“Attached” or “Unattached”: With Whom do Men and Women Prefer to Mate, and Why?

A mate poacher is an individual who has sexual relations with someone whom the poacher knows is already in a nominally exclusive, long-term relationship. This article reviews research in which participants were asked to rate the likelihood that benefits and costs exclusively associated with poaching would motivate them to attract, respectively, an attached or an unattached individual, assuming that the potential mates are equally attractive. The results indicated that for men and women to be motivated to poach, the attached individual must be perceived as being more attractive than the unattached individual. Discussion suggests that mate poaching may sometimes be pursued as an alternative to coercive mating strategies, by individuals who are unable to secure unattached mates of acceptable attractiveness. We further hypothesize that individuals may pursue a hierarchy of conditional mating strategies from attracting unattached individuals, through poaching, to coercion. Additional findings of sex differences in perceptions of benefits and costs exclusive to poaching also are discussed.