It has been suggested that mate-poaching behavior is an evolutionarily-adaptive mating tactic. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between lifetime number of mate-poaching attempts and mating success in a sample of 271 (147 women and124 men) heterosexual undergraduate students. Results indicated that for both men and women, the number of mate-poaching attempts predicted having more lifetime sex partners, more lifetime casual sex partners, and more lifetime dating partners. Mate-poaching attempts did not however, predict differences in the attractiveness and social dominance of one's most recent partner. These results provide evidence of the efficacy of mate-poaching in predicting mating success.
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Arnocky et al. (2013) studied this question.
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