The Role of Emotion Projection, Sexual Desire, and Self-Rated Attractiveness in the Sexual Overperception Bias

Abstract

A consistent finding in the literature is that men overperceive sexual interest in women (i.e., sexual overperception bias). Several potential mechanisms have been proposed for this bias, including projecting one’s own interest onto a given partner, sexual desire, and self-rated attractiveness. Here, we examined the influence of these factors in attraction detection accuracy during speed-dates. Sixty-seven participants (34 women) split in four groups went on a total of 10 speed-dates with all opposite-sex members of their group, resulting in 277 dates. The results showed that attraction detection accuracy was reliably predicted by projection of own interest in combination with participant sex. Specifically, men were more accurate than women in detecting attraction when they were not interested in their partner compared to when they were interested. These results are discussed in the wider context of arousal influencing detection of partner attraction.