Seduction can be a lot of fun, but why does it take so much time? Experienced Seductionists know that men can take a long time in declaring their interest in a woman; but once they have, the female then needs to determine their suitability, in order to screen out the men that she finds incompatible as mates.

Looking at this another way, sometimes things go wrong in a seduction – then, in human terms, we might say “The ‘Chemistry’ just wasn’t there!“. Alternatively, you might ask why not just have sex with everyone instead of waiting at all? And, if you wait, what does that say about the quality of the relationship?

To shed light on this matter Scientists have developed a mathematical model of the mating game to help explain why courtship is often so protracted. The study, carried out by researchers at University College London (UCL), University of Warwick and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), uses Game theory to show that extended courtship periods enable a male to signal his suitability to a female, and allows the female to weed out the male if he is found to be unsuitable as a potential mate.

From the perspective of Game theory, almost every decision we make is the result of a series of negotiations in which we try to reduce uncertainty by trading off what other people want in return for what we want ourselves. Therefore, just like Poker and Chess, real life can be thought of as a game of strategy, combined with contracts and deals to protect us from the Cheats and Liars.

But, unlike Poker and Chess, we can almost never expect to be a “winner” in these games. Choosing the option that we judge will bring us the best payoff tends to be the riskiest decision, since it will usually provoke the strongest defence from other players who stand to lose if we get what we want. Thus, we usually have to settle for compromise agreements, which may require us to make the best of a bad bargain. Some good examples would be drawing up an employment contract, buying a house, negotiating a loan with your Bank or even a classic logic puzzle such as the Sultan’s Dowry Problem, which may be of interest to mathematically minded Seductionists.

The findings of this latest research, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, analyse how males and females behave strategically towards each other in the mating game. Thus, the model is based on the idea that women have much to lose from any new relationship because they may end up with a baby fathered by an abusive or poor genetic quality father. Whilst a man may end up investing time and money in a “Gold digging” partner that has no intention of ever having sex with him.

The mathematics considers a male and a female in a simplified courtship encounter of unspecified duration, in a society without contraception, with the game ending when either partner quits, or the female accepts the male as a mate. The first courtship model presented assumes that from the female perspective, a male is either “Good” (i.e. Healthy and willing to stick around and help raise any children he fathers) or “Bad” (i.e. Unhealthy or unwilling to help raise any children) – Whilst from the male perspective a man (of either type) makes a subjective assessment of whether the female is attractive or unattractive and then proceeds with the courtship encounter or not, as the case may be.

Thus, a male gets a positive payoff from mating with any female he chooses to pursue, even though his payoff is higher if he is “good” than if he is “bad”. Whereas, in contrast, the female only gets a positive payoff from mating with a “good” male but a negative payoff from mating with one that is “bad”. Therefore, it is in her interest to gain more information about the male’s type with the aim of avoiding mating with a “bad” male, since she would like to mate with a “good” male, but cannot tell a male’s type from his appearance alone.

So, the study looks for behaviours that are evolutionarily stable and in equilibrium. That is to say, females are doing as well as they can against male behaviour and males are doing as well as they can against female behaviour in a so called “Battle of the sexes” with both sides compromising on the point in the developing relationship where they agree to have sex.

The model shows that extended courtships can take place, with a “good” male being willing to court for longer than a “bad” male and the female delaying mating. In this way the duration of a male’s courtship effort carries information about his type, and by delaying mating, the female is able to make some use of this information to achieve a degree of screening. Therefore, since “bad” males have a greater tendency to quit the courtship game early, as time goes on and the male has not quit it becomes increasingly probable that he is a “good” male.

Lead Author, Professor Robert Seymour, of UCL Mathematics, said:

Courtship in a number of animal species occurs over an extended period of time. Human courtship, for example, can involve a sequence of dinners, theatre trips and other outings lasting months or even years. One partner – often the male – may pay the greater part of the financial cost, but to both sexes there is a significant cost of time which could be spent on other productive activities. Why don’t people and other animals speed things up to reduce these costs? The answer seems to be that longer courtship is a way for the female to acquire information about the male.

By delaying mating, the female is able to reduce the chance that she will mate with a “bad” male. A male’s willingness to court for a long time is a signal that he is likely to be a “good” male. Long courtship is a price paid for increasing the chance that mating, if it occurs, will be a harmonious match which benefits both sexes. This may help to explain the commonly held belief that a woman is best advised not to sleep with a man on a first date.

Dr Peter Sozou, of Warwick Medical School and LSE Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science said:

The strategic problem the female faces is how to screen out “bad” males, and this is where long courtship comes into play. A male is assumed to always want to mate with a female, but a “good” male is more willing to pay the cost of a long courtship in order to claim the prize of mating. This leads to an outcome in which the female is not willing to mate immediately, but instead requires the male to wait for an indeterminate time before she agrees to mate with him. During this time, the male may give up on courting the female.

“Bad” males give up at some random time if the female has not by then mated with them, but “good” males are more persistent and do not give up. The female’s strategy is a compromise – a trade-off between on the one hand the greater risk of mating with a “bad” male if she mates too quickly, and on the other hand the time cost of delay. Under this compromise there remains some risk that she will mate with the wrong type of male.

She cannot eliminate this risk completely unless she decides never to mate.

Of course, this model will not work so well in a society where contraception removes much of the risk of becoming pregnant, and it should also be noted that the model ignores factors such as social and peer group pressures.

However, Professor Seymour believes that it helps explain how the extended courtship of humans may have evolved in Prehistoric societies.

The original paper can be seen here.

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Posted by Jonathan in Biology, Philosophy

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