Research into criminal fantasies has thus far primarily focused on homicidal. Here, we broaden the study of criminal ideation by examining a wide range of violent and non-violent criminal fantasies. Specifically, we aimed to compare the magnitude of sex difference in actual crimes to sex differences in crime fantasies. Using a questionnaire design, participants were asked about the frequency and recency of multiple categories of criminal fantasies, including violent and non-violent crimes. Reports of crime fantasies from this questionnaire were compared to national rates of arrest and incident for these actual crimes. Results indicated that men not only commit crimes more frequently than women do, they also fantasize about crimes more frequently. At the same time, such sex differences in crime fantasies were smaller than sex differences in actual crimes. Future studies should continue to explore the purpose of crime fantasies and their relation to behavioral regulation mechanisms.

Besides acquiring group status via dominance or force, as in other animals, human beings can acquire status via prestige, which follows from other group members valuing one’s expert knowledge. Past research has shown a preference for prestigious leaders over dominant leaders. That is, people prefer leaders who are expert over those who are domineering. In this research, I explored whether the preference for prestige over dominance applies to preferences for actual political figures with facial features that appear dominant or prestigious. I also asked whether the same links between dominance, prestige, and voter preference would hold for both men and women. American participants (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) rated European politicians’ faces on traits associated with prestige and dominance and indicated their likelihood of voting for this person as a governor of their state. Findings suggest ratings of both prestige is a strong predictor of leadership preference than dominance. However, strong correlations between variables suggest prestige and dominance are two closely related concepts. In addition, participants indicated a marginal to significant preference for female leaders, depending on their perceived dominance and prestigiousness.

Accurately assessing the sexual interest of others is useful for initiating courtship behaviors that have a chance of being reciprocated, and also potentially critical for survival, particularly for women, where unwanted sexual interest from men can become unwanted sexual advances, sexual assault, and worse. Previous research suggests that men overestimate women’s sexual interest to initiate courtship behaviors even if the probability of their advances being reciprocated is low. This may be because missing a potential mating opportunity is costlier than squandered courtship efforts. However, research on this male sexual overestimation effect has failed to fully appreciate the importance of the motivations and contexts of actors. Here, we primed participants with short-term mating motivations and threat contexts to compare against a control prime condition. We replicated the male sexual overestimation effect in the control and threat prime conditions and found a marginal effect in the short-term mating prime condition. The magnitude of the difference between men’s estimations and women’s self-reports of women’s sexual interest was only significantly different from the control prime in the threat condition. Additionally, we explored some interesting combinations of circumstances. We found that, in a potentially common scenario, where men are primed with short-term mating motives and women are primed with threat, the male sexual overestimation effect replicates and, further, find that this effect disappears when the mindsets of men and women are reversed. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of understanding what the default psychologies of people during the early stages of courtship are, and the effects these psychologies have on estimations of sexual interest.