Women's Long-Term Mating Strategies PDF

4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES loving partner. A speed-dating study conducted in Germany examined actual mate choices made by women (Todd, Penke, Fasolo, & Lenton, 2007). Women high on self-perceived physical attractiveness actually chose men high on overall desirability, an aggregate score...

4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES loving partner. A speed-dating study conducted in Germany examined actual mate choices made by women (Todd, Penke, Fasolo, & Lenton, 2007). Women high on self-perceived physical attractiveness actually chose men high on overall desirability, an aggregate score that included wealth and status, family orientation, physical appearance, attractiveness, and healthiness. Attractive women apparently want it all. How Women’s Mate Preferences Afect Actual Mating Behavior For preferences to evolve, they must afect actual mating decisions because it is those decisions that have reproductive consequences. For a number of reasons, however, preferences should not show a perfect correspondence with actual mating behavior. People can’t always get what they want. First, highly desirable potential mates are always in short supply. Second, one’s own mate value limits access to those who are highly desirable. The most desirable women are in the best position to attract the most desirable men, and vice versa. Third, parents and other kin sometimes infuence one’s mating decisions, regardless of personal preferences. Despite these factors, women’s mate preferences must have afected their actual mating decisions some of the time over the course of human evolutionary history, or they would not have evolved. Several sources of evidence suggest that preferences do afect mating decisions. Women’s Responses to Men’s Personal Ads One source of evidence comes from women’s responses to personal ads posted by men in newspapers and online dating sites. If women’s preferences afected their mating decisions, then they would be predicted to respond more ofen to men who indicate that they are fnancially well of. Baize and Schroeder (1995) tested this prediction using a sample of 120 personal ads placed in two diferent newspapers, one from the West Coast and the other from the Midwest. Several variables signifcantly predicted the number of letters men received in response to their ads. First, age was a signifcant predictor, with women responding more often to older men than to younger men (r = +.43). Second, income and education were also signifcant predictors, with women responding more to men with ads indicating higher salaries (r = +.30) and more years of education (r = +.37). Baize and Schroeder ended their article on a humorous note by recalling the hypothetical question posed by Tim Hardin in his famous folk song about whether a woman he loved would marry him if he happened to be a carpenter and she were a “lady.” Given the research fndings, the most likely answer is: No. Parallel results have been found in Poland in a study of response rates to ads placed by 551 men (Pawlowski & Koziel, 2002). Men with higher levels of education, who were somewhat older and taller and had more resources all received a larger number of responses from women than did men who lacked these qualities. A study of more than 40,000 online daters in Australian found that women were much more likely than men to initiate contact with potential mates who had higher education levels than they did (Whyte & Torgler, 2017). Education happens to be a good predictor of income. Finally, an online longitudinal study found that mate preferences at Time 1 predicted actual mate choices at Time 2 5 months later (Gerlash et al., in press). Women who placed at especially high value on status and resources at Time 1, for example, were more likely than other women to actually mate with men who had a lot of status and resources at Time 2. Women’s psychological mate preferences, in short, predict actual mating behavior. 123 124 ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG Women’s Marriages to Men High in Occupational Status A study of 21,973 men from a U.S. data set gathered in the year 1910 found that the higher a man’s socioeconomic status, the greater the chances that he would actually marry (Pollet & Nettle, 2007). Poor men were far more likely to remain bachelors, unable to attract women, presumably because they failed to fulfll women’s desire for men with resources and status. Another study of the Kipsigis from Kenya, Africa, found that men who owned a lot of land were more likely to attract women as wives, and multiple wives if they were quite wealthy (Borgerhof Mulder, 1990). Kipsigis women and their parents act on their mate preferences for men with resources. In fact, many studies of polygynous societies reveal that the higher a man’s status and resource holdings, the more likely he is to have multiple wives (Perusse, 1993). What about women who are in a position to get what they want? In three separate studies, researchers discovered that physically attractive women in fact marry men who are higher in social status and fnancial holdings than do less attractive women (Elder, 1969; Taylor & Glenn, 1976; Udry & Eckland, 1984). In one study, the physical attractiveness of women was correlated with the occupational prestige of their husbands (Taylor & Glenn, 1976). For diferent groups, the correlations were all positive, ranging between +.23 and +.37. A longitudinal study was conducted at the Institute of Human Development in Berkeley, California (Elder, 1969). Physical attractiveness ratings were made by staf members of thenunmarried women when they were adolescents. This sample of women was then followed up in adulthood after they had married, and the occupational statuses of their husbands were assessed. The results were examined separately for working-class and middle-class women. The correlations between a woman’s attractiveness in adolescence and her husband’s occupational status roughly a decade later were +.46 for women with working-class backgrounds and +.35 for women of middle-class backgrounds. For the sample as a whole, a woman’s physical attractiveness correlated more strongly with her husband’s status (+.43) than did other women’s variables such as class of origin (+.27) or IQ (+.14). In sum, attractiveness in women appears to be an important path to upward mobility; women who are in a position to get what they want appear to select men who have the qualities that most women desire. Women’s Marriages to Men Who Are Older Another source of data on women’s actual mate choices comes from demographic statistics on the age diferences between brides and grooms at marriage. Recall that women express a desire for men who are somewhat older. Specifcally, in the international study of 37 cultures, on average women preferred men who were 3.42 years older (Buss, 1989a). Demographic data on actual age diferences were secured from 27 of these countries. From this sample, the actual age diference between brides and grooms was found to be 2.99 years. In every country, grooms were older on average than brides, ranging from a low of 2.17 years in Ireland to a high of 4.92 years in Greece. In short, women’s preferences for older husbands translate into actual marriages to older men (Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2018). Actual mating decisions of women accord well with their expressed preferences. Efects of Women’s Preferences on Men’s Behavior Another indication of the potency of women’s mate preferences comes from their efects on men’s behavior. The theory of sexual selection predicts that the mate preferences of one sex should establish domains of mate competition in the opposite sex. If women value resources, for example, men should compete with each other to acquire and display those resources in mate competition. Many studies document exactly that. In studies of tactics of attraction, men are more likely than women to display resources, talk about their professional successes, fash money, drive expensive cars, and brag about their accomplishments (Buss, 1988b; Schmitt & Buss, 1996). Men compete with other men via conspicuous consumption—purchasing luxury cars for example (Hennighausen, Hudders, Lange, & Fink, 2016). Moreover, men view other 4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES 125 men with these conspicuous signals as more likely to be mating rivals and potential mate poachers. When men derogate their competitors, they use tactics such as indicating that a rival is poor, lacks ambition, and is unlikely to succeed professionally (Buss & Dedden, 1990; Schmitt & Buss, 1996). Men experience the emotion of envy more than women in response to mating rivals who have higher status and greater fnancial resources (DelPriore, Hill, & Buss, 2012). In studies of deception tactics, men are more likely than women to infate their status, prestige, and income to potential mates (Haselton, Buss, Oubaid, & Angleitner, 2005). One study of 5,020 individuals using an online dating service discovered that men were more likely than women to misrepresent the magnitude of their personal assets, notably their income and education level (Hall, Park, Song, & Cody, 2010). A separate study of online dating profles examined deception about physical attributes by comparing the profle’s reported height and weight with the researcher’s actual measurement of these variables using a standard tape measure and weight scale (Toma, Hancock, & Ellison, 2008). It found that men lied more about their height. Taken together, this body of research suggests that men are aware of women’s preferences for resources and the qualities linked with their acquisition, as well as their preferences for tall men, and take actions in an efort to embody (or appear to embody) what women want. Roney (2003) hypothesized that mere exposure to attractive women would activate cognitive adaptations in men designed to embody the qualities that women want in a mate. Specifcally, he predicted that exposure to young attractive women would (1) increase the importance men place on their own fnancial success, (2) experience feeling more ambitious, and (3) produce self-descriptions that correspond to what women want. Using a cover story to disguise the purpose of the study, Roney had one group of men rate the efectiveness of advertisements containing young, attractive models and another group of men rate the efectiveness of ads containing older, less-attractive models. Following this exposure, the men responded to the key measures to test his hypotheses. When asked “With respect to your job/career you would like to have, how important are the following to you?” The rating scale