title: Strangers With Benefits: Attraction to Outgroup Men Increases as Fertility Increases Across the Menstrual Cycle.
abstract: Research typically reveals that outgroups are regarded with disinterest at best and hatred and enmity at worst. Working from an evolutionary framework, we identify a unique pattern of outgroup attraction. The small-group lifestyle of pre-human ancestors plausibly limited access to genetically diverse mates. Ancestral females may have solved the inbreeding dilemma while balancing parental investment pressures by mating with outgroup males either via converting to an outgroup or cuckolding the ingroup. A vestige of those mating strategies might manifest in human women as a cyclic pattern of attraction across the menstrual cycle, such that attraction to outgroup men increases as fertility increases across the cycle. Two studies, one using a longitudinal method and the other an experimental method, evidenced the hypothesized linear relationship between attraction to outgroup men and fertility in naturally cycling women.
authors.affiliation: 1 Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Salvatore
authors.affiliation: 2 Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA.
authors.forename: Andrea L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Meltzer
authors.affiliation: 3 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.
authors.forename: David S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: March
authors.affiliation: 3 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.
authors.forename: Lowell
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gaertner
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008597:Menstrual Cycle; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attraction; evolution; intergroup processes