Evolutionary Psychology 101: Men’s Long Term Mating Preferences

 Note: Much of this is cut and pasted from the original source. I do not have the time to rewrite all of it. I trimmed out quite a lot here, leaving the most salient points. Perhaps I will re-write it later in the future. No more of these lessons in evolutionary psychology for a while or maybe ever, these take a long time.

Introduction: What do Men Stand to Gain from Long Term Relationships?

Why would men want to commit to a relationship at all? It is partly due to women’s preferences. Women want to find a mate who is likely to commit.

Men who are willing to promise long-term resources, protection, and investment in children are appealing to women, so men who are willing to commit to the long term have a wider range of women from which to choose. Willing men attract desirable women because women typically desire lasting commitment, and highly desirable women are in the best position to get what they want.

A third potential benefit is an increase in the odds that the man is the father of the children a woman bears. Through marriage, a man gains repeated sexual access—in many cases, exclusive sexual access. Without recurrent or exclusive access, his certainty in paternity would be jeopardized.

A fourth potential benefit of marriage would have been an increase in the survival of the man’s children. In human ancestral environments, it is likely that infants and young children more frequently died without the prolonged investment from two parents or related kin (Hill & Hurtado, 1996). Among the Ache Indians of Paraguay, for example, children without an investing father suffer a death rate more than 10 percent higher than children whose fathers remain alive.

Fathers have also had a strong hand in arranging marriages for their sons and daughters.

Marriage also benefits men by an increase in status. A man also gains potential allies through his wife’s family and friends.

In summary the benefits for a man are:

(1)             increased odds of succeeding in attracting a (wo)man (sic), (2) increased ability to attract a more desirable mate, (3) increased paternity certainty, (4) increased survival of his children, (5) increased reproductive success of children accrued through paternal investment, (6) increased social status, (7) added coalitional allies, (8) access to his partner’s resources and status, and (9) increased lifespan.

 

The problem of cryptic ovulation in human females

Men need to be able to determine which women are fertile and bear many children.  In chimpanzees the female does this through something called estrus, it is an outward display of fertility. It is advertised by bright red swollen genitals and scents towards the males.

Woman’s ovulation is cryptic. Sexual activity for humans occurs throughout the female’s ovulation cycle.

So, for men the shift became from when they were ovulating to which women were capable of bearing children. They needed to determine a woman’s reproductive value, meaning how many children she could have. A younger woman generally has more potential to have kids than an older one on average. Fertility refers to the number of actual children a woman has.

Reproductive value though is hard to know so the men must have evolved the abilities to notice traits correlated with reproductive value, such as youth, and health.

In many ways men’s long-term mate preferences are similar to those of women. Like women, men express a desire for partners who are intelligent, kind, understanding, and healthy (Buss, 2016 b). Intelligent long-term mates offer a bounty of benefits—skill at solving mutually relevant problems of survival, adeptness at childrearing, skill in navigating social hierarchies, and even good genes that can be transmitted to children. Kind and understanding partners tend to be empathic, good at social mind reading, and highly cooperative as long-term partners. Men who select healthy mates benefit from their ability to thrive in adverse circumstances, remain energetic in accomplishing the tasks of everyday living, and pass on genes for good health to their children. Also, like women, men look for partners who share their values and are similar to them in attitudes, personality, and religious beliefs. These shared qualities maximize cooperation in long-term mateships and minimize conflict.

Standards of Beauty Emerge Early in Life

Adults evaluated color slides of White and Black female faces for their attractiveness. Then infants 2 to 3 months and 6 to 8 months old were shown pairs of these faces that differed in degree of attractiveness. Both younger and older infants gazed longer at the more attractive faces, suggesting that standards of beauty apparently emerge quite early in life. In a second study, 12-month-old infants played significantly longer with facially attractive dolls than with unattractive dolls. This evidence challenges the commonly held view that the standards of attractiveness are learned through gradual exposure to current cultural models. No training seems necessary for these standards to emerge.

