Women were shown to demonstrate a common form of sexual misperception; “the tendency

to underestimate men’s sexual interest” (Perilloux et.al, 2012, pg 150). Some men were
shown to correctly perceive the sexual interest of women, and not all women had their sexual
interest incorrectly perceived by their male counterparts.

Buss (2003) described such an underestimation as a “sexual underperception bias”, with the
proposed ability to increase a female’s mating prospects in their encounters with males;
promoting both an escalation in male courting strategies, and ensuring a higher quality of
mates (as cited by Perilloux et al., 2012).

Such interpretations are congruous with the hypothesis that “misperception facilitates a short-
term mating strategy in men” (Perilloux et al., 2012, p.149), an evolutionary beneficial
advantage which increases the immediate probability of encountering a mate.

Buss, D., & Schmitt, D. (1993). Sexual Strategies Theory: An evolutionary perspective on
human mating. Psychological Review, 100(2), 204-232.
Haselton, M., & Nettle, D. (2006). The Paranoid Optimist: An Integrative Evolutionary
Model of Cognitive Biases. Personality And Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 47-66.
Sugiyama, L. (2005). Physical Attractiveness in adaptationist perspective. Evolutionary
Psychology, 54, 292-342.

Perilloux, C., Easton, J., & Buss, D. (2012). The Misperception of Sexual
Interest. Psychological Science, 23(2), 146-151.