People paid more attention not to the number of sexual relationships in the past of potential partners, but to how recent the last one was. At the same time, women and men were rated approximately the same, which contradicts the idea that women are treated worse because of a large number of sexual contacts in the past. Scientists have discovered for the first time some other factors that influence the choice of a potential partner, in addition to the number of previous ones. Research published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Scientists believe that the tendency to choose partners with fewer sexual contacts originated in ancient humans in the past. It served to protect against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, potential infidelity, and investing emotional resources in a person who might leave.
However, how the number of sexual relationships affects the choice of partner by modern people, who have access to contraception and more diverse sexual behavior, scientists studied more than 5000 people from 11 countries in five regions of the world.
Participants were shown graphs that schematically depicted when another person had a new sexual partner and asked to choose a potential partner. When the number of partners on the graphs was the same, people tended to choose those who had more sexual contacts in the distant past, and over time, this number decreased.
And the greater the total number of sexual relationships, the more pronounced the effect. People who were more open to having sex without being in a committed relationship rated the number and length of other people's sexual relationships less harshly.
