Women's Long-Term Mating Strategies PDF

4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES Thirty-seven cultures, distributed as shown, were examined by the author in his international study of male and female mating preferences. The author and his colleagues surveyed the mating desires of 10,047 people on six continents and fve islands. The results...

4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES Thirty-seven cultures, distributed as shown, were examined by the author in his international study of male and female mating preferences. The author and his colleagues surveyed the mating desires of 10,047 people on six continents and fve islands. The results provide the largest database of human mating preferences ever accumulated. Participants in cultures rated this variable, in the context of 17 other variables, on how desirable it would be in a potential long-term mate or marriage partner using a four-point rating scale, ranging from 0 (irrelevant or unimportant) to 3 (indispensable). These fndings provided the frst extensive cross-cultural evidence supporting the evolutionary basis for the psychology of human mating. Since that study, fndings from other cultures continue to support the hypothesis that women have evolved preferences for men with resources. One massive study of 21,245 Germans ranging in age from 18 to 65 found that the largest sex diference centered on women’s greater preference for “wealthy and generous” (Schwarz & Hassebrauck, 2013). A study of the Himba, a small group of seminomadic pastoralists living in northwest Namibia, found that women prioritize long-term mates who are wealthy, respectful, hardworking, and generous—key cues to the ability and willingness of a man to acquire and share resources (Scelza & Prall, 2018). A study of Chinese, 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). Another study found that women experienced relationship regret over getting involved with a man who was “stingy” and passing up on an opportunity to get involved with a man who was “wealthy” (Coats, Harrington, Beaubouef, & Locke, 2011). A study of mate selection in the country of Jordan found that women more than men valued economic ability, as well as qualities linked to economic ability such as status, ambition, and education (Khallad, 2005). Using a diferent method—analysis of folktales in 48 cultural areas including bands, tribes, preindustrial states, Pacifc islands, and all the major continents—Jonathan Gottschall and colleagues found the same sex diference (Gottschall et al., 2003). Substantially more female than male characters in the folktales from each culture placed a primary emphasis on wealth or status in their expressed mate preferences. Gottschall found similar results in a historical analysis of European literature (Gottschall, Martin, Quish, & Rea, 2004). A study of 500 Muslims living in the United States found that women sought fnancially secure, emotionally sensitive, and sincere partners, the latter being a signal of willingness to commit to a long-term relationship (Badahdah & Tiemann, 2005). Finally, an in-depth study of the Hadza of Tanzania, a hunter-gatherer society, found that women place a great importance on a man’s foraging abilities—primarily his ability to hunt and provide meat (Marlowe, 2004). This fundamental sex diference also appears prominently in modern forms of mating, such as speed dating and mail-order brides. In a study of speed dating, in which individuals engage in 4-minute conversations to determine whether they are interested in meeting the other person again, women chose men who indicated that they had grown up in afuent neighborhoods (Fisman, Iyengar, Kamenica, & Simonson, 2006). Another study of a community sample of 382 speed daters, ranging in age from 18 to 54, found that women’s choices, more than men’s choices, were infuenced by a potential date’s income and education (Asendorpf, Penke, & Back, 2011). A study of the mate preferences of mail-order brides from Colombia, the Philippines, and Russia found that these women sought husbands who had status and ambition—two key correlates of resource acquisition (Minervini & McAndrew, 2006). As the authors conclude, “women willing to become MOBs [mail-order brides] do not appear to have a diferent agenda than other mate-seeking women; they simply have discovered a novel way to expand their pool of prospective husbands” (2006, p. 17). A study of personal advertisements in Sweden, a culture that has a high level of economic equality between the sexes, found that women sought resources 107 ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 108 three times as often as did men (Gustavsson & Johnsson, 2008). A study of 2,956 Israelis who subscribed to a computer dating service found that women, far more than men, sought mates who owned their own cars, had good economic standing, and placed a high level of importance on their careers (Bokek-Cohen, Peres, & Kanazawa, 2007). Women also place tremendous value on intelligence in a long-term mate (Buss et al., 1990; Prokosch, Coss, Scheib, & Blozis, 2009), a quality highly predictive of income and occupational status (Buss, 1994b). Even in more traditional societies, such as the Kipsigis of Kenya, women (as well as the women’s parents when choosing for them) preferentially select men who have resources such as large plots of land (Borgerhof Mulder, 1990). Finally, a study of the reproductive outcomes of women living in preindustrial Finland in the 18th and 19th centuries found that women married to wealthier men had higher survival rates and a larger number of children who survived to adulthood than women married to poorer men (Pettay, Helle, Jokela, & Lummaa, 2007). A historical study of Norwegians found similar efects (Skjærvø, Bongard, Viken, Stokke, & Røskaft, 2011). The enormous body of empirical evidence across diferent methods, time periods, and cultures supports the