Interactive effects of intrasexual competitiveness, same-sex competition, and physical attractiveness on temporal discounting

Yong, Jose C., Aziz, Indra Alam Syah, Xiao, Hualin, and Li, Norman P. (2025) Interactive effects of intrasexual competitiveness, same-sex competition, and physical attractiveness on temporal discounting. Personality and Individual Differences, 232. 112843.

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Abstract

Studies have shown that men discount the future and prefer immediate-but-smaller over delayed-but-larger rewards when exposed to mating opportunities (e.g., attractive opposite-sex targets) or threats (e.g., same-sex competition) whereas women's discounting in response to similar cues appears mixed, suggesting that mating-motivated discounting is primarily a male phenomenon. Importantly, this line of research has not yet examined the role of individual difference variables as well as how the attractiveness of potential mates and perceptions of competition jointly influence discounting rates. We conducted a novel test of the effect of trait intrasexual competitiveness (ISC) using dating profiles varying on target attractiveness and same-sex competition to observe their interactive effects on participants' discounting. Results showed that when targets were attractive, higher ISC was associated with steeper discounting for both men and women, and this association was stronger when competition was high rather than low. ISC still predicted discounting when targets were low in attractiveness but competition was high; high ISC did not predict discounting only in the low attractiveness and low competition condition. These findings reveal ISC as a factor that leads women to discount as much as men, and that high-ISC individuals may be more responsive to competition than to target attractiveness.

Item ID: 83514
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1873-3549
Copyright Information: © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited: 02 Sep 2024 23:14
FoR Codes: 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5205 Social and personality psychology > 520502 Gender psychology @ 33%
52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5205 Social and personality psychology > 520503 Personality and individual differences @ 34%
52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5202 Biological psychology > 520204 Evolutionary psychological studies @ 33%
SEO Codes: 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280121 Expanding knowledge in psychology @ 100%
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