Recent evidence suggests that the adoption of religious beliefs and values may be used strategically to enhance long-term mating strategies, which implies an intuitive connection between differences in mating strategy and religiosity. This connection was investigated in a two-part primary hypothesis: perception of long-term mating strategies should increase association with religiosity and decrease association with nonreligiosity, while perception of short-term mating strategies should decrease association with religiosity and increase association with nonreligiosity. This was studied using a novel methodology of developing two mating strategy narratives (short-term vs. long-term) constructed from a preestablished measure and exploiting the tendency to use the representativeness heuristic and conjunction error to study the intuitive links between mating strategies and religiosity. Study 1 served as a pilot study using undergraduates and confirmed the primary hypothesis. Studies 2 and 3 expanded on study 1 by using a more representative sample through a larger Qualtrics panel of participants more closely matched to the general US population and also added the variables of participant religiosity and gender to the analysis. These studies not only confirmed the primary hypothesis but also demonstrated that how religiosity is described has an effect on whether or not it is associated with long-term strategies. Gender did not have an effect on the association between mating strategy and religiosity, but in study 3, nonreligious individuals did not associate long-term mating strategies with religiosity.

最近的证据表明，可以从策略上采用宗教信仰和价值观来增强长期交配策略，这意味着在交配策略和宗教信仰之间存在直观的联系。在两部分的主要假设中研究了这种联系：长期交配策略的感知应增加与宗教性的关联，并减少与非宗教性的关联，而短期交配策略的感知应减少与宗教性的关联，并增加与非宗教性的关联。这是使用一种新颖的方法研究的，该方法开发了两种交配策略的叙述（短期与非主流）。长期的）从预先建立的措施，并利用趋势，使用代表性的启发性和连接错误来研究交配策略和宗教信仰之间的直观联系。研究1作为使用大学生的试点研究，证实了主要假设。研究2和3在研究1的基础上进行了扩展，通过在更大的样本中使用更具代表性的样本参与者的质量评估小组与美国总体人口更加接近，并且在分析中增加了参与者的宗教信仰和性别变量。这些研究不仅证实了主要假设，而且证明了描述宗教的方式会影响其是否与长期策略相关。性别对交配策略和宗教信仰之间的关联没有影响，但是在研究3中，非宗教人士并未将长期的交配策略与宗教信仰相关联。