Hey, valentine: Maybe you should settle for Mr. or Miss Right Now

Are you looking for a perfect match in this Valentine’s week? You might want to reconsider.

It’s a good evolutionary strategy to give up the search for Mr. or Miss Right and settle for Mr. or Miss Right Now, according to a newly published study by researchers at Michigan State University.

And apparently it’s in our nature to take the safe bet when the stakes are high – a trait that can be traced back to the earliest humans.

“Primitive humans were likely forced to bet on whether or not they could find a mate,” Chris Adami, Michigan State professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and co-author of the study, said in a press release.

“They could either choose to mate with the first, potentially inferior, companion and risk inferior offspring, or they could wait for Mr. or Ms. Perfect to come around. If they chose to wait, they risk never mating.”

Settling early, therefore, gives you an evolutionary advantage if living in a small group, according to Adami, who co-wrote the study with Arend Hintze, a Michigan State research associate. The research was published in Nature’s Scientific Reports Journal earlier this month.

Group size does matter. People raised in small groups tend to be much more risk averse than those from larger ones, according to the research.

The research also found not everyone develops the same level of aversion to risk.

“Evolution creates a diversity in our acceptance of risk, so you see some people who are more likely to take bigger risks than others,” Adami said in the release.

This story was originally published February 9, 2015 at 3:49 PM with the headline "Hey, valentine: Maybe you should settle for Mr. or Miss Right Now."