Reasons of Singles for Being Single: Evidence from Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan and the UK

Menelaos Apostolou, Béla Birkás, Caio Santos A. da Silva, Gianluca Esposito, Rafael Ming Chi S. Hsu, Peter Karl Jonason, Konstantinos Karamanidis, Jiaqing O, Yohsuke Ohtsubo, Ádám Putz, Daniel Sznycer, Andrew G. Thomas, Jaroslava Varella Valentova, Marco Antonio Correa Varella, Karel Kleisner, Jaroslav Flegr, Yan Wang

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The current research aimed to examine the reasons people are single, that is, not in an intimate relationship, across eight different countries—Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, and the UK. We asked a large cross-cultural sample of single participants (N = 6,822) to rate 92 different possible reasons for being single. These reasons were classified into 12 factors, including one’s perceived inability to find the right partner, the perception that one is not good at flirting, and the desire to focus on one’s career. Significant sex and age effects were found for most factors. The extracted factors were further classified into three separate domains: Perceived poor capacity to attract mates, desiring the freedom of choice, and currently being in between relationships. The domain structure, the relative importance of each factor and domain, as well as sex and age effects were relatively consistent across countries. There were also important differences however, including the differing effect sizes of sex and age effects between countries.

    Original languageEnglish
    JournalCross-Cultural Research
    DOIs
    Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2021

    Keywords

    • cross-cultural research
    • evolutionary mismatch
    • mating
    • singlehood

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