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

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)
578 Downloads (Pure)

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
Pages (from-to)319-350
Number of pages32
JournalCross-Cultural Research
Volume55
Issue number4
Early online date15 Jun 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01 Oct 2021

Keywords

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

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Reasons of Singles for Being Single: Evidence from Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan and the UK'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this