Overperceiving desire, underestimating age: a review of a narrow research lens

The male sexual overperception bias describes the male tendency to sometimes misinterpret friendliness in women as sexual interest. Sexual overperception is a risk factor for sexual coercion and therefore deserves special attention in research, especially since differences in this bias across age groups may lead to differences in coercion risk across the lifespan. Previous research has mainly worked with undergraduate students as participants. Considering that other behavioral biases were found to change across the lifespan, this tendency in research was hypothesized to prejudice the results. We reviewed the literature in this field, revealing a mean participant age of 22.9 years across studies on the topic of sexual overperception, which points to the presence of a potential research bias as a function of participants' age. As far as we are aware, no research efforts attempting to replicate previous findings in samples aged 40 + have been made. The implications of these findings are discussed as well as the possibility of sexual overperception bias as a universal phenomenon. We call for future investigation with older age groups as well as across different cultural contexts to form a broader picture in this field.