[Analysis of Sexual Strategies Theory in the Spanish population]

The aim of this study was to test some of the main hypotheses derived from Buss' Sexual Strategies Theory on a representative Spanish sample. These hypotheses refer to the different strategies men and woman seem to adopt when they want to engage in a short-term sexual relationship (fling), or in a long-term one (loving relationship). (The technical term "strategies", unlike its equivalent in everyday language, is not meant to imply something necessarily planned or conscious). Data was obtained by self-report from a representative sample of 1949 Spanish people. Almost all the results verify the working hypotheses, conferring some empirical support on the theory from which they were deduced, within an evolutionary Social Psychology paradigm. In any case, it is argued that socialization approaches ("double moral" and the social construction of gender role and sexual identity) can also explain most of the differences obtained, in perfect compatibility with biological perspectives.