Abstract
Men are hypothesized to show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness in potential mates than women are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for short-term relationships. By contrast, women are thought to show stronger preferences for social status in potential mates than men are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for long-term relationships. These mate-preference sex differences are often claimed to be ‘universal' (i.e. stable across cultures). Consequently, we used an established ‘budget-allocation' task to investigate Chinese and UK participants' preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates. Confirmatory analyses replicated these sex differences in both samples, consistent with the suggestion that they occur in diverse cultures. However, confirmatory analyses also showed that Chinese women had stronger preferences for social status than UK women did, suggesting cultural differences in the magnitude of mate-preference sex differences can also occur.
Highlights
Two key factors are thought to drive sex differences in human mate preferences [1,2,3]
Consistent with these hypotheses, studies have reported that women place greater emphasis on social status and men place greater emphasis on physical attractiveness when assessing potential long-term partners, while both men and women place great emphasis on physical attractiveness when assessing potential short-term partners
120 Chinese women, 142 Chinese men, 99 UK women and 113 UK men could be included in the final analyses of physical attractiveness
Summary
Two key factors are thought to drive sex differences in human mate preferences [1,2,3]. When assessing men’s attractiveness as short-term partners, resources are thought to be less important and women are hypothesized to prefer men displaying cues that they are in good physical condition and will father healthy children [4]. Women allocated significantly more mate dollars to social status than men did in both the US and Singaporean samples This sex difference in preference for social status was pronounced when participants were choosing for potential long-term partners. We will use Li et al.’s [6] budget-allocation task to compare the UK and Chinese participants’ preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in hypothetical short-term (casual sex) and long-term (marriage) partners. By contrast with Li et al [6], who reported these results for US and Singaporean participants, we will attempt to replicate their key results in the UK and Chinese participants
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