The Influence of Mate Value on Women's Desire for Long and Short-Term Mates: Implicit Responses

This study examined the effects of mate-value on women's implicit desire for long and short-term mates. It was hypothesized that when social desirability effects were minimized that low mate-value women would have more positive associations with men available for short-term relationships compared to high mate-value women. To test this hypothesis, 144 women were presented with men available for either a long or a short-term relationship. The participants were asked to state their explicit response to the men, complete a procedure designed to measure their implicit responses to the men, and a measure of mate-value. As expected, high mate-value women had fewer positive implicit responses to men only available for short-term relations compared to low mate-value women. This effect disappeared when explicit responses were examined.