ranged from 1 (not important) to 7 (very important). Men exposed to young, attractive women rated “having a large income” to be 5.09, whereas men exposed to older, less attractive models rated it only 3.27—an astonishingly large efect. Similar diferences occurred in rating the importance of “being fnancially successful.” A full 60 percent of the men exposed to young, attractive models described themselves as “ambitious,” compared to 9 percent of the men exposed to older, less-attractive models. Another study found that merely having a young woman in the same room caused men to increase the importance Mere exposure to an attractive woman activates a cascade of psychological processes in men, such that they place greater value on the qualities that women want (resources, ambition) and describe themselves as possessing those qualities (see text for a description of the studies). ChALLENGES OF SEx AND MATiNG 126 they attach to having material wealth (Roney, 2003). Similar efects have been found by others. Men “primed” with attractive images of women display more creativity, independence, and nonconformity, causing them to stand out from other men (Griskevicius, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006; Griskevicius, Goldstein, Mortensen, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006). Chinese men also increase risk taking when being observed by women (Shan et al., 2012). In short, when mating motives are “primed” by exposure to young, attractive women, a cascade of psychological shifts occurs in men such that they value and display precisely what women want and hence what men need to succeed in mate competition. Summary We now have the outlines of an answer to the mystery of women’s long-term mate preferences. Modern women have inherited from their successful ancestors wisdom about the men they consent to mate with. Ancestral women who mated indiscriminately were likely to have been less reproductively successful than those who exercised choice. Long-term mates bring with them a treasure trove of assets. Selecting a long-term mate who has the relevant assets is clearly an extraordinarily complex endeavor. It involves a number of distinctive preferences, each corresponding to a resource that helps women solve critical adaptive problems. That women seek resources in a marriage partner might seem obvious, but prior to the crosscultural research by evolutionary psychologists, scientists did not realize that this was a universal evolved mate preference. Because resources cannot always be directly discerned, women’s mating preferences are keyed to other qualities that signal the likely possession or future acquisition of resources. Indeed, women may be less infuenced by money per se than by qualities that lead to resources, such as ambition, intelligence, social status, and older age. Women scrutinize these personal qualities carefully because they reveal a man’s potential. Potential, however, is not enough. Because many men with a rich resource potential are themselves highly discriminating and are at times content with casual sex, women are faced with the problem of commitment. Seeking love is one solution to the commitment problem. Acts of love signal that a man has in fact committed to a particular woman. To have the love and commitment of a man who could be easily downed by other men in the physical arena, however, would have been a problematic liability for ancestral women. Women who mated with small, weak men lacking physical formidability, athletic prowess, and courage would have risked damage from other men and loss of the couple’s joint resources. Tall, strong, athletic men ofered ancestral women protection. In this way, their personal well-being and their children’s well-being could be secured against incursion. Modern women are the descendants of successful women who selected men in part for their strength and prowess. Finally, resources, commitment, and protection do a woman little good if her husband becomes diseased or dies or if the couple is so mismatched that the partners fail to function as an efective team. The premium that women place on a man’s health ensures that husbands will be capable of providing these benefts over the long haul. Masculine features may provide valuable information about a man’s health, although masculine qualities also convey physical formidability. And the premium that women place on similarity of interests and traits with their mate helps to ensure fdelity and stability. These multiple facets of current women’s mating preferences correspond well to adaptive problems faced by our female ancestors thousands of years ago. Women’s preferences are not rigid or invariant but rather change in important and adaptive ways across several contexts: their personal access to resources, temporal context, personal mate value, and presence of attractive women who seem interested in a man. Preferences also shift as a function of sexual orientation (see Box 4.1). According to the sex role and structural powerlessness hypothesis, women who have a lot of personal access to resources are predicted not to value resources in a mate as much as women lacking resources. This hypothesis receives no support 4 WOMEN’S LONG-TERM MATiNG STRATEGiES from the existing empirical data, however. Indeed, women with high incomes value a potential mate’s income and education