entail different views of the mind as well as how selection has shaped it. The narrow-context hypothesis suggests the mind is made of a large number of context specific systems, each of which solves problems in its specific context and so has been shaped by selection pressures unique to that context. The broad-context hypothesis, however, suggests the mind consists of a smaller (although potentially still large) number of systems which are flexibly recruited across a range of contexts to produce effective behavior. As these broad-context systems are shaped by selection pressures from multiple contexts, their design may reflect compromises to the competing needs of different decisions and exhibit general solutions. In the context of mate-choice this becomes a question of whether mate-choice copying is guided by mechanisms that are specific to a mate-choice context, or mechanisms that operate more broadly (Bolhuis, Brown, Richardson, and Laland, 2011; Miller and Todd, 1998; Street et al., 2018).

Other work has placed considerable emphasis on broad-context adaptive biases that influence when, who and what to copy (Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Kendal et al., 2018; Kendal and Watson, 2023; Laland, 2004; Rendell et al., 2011). Such biases enable learners to obtain high quality information across many contexts. One of the most studied social learning biases is conformist transmission; the disproportionate adoption of majority beliefs (Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Morgan & Laland, 2012). Adoption is disproportionate in the sense that the probability of adopting the majority belief is greater than the proportional size of the majority. As such, conformist transmission can drive popular beliefs to fixation, which can result in stable between group variation (Henrich and Boyd, 1998), although the stability of these traditions has been questioned (Morgan and Thompson, 2020). Nonetheless, the potential for conformist transmission to stabilize cultural traditions has led to its study in many species, with evidence for this phenomena being found in human adults (Morgan, Rendell, Ehn, Hoppitt, and Laland, 2011; Muthukrishna, Morgan, and Henrich, 2016), children (Morgan, Laland, and Harris, 2014), monkeys (van de Waal, Borgeaud, and Whiten, 2013), birds (Aplin et al., 2015; Lachlan, Ratmann, and Nowicki, 2018) and flies (Danchin, Nöbel, Pocheville, et al., 2018). Though negative results have also been reported (Battesti, Moreno, Joly, and Mery, 2014; Eriksson, Enquist, and Ghirlanda, 2007; Watson et al., 2018).

Another transmission bias that has received recent attention is the selective copying of prestigious individuals, known as prestige-biased transmission. Selection favors copying successful individuals (Kendal, Giraldeau, and Laland, 2009; Schlag, 1998, Schlag, 1999), however, direct measurements of an individuals' skill may be difficult to obtain. In these situations, indirect cues, or general markers of success, can be used in their place (Atkisson, O'Brien, and Mesoudi, 2012; Henrich and Gil-White, 2001). The reliance on these indirect cues of success creates a pattern where generally successful individuals are sought for advice on a variety of matters and, in exchange, receive deference, access to resources, and positions of power and leadership, which collectively are signals of success, referred to as “prestige” (Henrich, Chudek, and Boyd, 2015; Henrich and Gil-White, 2001; Jiménez and Mesoudi, 2019; Lenfesty and Morgan, 2019). This hypothesis is supported by empirical documentation of prestige biased transmission in humans (Atkisson et al., 2012; Brand, Heap, Morgan, and Mesoudi, 2020; Brand, Mesoudi, and Morgan, 2021; Chudek, Heller, Birch, and Henrich, 2012; Henrich and Henrich, 2010).

Here we draw on transmission biases to test whether mate-choice copying is underpinned by narrow-context or broad-context mechanisms. Specifically, we ask two questions: 1) is mate choice copying influenced by the same biases (specifically, conformist and prestige biases) documented in other contexts? and 2) does mate choice copying (including any effect of conformity or prestige) differ between men and women? If mate choice copying is underpinned by broad-context mechanisms, we predict that conformist transmission and prestige biased transmission, which are both documented in other contexts, will also occur in the context of mate choice. If mate choice strategies are narrow-context, we predict that women will be more sensitive to the mate decisions of others than are men because women tend to have more at stake in reproduction than men (Bateman, 1948; Geary, Vigil, and Byrd-Craven, 2004; Kokko and Johnstone, 2002; Trivers, 1972), and they therefore should be expected to expend additional effort to evaluate potential mates.