Women’s Anti-Deception Tactics in Mating: A Preliminary Investigation

Because of the considerable recurrence of deception throughout evolutionary history that could have been much costlier to women’s reproductive fitness, evolutionary pressures may have favored women with a disposition toward detecting such deception and providing countermeasures specific to solving their reproductive problems. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, this research considered the behavioral tactics that women employ to avoid or discover sexual deceptions in the mate choice process. In Study 1, using an act nomination procedure (N = 147) we identified 43 tactics that women would likely employ to achieve this end. In Study 2 (N = 249), factor analyses clustered these tactics into five broad domains of anti-deception behaviors: distrust (questioning what a partner says), integration (introducing a partner to kin), religion matching (ensuring shared religious affiliation), social media (researching social media accounts), and reticence (avoiding rushed attachment). Among tactics, integration was the most considered domain to perform, whereas distrust was the least. Moreover, the use of integration and religious matching tactics were less prevalent among sociosexually unrestricted individuals, suggesting a degree of domain-specificity in women’s tactics across short-term and long-term mating contexts. Avoidant attachment also predicted use of reticence tactics, whereas mate value and neuroticism showed no association. These findings illustrate that women employ qualitatively differentiated deception-detection strategies to ensure the veracity of men’s signals, and that tactic use varies by individual differences such as sociosexuality and attachment.