Standards of Beauty Are Consistent Across Cultures

 

The constituents of beauty are neither arbitrary nor culture bound. When psychologist Michael Cunningham asked people of different races to judge the facial attractiveness of Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White women in photographs, he found tremendous consensus about who is and who is not considered good-looking (Cunningham, Roberts, Wu, Barbee, & Druen, 1995). The average correlation between groups in their ratings of the attractiveness of these photographs was +.93. In a second study by the same investigators, Taiwanese subjects agreed with the other groups in the average ratings of attractiveness (r = +.91). Degree of exposure to Western media did not affect the judgments of attractiveness in either study. In a third study, Blacks and Whites showed tremendous agreement about which women’s faces were most and least attractive (r = +.94). Consensus has also been found among Chinese, Indian, and English subjects; between South Africans and North Americans; and between Russians, Ache Indians, and Americans

So, standards of beauty seem to emerge early in life and are to some extent consistent across cultures. Why would this be? In some domains, ancestral men confronted a different set of adaptive mating problems than did ancestral women, and so their descendants are predicted to hold a somewhat different set of mate preferences as adaptive solutions. These preferences start with one of the most powerful cues to a woman’s reproductive status—her age.

Preference for Youth

Youth is a critical cue because a woman’s reproductive value declines steadily as she moves past age 20. By the age of 40, a woman’s reproductive capacity is low, and by 50, it is essentially zero. Men’s preferences capitalize on this. Within the United States, men uniformly express a desire for mates who are younger than they are. Men’s preference for youthful partners is not limited to Western cultures.

 

 

Our ancestors had access to two types of observable evidence of a woman’s reproductive value: (1) features of physical appearance, such as full lips, clear skin, smooth skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, good muscle tone, and body fat distribution; and (2) features of behavior, such as a bouncy, youthful gait, an animated facial expression, and a high energy level. These physical cues to youth and health, and hence to fertility and reproductive value, have been hypothesized to be some of the key components of male standards of female beauty (Symons, 1979, 1995). Strong empirical support exists for the link between physical attractiveness and objective measures of health in a sample of roughly 15,000 Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 (Nedelec & Beaver, 2014).

 Psychologists Clelland Ford and Frank Beach discovered several universal cues that correspond with the evolutionary theory of beauty (1951). Signs of youth, such as clear, smooth skin, and signs of health, such as an absence of sores and lesions, are universally regarded as attractive. Cues to ill health and older age are less attractive. Poor complexion is always considered unattractive. Ringworm, facial disfigurement, and filthiness are universally undesirable. Even a super-white sclera, the whites of the eyes surrounding the iris, is key cue to health and evaluated as attractive (Provine, Cabrera, & Nave-Blodgett, 2013). Freedom from disease is universally attractive.

 

Among the Trobriand Islanders in northwestern Melanesia, for example, anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski reports that “sores, ulcers, and skin eruptions are naturally held to be specially repulsive from the viewpoint of erotic contact” (Malinowski, 1929, p. 244). The “essential conditions” for beauty, in contrast, are “health, strong growth of hair, sound teeth, and smooth skin.” Specific features, such as bright, shining eyes and full, well-shaped lips rather than thin or pinched lips, are especially important to the islanders.

 

Another cue to youth and health is the length and quality of women’s hair. One study interviewed 230 women at various public locations about their age, subjective health status, and relationship status and obtained observer measures of hair length and hair quality (Hinsz, Matz, & Patience, 2001). Hair length and quality were strong cues to youth: Younger women had longer hair of higher-rated quality than did older women. Hair quality was positively correlated with women’s subjective judgments of their own health.

Skin quality is especially important in judgments of attractiveness. It provides a cue to a woman’s age and a partial record of her lifetime health (Sugiyama, 2005). Clear, unblemished skin signals an absence of parasites, absence of skin-damaging diseases during development, and possibly “good genes” to withstand disease and heal without infection (Singh & Bronstad, 1997). Skin quality is linked with perceived facial attractiveness (Fink & Neave, 2005). Female faces with skin that has a homogeneous skin color distribution, not splotchy, receive higher attractiveness ratings and are perceived to be younger (Fink, Grammer, & Matts, 2006; Fink et al., 2008). Furthermore, more skin blood color in female faces enhances the perception perhaps corresponding to the subjective impression that some faces seem to “glow” (Stephen, Coetzee, Smith, & Perrett, 2009). This may also explain why some women use rouge as makeup, since it enhances perceptions of health and vitality.

