Search

Despite the increasing ubiquity of women’s surname retention following marriage, stereotypes of such women as experiencing relational failure persist. These stereotypes could be especially pervasive toward women whose physical appearance suggests further deviation from feminine norms. Surname retention could foster negative expectations about women’s success among those with less feminine facial morphology. In this study, participants provided trait inferences and expectations of marital success for recently married heterosexual women based on whether they retained their surname whose appearance varied in the presence of feminine facial features. Dispositionally heightened endorsement of hostile sexism further predicted masculinized women as experiencing less marital success following surname retention. Conversely, benevolent sexism predicted greater perceived success among masculinized women who changed their names. Functional stereotypes of women’s relational goals appear to interact in shaping expectations for how women engage relationships in modern contexts. Keywords: surname, marriage, sexism, gender norms, sexual dimorphism

Many Labs 3 is a crowdsourced project that will systematically evaluate time-of-semester effects across many participant pools. The project team will create a single experimental protocol assessing 10 known effects within 30 minutes. As many labs that can join will administer the same protocol across the academic semester. The aggregate data will provide high-powered evidence whether time-of-semester moderates the detectability of effects. Effects will be selected based on the lay theories of what is likely to be influenced by time of semester.

A large portion of humans’ somatic efforts is devoted to selecting, obtaining, and retaining a mate (Low, 2000; Buss & Shackelford 1997). Mate retention behaviors could have thus emerged as an effective solution to the adaptive problems posed by relationship dissolutions. That is, relationship maintenance could present relatively fewer costs of ensuring prior investment into a relationship compared to what would likely be considerably larger costs inherent in initiating a new pairbond. Retention strategies include behaviors that dissuade one’s partner from infidelity or otherwise leaving the relationship, whether through benefit provisioning or cost induction. Such behaviors can range from simple, romantic actions to significantly costlier tactics such as sexual coercion (Buss et al., 2008). Although sexual coercion could have historically presented adaptive benefits for certain individuals, such behaviors impose considerable social costs in modern contexts that could preclude widespread utilization among most individuals. Nonetheless, individuals could rely on subtler forms of mental and emotional manipulation to ensure a partner would remain in the pairbond that remain pernicious yet would not warrant the considerable social sanctions of more aggressive acts. For example, threatening to seek partners outside of the current pairbond, or to withhold benefits from one’s partner, was a more commonly used coercion tactics as opposed to explicit violence (Shackelford & Goetz, 2004). Another potential coercive mate retention tactic that one could employ to secure their partner is having a baby in the service of securing access to one’s mate, or a relationship-leveraging offspring. Producing offspring with one’s current partner could be argued as an evolutionarily viable mate retention tactic in the instance that having a child reduces mate value, given the subsequent consideration to provide biparental investment. For example, a woman’s mate value inherently decreases in the instance of having a kid (Anderson, 2000) as a result of the attention and metabolic resources necessarily required to devote to the offspring and potential pairbond with the father. The woman will also become more dependent on the biological father to provide protection and resources for the current offspring, at least until the child is able to become more self-sufficient (i.e., through weaning). Indeed, research shows that having a preschool aged child buffers the likelihood of divorce or separation, though the same is not true for any other age of child (Waite and Lillard, 1991; Cherlin, 1977; Becker, Landes, & Michael, 1977; Waite, Haggstrom, & Kanouse, 1985). As such, we refer to these children as relationship-leveraging offspring in the current study. A previous study conducted by the authors of this pre-registration found that a correlation exists between avoidantly attached individuals such that those higher in avoidance and anxiety are less likely to use such direct, costly relationship-leveraging tactics. Such tactics were measured by having participants rate how sympathetic they were to a series of Relationship-Leveraging Offspring items that consisted of both direct, costly tactics (e.g., “A person throws away their partner's birth control or condoms.”) and indirect, benefit provisioning tactics (e.g., “A person promises to marry their partner if they will have a baby with them.”). The purpose of this study is to seek to replicate this finding in an experimental study to identify a causal link between insecure attachment and endorsement of these behaviors, while additionally addressing ambiguity in previous findings about sex differences.

Many Labs 3 is a crowdsourced project that will systematically evaluate time-of-semester effects across many participant pools. The project team will create a single experimental protocol assessing 10 known effects within 30 minutes. As many labs as can join will administer the same protocol across the academic semester. The aggregate data will provide high-powered evidence whether time-of-semester moderates the detectability of effects. Effects will be selected based on the lay theories of what is likely to be influenced by time of semester.

Similar to other species, humans spend a considerable amount of resources retaining a mate. Evolutionary psychology suggests that humans use a variety of mate retention tactics in an effort to dissuade relationship dissolution. These tactics are often grouped into benefit-provisioning and cost-inflicting factors. Generally speaking, benefit-provisioning strategies prevent defection by highlighting the benefits of staying mated to the current partner, whereas cost-inflicting strategies are characterized by riskier behaviors that induce psychological or physical harm. Specific tactics can range from providing gifts for one’s partner to outright violence against rivals (Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Buss et al., 2008). In any case, reproductive coercion represents a particularly aversive form of mate retention that people may use to increase relationship commitment. Accordingly, bearing offspring is a plausible avenue for increasing commitment to the relationship by decreasing the availability of alternatives for the partner and providing the opportunity for the child to monopolize the partner’s time. This is also consistent with the idea that relationship investments can act as constraints preventing relationship dissolution (Stanley & Markman, 1992). One study supporting this line of reasoning showed that traditional Hadza hunter-gatherers reported greater commitment as their reproductive fitness increased (measured by number of children beared; Sorokowski et al., 2017). Additional research shows that having a young child reduces the chances of a couple divorcing or separating (Waite and Lillard, 1991). As such, we call such children relationship-leveraging offspring in the current study. While there are severe social consequences for using reproductively coercive mate retention tactics, there are a number of these strategies that are relatively inconspicuous. Previous studies by the current authors indicate that reproductively coercive tactics fall into direct and indirect factors. Similar to the broad range of mate retention tactics, these Relationship-Leveraging Offspring (RLO) tactics can range from sabotaging contraceptives (i.e., covertly removing a condom during sex) to bestowing resources upon one’s partner (i.e., telling your partner you can buy a bigger house if you have a child). To better understand what types of people would be more likely to endorse these tactics, it will be beneficial to examine which general personality characteristics they are associated with. The HEXACO model of personality has been shown to be an effective, cross-culturally valid, and reliable measure of human personality. Thus, examining the HEXACO factors in relation to the RLO tactics will be useful for answering this research question. Also, considering the close relationship between reproductive coercion and intimate partner violence, it is likely that these RLO strategies reflect a socially aversive interpersonal style (Grace & Anderson, 2018). So, to better understand how socially aversive personality traits influence the likelihood of RLO strategy endorsement we plan to examine the relationship between the RLO factors and the Dark Core of Personality (D; Moshagen et al., 2018). Evolutionary theorists have directed considerable attention toward personality traits and their potential adaptiveness in mating related endeavors. However, no personality information has been obtained that directly informs the literature about reproductive coercion from this theoretical viewpoint. Overall, the study here is intended to clarify the relationship between a large range personality characteristics and the endorsement of specific mate retention tactics used for reproductive coercion.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-cjb-10.1177_00938548221087177 for Does Convenience Come with a Price? The Impact of Remote Testimony on Perceptions of Expert Credibility by Ashley C. T. Jones, Ashley B. Batastini, Meera B. Patel, Donald F. Sacco and Craig A. Warlick in Criminal Justice and Behavior