Mate poaching for our friends

Abstract

A woman’s menstrual cycle influences a variety of her behaviors such as her appearance, mate preferences, and relationships with other women (Durante et al., 2008; Gildersleeve, 2014; Krems et al., 2016). Past research has primarily focused on women’s menstrual cycle in relation to competition on behalf of herself and her mating choices; however, friends are also people we are willing to compete for as they are highly valuable (Renyolds, 2020). To our knowledge, whether women are willing to compete in the mating market on behalf of their friends has yet to be investigated. Thus, in the current study, we aim to investigate if a) women are willing to help their friends mate poach and b) if their cycle influences these decisions.