 

Femininity is another cue to attractiveness (Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005). Facial femininity includes cues such as full lips, relatively large eyes, thinner jaws, small chin, high cheekbones, and a relatively short distance between mouth and jaw. Female facial femininity is likely to be a marker of reproductive value for two reasons. First, as women age, their facial features become less feminine. Second, facial femininity is linked with higher levels of estrogen, the ovarian hormone that correlates with fertility (Schaefer et al., 2006). Third, facial femininity is linked to health and some aspects of disease resistance (Gray & Boothroyd, 2012). Meta-analyses reveal that facial femininity is one of the most powerful cues to women’s attractiveness (Rhodes, 2006). Feminine voices—relatively high pitched—are also found to be more attractive in women and provide cues to youth (Collins & Missing, 2003; Feinberg et al., 2005; Röder, Fink, & Jones, 2013). Another study using point-light methodology to measure biomechanical gait found that women who wear high heels are judged to be both more feminine (shorter stride length and increased rotation and tilt of the hips) and more attractive (Morris, White, Morrison, & Fisher, 2013).

 

Facial symmetry is another correlate of female attractiveness (Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005; Rhodes, 2006). Symmetry is hypothesized to be a cue to developmental stability, a hypothesized sign of “good genes” and the capacity to withstand environmental insult. Symmetrical female faces are indeed judged to be healthier than less symmetrical faces (Fink et al., 2006). Facial symmetry is positively correlated with judgments of attractiveness, although the link is weaker than that of facial femininity (Rhodes, 2006).

 

Facial averageness is another quality linked with attractiveness, although this may seem counterintuitive. Researchers created computer composites of the human face, superimposing faces on each other to create new faces (Langlois & Roggman, 1990). The new faces differed in the number of individual faces that made them up—4, 8, 16, or 32. The composite faces—the averages of the individual faces—were judged more attractive than the individual faces. And the more faces that went into the composite, the more attractive the face was judged to be. Two competing hypotheses have been advanced to explain why average faces are attractive. First, people may show a generalized cognitive preference for things that are easily processed, and stimuli that match an average prototype may be easier to process. People do indeed find averaged images of fish, birds, and even cars more attractive than individual fish, birds, or cars (Rhodes, 2006). Second, averageness may be a marker of genetic or phenotypic quality (Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005). Deviations from averageness may be cues to environmental insults such as such as disease, susceptibility to environmental insults, or genetic mutations.

 

Leg length, especially long legs relative to torso length, has been hypothesized to be a cue to health and biomechanical efficiency (Sorokowski & Pawlowski, 2008). Using silhouette stimuli that held overall height constant but varied leg length, researchers discovered that legs roughly 5 percent longer than average are viewed as maximally attractive in women (Sorokowski & Pawlowski, 2008). Other studies confirm that both sexes view relatively longer legs as more attractive in women (Bertamini & Bennett, 2009; Swami, Einon, & Furnham, 2006). Perhaps this explains why some women wear high-heeled shoes—they make legs appear to be relatively longer. Interestingly, a study of 9,998 Chinese found that women with longer legs had more offspring, an association especially strong in women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Fielding et al., 2008).

 

Lumbar curvature. Women face a critical adaptive problem no man has ever faced—a 9-month pregnancy. As the pregnancy progresses, it shifts women’s center of gravity forward, changing the strain or torque it puts on their spinal columns. Women have evolved somewhat different spinal structures—a wedge-shaped third-to-the last lumbar vertebra—that helps to solve this adaptive problem. David Lewis and his colleagues calculated the optimal degree of lumbar curvature that would minimize torque and predicted that men would find this optimum maximally attractive (Lewis, Russell, Al-Shawaf, & Buss, 2015). Two studies confirmed this hypothesis, highlighting a new discovery about evolved standards of beauty, guided by an evolutionary perspective.

