An Analysis of the Matching Hypothesis in Networks

The matching hypothesis in social psychology claims that people are more likely to form a committed relationship with someone equally attractive. Previous works on stochastic models of human mate choice process indicate that patterns supporting the matching hypothesis could occur even when similarity is not the primary consideration in seeking partners. Yet, most if not all of these works concentrate on fully-connected systems. Here we extend the analysis to networks. Our results indicate that the correlation of the couple's attractiveness grows monotonically with the increased average degree and decreased degree diversity of the network. This correlation is lower in sparse networks than in fully-connected systems, because in the former less attractive individuals who find partners are likely to be coupled with ones who are more attractive than them. The chance of failing to be matched decreases exponentially with both the attractiveness and the degree. The matching hypothesis may not hold when the degree-attractiveness correlation is present, which can give rise to negative attractiveness correlation. Finally, we find that the ratio between the number of matched couples and the size of the maximum matching varies non-monotonically with the average degree of the network. Our results reveal the role of network topology in the process of human mate choice and bring insights into future investigations of different matching processes in networks

Marriage Formation/Dissolution and Marital Distribution in a Two-Period Economic Model of Matching with Cooperative Bargaining

We study the problem of marriage formation and marital distribution in a two-period model of matching, extending the matching with bargaining framework of Crawford and Rochford (1986). We run simulations to find the effects of alimony rate and legal cost of divorce parameters on the payoffs and marital status in the society.Matching, Bargaining, Marriage, Divorce, Marital Distribution

Family Policies in the Context of Low Fertility and Social Structure.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effectivity of family policies in the context of different assumptions regarding the social structure of a society. We use an agent based simulation model to analyse the impact of family policies on individual fertility decisions and on cohort fertility, intended fertility, and the fertility gap on the aggregate level. The crucial features of our simulation model are the agents' heterogeneity with respect to age, income, parity, and intended fertility, the social network and social influence. Our results indicate that both fixed and income dependent child supports have a positive and significant impact on fertility. However, several network and social influence parameters have the ability not only to influence fertility itself but also the effectivity of family policies. Therefore, policymakers aiming to transfer a certain policy mix that has proved successful from one country to another one ignoring differences in the social structure may fail. Family policies can only be successful if they explicitly take into account the characteristics of the society they are assigned for.Family policies, low fertility, social influence, social networks, social structure.

Contrasting Computational Models of Mate Preference Integration Across 45 Countries

Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across these many preference dimensions into summaries of the overall mate value of their potential mates. Here we explore the computational design of this mate preference integration process using a large sample of n = 14,487 people from 45 countries around the world. We combine this large cross-cultural sample with agent-based models to compare eight hypothesized models of human mating markets. Across cultures, people higher in mate value appear to experience greater power of choice on the mating market in that they set higher ideal standards, better fulfill their preferences in choice, and pair with higher mate value partners. Furthermore, we find that this cross-culturally universal pattern of mate choice is most consistent with a Euclidean model of mate preference integration.The work of Truong Ti Khanh Ha was supported by grants 501.01–2016.02 from the Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED). Anna Oleszkiewicz was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (#626/STYP/12/2017). Tis study was conducted in line with project NIR No. 01201370995 “Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary researches. Biosocial and cross-cultural analysis of models of tolerance and basic values of culture in modern society” (Marina Butovskaya and Daria Dronova). Agnieszka Sorokowska and Piotr Sorokowski were supported by the National Science Center—Poland (2014/13/B/HS6/02644). Petra Gyuris, András Láng, and Norbert Meskó were supported by the Hungarian Scientifc Research Fund — OTKA (K125437). Feng Jiang was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China, grant No. 71971225

An Agent Based Model of Disease Diffusion in the Context of Heterogeneous Sexual Motivation

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 2006This project focused on building and analyzing an agent-based model of disease diffusion in order to explore the hypothesis that the relative risk associated with an individual's "sexual motivation profile" (SMP) is influenced by the distribution of strategies represented in the population - that is, that sexual motivation functions as a frequency dependent trait. Sexual motivation is hypothesized to be composed of a sexual inhibition system (SIS) and a sexual excitation system (SES), following the Dual Control Model of Sexual Response. Results of the model show that the relative risk of a SMP does vary depending on the relative representation within a population, but that that variance is constrained by agents' absolute values of SIS and SES. The model produced several parallels with empirical data on humans, suggesting that the model accurately reproduced some aspects of human sexual behavior. For example, agents' SES was a better predictor than SIS of total number of partners, while SIS was a better predictor than SES of Age at Infection. Also, the more accurately the agent population matched the human population, the more the model produced human-like results. Future work should focus on increasing the verisimilitude of agents and their environments, in order to make models more practical for designing and testing intervention and policy strategies

Mate Choice Patterns in Social and Non-Social Decision-Making Domains

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Cognitive Science Program, 2019Humans are a fundamentally social species, and an individual may have social ties of many flavors. One social domain, mate or romantic partner choice, has been thoroughly examined, but others remain relatively understudied. How do our choice patterns vary between different social domains? In this work, I argue that although choice constraints vary between social domains (e.g. a collaborator, spouse, friend, mentor, or dodgeball teammate), the fundamental patterns of choice are ultimately similar. In this dissertation, I present studies of three different choice areas. First, I compare the search for non-social resources such as food (i.e. Optimal Foraging Theory; OFT) with that for a romantic partner to produce a theory-driven framework for mate choice as a foraging problem. Mate foragers demonstrated sensitivity to search costs as predicted by OFT, where those searching longest for their first marriage (but not cohabitations) had a decreased risk of relationship dissolution. However, periods of relationships and search also covaried in ways unexpected by OFT. Next, I tested for the presence of two common patterns in romantic partner choice: positive assortment (e.g. homophily) and the stated-revealed preference gap (inconsistency between one’s stated preferences and the actual traits of a chosen partner). I demonstrated these patterns in two social domains: academic collaborator choice and companion animal choice. I tested whether homophily was the best predictor of academic collaborations forming. I held three academic speed-networking events, a modified form of speed-dating. Pairs were assigned experimentally based on the similarity of academics’ current research and complementarity of desired vs current knowledge. These manipulations did not significantly impact collaboration rates; rather, believing a partner’s research was similar was predictive of collaboration, suggesting homophily has a nuanced role in collaboration formation. I then examined dog choice in animal shelters. Comparing the traits of a newly adopted dog to the stated preferences of their adopter, adopters perceived their dog to fulfill their stated preferences at above-chance rates. These adopter-dog pairs also exhibited weak positive assortment of personality. I summarize the implications of exapting choice mechanisms which are appropriate for one adaptive domain to novel social domains with different choice constraints

Emergent Patterns of Mate Choice in Human Populations

We present a model of human mate choice that shows how realistic population-level patterns of assortative mating can self-organize and emerge from the behavior of individuals using simple mate search rules. In particular, we model plausible psychological mechanisms for mate search and choice in a realistic social ecology. Through individual interactions, patterns emerge that match those observed in typical human societies, particularly in terms of correlated quality levels within couples, distributions of the ages at which couples mate, and eects of skewed sex ratios on these mating age distributions