Part II

In Part I of this series we showed that men can discriminate between women and their intentions based on the gifts they give. For one thing, they can eliminate gold diggers. But women can also understand men's intentions over time using other signals. For example if you want a partner who will be a good father, game theory offers real answers. In a follow-up to their 2005 study on gifts and dating1, the mathematicians, Robert Seymour and Peter Sozou, researchers at the University College London, and The London School of Economics used game theory to understand the benefits and costs of waiting to have sex during dating. The game had three possible and independent outcomes:
1. The female has sex with male.
2. The female quits the game without having sex
3. The male quits the game before mating.

According to this fascinating study, the duration of the man's dating effort represents the strength of his courtship signal. And it's that signal that a woman should focus on. Males who are more available for lasting and true love relationships were willing to wait and delay having sex and hung in there longer. The authors consider these subjects to be "good men" from the women's point of view, with "goodness" defined as willingness to care for their young after mating. "Bad men," according to these male scholars, try to get to mating right away and then quit the courtship process right after sex.

To all men, the courtship game is a kind of war of attrition, with the opportunity to mate with the woman the real benefit for which they wait. According to the findings, which required rejuvenating the statistician in me, a "good" male has a higher ratio of benefit to cost per unit time of courting than a "bad" male. In other words, "bad" men see waiting to have sex as paying too high a price. A "good" male, on the other hand, values mating with the female and having a lasting relationship relative to the costs of courtship, more highly than a "bad" male does. In other words, they can wait longer.

Game theorists, evolutionary biologists2 and psychologists like me, share the view that a woman faces a fundamental dilemma in courtship: how to discriminate and make decisions in the face of great uncertainty and not enough information about her prospective partner. (Of course, men face a similar but not exactly the same dilemma.) The answer offered here is that it's best to wait and see how the prospects shake themselves out by not having sex for awhile. If a man is really interested in a relationship, he'll wait for awhile; if not, he'll drop out.

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