Men likelier to seek long-term relationships when women are scarce

Washington: A new research has revealed that men are likelier to seek long-term relationships when women are in short supply.

First author of the study of the Makushi people in Guyana, Ryan Schacht, from the University of Utah said that commitment to a relationship is influenced by the availability of partnersand so people can think of the number of men and women in a population as a potential mating market where the principles of supply and demand hold sway.

Representational picture

Schacht added that when someone belongs to the sex that is abundant, he/she must cater to the preferences of the rare sex and so the expectations are that men will be interested in short-term relationships when more women are available, but when women are difficult to find, they become valued resources, so men will attempt to attract and maintain a single partner because it is costly to lose a partner when partners are rare.

Schacht says the findings suggest just the opposite of the conventional view that when men outnumber women, there are more likely to be male-male fights and increases in sexually transmitted diseases.

The researchers found that in general, Makushi men show a greater willingness to engage in uncommitted sex than do women, as the stereotype predicts and also they found that Makushi men are more likely to want committed relationships when there are fewer women available, regardless of age.

The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.