My interdisciplinary research has addressed two general areas, (1) sexual conflict as it relates to intimate partner violence, and (2) shifts in women’s decision-making and risk–taking behaviors across the ovulatory cycle.

Intimate Partner Violence

I spent the first two years of my Ph.D. program investigating the evolved psychology of men’s mate retention behaviors. My colleagues and I have investigated men’s nonviolent and violent mate retention behaviors in relation with men’s perceptions of their partner’s risk of infidelity (Kaighobadi, Starratt, Shackelford, & Popp, 2008; Kaighobadi & Shackelford, 2008). Furthermore, we investigated individual differences in men’s violent mate retention behaviors as assessed by several personality traits and we documented interactions between men’s personality traits and situational factors such as perceptions of partner infidelity risk in our efforts to predict men’s violence against their partners (Kaighobadi et al., 2009). Currently, my colleagues and I are building upon previous research by investigating the relationship between men's life history strategies and intimate partner violence in the context of female partner's infidelity risk. My research builds a comprehensive model of sexual conflict in intimate relationships, including proximate, and ultimate or evolutionary predictors of such conflict. 

For a complete review of intimate partner violence and femicide refer to Kaighobadi, Shackelford, & Goetz (2009). 

Female Adaptations to Ovulation

Over evolutionary history, it may have been adaptive for women to be sensitive to the limited window of peak fertility during the ovulatory cycle. Women might have evolved psychological mechanisms that produced adjustments in their sexual desire and behavior as a function of conception risk. For example, past studies have found that near ovulation women’s preference for male signals of genetic fitness increases, because the genetic fitness of a sexual partner can directly influence the fitness of resulting offspring.

I have designed a series of cognitive experiments to investigate the lower-level implicit mechanisms designed to facilitate women’s behavioral adjustments as a function of conception risk. I am interested in investigating women's decision-making, temporal discounting and risk taking behavior in the mating domain across the cycle.  We are currently at the initial stages of data collection for this project.

Sexual Behavior

Frequent in-pair copulation (IPC) is also hypothesized to be an anti-cuckoldry behavior observed in human and non-human species. IPC may function as a sperm competition tactic evolved to decrease the risk of cuckoldry by increasing the number of functional sperm in the female’s reproductive tract. In a recent study we (Kaighobadi & Shackelford, 2008) found that men who perceive their partner as more attractive perform more frequent in-pair copulations. The results also indicate that perceived partner attractiveness partially mediates the relationship between IPC frequency and men’s mate retention behaviors. We speculate that men perform different behaviors to decrease the risk of cuckoldry, but as the recurrent risk of sperm competition increases, men perform more frequent IPC and mate retention behaviors simultaneously. 

We have also investigated correlates of pretending orgasm among women. We hypothesize that women pretend orgasm to decrease their partner’s assessments of infidelity risk and, therefore, to decrease the risk of their partner’s sexual coercion against them. We speculate that pretending orgasm is one facet of a rich armament available to women to signal commitment to their current long-term partner.