Convergent evidence for a theory of rapid, automatic, and accurate sex ratio tracking

Brandner, Jordann L.; Dillon, Haley; Brase, Gary L.

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103161

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…At the same time, a focus of the present work is to assess possible differences across stimuli that vary in content (sex, pet, and vehicle ratios), a potentially more subtle effect. Thus, although a power analysis based on prior research (Alt et al, 2019; Brandner et al, 2020) suggests a sample size of about 10, the more modest repeated measures design and potentially smaller effects of interest in the present study, led us to decide on a larger target sample size of 50.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Certainly, claims of slight biases such as this should be assessed with consideration of error variance, and the current methodological paradigm (i.e., comparing sex-ratio perception with abilities to perceive other ratios) provides a useful context for doing so. Previous research suggests this could be a regression to the mean effect (Brandner et al, 2020). Because the effect occurs with a variety of ratio types, it is slightly less likely that there is a specific male-perception bias and more likely that ratio estimates (of any type) are anchored at a 50/50 split of stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sex, and other important things: Tracking ratios of ecologically significant categories.

Brase¹,

Brandner²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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The ratio of males and females in a population (the sex ratio) has been documented as an important factor in calibrating mating behaviors. This implies mental processes of attention, perception, categorization, and memory to obtain these environmental sex ratios. Although recent work has indicated that sex ratio information can be processed quickly, accurately, and with little effort, there are still open questions about whether sex ratio information is cognitively privileged or prioritized, relative to other environmental information. The present experiments used an ensemble coding paradigm with larger, more complex matrices of stimuli and with a more feasible range of ratios (between 7:13 to 13:7) than many prior studies on sex ratio perception. Experiment 1 found that sex ratio estimates are sensitive to actual seen ratios (of a 4 3 5 matrix of faces, shown for about 500 ms), and that those judgments are more accurate than similarly presented ensemble coding judgments for vehicles (ratios of cars and truck) or for animals (ratios of cats and dogs). Experiment 2 found that sex ratio estimates and hair color ratio estimates are about equal in accuracy. These results together suggest that faces are a privileged content for frequency tracking, relative to other aspects of the environment. Further research can extend this work by disambiguating factors such as complexity and discriminability of various facial cues and the stage of processing at which those cues are being used.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex, and other important things: Tracking ratios of ecologically significant categories.

Brase¹,

Brandner²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Whereas ample theories imply sensitivity to group emergent properties (e.g., self-categorization and social-identity theories, social-dominance theory, evolutionary theories, theories of self-regard; Brandner et al, 2020; Leary & Baumeister, 2000; Mahadevan et al, 2019; Neuberg et al, 2010; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1985) and the importance of this sensitivity for behavior, the mediating role of actually perceiving such properties is only now being tested. For example, past work has found that representation in classrooms and in organizations affects individuals’ sense of belonging and ultimately their success (e.g., Cheryan et al, 2009; Mannix & Neale, 2005; Murphy et al, 2007; K.…”

Section: Advancing Research In People Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Person Perception, Meet People Perception: Exploring the Social Vision of Groups

Alt

Phillips

2021

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Groups, teams, and collectives —people—are incredibly important to human behavior. People live in families, work in teams, and celebrate and mourn together in groups. Despite the huge variety of human group activity and its fundamental importance to human life, social-psychological research on person perception has overwhelmingly focused on its namesake, the person, rather than expanding to consider people perception. By looking to two unexpected partners, the vision sciences and organization behavior, we find emerging work that presents a path forward, building a foundation for understanding how people perceive other people. And yet this nascent field is missing critical insights that scholars of social vision might offer: specifically, for example, the chance to connect perception to behavior through the mediators of cognition and motivational processes. Here, we review emerging work across the vision and social sciences to extract core principles of people perception: efficiency, capacity, and complexity. We then consider complexity in more detail, focusing on how people perception modifies person-perception processes and enables the perception of group emergent properties as well as group dynamics. Finally, we use these principles to discuss findings and outline areas fruitful for future work. We hope that fellow scholars take up this people-perception call.

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“…If our reversed-causality explanation for the negative association between sexual disgust and perceptions of mate availability is correct, the accuracy of our conscious perception of mate availability must be scrutinized more closely. Operational sex ratio may be a crude proxy at best, as it may fail to take into account many important factors that would likely be tracked by our minds, such as age distribution, proportion of mates that are married or pregnant, and local attitudes toward monogamy and casual sex (see Brandner et al, 2020 for a discussion of our evolved sex ratio tracking abilities). More effort should be dedicated to expanding the range of measures used to approximate actual mate availability.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mate Availability and Sexual Disgust

Crosby

Durkee

Sedlacek

et al. 2021

Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology

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Objective One of the factors that sexual disgust should be calibrated to is the size of the mating pool. This study tested this hypothesis by examining whether perceptions of mate availability explain variance in levels of sexual disgust towards potential mates. Methods Participants ( N = 853; 373 women) rated how sexually disgusting they found 60 potential mates that have previously been rated on attractiveness by a separate group of raters. We also measured participants’ perceptions of mate availability in their local environment, self-perceived attractiveness and mate value, and relevant control variables. Results Multilevel models revealed a negative association between sexual disgust towards potential mates and perceived mate availability—the opposite of what we predicted. We found support for our prediction that women had higher levels of sexual disgust than men, but only after addressing the confounding sex difference in target attractiveness. We also found the predicted negative association between target attractiveness and sexual disgust. Finally, as predicted, sexual disgust levels were more strongly related to potential mates’ attractiveness in individuals who perceived there to be many available mates in their local environment. Conclusions These findings generally bolster functional accounts of sexual disgust while highlighting the need for more evidence to ascertain the role of mate availability in the calibration of sexual disgust. Specifically, future research should examine the extent to which disgust levels may truncate mental representations of the mating pool instead of being calibrated by them.

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Convergent evidence for a theory of rapid, automatic, and accurate sex ratio tracking

Cited by 7 publications

References 93 publications

Sex, and other important things: Tracking ratios of ecologically significant categories.

Sex, and other important things: Tracking ratios of ecologically significant categories.

Person Perception, Meet People Perception: Exploring the Social Vision of Groups

Mate Availability and Sexual Disgust

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