Mating games: the evolution of human mating transactions

Hill, Sarah E.
Reeve, H. Kern

^aDepartment of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, TX 78731, USA
^bDepartment of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14653, USA

Address correspondence to S. E. Hill. E-mail: [email protected].

Received 5 June 2003; revised 29 October 2003; accepted 10 November 2003.

Behavioral Ecology 15(5):p 748-756, September-October 2004.

We propose a new, evolutionary, game-theoretic model of conditional human mating strategies that integrates currently disconnected bodies of data into a single mathematically-explicit theory of human mating transactions. The model focuses on the problem of how much resource a male must provide to a female to secure and retain her as a mate. By using bidding-game models, we show how the male's minimally required resource incentive varies as a function of his own mate value, the value of the female, and the distribution of the mate values of their available alternative mates. The resulting theory parsimoniously accounts for strategic pluralism within the sexes, mate choice differences between the sexes, and assortative mating, while generating a rich set of testable new predictions about human mating behavior.