Steven Neuberg, Arizona State University – Women, Ovulation and Mate Guarding

Do women know when to keep their partners away from other ovulating women?

Steven Neuberg, foundation professor of psychology at Arizona State University, explores this question.

Dr. Steven L. Neuberg, Foundation Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, integrates social-cognitive and evolutionary approaches to explore the nature and nuances of prejudices and stereotypes; how features of the ecology influence people’s social behaviors, attitudes, and thought processes; how different fundamental motives shape cognitive processes ranging from attention and memory to economic decision making; and how women think about and interact with one another. He currently leads the ASU Global Group Relations Project, a multidisciplinary and global study of factors, including religion, shaping intergroup conflict.

Neuberg’s research has been published in outlets such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Handbook of Social Psychology, and Perspectives on Psychological Science, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Mental Health. His work with Dr. Mark Schaller on evolutionary approaches to prejudices received the 2013 Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize for best paper on intergroup relations from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

Neuberg has co-authored a six-edition social psychology textbook, is a Fellow of multiple professional societies, was Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and has served on multiple journal editorial boards and federal grant panels.  He has received several teaching awards, including his university’s Outstanding Doctoral Mentor Award.  Neuberg received his A.B. from Cornell University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He thinks that doing science exploring human social behavior is the coolest thing ever.

Women, Ovulation and Mate Guarding

Colleen meets Lisa at a friend’s party. What might affect whether Colleen decides to invite Lisa further into her social circle or to keep Lisa out of it?

For women, a new female friend is both a potential ally and a potential threat—a potential ally one could work with to achieve common goals, but also a potential threat who’d be in a position to steal her long-term romantic partner. If a new acquaintance—Lisa—gives off cues of being a potential mate poacher, Colleen would benefit from keeping Lisa at a distance. 

When might a woman be a more likely and a more capable, mate poacher? Ovulation, the roughly four-day fertility window in women’s menstrual cycles, is the only time when sex can lead to pregnancy, and the psychology of both men and women seems attuned to when women are ovulating. Previous research shows that men are more attracted to women when they are ovulating, and other research shows that women are more open to having sex when they are ovulating, but only with men are who are particularly desirable—with men who would provide so-called “good genes.”

Across 4 experiments, Jaimie Arona Krems, our colleagues, and I showed married and engaged women photographs of other women that, unbeknownst to our participants, were taken either when the other women were ovulating or not. Even though the photographs revealed only subtle differences between the ovulating and non-ovulating faces, our married and engaged participants reported wanting to avoid the ovulating other women and to keep them away from their partners— but only when our participants were partnered to highly desirable men. This research demonstrates that women are sensitive to subtle cues of other women’s fertility and can respond in functional ways—in ways that, for example, may help our friend Colleen hold on to her desirable spouse.

Read More:
PsychNet – Women selectively guard their (desirable) mates from ovulating women.