Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

This paper investigates the role that parental imprinting plays in human mate choice. Sexual imprinting is a process of early childhood learning in which characteristics present in (usually) genetically related individuals are stored in memory for future use in mate selection. Previous research has shown that sex differences exist in imprinting processes, most notably in that children seem most likely to imprint on their other-sex parent. This difference in imprinting for men and women was investigated to determine whether it is a result of sex or sexual orientation, and whether non-heterosexuals would instead imprint on their same-sex parent. Imprinting effects were assessed for a total of 458 participants on a number of characteristics by recruiting a primarily (79.1%) non-heterosexual sample through web-based and snowball sampling methods. Positive imprinting effects were found for the characteristics of eye color, hair color, hair length, race/ethnicity, and smoking, as well as some evidence for a negative imprinting effects in the novel characteristic of shoulder-to-hip ratio. Analysis of the differences in imprinting between sexual orientations showed that imprinting is generally more likely to occur for parents that are the same sex as participants ideal partner(s). The findings of the present study suggest that sexual imprinting is sensitive to sexual orientation and that gender differences found in prior research may be due to this effect rather than of the subjects themselves.

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