Womens Cooperative Motivation towards Ovulating Women Under Male Threat Context

Abstract

The present study investigated womens intrasexual cooperation as a function womens partner competitiveness and other womans fertility. It was expected that when the interacting target is depicted as being threatened by a male, women with highly competitive partner would show more cooperative motivation toward fertile target than non-fertile target. Contrary to the hypothesis, it was found that women with less competitive partner showed lower level interaction intention to fertile woman than non-fertile woman. Additional supplementary study was implemented to observe womens psychological perception towards the fertility cue of male-threaten target and found that women perceive more risk in fertile target than non-fertile target. The current research provides primitive but novel evidence that womens cooperative motivation towards other same-sex target operate in functionally flexible ways on social factors.