Reward circuitry in the Brain

Neuropsychologists looked at fMRI images of male brains as they looked at attractive male, average male, attractive female, and average female pictures. The attractive female pictures were the ones that activated the nucleaus accumbens, which is known to be fundamental rewards circuitry.

Body Fat, Waist-to-Hip Ratio, and Body Mass Index

The most culturally variable standard of beauty seems to be in the preference for a slim versus a plump body build, and it is linked with the social status that build conveys. In cultures where food is scarce, such as among the Bushmen of Australia, plumpness signals wealth, health, and adequate nutrition during development (Rosenblatt, 1974). In ecologies where food shortages are common, such as in Kenya, Uganda, and certain parts of Ecuador, men prefer women who are heavier and possess more body fat (Sugiyama, 2005). Even within cultures, men prefer heavier women during economic hard times (Pettijohn & Jungeberg, 2004), when hungry (Pettijohn, Sacco, & Yerkes, 2009), and when they feel poor (Nelson & Morrison, 2005). In cultures where food is relatively abundant, such as the United States and many Western European countries, the relationship between plumpness and status is reversed, and the wealthy distinguish themselves by being thin (Symons, 1979). Thus, although “body-weight preference varies across cultures and time, it does so in predictable ways” (Sugiyama, 2005, p. 318), suggesting context-dependent adaptations.

Psychologist Devendra Singh has discovered one preference for body shape that may be universal: the preference for a particular ratio between the size of a woman’s waist and the size of her hips (Singh, 1993; Singh & Young, 1995). Before puberty, boys and girls show similar fat distributions. At puberty, however, a dramatic change occurs. Men lose fat from their buttocks and thighs, whereas the release of estrogen in pubertal girls causes them to deposit fat in the lower trunk, primarily on their hips and upper thighs. Indeed, the volume of body fat in this region is 40 percent greater for women than for men.

Women with a low WHR are judged to be more attractive than women with a higher WHR. A relatively low WHR signals that the woman is young, healthy, and not pregnant.

It may also have to do with overall health status and fertility.

Singh discovered that WHR is a powerful part of women’s attractiveness. In a dozen studies conducted by Singh, men rated the attractiveness of female figures that varied in both WHR and total amount of fat. Again, men found the average figure more attractive than either a thin or a fat figure. Regardless of the total amount of fat, however, men find women with low WHRs the most attractive. Women with a WHR of 0.70 are seen as more attractive than women with a WHR of 0.80, who in turn are seen as more attractive than women with a WHR of 0.90. Studies with line drawings and with computer-generated photographic images produced the same results.

 

Another hypothesized cue to female body attractiveness is body mass index (BMI), a measure of overall body fat as calculated from a person’s weight and height. BMI and WHR are positively correlated—as WHR increases, so does BMI. One study found that a low BMI was a better predictor of attractiveness judgments than WHR, and that statistically controlling for BMI, WHR did not predict attractiveness judgments (Cornelissen, Tovee, & Bateson, 2009). The authors conclude that although WHR is indeed an important predictor of attractiveness, this is largely explained by the effect of total body fat on WHR. Another study using an eye-tracking procedure reinforced this conclusion, finding that eye fixations clustered around the waist and breasts but not on the pelvic or hip regions (Cornelissen, Hancock, Kiviniemi, George, & Tovee, 2009). Other research, in contrast, supports the primacy of WHR over BMI. A brain imaging study found that male brain reward centers (especially the nucleus accumbens) were activated in response to naked female bodies with a low WHR, but were not activated by those with a lower BMI (Platek & Singh, 2010).

More research is needed to settle the controversy between Waist to Hip Ratio and BMI.

