The Hidden Psychology of Mating Rivalry Is Surprisingly Similar Across Cultures

When people compete with others of the same sex for romantic partners, the contest can take many forms: displaying confidence, improving appearance, seeking thrilling experiences, attacking a rival’s reputation or pursuing more sexual opportunities. A new cross-cultural study suggests that these behaviors are linked by a common psychological pattern that appears in societies as different as Canada, Hungary and Indonesia. The research, published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that people who enjoy feeling superior to same-sex rivals also tend to report greater sensation seeking, aggression, appearance enhancement, openness to cosmetic surgery, sexual motivation and unrestricted sociosexuality—the tendency to feel comfortable with casual or uncommitted sex. The researchers describe this as “intrasexual competition,” a term for rivalry among individuals of the same sex over access to, attraction of and retention of desirable partners. The study’s most striking result was not that these traits were connected, but that many of the connections remained broadly consistent across national boundaries.

The team studied 661 adults who completed an online questionnaire between May and November 2023. The sample included 124 participants from Canada, 272 from Hungary and 96 from Indonesia, along with 169 additional respondents recruited through an international psychology program, most of whom did not specify a country. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 67, with an average age of about 27. Three-quarters identified as women, one-fifth as men and a small proportion as non-binary or unspecified. The researchers deliberately treated intrasexual competition as an individual psychological difference rather than assuming it belonged to one sex. That decision was important because the sample was too unevenly divided for reliable sex-specific comparisons. Participants completed established scales measuring sensation seeking, aggression, cosmetic-surgery acceptance, everyday beauty-enhancing behavior, reasons for having sex and sociosexuality. They also completed the 12-item Intrasexual Competition Scale, which the researchers found was better represented by two dimensions than by a single score.

Those two dimensions capture very different emotional engines. “Superiority enjoyment” describes an active, approach-oriented desire to be slightly better, more desirable or more successful than same-sex rivals. It reflects the rewarding side of competition: the satisfaction of gaining status or outperforming someone perceived as a competitor. “Inferiority frustration,” by contrast, describes the negative reaction to encountering a rival who appears more attractive, ambitious or desirable. The distinction matters because the study found that superiority enjoyment was much more consistently associated with the other psychological traits. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the two-factor model, with substantially better fit than a one-factor alternative. In statistical terms, the two-factor model produced a root mean square error of approximation of .053, a standardized root mean square residual of .068 and a comparative fit index of .976. These indicators suggest that the two components capture related but meaningfully distinct forms of rivalry rather than simply measuring the same tendency twice.

The researchers used Bayesian multilevel models to determine whether the observed relationships were similar across countries or varied substantially between them. Unlike conventional significance testing, Bayesian analysis compares the relative evidence for competing models and estimates the probability distribution of an effect. The multilevel framework allowed the researchers to separate individual-level associations from country-level differences, while random-intercept models permitted average scores to vary between nations and random-slope models allowed the strength of an association itself to differ by country. Before comparing groups, the team also tested measurement invariance, a crucial safeguard in cross-cultural research. A questionnaire item may not carry precisely the same meaning in different languages or cultural settings, so direct comparison can be misleading unless the underlying measurement structure is equivalent. Several scales failed to meet the strict requirements of scalar or even configural invariance. The researchers therefore used measurement alignment, a statistical procedure that adjusts factor loadings and intercepts to minimize cross-cultural distortions before estimating group differences.

The strongest and most stable relationship involved superiority enjoyment and sensation seeking. Participants who more strongly enjoyed surpassing same-sex rivals also tended to seek novel, intense or risky experiences, with a standardized association of β = .24 and a Bayesian 95 percent credible interval from .17 to .31. Sensation seeking is a personality trait linked to novelty, excitement, disinhibition and willingness to tolerate uncertainty. In mating contexts, the researchers argue, it may encourage people to enter competitive social environments, pursue opportunities rapidly or accept the risks associated with unconventional relationships. Superiority enjoyment was also positively associated with several forms of aggression, including physical aggression, verbal aggression and hostility. The association with anger, however, was not supported, suggesting that competitive aggression is not necessarily the same as frequently losing one’s temper. The evidence for physical and verbal aggression was less precise than for sensation seeking, and the strength of these links may vary across countries, but the overall pattern was consistent with earlier research connecting rivalry with attempts to intimidate, undermine or outcompete potential mates.

