Mating game a team sport

November 9, 8:10 PMSeattle Singles Scene ExaminerVictor Scott

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Social scientists who study mating and dating have known, in the mating game, two heads are often better than one.  Why?  Friends help you find desirables, weed out undesirables, and provide support in other ways.

"Courtship is often framed as a game, and researchers who study courtship behavior tend to focus on competitive aspects of this game," says MIT Sloan Assistant Professor Joshua M. Ackerman. "Sometimes, though, the mating game is a team sport."

In an article last month in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Ackerman and Douglas T. Kenrick of Arizona State University describe the results of studies they did on cooperation and romance.  The researchers asked volunteers on dating attitudes and behavior, posed hypothetical singles situations, and conducted a "dating game."

They discovered cooperation is a common theme for both men and women.  But the cooperation plays out differently between the sexes.  Women help other women by acting as barriers to discourage undesirable men or as another source of intuition to help female friends evaluate potential partners. Men help other men by breaking down barriers that block friends from desirable women.

Men and women who are platonic also help each other achieve romantic goals.  "Men would help women ward off other men, while women were more likely to help a male friend gain access to a desirable mate," Ackerman says.  Ackerman and Kenrick also discovered platonic friends sometimes pretend to be romantically involved to help each other.  "If you're a woman, saying someone is your boyfriend creates a barrier," says Ackerman. "If you're a guy, saying someone is your girlfriend makes you more desirable to women."

In a previous article on online romance, I noted that according to Match, Seattle is a hot spot of online mating and dating.  Suffice it to say, there are a lot of Seattleites trying to make something happen on their own, in front of a computer screen, because the social climate is not warm enough to ignite a flirty atmosphere ripe for love or even lust connections.  In this user unfriendly Seattle nice culture, it makes more sense to ask for and pick up some help so you can get your flirt on!