There are 20 men at a party, and the women in attendance are only talking to five of them. Which man should a woman looking for a new relationship approach?

A recent study by Skyler Place, a researcher in Indiana U’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, shows that men and women looking to begin dating will consider not only their friends’ opinions about new mates but also those of complete strangers, such as other men and women at a party.

“Maybe the other 15 are not very good quality,” Place said about the party example. “They’re taking advantage of the time other people spent interacting with men in their potential world.”

As part of his dissertation, Place and a small group of researchers conducted an experiment asking participants to rate pictures of possible dates on a number scale. After the experiment, the researchers determined whether the participants’ opinions of the possible dates changed due to strangers’ noticeable attraction to the same men.

For the study, Place and the other researchers hypothesized that men and women would use the information in the same way and that each gender would react to dating preferences of strangers similarly.

What they found followed the original theory.

When men and women see someone of the opposite sex attracting positive or negative attention from strangers, it can sometimes affect whether they like or dislike the possible mate, Place said.

“It’s called ‘mate copying,’” Place said. “It’s the idea that a female observer would become more interested in a potential male target if she saw another female interested in the same man, or a man interested in a woman because other men like her. It makes sense to see who other people are choosing.”