ORIGINAL PAPER Men’s Benefit-Provisioning Mate Retention Behavior Mediates the Relationship Between Their Agreeableness and Their Oral Sex Behaviors

Abstract Men perform oral sex on their romantic partner as part of a broader benefit-provisioning mate retention strategy and men higher in Agreeableness are especially likely to pro-vision their partnerwith benefits. The current research explored whether men’s benefit-provisioning mate retention behavior mediated the relationshipbetween theirAgreeablenessand their oral sexbehaviors in their long-termromantic relationship.Men (n = 346) in a committed, sexual, heterosexual relationship completed the Mate Retention Inventory—a 104-item instru-ment that assesses the frequency with which they performed various mate retention behaviors during the past month, a 40-itempersonality inventory, and reportedonaquestionnaire their interest in and the time they spent performing oral sex on their romanticpartnerduring theirmost recent sexualencounter with her. The results indicated that men higher in Agreeable-ness reportedgreater interest inandspentmore timeperforming oral sex on their partner, and that their benefit-provisioning mate retentionbehaviorspartiallymediatedthese relationships. The current research is the first to investigate the relation-ship between personality dimensions and oral sex behaviors and adds to a growing body of research documenting thatmate retention strategies influence sexual behavior