Commentary: The neural basis of human female mate copying: An empathy-based social learning process

Our romantic partners are not only a source of intimacy for us and of genetic information for our offspring—their qualities also signal something about us to the external world. “Mate choice copying” is a form of social learning which allows an individual to learn from the information gathered and mate choices made by others (reviewed in Kavaliers et al., 2017; Anderson, 2018). Having examined the neural basis and functional specificity of the phenomenon, the authors of a recent experimental article suggested that mate choice copying may be “a domain-specific adaptation involving an empathy-based social-learning process that is also associated with reduced cognition” (Zhuang et al., 2017). We point out several shortcomings inherent in this conclusion, valuable though Zhuang et al.’s (2017) experimental data on the neurophysiological underpinnings of the trait may be.