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.

中文翻译：

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伴侣可用性和性厌恶

客观的

性厌恶应该校准的因素之一是交配池的大小。这项研究通过检查对配偶可用性的看法是否解释了对潜在配偶的性厌恶程度的差异来检验这一假设。

方法

参与者（N  = 853；373 名女性）对他们发现的 60 位潜在伴侣的性厌恶程度进行了评分，这些潜在伴侣此前曾被另一组评分者评定为吸引力。我们还测量了参与者对当地环境中配偶可用性的看法、自我感知的吸引力和配偶价值，以及相关的控制变量。

结果

多层次模型揭示了对潜在伴侣的性厌恶与感知伴侣可用性之间的负相关——这与我们的预测相反。我们发现支持我们的预测，即女性的性厌恶程度高于男性，但前提是要解决目标吸引力中令人困惑的性别差异。我们还发现了目标吸引力和性厌恶之间的预测负相关。最后，正如预测的那样，性厌恶程度与潜在配偶的吸引力密切相关，这些人认为在当地环境中有许多可用的配偶。

结论

这些发现通常支持性厌恶的功能解释，同时强调需要更多证据来确定配偶可用性在校准性厌恶中的作用。具体来说，未来的研究应该检查厌恶程度可能会在多大程度上截断交配池的心理表征，而不是由它们校准。