Intuitively the cost to a guy in pre-societal times of getting a girl pregnant was negligible compared to the cost of a girl getting pregnant and as such women

Intuitively the cost to a guy in pre-societal times of getting a girl pregnant was negligible compared to the cost of a girl getting pregnant and as such women should be more selective. The effect that societal influence may have had on this (the guy gets a bad reputation hurting his future chances at offspring) is something to consider but I'd doubt it's anywhere close. Having said all that, the article does try to dispell all this by reasoning that the partner "being approached" is more selective, and that societal conditioning has led to this being the woman. I would counter that when someone approaches in a dating scene (as in the study) they are immediately demonstrating lower value ("I have come to prove myself"). The person sitting has also established this little space as their domain, and gets to assess the value of the person coming to them. This allows for the results of the study, but also explains, in conjunction with the first theory above, why on average, even during the study, women are more selective.