Evolutionary Psychology 101: Women's Long-Term Mating Preferences

 For people who have known me for some time I have some knowledge of psychology as I studied it in university along with physical sciences, and have taken an amateur interest in it. One of the most seminal moments of my education in university came when we studied evolution in first year biology class, among many fascinating concepts sex differences in reproduction fascinated me, since I figured that the biological difference is responsible for differences in behaviour. 

 I’ve been meaning to discuss the evolutionary psychology of human mate preferences, the evidence and theory behind them. Unfortunately this is a very long discussion so due to time constraints I had to ultimately resort to copypasta!

There are three sections this is the first on women’s long term mating strategies, later will be men’s long term mating strategies, and then short term mating strategies.

We all heard about “stereotypes of men and women”, are they really stereotypes? I actually don’t think so. Learn here what women really want and the reasons for them:

Reference: Evolutionary Psychology the New Science of the Mind by David Buss 6th edition:

https://www.amazon.ca/Evolutionary-Psychology-New-Science-Mind/dp/1138088617/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&qid=1633231531&refinements=p_27%3ADavid+Buss&s=books&sr=1-4&text=David+Buss

About Evolutionary Mate Preferences in Humans:

“Because differential reproduction is the engine that drives the evolutionary process, the psychological mechanisms surrounding reproduction should be especially strong targets of selection. If selection has not sculpted psychological adaptations to solve problems posed by sex and mating, then evolutionary psychology would be “out of business” before it even got off the ground.”

“Nowhere do people have an equal desire for all potential mates. Everywhere, some potential mates are preferred, others shunned. Imagine living as our ancestors did long ago—struggling to keep warm by the fire; hunting meat for our kin; gathering nuts, berries, and herbs; and avoiding dangerous animals and hostile humans. If we were to select a mate who failed to deliver the resources promised, who had affairs, who was lazy, who lacked hunting skills, or who heaped physical abuse on us, our survival would be tenuous, our reproduction at risk. In contrast, a mate who provided abundant resources, who protected us and our children, and who devoted time, energy, and effort to our family would be a great asset. As a result of the powerful survival and reproductive advantages reaped by those of our ancestors who chose mates wisely, many specific desires evolved. As descendants of those winners in the evolutionary lottery, modern humans have inherited a specific set of mate preferences.”

 Biological sex is determined by size of sex cells. In some species males make greater investment than females, and females compete for sexual access to males.

Gestating, bearing, lactating, nurturing, protecting, and feeding a child are exceptionally valuable reproductive resources.

“In summary, Trivers’s (1972) theory of parental investment and sexual selection makes two profound predictions: (1) The sex that invests more in offspring (typically, but not always, the female) will be more discriminating or selective about mating; and (2) the sex that invests less in offspring will be more competitive for sexual access to the high-investing sex. In the case of humans, it is clear that women have greater obligatory parental investment. For long-term mating or marriage, however, both men and women typically invest heavily in children, and so the theory of parental investment predicts that both sexes should be very choosy and discriminating.”

 

Women’s Long-Term Strategies:

Men differ in their physical prowess, athletic skill, ambition, industriousness, kindness, empathy, emotional stability, intelligence, social skills, sense of humor, kin network, and position in the status hierarchy. Women have preferences for these traits.

Preference for Economic Resources:

Women value economic resources, or traits that can ensure the acquisition of economic resources.

Douglas Kenrick and his colleagues devised a useful method for revealing how much people value different attributes in a marriage partner by having men and women indicate the “minimum percentiles” of each characteristic they would find acceptable (Kenrick, Sadalla, Groth, & Trost, 1990). U.S. college women indicate that their minimum acceptable percentile for a husband on earning capacity is the 70th percentile, or above 70 percent of all other men, whereas men’s minimum acceptable percentile for a wife’s earning capacity is only the 40th.

Personal ads in newspapers and online dating sites confirm that women who are actually in the marriage market desire strong financial resources (Gustavsson & Johnsson, 2008; Wiederman, 1993).

Nor are these female preferences restricted to America, to Western societies, or to capitalist countries. A large cross-cultural study was conducted of 37 cultures on six continents and five islands using populations ranging from coast-dwelling Australians to urban Brazilians to shantytown South African Zulus (Buss et al., 1990). Some participants came from nations that practice polygyny (the mating or marriage of a single man with several women), such as Nigeria and Zambia. Other participants came from nations that are more monogamous (the mating of one man with one woman), such as Spain and Canada. The countries included those in which living together is as common as marriage, such as Sweden and Finland, as well as countries in which living together without marriage is frowned on, such as Bulgaria and Greece. The study sampled a total of 10,047 individuals in 37 cultures, as shown in Figure 4.1 (Buss, 1989a).