Sex differences in importance of physical appearance

Because of the abundance of cues conveyed by a woman’s physical appearance, and because male standards of beauty have evolved to correspond to these cues, men place a premium on physical appearance and attractiveness in their mate preferences. A cross-generational mating study spanning a 57-year period from 1939 to 1996 in the United States gauged the value men and women place on different characteristics in a mate (Buss et al., 2001). The same 18 characteristics were measured at roughly one-decade intervals to determine how mating preferences have changed over time in the United States. In all cases, men rated physical attractiveness and good looks as more important than did women.

 

This does not mean that the importance people place on attractiveness is forever fixed. On the contrary, the importance of attractiveness has increased dramatically in the United States in the 20th century (Buss et al., 2001). For example, the importance attached to good looks in a marriage partner on a scale of 0 to 3 increased between 1939 and 1996 from 1.50 to 2.11 for men and from 0.94 to 1.67 for women, showing that mate preferences can change. Indeed, these changes point to the importance of cultural evolution and the impact of input from the social environment. The sex difference, however, so far remains invariant.

These sex differences are not limited to the United States or even to Western cultures. Regardless of location, habitat, marriage system, or cultural living arrangement, men in all 37 cultures included in the study on choosing a mate—from Australians to Zambians—valued physical appearance in a potential mate more than women 

 

Preferences for Ovulating Women

Men may have a preference in ovulating women, since this would increase their chances of reproductive success.

When women are ovulating their skin becomes more suffused with blood, and appears to glow more. The skin tone also becomes lighter. Ovulating women are touched more often in singles bars. Women’s voices also increase in pitch, their waist to hip ratio tends to lower, and their faces appear more attractive, and there are other cues as well.

 

Solutions to the problem of paternity uncertainty

Apes could guard their females during estrus, but due to cryptic ovulation this becomes more difficult for human males. They need to spend time on problems of survival, but don’t want to risk the females being unfaithful and having to invest in someone else’s offspring.

Thus, marriage may have been something to help ensure paternity certainty, as if they had more sexual access to the females it is more likely they would be the ones that make the female pregnant.

Also, the desire for premarital sexual chastity and post marital sexual fidelity. On the assumption that premarital chastity would be stable over time, it is a clue to a woman’s proclivity to infidelity. A man who didn’t select a chaste mate ran the risk of getting a female who would cuckold him.

Men around the world, and through time tended to value chastity in a partner more than women. Men also highly value fidelity, and being unfaithful is the most undesirable trait that men find in a partner. Also, across cultures sexual infidelity is the biggest overall cause of pain for men.

Positions of power

Men in positions of power and with resources have an easier time attractive more attractive and younger women. Also, historically kings and despots were able to accrue several young and attractive mating partners.

Testosterone levels

Higher testosterone levels help men compete with same-sex competitors and in their pursuit of females. However, testosterone compromises the immune system, so after a male has secured a long-term mate, and if he’s had children the testosterone levels tend to go down.

The mere presence of an attractive female causes men’s risk taking behaviour to increase, and a rise in testosterone levels.

When people have higher mating value men tend to allocate more importance to physical attractiveness, and women tend to allocate more importance to resources. People of higher value tended to be choosier and thinking about things like kindness and intelligence, etc. But for those lower in value, for men some basic level of physical attractiveness, for women some basic level of resources and status.

Women’s competition tactics with other women strongly map the preferences of men for a long-term mate so, for example, women derogate other women’s appearance, and sexual fidelity, and promiscuity.

 

Summary:

Just as women have preferences in a long-term mate such as access to resources, social status, physical prowess, and masculinity men have these as well. Although it appears that both sexes appreciate intelligence and kindness. Men place a greater premium on physical attractiveness in a mate. Female apes typically go into estrus that signal their fertility, but women have cryptic fertility. Therefore, men place high value in traits that signal fertility which includes things like a lower waist to hip ratio, BMI, a preference for youth and health, facial averageness, facial symmetry, and femininity among others. Chastity, and to an even greater extent sexual fidelity are very important to men in long term relationships.  In short, there are notable sex differences in preferences for a long-term mate between men and women and they have deep evolutionary roots, in contrast to what we hear about gender equality in modern Western societies.

Source: Evolutionary Psychology The New Science of the Mind by David Buss 5^th Edition