The data was gathered for a sub-study (Study 1) of an investigation of mating preferences of conservatives. Study 1 investigated whether conservatives were less likely to employ a short-term mating strategy distinct to their long-term mating strategies. They also examined whether an individual’s motivation to preserve traditional norms affected short-term mating strategies (Muggleton & Fincher, 2018).
The participants were recruited using a Prolific Academy study – an online crowdsourcing tool – and given financial reimbursement for their time.
This dataset includes subject ID, sex (female = 254; male = 273) and nationality (UK, US, or India) of 527 participants. Columns include SOI, Tradition, Tight, Context, Trait, and Spend.
SOI is a behaviour subscale of the SOI-R (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008) indicating an individual’s level of sexual experience. A high score corresponds to an unincreased likelihood of engaging in sexual relationships without deeper emotional commitment.
Tradition describes adherence to traditional norms. This was measured using a three-item subscale from the Portraits Values Questionnaire (Schwartz et al., 2012). A higher score indicates greater commitment to traditional values or beliefs.
Tight describes cultural tightness – the extent to which social norms are consistently imposed and clearly defined within a region. These scores were obtained using the six-item tightness-looseness scale (Gelfand et al., 2011) with a higher score indicating increased cultural tightness.
Context was a within-subject factor indicating whether the subject was responding to a short-term (short) or long-term (long) mate.
Trait is another within-subject factor showing which trait (good genes, good parent, good provider) the participant had selected being most important in their partner.
Participants were asked to construct their ideal mate for each context. Each dollar they spent on a specific trait was equivalent to 10 percentile points greater than the general population. The amount spent ($) is shown in the Spend column.
**References**
Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. M., Lun, J., Lim, B. C., ... & Aycan, Z. (2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. *science*, 332(6033), 1100-1104.
Muggleton, N., & Fincher, C. (2018). You're not my type: Do conservatives have a bias for seeing long-term mates?. *Evolution And Human Behavior*, 39(6), 652-663. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.06.009
Penke, L., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2008). Beyond global sociosexual orientations: a more differentiated look at sociosexuality and its effects on courtship and romantic relationships. *Journal of personality and social psychology*, 95(5), 1113.
Schwartz, S. H., Cieciuch, J., Vecchione, M., Davidov, E., Fischer, R., Beierlein, C., ... & Dirilen-Gumus, O. (2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. *Journal of personality and social psychology*, 103(4), 663.
