Prolonging the mating courtship increases a woman's chance of finding a
"good" man, mathematicians have found.
A new study shows that refusing to sleep with a partner on the first date
could be one of the keys to making a successful match.
Researchers used a mathematical model to show that more reliable men were
willing to wait longer before having sex for the first time.
By contrast, less suitable men were not as likely to continue dating.
Professor Robert Seymour, from University College London (UCL), who created
the model, said: "Longer courtship is a way for the female to acquire
information about the male. "By delaying mating, the female is able to
reduce the chance that she will mate with a bad male.
"A male's willingness to court for a long time is a signal that he is likely
to be a good male.
"Long courtship is a price paid for increasing the chance that mating, if it
occurs, will be a harmonious match which benefits both sexes. This may help
to explain the commonly held belief that a woman is best advised not to
sleep with a man on a first date."
Dr Peter Sozou, from Warwick Medical School and LSE Centre for Philosophy of
Natural and Social Science, who helped to construct the model, warned that
the strategy was not foolproof.
He said: "The strategic problem the female faces is how to screen out bad
males, and this is where long courtship comes into play.
"A male is assumed to always want to mate with a female, but a good male is
more willing to pay the cost of a long courtship in order to claim the prize
of mating.
"The female's strategy is a compromise - a trade-off between on the one hand
the greater risk of mating with a bad male if she mates too quickly, and on
the other hand the time cost of delay.
"Under this compromise there remains some risk that she will mate with the
wrong type of male.
"She cannot eliminate this risk completely unless she decides never to
mate."
The findings are published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
