The Mate-Search Tax

Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir, and Zhao (2013) showed that poverty levies a bandwidth tax: preoccupation with a scarce, important, unresolved resource degrades fluid intelligence and cognitive control by the equivalent of roughly thirteen IQ points, in the same person, as circumstances move. This paper extends the scarcity framework to the unresolved pair-bond. Its first contribution is a unit correction: the operative variable is not relationship status, a collapsed binary, but unresolved mate-search load (UMSL), a continuous construct that correctly predicts the untaxed contented single and the heavily taxed insecurely partnered. The second is a disambiguation: the calibration scarcity already described in this corpus (reference-dependent expectation formation; Temte 2026b) and bandwidth scarcity are distinct mechanisms sharing a word, and their co-occurrence is the worst case. The third is structural: mate-search load is worse-configured than monetary scarcity, an open evaluative loop with no terminal state, fed by rejection-monitoring and comparison processes that intrude without schedule and take the self as their subject. The fourth compounds the time cost: search hours displace activities that simultaneously restore bandwidth, build mate value, and provide ambient exposure, making intensive search self-undermining, with concave returns, amplified by platforms whose revenue depends on non-resolution. Finally, the load is given decision-theoretic form: the searching state is a held superposition, the tax is its holding cost, and self-acceptance operates by lowering the holding cost without collapsing the state. An empirical programme built on quasi-exogenous load variation is specified.