Appearance was another major arena of competition. People scoring higher in superiority enjoyment reported spending more time on beauty-enhancing behaviors such as grooming, clothing choices, exercise, cosmetics, hair care and appearance-focused diets. The questionnaire asked participants to count these activities only when their motivation was to improve attractiveness, rather than for health or hygiene alone. Superiority enjoyment was also positively related to all three dimensions of openness to cosmetic surgery: personal reasons, social motivations and willingness to consider a procedure in the future. The effects were modest but consistent, with standardized coefficients ranging from approximately .20 to .28. These findings do not show that competitive people undergo cosmetic procedures, nor do they establish that rivalry causes beautification. Instead, they suggest that individuals who experience competition as an opportunity to gain superiority may be more receptive to appearance modification when they believe it can improve social standing or mate value. The authors interpret beautification as one possible self-promotion strategy, alongside more direct tactics such as status displays or competitor derogation.

The study also linked intrasexual competition with sexual motivation and sociosexuality. Superiority enjoyment was associated with sex motivated by personal goals, relational reasons and coping with emotional states. Inferiority frustration showed weaker but still positive links with relational motives and sex as coping. The pattern may indicate that highly competitive individuals regard sexual behavior as a flexible tool serving several aims, from pleasure and self-confidence to intimacy or emotional regulation. Both dimensions of intrasexual competition were also positively related to all three parts of sociosexuality: past behavior, attitudes toward casual sex and sexual desire. The relationship with sociosexual desire was especially clear, with coefficients of .25 for superiority enjoyment and .19 for inferiority frustration. Participants with stronger competitive tendencies therefore tended to report more frequent spontaneous sexual fantasies, more permissive attitudes and more experience with uncommitted sexual behavior. Yet the results cannot determine whether competitive attitudes encourage unrestricted sexuality, whether sexual strategies heighten rivalry or whether both are influenced by other factors such as personality, social status or relationship history.

National differences emerged in the average level of one form of competition, but not the other. After statistical adjustment and correction for multiple comparisons, participants from Canada did not differ significantly from those in Hungary or Indonesia in superiority enjoyment. The three groups therefore appeared similar in the extent to which they reported enjoying being better than same-sex rivals. Canada did differ in inferiority frustration: Canadian participants scored significantly lower than both Hungarian and Indonesian participants, while Hungary and Indonesia did not significantly differ from each other. This result contradicted the researchers’ original prediction that intrasexual competition would follow a simple cultural sequence based on individualism, collectivism and social “tightness.” It also challenges the idea that collectivist or tightly regulated societies automatically produce higher competition in every dimension. The findings instead suggest that cultural context may shape how people experience threat or inadequacy more than how they enjoy active competition. A society may influence the emotional costs of comparison without changing the appeal of winning.

The authors caution that the findings should not be read as evidence that human mating behavior is dictated by biology or that national cultures determine personality. The study was cross-sectional, relied on self-reported questionnaires and was not preregistered. The Indonesian sample was relatively small, and the country groups were not representative population samples. The heavy imbalance toward women also prevented robust comparisons across sex or gender. Moreover, several instruments required alignment because their items did not function identically across language groups, a reminder that apparently universal psychological scales can conceal cultural differences in interpretation. Still, the results offer a provocative framework for understanding why rivalry can appear in settings far beyond dating—from social media self-presentation and workplace status contests to cosmetic decisions and relationship behavior. The most important distinction may be between competition driven by the pleasure of gaining an advantage and competition driven by distress at feeling inferior. Across the three countries, the first pattern was the more powerful predictor of sensation seeking, aggression, appearance investment and sexual behavior, suggesting that the psychology of rivalry may be less about fear of losing than about the intoxicating prospect of coming out on top.