The experiment was conducted to test three different variables. These variables are an assessment of female aggression, food deprivation, and staged male-to-female interactions. During the female aggression test, virgin females were subjected to an attack latency test to determine their aggression. The spiders were given 30 seconds, a cricket was dropped, and the duration of the interaction between the cricket and the spider was measured. During the food deprivation tests, the number of days the female spiders went without food varied and they were paired into 1-, 3-, and 5-day groups for routine feeding. It was predicted that the longer the female spiders went without food, the hungrier they would be. When testing male and female interactions, males were placed in female containers with the lids open as an escape route. Each pair interacted for six hours and all pairs resulted in successful copulation, sexual cannibalism, or the male abandoning the female's web. All cases of cannibalism were precopulatory and occurred shortly after the males began the courtship sequence. After the interaction, the remaining males were taken out of the female network, and females that cannibalized a male were given 24 hours to feed on the male before receiving another male. A female has never cannibalized two males consecutively. It was concluded that females who attacked prey more rapidly were more likely to cannibalize their first male mate. No association was found between cannibalism or food deprivation and female body mass. There is a positive association between egg mass and number of offspring in females. The study showed that two factors are important in sexual cannibalism: female hunger status and female aggression. There is also a source of fitness benefit for women. The three variables that influence female cannibalism-related behavior are aggression, food deprivation and male-female interactions. Female aggression is linked to the aggressive spillover hypothesis. This suggests that sexual cannibalism emerges as a product of selection and that sexual cannibalism may be an aspect of aggression. Selection favoring aggression may indirectly increase the incidence of sexual cannibalism. Under these circumstances, sexual cannibalism threatens to sterilize highly aggressive females. With male-female interactions, the mate choice hypothesis presents itself as a theory. Sexual cannibalism can represent an extreme form of mate choice. This is when females attack unwanted males but allow preferred mates to mate. Finally, food deprivation can occur in aggressive and non-aggressive females.