ABSTRACT-Women prefer both the scent of symmetrical men and masculine male faces more during the fertile (late follicular and ovulatory) phases of their menstrual cycles than during their infertile (e.g., luteal) phases. Men's behavioral displays in social settings may convey signals that affect women's attraction to men even more strongly. This study examined shifts in women's preferences for these behavioral displays. A sample of 237 normally ovulating women viewed 36 or 40 videotaped men who were competing for a potential lunch date and then rated each man's attractiveness as a short-term and a long-term mate. As predicted, women's preference for men who displayed social presence and direct intrasexual competitiveness increased on high-fertility days relative to low-fertility days, but only in a short-term, not a long-term, mating context. These findings add to the growing literature indicating that women's mate preferences systematically vary across the reproductive cycle.Two recent lines of research have shown that the criteria women use to evaluate men's attractiveness shift across the menstrual cycle. First, women prefer the scent of men who evince high developmental stability (as measured by fluctuating asymmetry) particularly during fertile days of their cycles (Gangestad & Thornhill, 1998;Rikowski & Grammer, 1999;Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999b;Thornhill et al., 2003). Second, women prefer masculine faces more on fertile days than on nonfertile days (Johnston, Hagel, Franklin, Fink, & Grammer, 2001;Penton-Voak & Perrett, 2000;Penton-Voak et al., 1999). These findings are believed to reflect evolved adaptations for women to choose sires who can provide genetic benefits to offspring. Heightened attraction to men who possess putative indicators of genetic benefits (e.g., symmetry and facial masculinity, which covary positively; Gangestad & Thornhill, in press) may increase the probability that women have sex with them when fertile, even if such men are not their primary partners. This interpretation is supported by the finding that women's attraction to masculine facial features is heightened midcycle when they evaluate men as short-term partners (i.e., as sex partners), but not when they evaluate men as long-term, stable partners (PentonVoak et al., 1999). These preference shifts may explain why women report increased sexual attraction to men other than primary partners when fertile (Gangestad, Thornhill, & Garver, 2002).Although scent and facial attractiveness may importantly affect women's attraction to men (Buss & Schmitt, 1993;Herz & Cahill, 1997;Regan & Berscheid, 1995), men's behavior-how they interact with women and other men-may be even more important determinants of attraction. Women prefer men who display self-assurance and stand up for themselves with other men, but who exhibit warmth and agreeableness (e.g., Cunningham, Druen, & Barbee, 1997;Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, Todd, & Finch, 1997;Jensen-Campbell, Graziano, & West, 1995). The former attributes, which reflect intrasexual competitiveness, m...

The self-concept plays an important role in conformity to sex-typed social norms. Normative beliefs that men are powerful, dominant, and self-assertive and that women are caring, intimate with others, and emotionally expressive represent possible standards for whom people ought to be and whom they ideally would like to be. In the present research, to the extent that sex role norms were personally relevant for participants, norm-congruent experiences (i.e., those involving dominance for men and communion for women) yielded positive feelings and brought their actual self-concepts closer to the standards represented by ought and ideal selves. A recurring theme in the popular psychology literature is that men and women are motivated toward different goals and values in everyday social relationships. Tannen's (1990) bestseller , You Just Don't Understand, suggests that women's "conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus" (p. 25), whereas men's are "negotiations in which people try to achieve and maintain the upper hand if they can, and protect themselves from others' attempts to put them down and push them around" (p. 25). Similarly, Gray's (1992) popular book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, outlines sextyped value systems, with men oriented toward "power, competency, efficiency, and achievement" (p. 16) and women toward "love, communication, beauty, and relationships" (p. 18). The idea that men and women possess divergent motivations in social relationships is not especially novel; it elaborates on Bakan's (1966) well-known argument that men are oriented toward agency, and women, toward communion. The popularity of these ideas comes from their capturing some centrally important feature of people' s experiences as men or women in our society. Indeed, they correspond to the core dimensions of sexdifferentiated normative standards, as documented by psychological research on sex stereotypes (e.g.

Two studies demonstrated that greater identification with a group was associated with more positive emotions for members who conformed with versus violated the group's norms. These effects were found with injunctive norms, which specify what members should do or what they ideally would do, but emerged less consistently with descriptive norms, which specify what members typically do. Descriptive norms affected emotional responses when they acquired identity-relevance by differentiating an important ingroup from a rival outgroup. For these descriptive norms, much like injunctive norms, greater identification yielded more positive emotions following conformity than violation. The authors suggest that positive emotions and self-evaluations underlie conformity with the norms of self-defining groups.

Heterosexual men and women were told they were competing with another same-sex individual for a date with an attractive opposite-sex interviewer. After answering 6 questions, participants were asked to tell the competitor why the interviewer should choose them over the competitor. Participants' videotaped behavior was coded for different behavioral tactics. Men who were more symmetrical and who had a more unrestricted sociosexual orientation were more likely to use direct competition tactics than were less symmetrical and restricted men. Restricted men accentuated their positive personal qualities, presenting themselves as "nice guys." Structural equation modeling revealed that fluctuating asymmetry (FA) was directly associated with the use of direct competition tactics. However, the link between FA and presenting oneself as a nice guy was mediated through sociosexuality. No effects were found for women.

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