Possible Influence of Psychological Distance to Women’s Intrasexual Mating Competition

Purpose: Researchers have studied intrasexual competition by priming the competition using a variety of techniques, including manipulated sex ratios and vignettes implying a competition either for resources critical for obtaining mates or directly for mates. When priming intrasexual competition, changes in the dependent variable of interest are generally taken as prima facie evidence of intrasexual competition; few researchers have tried to independently assess intrasexual competition. Methods: The studies presented here replicate and extend one such state measure of intrasexual competition using words taken from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) with additional competition words (PANAS-Short Form with an added competitive subscale). The first study used a vignette manipulation and the second used a sex ratio manipulation. Participants then responded to the modified PANAS, the Intrasexual Competition Scale (ICS) and the Intrasexual Rivalry Scale (IRS). Results: Results indicated that neither manipulation resulted in differences on the ICS or IRS. There were differences on the negative and competitive subscales of the modified PANAS, but only for the vignettes manipulation; sex ratio did not result in effects on any of the subscales. These results suggest that different intrasexual competition primes may not be accessible by a single measure. Conclusion: One explanation may be that the vignettes specify a target while the unbalanced sex ratios do not, which could create a difference in the psychological distance to a target. Studies in non-human animals have shown that distance and time to reinforcement affects the types of responses and conditioned responses that the reinforcer can support (e.g., behavior systems, Timberlake & Lucas, 1989), which we apply to this work.