Sex differences in intimate relationships
Vasyl Palchykov, Kimmo Kaski, J\'anos Kert\'esz, Albert-L\'aszl\'o, Barab\'asi, Robin I. M. Dunbar

TL;DR
This study uses mobile phone data to reveal significant sex differences in relationship patterns over the lifespan, highlighting how reproductive investment strategies influence social dynamics.
Contribution
It provides novel insights into how gender-specific reproductive strategies shape relationship dynamics across the human lifespan using large-scale mobile phone data.
Findings
Women show shifting patterns of relationship investment over the lifespan.
Men's relationship patterns are less variable across age.
Reproductive investment influences social relationship preferences.
Abstract
Social networks have turned out to be of fundamental importance both for our understanding human sociality and for the design of digital communication technology. However, social networks are themselves based on dyadic relationships and we have little understanding of the dynamics of close relationships and how these change over time. Evolutionary theory suggests that, even in monogamous mating systems, the pattern of investment in close relationships should vary across the lifespan when post-weaning investment plays an important role in maximising fitness. Mobile phone data sets provide us with a unique window into the structure of relationships and the way these change across the lifespan. We here use data from a large national mobile phone dataset to demonstrate striking sex differences in the pattern in the gender-bias of preferred relationships that reflect the way the reproductive…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