hypothesis that women have evolved a powerful preference for long-term mates with the ability to provide resources. Today’s women are the descendants of a long line of women who had these mate preferences—preferences that helped them to solve the adaptive problems of survival and reproduction. Preference for High Social Status Traditional hunter-gatherer societies, one rough guide to what ancestral conditions were probably like, suggest that ancestral men had clearly defned status hierarchies. Resources in most status hierarchies fow freely to those at the top and trickle slowly to those at the bottom (Betzig, 1986; Brown & Chia-Yun, n.d.). Cross-culturally, groups such as the Melanesians, the early Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Japanese, and the Indonesians include people described as “head men” and “big men” who wield great power and enjoy the resource privileges of prestige. Among various south Asian languages, for example, the term “big man” is found in Sanskrit, Hindi, and several Dravidian languages. In Hindi, for example, bara asami means great man or someone high in rank (Platts, 1960). In North America, “big man” and similar terms are found among groups such as the Wappo, Dakota, Miwok, Natick, Choctaw, Kiowa, and Osage. In Mexico and South America, “big man” and closely related terms are found among the Cayapa, Chatino, Mazahua, Mixe, Mixteco, Quiche, Terraba, Tzeltal, Totonaca, Tarahumara, Quechua, and Hahuatl. In language, therefore, many cultures have found it important to invent words or phrases to describe men who are high in status. Women desire men who command a high position because social status is a universal cue to the control of resources. Along with status come better food, more abundant territory, and superior health care. Greater social status bestows on children social opportunities missed by the children of lower-ranking males. For male children worldwide, access to more and better-quality mates typically accompanies families of higher social status. In one study of 186 societies ranging from the Mbuti Pygmies of Africa to the Aleut of Alaska, high-status men invariably had greater wealth and more wives and provided better nourishment for their children (Betzig, 1986). One study examined short-term and long-term mating to discover which characteristics people especially valued in potential spouses, as contrasted with potential sex partners (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Several hundred individuals evaluated 67 characteristics for their desirability or undesirability in the short or long term, rating them on a scale ranging from −3 (extremely undesirable) to +3 (extremely desirable). Women judged the likelihood of success in a profession and the possession of a promising career to be highly desirable in a spouse, giving average ratings 4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES 109 Figure 4.3 Preference for Social Status in a Marriage Partner N = sample size. p values less than .05 indicate that sex diference is signifcant. NS indicates that sex diference is not signifcant. Source: Buss, D. M., Abbott, M., Angleitner, A., Asherian, A., Biaggio, A. et al. (1990). International preferences in selecting mates: A study of 37 cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 21, 5–47. Participants in 37 cultures rated this variable, in the context of 18 other variables, on how desirable it would be in a potential long-term mate or marriage partner using a four-point rating scale, ranging from 0 (irrelevant or unimportant) to 3 (indispensable). of +2.60 and +2.70, respectively. Importantly, these cues to future status are seen by women as more desirable in spouses than in casual sex partners. U.S. women also place great value on education and professional degrees in mates—characteristics that are strongly linked with social status. The importance that women grant to social status in mates is not limited to the United States or even to capitalist countries. In the vast majority of the 37 cultures considered in the international study on choosing a mate, women valued social status in a prospective mate more than men in both communist and socialist countries, among Africans and Asians, among Catholics and Jews, in the southern tropics and the northern climes (Buss, 1989a). In Taiwan, for example, women valued status 63 percent more than men; in West Germany, women valued it 38 percent more; and in Brazil, women valued it 40 percent more (see Figure 4.3). Another study conducted in Iran found that a preference for a combined “status-resources” factor showed the largest gender diference of all in long-term mate preferences (Atari, 2017). Women appear to have solved the adaptive problem of acquiring resources in part by preferring men who are high in status. Indeed, when forced to trade of among diferent mate characteristics, women prioritize social status, viewing it as a “necessity” rather than a “luxury” (Li, 2007). Women evaluate men who possess high-status items such as luxury high-prestige cars and luxury apartments as especially attractive potential partners (Dunn & Hill, 2014; Dunn & Searle, 2010). Preference for Somewhat Older Men The age of a man also provides an important clue to his access to resources. Just as young male baboons must mature before they are able to enter the upper ranks in the baboon social hierarchy, human adolescents rarely command the respect, status, or position of more mature men. Older men have had more time to build important alliances, cultivate skills, and learn more about the environment—all benefcial attributes. The age–resources link reaches extremes among the Tiwi, an aboriginal tribe located on two islands of the coast of northern Australia (Hart & Pilling, 1960). The Tiwi are a gerontocracy in which the very old men wield most of the power and prestige; they control the mating system through complex social alliances. Even in U.S. culture, status and wealth tend to accumulate with increasing age. ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 110 In all 37 cultures included in the international study on mate selection, women preferred older men (see Figure 4.4). Averaged over all cultures, women prefer men who are roughly 3.5 years older. Another study of 22,400 individuals in 14 diferent cultures and two diferent religious groups (Muslims and Christians) found similar results (Dunn, Brinton, & Clark, 2010). The preferred age diference ranges from French Canadian women, who seek husbands just a shade under 2 years older, to Iranian women, who seek husbands more than 5 years older. Why do women prefer somewhat older men, but not much older men? The answer seems to lie partially in problems that develop in much older men—they are more likely to be infertile, women who get pregnant with them are more likely to experience pregnancy problems, and children of much older men are at increased risk of genetic abnormalities (Spinelli, Hattori, & Sousa, 2010). Much older men also are less likely to live a long time—they have a shorter shelf-life ahead of them—so have fewer years of investment from which a woman might beneft. To understand why women value somewhat older mates, we must consider the things that change with age. One of the most consistent changes is access to resources. In contemporary Western societies, income generally increases with age (Jencks, 1979). These status trends are not limited to the Western world. Among the Tiwi, a polygynous people, men are typically at least 30 before they have enough social status to acquire a frst wife (Hart & Pilling, 1960). Rarely does a Tiwi man under the age of 40 attain enough status to acquire more than one wife. Older age, resources, and status are coupled across cultures. In traditional societies, part of this linkage may be related to physical strength and hunting prowess. Physical strength increases in men as they get older, peaking in the late 20s and early 30s. In traditional hunter-gatherer societies such as the Tsimane Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazon and the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, hunting skill peaks even later—roughly the mid- to late 30s (Collings, 2009; Gurven, Kaplan, & Gutierrex, 2006). A study of a small-scale Amazonian society in Ecuador found that a man’s hunting ability was the strongest predictor of women’s judgments of a man’s attractiveness, closely followed by a man’s status and reputation as a good warrior (Escasa, Gray, & Patton, 2010). 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 benefcial to a woman and her children that can aid in their survival and their future mating opportunities. Preference for Ambition and Industriousness How do people get ahead in everyday life? Among all the tactics, sheer hard work proves to be one of the best predictors of past and anticipated income and promotions. Those who work hard achieve higher levels of education and status, higher annual salaries, and more promotions than their more laid-back peers. Industrious and ambitious men secure a higher occupational status than lazy, unmotivated men (Jencks, 1979; Kyl-Heku & Buss, 1996; Lund, Tamnes, Moestue, Buss, & Vollrath, 2007; Willerman, 1979). In the overwhelming majority of cultures, women value ambition and industriousness more than men do, typically rating them as between important and indispensable. In Taiwan, for example, women rate ambition and industriousness as 26 percent more important than men do, women 4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES 111 Figure 4.4 Age Diferences Preferred between Self and Spouse N = sample size. Source: Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204–232. Copyright © 1993 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission. Participants recorded their preferred age diference, if any, between self and potential spouse. The scale shown is in years, with positive values signifying preference for older spouses and negative values signifying preference for younger spouses. from Bulgaria rate it as 29 percent more important, and women from Brazil rate it as 30 percent more important. This cross-cultural and cross-historical evidence supports the key evolutionary psychological prediction that 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. Preference for Dependability and Stability Among the 18 characteristics rated in the worldwide study on mate selection, the second- and third-most-highly-valued characteristics are a dependable character and emotional stability or maturity. In 21 of 37 cultures, men and women had the same preference for dependability in a partner (Buss et al., 1990). Of the remaining 16 cultures, women in 15 valued dependability more than men. Averaged across all 37 cultures, women rated dependable character a 2.69, where a 3 signifes indispensable; men rate it nearly as important, with an average of 2.50. In the case of emotional stability or maturity, the sexes difer more. Women in 23 cultures value this quality signifcantly more than men do; in the remaining 14 cultures, men and women value emotional stability equally. Averaging across all cultures, women give this quality a 2.68, whereas men give it a 2.47. These characteristics may possess great value to women worldwide for two reasons. First, they are reliable signals that resources will be provided consistently over time. Second, men who lack dependability and emotional stability provide erratically and infict heavy emotional and other costs on their mates (Buss, 1991). They tend to be self-centered and monopolize shared resources. They are frequently possessive, monopolizing much of the time of their wives. They show higher-than-average sexual jealousy, becoming enraged when their wives merely talk with someone else. They tend to be dependent, insisting that their mates provide for all of their