Hansjörg Neth, Simeon Schächtele, Sulav Duwal, Peter M. Todd

Competitive mate choice: How need for speed beats quests for quality and harmony

Abstract:  The choice of a mate is made complicated by the need to search for partners at the same time others are searching. What decision strategies will outcompete others in a population of searchers? We extend previous approaches using computer simulations to study mate search strategies by allowing direct competition between multiple strategies, evaluating success on multiple criteria. In a mixed social environment of searchers of different types, simple strategies can exploit more demanding strategies in unexpected ways. We find that simple strategies that only aim for speed can beat more selective strategies that aim to maximize the quality or harmony of mated pairs.

Keywords:  Mate choice, sequential search, simple heuristics, strategy competition, agent-based modeling, social simulation.

Reference:  Neth, H., Schächtele, S., Duwal, S., & Todd, P. M. (2011). Competitive mate choice: How need for speed beats quests for quality and harmony. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 699–704). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Related:  Social influence and the collective dynamics of opinion formation

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