more, not less, than women with lower incomes. Women also show sensitivity to the contexts of long-term versus short-term mating. Specifcally, in long-term mating contexts, women especially value qualities that signal that the man will be a good provider and a good father. These qualities are considerably less important in women’s desires in a short-term mate. In a phenomenon known as mate copying, women are more likely to fnd men desirable if they are with other women, and particularly if other women are physically attractive and seem interested in them. Women who are higher in attractiveness raise their mating standards and seek men who are relatively more masculine, symmetrical, high in status, attractive, healthy, and physically ft. 4.1 What About Non-Heterosexual Sexual Orientations? The evolutionary theories advanced in this chapter do a reasonably good job of explaining some of the key mating strategies of heterosexual women but thus far cannot explain the origins or the mating strategies of women who are not heterosexual. Although there have been several theories that have attempted to explain male homosexual orientation (see Chapter 5), relatively little efort has been made to explain the puzzle of primary or exclusive lesbian orientation, which occurs in 1 to 2 percent of women, and bisexual orientation, which occurs in 2 to 3 percent of women (Apostolou, 2016; Bailey, Kim, Hills, & Linsenmeier, 1997). Larger numbers exist for women who have ever experienced sexual attraction to other women—14 to 30 percent, depending on the study. One interesting exception to the relative lack of attention is a recent hypothesis that has been tested in an Italian sample that compared 487 women with a lesbian sexual orientation, 183 bisexual women, 808 heterosexual women, and 32,203 of their genetic relatives (Ciani, Battaglia, Cesare, Ciani, & Capiluppi, 2018). The researchers found evidence for some genetic infuence on sexual orientation, as have other studies. They also found that the direct reproductive success of non-heterosexual women was four times lower than that of heterosexual women. But interestingly, the genetic relatives of lesbian and bisexual women had higher reproductive success than the families of heterosexual women. The authors conclude that, if these efects are replicated, they could provide a partial evolutionary answer to the puzzle of why non-heterosexual sexual orientations such as lesbian and bisexual are adaptive and can be maintained in the population over time. The cost in direct reproduction is ofset by the increased reproduction of genetic relatives. As many theorists have pointed out, homosexuality and non-heterosexuality are not singular phenomena. Most theorists distinguish among diferent facets such as gender identity (do you identify as male, female, both, neither), sexual attraction (e.g., who you fantasize about or desire to have sex with), and sexual behavior (who you actually do have sex with). Although these facets ofen go together, they need not. For example, a person could self-identify as a woman, be attracted to both women and men (bisexual attraction), and yet only engage in sex with one gender. All diferent combinations and permutations are possible. Lesbianism and male homosexuality also appear to be quite diferent: Male sexual orientation tends to appear early in development, whereas female sexuality appears to be more fexible or fuid over the lifespan (Baumeister, 2000). Future theories should attend to the large individual diferences within those currently classifed as lesbian and gay. For example, mate preferences vary across lesbians who describe themselves as “butch” as opposed to “femme” (Bailey et al., 1997; Bassett, Pearcey, & Dabbs, 2001). Butch lesbians tend to be more masculine, dominant, and assertive, whereas femme lesbians tend to be more sensitive, cheerful, and feminine. The diferences are more than merely psychological; butch lesbians, compared to their femme peers, have higher levels of circulating testosterone, more masculine waist-to-hip ratios, more permissive attitudes toward casual sex, and less desire to have children (Singh, Vidaurri, Zambarano, & Dabbs, 1999). Femme lesbians place greater importance than butch lesbians on fnancial resources in a potential romantic partner and experience sexual jealousy over rivals who are more physically attractive. Butch lesbians place less value on fnancial resources when seeking partners but experience greater jealousy over rival competitors who are more fnancially successful. The psychological, morphological, and hormonal correlates imply that butch and femme are not merely arbitrary labels but rather refect genuine individual diferences. The mate preferences of lesbian women are similar to those of heterosexual women in valuing kindness, dependability, and emotional stability in a long-term mate. They difer, however, in their tolerance for age diferences. Compared to heterosexual women, lesbian women are more fexible in tolerating a larger age gap, both at the younger and older ends of the spectrum (Conway, Noe, Stulp, & Pollet, 2015). Another diference centers on preferred height of a partner. Whereas heterosexual women prefer partners to be tall, lesbian and bisexual women prefer their female partners to be roughly the same height as themselves (Valentova, Bártová, Štěrbová, & Varella, 2016). 127