Adolescent development of sexual misperception biases: females increasingly overperceived, males consistently underperceived

Men overestimate women's sexual interest and women underestimate men's. Error Management Theory conceptualizes these sexual over- and underperception biases as adaptations. While the presence of these biases is well documented in adults, no previous research has explored their emergence and development during adolescence. We examined whether sexual over- and underperception biases were already present at age 16, whether they emerged later, and how they developed from ages 16 to 19. Given that adolescents face similar reproductive challenges as adults, we predicted these adaptations would already be activated by age 16. Following Haselton's (2003) procedure, a high-school community sample (males = 551, females = 739) from the Norwegian Health, Sexual Harassment, and Experiences Study (2013) reported if they had experienced being sexually over- and underperception during the previous 12 months. Unexpectedly, females were first 17 years of age when they reported that males had an overperception bias, and it was not until age 19 that females were more frequently overperceived than males. This pattern resulted from females becoming increasingly overperceived from age 16 (7 %) to 19 (25 %). More males (13 %) than females (3 %) were underperceived at all ages. Since the proportion of overperceived males dropped to 3 % at age 19, 19-year-old males consequently reported that females had an underperception bias. Sociosexuality increased the risk of being overperceived for both sexes and additionally increased males' risk of being underperceived. Singlehood and sexual debut did not influence risk of being misperceived. Mate value strongly increased males' likelihood of being overperceived. Developmentally, reports of sexual overperception undergo sex differentiation from mid- to late adolescence, while reports of sexual underperception are already sex-differentiated by age 16. Thus, males' overperception bias appears to emerge in middle adolescence, whereas females' greater tendency to underperceive males is likely present before mid-adolescence. Limitations regarding the timing of these biases and future directions for studying their developmental trajectories are discussed.