Predictors of Mate-Guarding: A Dyadic Approach

In ecology, mate-guarding is a reproductive tactic employed by animals to secure mates and ensure paternity. Humans also utilize mate guarding behaviors, as well as behaviors to resist these practices (e.g., deleting texts or lying about the gender makeup of friend groups). Traits like jealousy, as well as perceptions of high discrepancies in attractiveness, are characteristic of relationships high in mate-guarding. However, despite occurring in a dyadic context, it's less common for these inquiries to be tested with dyadic data (e.g., information about both couple members' jealousy). In order to examine this dyadically, we used a sample of 549 couples from a pre-existing longitudinal dataset and actor-partner interdependence modeling to find that actor jealousy, partner jealousy, and actor attractiveness discrepancies were associated with increased resistance to mate-guarding. We also found a gender difference, such that men were more likely to report resistance to mate-guarding (especially when their partner was high in jealousy). The results of this analysis will extend the existing mate-guarding literature and offer insight into potentially problematic relationship behaviors.