Deceptive affectionate messages (DAMs) have been proposed to act as relational maintenance techniques and, as such, might be part of a greater repertoire of mate retention behaviors. We analyzed data from 1,993 Mechanical Turk participants to examine the relations between DAMs and mate retention, and whether these relations were mediated by the perceived risk of partner infidelity. In line with predictions, frequency of DAMs positively predicted general mate retention and cost-inflicting mate retention through the perceived risk of partner infidelity. In line with our nondirectional prediction, we also found that frequency of DAMs negatively predicted benefit-provisioning mate retention behaviors. In an exploratory mediation analysis of DAMs on benefit-provisioning mate retention via perceived partner infidelity, we surprisingly found that DAMs negatively predicted benefit-provisioning behavior due to the perceived risk of partner infidelity, suggesting that DAMs—but not benefit-provisioning mate retention—are deployed under the threat of partner infidelity. Overall, these findings suggest that DAMs might belong to a greater repertoire of mate retention (especially cost-inflicting) behaviors to thwart the possibility of partner infidelity.

中文翻译：

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欺骗性的深情信息：在伴侣不忠的威胁下部署伴侣保留。

欺骗性的深情信息（DAM）已被提议作为关系维护技术，因此可能成为更多的配偶保留行为的一部分。我们分析了 1,993 名 Mechanical Turk 参与者的数据，以研究 DAM 和伴侣保留之间的关系，以及这些关系是否受到伴侣不忠的感知风险的调节。与预测一致，DAM 的频率正向预测一般的择偶保留率以及通过感知伴侣不忠风险而造成的成本高昂的择偶保留率。与我们的非定向预测一致，我们还发现 DAM 的频率对提供福利的配偶保留行为有负面预测。在一项探索性中介分析中，DAM 通过感知到的伴侣不忠来影响提供福利的配偶保留，我们惊讶地发现，由于伴侣不忠的感知风险，DAM 负面预测了福利提供行为，这表明 DAM（而不是提供福利的配偶保留）是在伴侣不忠的威胁下部署的。总体而言，这些研究结果表明，DAM 可能属于更多的保留配偶（尤其是造成成本的）行为，以阻止伴侣不忠的可能性。