Male and female participants rated the importance of 18 characteristics in a potential mate or marriage partner, on a scale from unimportant to indispensable. Women across all continents, all political systems (including socialism and communism), all racial groups, all religious groups, and all systems of mating (from intense polygyny to presumptive monogamy), placed more value than men on good financial prospects. Overall, women valued financial resources roughly twice as much as did men (see Figure 4.2). There are some cultural variations. Women from Nigeria, Zambia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, Colombia, and Venezuela valued good financial prospects a bit higher than women from South Africa (Zulus), the Netherlands, and Finland. In Japan, for example, women valued good financial prospect roughly 150 percent more than men, whereas women from the Netherlands deem it only 36 percent more important than their male counterparts, less than women from any other country. Nonetheless, the sex difference remained invariant: Women worldwide desired financial resources in a marriage partner more than men.

European, and American individuals found that a potential mate’s salary had four times the impact on women’s judgments of men’s attractiveness compared to men’s judgments of women’s attractiveness (Wang et al., 2018). 

-        Point: Cross cultural preferences for wealth. Preference for intelligence showing the ability to gather wealth.

-         Point: Women desire men who command a high position because social status is a universal cue to the control of resources. 

-         Point: Women desire men who command a high position because social status is a universal cue to the control of resources. 

Indeed, when forced to trade off among different mate characteristics, women prioritize social status, viewing it as a “necessity” rather than a “luxury” (Li, 2007).

Preference for somewhat older men

Prefer them because they usually tend to have better resources or better access to resources. Older men tend to have more alliances learn more about the environment etc. The age difference is 3.5 years. Tend not to like much older men because they have less life span and less time to contribute to resources, more chance of having genetic mutations, more chance to be infertile. Pregnancy problems abnormalities.

So, women’s preference for somewhat older men may stem from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, for whom the resources derived from hunting were critical to survival. Importantly, older men will have had more time to build important social alliances and acquire status—qualities directly beneficial to a woman and her children that can aid in their survival and their future mating opportunities.

Preference for Ambition and Industriousness

In the overwhelming majority of cultures, women value ambition and industriousness more than men do, typically rating them as between important and indispensable.

Women have evolved a preference for men possessing signs of the ability to acquire resources and are less attracted to men lacking the ambition that often leads to status and resources.

Women place a premium on dependability and emotional stability to reap the benefits that a mate can provide to them consistently over time.

Preference for athletic prowess, formidability and height:

Women sometimes face physical domination by larger, stronger males, which can lead to injury and sexual domination. These conditions undoubtedly occurred with some regularity during ancestral conditions. Studies of many non-human primate groups reveal that male physical and sexual domination of females has been a recurrent part of our primate heritage. Primatologist Barbara Smuts lived among the baboons residing in the savanna plains of Africa and studied their mating patterns (Smuts, 1985). She found that females frequently formed enduring “special friendships” with males who offered physical protection to them and their infants. In return, these females sometimes granted their “friends” preferential mating access during times of estrus.

One benefit to women of long-term mating is the physical protection a man can offer. A man’s size, strength, physical prowess, and athletic ability are cues that signal solutions to the problem of protection. Evidence shows that women’s preferences in a mate embody these cues. Women judge short men to be undesirable for either a short-term or a long-term mate (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). In contrast, women find it very desirable for a potential marriage partner to be tall, physically strong, and athletic. A study of women from Britain and Sri Lanka found strong preferences for male physiques that were muscular and lean (Dixon, Halliwell, East, Wignarajah, & Anderson, 2003). Women also prefer and find attractive men with a “V-shaped” torso—broad shoulders relative to hips (Hughes & Gallup, 2003). Another good index of physical formidability is handgrip strength (Gallup & Fink, 2018), which may be why men sometimes show off in mate-attraction tactics by volunteering to open the lids on jars that are especially difficult to open (Buss, 1988a).

Women who are especially fearful of crime show even stronger preferences for long-term mates who are physically formidable (Snyder et al., 2011). Moreover, women exposed in an experiment to images of men fighting with each other or images of weapons increased their preferences for masculine-looking male faces—likely a cue to protection (Little, DeBruine, & Jones, 2013).

Tall men are consistently seen as more desirable as dates and mates than are short or average men (Courtiol, Ramond, Godelle, & Ferdy, 2010; Ellis, 1992). Two studies of personal ads revealed that, among women who mentioned height, 80 percent wanted a man to be 6 feet or taller (Cameron, Oskamp, & Sparks, 1978).

Preference for symmetry and masculinity signs of good health. 

Better able to withstand environmental stressors, better able to pass on health to children.

Symmetry may be a health cue.

Masculinity is associated with attractiveness in one study with a weak correlation of +.35

It may signal being able to afford testosterone production during puberty since testosterone compromises the immune system.

But masculine features may be signals of social dominance and being able to protect.

