Abstract
Many evolutionary psychology studies have addressed the topic of mate preferences, focusing particularly on gender and cultural differences. However, the extent to which situational and environmental variables might affect mate preferences has been comparatively neglected. We tested 288 participants in order to investigate the perceived relative importance of six traits of an ideal partner (wealth, dominance, intelligence, height, kindness, attractiveness) under four different hypothetical scenarios (status quo/nowadays, violence/post-nuclear, poverty/resource exhaustion, prosperity/global well-being). An equal number of participants (36 women, 36 men) was allotted to each scenario; each was asked to allocate 120 points across the six traits according to their perceived value. Overall, intelligence was the trait to which participants assigned most importance, followed by kindness and attractiveness, and then by wealth, dominance and height. Men appraised attractiveness as more valuable than women. Scenario strongly influenced the relative importance attributed to traits, the main finding being that wealth and dominance were more valued in the poverty and post-nuclear scenarios, respectively, compared to the other scenarios. Scenario manipulation generally had similar effects in both sexes, but women appeared particularly prone to trade off other traits for dominance in the violence scenario, and men particularly prone to trade off other traits for wealth in the poverty scenario. Our results are in line with other correlational studies of situational variables and mate preferences, and represent strong evidence of a causal relationship of environmental factors on specific mate preferences, corroborating the notion of an evolved plasticity to current ecological conditions. A control experiment seems to suggest that our scenarios can be considered as realistic descriptions of the intended ecological conditions.
Highlights
Many evolutionary psychology studies have addressed the topic of mate preferences focusing mainly on gender and cultural factors (e.g., [1,2,3])
A possible account for such a discrepancy might be that our scenario manipulation could have masked the least robust sex differences, an explanation which is consistent with studies indicating that ecological factors such as culture and socioeconomic environment seem to play a greater role than sex in shaping mate preferences [2,34]
The present research is in line with correlational studies suggesting that situational variables shape mate preferences in a congruous manner [33,34]
Summary
Many evolutionary psychology studies have addressed the topic of mate preferences focusing mainly on gender and cultural factors (e.g., [1,2,3]). Women and men faced rather different selection pressures during human evolution, and they show noteworthy dissimilarities [5]. The possession of economic resources and related attributes (such as social status, ambition and industry) are characteristics of a prospective mate that are almost universally appreciated more by women than by men. Women tend to prefer mates who are older than they are. Overall, this suggests that women’s preferences have been shaped by selection to target men who are more able to provide resources [5]. Men from different cultures are attracted by women’s youth and physical attractiveness, likely because these qualities have been linked with women’s fertility during human evolution [5]
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