The science of dating

With Valentine’s Day just a few weeks away, new research has highlighted the importance of the dating period in establishing whether a man and woman are well suited to each other.

Dr Peter Sozou of the Warwick Medical School, along with researchers from University College London and the London School of Economics, have used game theory to analyse the moves made by men and women in the mating game.

The research, published in this month’s “Journal of Theoretical Biology,” shows that an extended period of dating enables a male to signal his suitability to the female and enables the female to ‘screen’ the male, deciding whether or not he makes a suitable mate.

The model considers a dating encounter of unspecified length and assumes that the male is either “good” or “bad” based upon whether he shows a willingness to care for the young after mating.

The female gets a positive payoff is she mates with a “good” male but gets a negative payoff if she mates with a “bad” one. The idea is that the female attempts to gain information about her prospective mate in order to avoid mating with a “bad” male, thus prolonging the dating period.

A male, on the other hand, gets a positive payout by mating with any female, although his payout is higher if he is “good.” The longer the game goes on, the more likely it is that he is “good” as “bad” males tend to quit the mating game early. The game ends when the female accepts the male as a mate or either party quits.

Dr. Sozou said, “From a female’s point of view, males are not all equal. A female would like to mate with a good male, but cannot tell a male’s type from his appearance alone. 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 may help to explain the commonly held belief that a woman is best advised not to sleep with a man on a first date.”

Asked how such research could apply to same-sex couples, Dr. Sozou said that this is where it gets complicated. He said, “It may be that same sex couples are better understood as essentially symmetric partnerships.

“If so, then a better model for same-sex couples would be one based on a more symmetric contest. Whilst this has important differences from our model, a common element is that establishing the partnership may involve costly signalling.”

Dr. Sozou went on to say that he hopes the study will lead to increased research in this area.

“I hope it will stimulate more work by others in the field: more theoretical work to further develop this modelling approach and to develop models of this form which are tailored to specific species.”