Love and Commitment:

Women have long faced the adaptive problem of choosing men who not only have the necessary resources but also show a willingness to commit those resources to them and their children. Although resources can often be directly observed, commitment cannot. Instead, gauging commitment requires looking for cues that signal future channeling of resources. Love may be one of the key cues to commitment (Buss, 2018b).

Researchers found evidence of romantic love in 88.5 of cultures studied.

Acts of commitment top women’s and men’s list as most central to love. These acts include giving up romantic relations with others, talking of commitment and marriage, and expressing a desire to have children with this person. When performed by a man, these acts of love signal the intention to commit resources to one woman and her future children. Reports of experiencing love powerfully predict feelings of subjective commitment—far more than reports of sexual desire (Gonzaga, Haselton, Smurda, Davies, & Poore, 2008).

 Among 18 possible characteristics, mutual attraction or love proved to be the most highly valued in a potential mate by both sexes, rated 2.87 by women and 2.81 by men (Buss et al., 1990). Nearly all women and men, from the Zulu of South Africa to urban Brazilians, gave love the top rating, indicating that it is an indispensable part of long-term mating. Another study of love in 48 nations found high levels of love in all of them (Schmittet al., 2009).

The specific areas of the brain that “lit up” (showed an increased blood flow, indicating changes in neural activity) centered on the caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental areas. These areas contain cells that produce dopamine, which stimulates the reward centers of the brain, analogous to experiencing a “rush” of cocaine (Fisher, 2006).

Preference for willingness to invest in children:

Another adaptive problem that women face when selecting a long-term mate is gauging men’s willingness to invest in children. This adaptive problem is important for two reasons: (1) Men sometimes seek sexual variety and so may channel their efforts toward other women (mating effort) rather than toward children (parental effort; see Chapter 6); and (2) men evaluate the likelihood that they are the actual genetic father of a child and tend to withhold investment from the child when they know or suspect that the child is not their own (La Cerra, 1994).

 Studies show that women who perceive men’s interest in investing in children were judged by them to be more attractive but the reveres is not true.

Women were able to predict which men’s faces were more likely to invest in children probably by the happiness and positivity of their faces.

 

Preference for Dependability and Stability:

Women like men who are dependable and emotionally stable to provide for them.

Preference for Similarity: [taken directly from the textbook]

Successful long-term mating requires sustained cooperative alliances over time. Similarity leads to emotional bonding, cooperation, communication, mating happiness, lower risk of breaking up, and possibly increased survival of children (Buss, 2003; Castro, Hattori, & Lopes, 2012). Women and men alike show strong preferences for mates who share their values, political orientations, worldviews, intellectual level, and, to a lesser extent, their personality characteristics. The preference for similarity translates into actual mating decisions, a phenomenon known as homogamy—people who are similar on these characteristics date (Wilson, Cousins, & Fink, 2006) and get married (Buss, 1985) more often than those who are dissimilar. Homogamy is strongest for intelligence, religiosity, and political orientation. It is positive but not strong for personality characteristics, including narcissism and manipulativeness (Kardum, Hudek-knezevic, Schmitt, & Covic, 2017).

Homogamy for physical appearance might be due to “sexual imprinting” on the opposite-sex parent during childhood (Bereczkei, Gyuris, & Weisfeld, 2004). Interestingly, daughters who received more emotional support from their fathers were more likely to choose similar-looking mates (Nojo, Tamura, & Ihara, 2012; Watkins et al., 2011). Finally, there is strong homogamy for overall “mate value,” with the “10s” mating with other “10s” and the “6s” mating with other “6s” (Figueredo et al., 2015).

 

Additional Mate Preferences: Kindness, Humor, Incest Avoidance, and Voice:

The 37-culture study found “kind and understanding” was universally ranked as the most desirable quality in a long-term mate out of 13 ranked qualities (Buss et al., 1990). Barclay (2010) experimentally manipulated vignettes that differed only in the presence or absence of hints of altruistic tendencies (e.g., when the phrase “I enjoy helping people” was embedded within a longer description of the potential mate). Women strongly preferred men with altruistic tendencies as long-term mates. Kindness toward whom matters. Women find kindness to be especially desirable when the kind acts are directed toward themselves, their friends, and their family; they shift their preferences to lower levels of kindness when the kind acts are directed toward other targets such as other women (Lukaszewski & Roney, 2010). 

Women also love a sense of humour and a deep voice.

Postscript on Similarity:

One of the things this text glosses over is physical similarity, the real reason for the physical similarity preference is that it is a cue to genetic similarity. If two people who are similar reproduce, they can pass on not just 50% of their alleles to their partners, but the 20 or 30% of their alleles that are found in their partner, and thus leave 70-80% of their alleles in their children. Also, considering how important love is apparently, it is more likely to be the case to fall in love with someone who is similar. My point is that similarity and physical similarity is more important than this text leads on.