Multimodal mate choice: Exploring the effects of sight, sound, and scent on partner choice in a speed-date paradigm

Abstract

When people meet a potential partner for the first time, they are confronted with multiple sources of information, encompassing different modalities, that they can use to determine whether this partner is suitable for them or not. While visual attractiveness has widely been studied with regard to partner choice, olfactory and auditory cues have received less attention, even though they might influence the attitudes that people have towards their partner. Therefore, in this study, we employed a combination of pre-date multimodal rating tasks followed by speed-date sessions. This offered a naturalistic setup to study partner choice and disentangle the relative effects of a priori attractiveness ratings of sight, scent and sound on date success. Visual attractiveness ratings showed a strong positive correlation with propensity to meet the partner again, while the effects of olfactory and auditory attractiveness were negligible or not robust. Furthermore, we found no robust sex differences in the importance of the three modalities. Our findings underscore the relative importance of visual attractiveness in initial mate choice, but do not corroborate the idea that static pre-date measures of auditory and olfactory attractiveness can predict first date outcomes.