A substantial body of research has assessed the effect of gender on face recognition; however, little is known about the effect of relationship status on face recognition. In this study, we assessed for the first time how relationship status impacts face recognition by asking 62 male and female participants to decide whether they had previously encountered faces of males and females. Participants were also asked to fill a socio-demographic variables questionnaire which included, among other information, question about their relationship status (i.e., single vs. in a relationship). A significant effect of relationship status on face recognition was observed only in males; namely, single males demonstrated higher face recognition than males in relationships, whereas similar face recognition was observed in single and in-relationship females. More specifically, single males demonstrated higher recognition for female than for male faces, whereas no differences were observed in single females, males in relationships, or in females in relationship. Single males seem to be motivated by mating opportunity and, thus, unlike single females or males and females in relationships, devote high attentional resources to processing faces of the opposite gender.

中文翻译：

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单身与面孔：单身男性对女性面孔的高辨识度

大量研究评估了性别对人脸识别的影响；然而，人们对关系状态对人脸识别的影响知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们通过询问 62 名男性和女性参与者决定他们之前是否遇到过男性和女性的面孔，首次评估了关系状态如何影响人脸识别。参与者还被要求填写一份社会人口变量问卷，其中包括有关他们的关系状态（即单身与恋爱关系）等信息的问题。关系状态对人脸识别的显着影响仅在男性中观察到；也就是说，单身男性在人际关系中表现出比男性更高的面部识别能力，而在单身和有关系的女性中观察到类似的面部识别。更具体地说，单身男性对女性面孔的识别度高于男性面孔，而单身女性、恋爱中的男性或恋爱中的女性没有观察到差异。单身男性似乎受到交配机会的激励，因此，与单身女性或恋爱关系中的男性和女性不同，他们将高度的注意力资源用于处理异性面孔。