A thousand times more beautiful: Priming competitor derogation in women

Prior research on cognitive priming for situations involving potential infidelity indicates that women are vigilant to potential threats to their romantic relationships. Here we examined whether women can be effectively primed to initiate one strategy for intrasexual mating competition, competitor derogation, which includes behaviors individuals undertake to decrease the value of a rival relative to oneself. Using a pre-post within-subjects research design, women evaluated photographed womens’ attractiveness, friendliness, intelligence, and attributable blame for an infidelity, as well as their own relative attractiveness, desirability, and attributable blame. Short vignettes describing a hypothetical situation of a mate diverting his interest toward another woman served as primes of possible threat to one’s romantic relationship. After exposure to the primes, women’s ratings of the photographed women decreased, while allocation of blame increased, despite the fact that these women were not involved in the primes and hence, did not directly serve as threats to the relationship. The participants were also less likely to want to become friends with the photographed women, or recommend her for friendship. Self-ratings remained stable, possibly indicating one’s self-perceived mate value is not influenced by temporary situations, akin to how baseline self-esteem is resistant to short-term fluctuations. Directions for future work are provided.