Sexual Underperception Bias

Sexual underperception bias is a cognitive bias identified within error management theory, the framework developed by the psychologists David Buss and Martie Haselton to explain why certain systematic errors in perception and judgment persisted through evolutionary history because they carried lower costs than the alternative error. The bias describes women's tendency to underestimate a man's genuine level of commitment interest in a relationship, which error management theory treats as the mirror image of the sexual overperception bias, in which men tend to overestimate a woman's sexual interest in them. Researchers explain the asymmetry through cost asymmetry: because the reproductive costs of a false positive differ for each sex, natural selection is proposed to have favored a bias toward the less costly mistake in each case, here a bias that leads women to require stronger evidence before believing a man's commitment is genuine. Later research has identified exceptions and refinements to the pattern, including effects tied to menopause, the possible role of a person's own commitment self-interest, and individual differences in openness to casual sexual relationships.