Men not the sex fiends you thought

From scientific studies to sitcoms, society portrays men as hard-wired to prefer sexual flings and spurn commitment, as if evolution wanted it that way.

But in a study published on Tuesday anthropologists presented evidence that male promiscuity is not hard-wired in the human brain. Instead, mating strategies are flexible, responding to circumstances such as gender ratios.

In short, when women are scarce, men prefer long-term committed relationships, said Ryan Schacht, of the University of Utah, who led the study, published in Royal Society Open Science.

And women, contrary to stereotype, can be just as interested in one-night stands as men.

In experiments, male college students typically said they preferred flings to commitment, leading to the claim that men's desire to spread their seed and genes was an immutable evolutionary drive.

Schacht and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, of the University of California, Davis, tested that idea in the Makushi people of Guyana. In the eight communities they examined, they discovered that when men outnumbered women it made more evolutionary sense to commit than compete.

"The best strategy is to find one woman and stick with her," Schacht said. Infidelity and promiscuity would probably end a relationship and so decrease "mating opportunities".

He added that urban and rural societies could differ sharply.

"For women in urban environments, it might be challenging to nail down a single, committed partner. Women in rural areas might find it easier to find a partner ready to settle down and commit."

A prominent proponent of evolutionary psychology, David Buss, of the University of Texas, said: "No one has argued that men are ardent and women coy".

Which mating strategy men adopt "depends heavily on context".