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There has been a recent surge of research on the role of intelligence in mate preferences. To advance this area of research, in two online studies (N = 743), we manipulated relative, as opposed to absolute, intelligence and examined desirability in long-term and short-term relationships. In Study 1, we also examined the role of mate value towards understanding differences in desirability and, in Study 2, we also manipulated target's level of physical attractiveness. The sexes found less intelligent partners less desirable, a more intelligent partner was no more desirable than partner who was equal in intelligence, and intelligence was particularly valued as a long-term mate. In addition, mate value was correlated with rejecting less intelligent mates and desiring more intelligent ones in women only. And, last, we found that once men and women found sufficient rates of attractiveness for their short-term partners, they care about the intelligence of their partner.

The emergence of the popular culture notion of a sapiosexual, an individual who finds high levels of intelligence (IQ) the most sexually attractive characteristic in a person, suggests that a high IQ may be a genuinely sexually attractive trait, at least for some people. Consequently, mean desirability ratings of IQ on a percentile continuum were estimated, across sexual attraction specifically and long-term partner interest conditions (N = 383). Furthermore, we evaluated the psychometric properties of a newly developed measure, the Sapiosexuality Questionnaire (SapioQ). Finally, we estimated the correlation between objective intelligence and the SapioQ. On average, the 90th percentile of intelligence (IQ ≈ 120) was rated to be the most sexually attractive and the most desirable in a long-term partner. However, 8.1% and 1.3% of the sample scored above 4.0 and 4.5, respectively, on the SapioQ (theoretical range: 1 to 5), which had respectable psychometric properties. The desirability ratings across the IQ percentile continuum interacted with the two conditions (i.e., sexual attraction specifically versus partner interest), such that the rater desirability of IQ increased more substantially for partner interest than sexual attraction specifically across the 25th to 75th IQ percentiles. Finally, objective intelligence correlated negatively with rated sexual attraction specifically and partner interest for a hypothetical person at 25th and 50th percentiles of IQ (r ≈ − 0.25). By contrast, objective intelligence failed to correlate with sapiosexuality (r = − 0.02, p = 0.765; BF01 = 12.84). The results were interpreted to suggest that, for most people, a very high IQ in a partner (IQ 135 +) is not the most attractive level of intelligence, which may be considered supportive of a version of the threshold hypothesis of intelligence. Finally, although sapiosexuality may be a genuine psychological construct, it appears to be influenced by non-intellective factors.

Prevalence studies indicate that about one in five women experience some degree of same-sex attraction. The evolutionary origins of such attraction are not well understood. Accordingly, this paper proposed a theoretical framework where, during the period of human evolution, same-sex attractions in women were under positive selection. The source of positive selection has been male preferences for opposite-sex sex partners who experienced same-sex attractions. This theoretical framework was used to generate four predictions that were tested in two online studies which employed a total of 1509 heterosexual participants. It was found that heterosexual women did not desire partners who experienced same-sex attractions, but a considerable proportion of heterosexual men desired partners who experienced same-sex attractions. In addition, it was found that men were more sexually excited than women by the same-sex infidelity of their partners, and they desired more than women, their opposite-sex partners to have sex with same-sex individuals. Finally, participants' preferences were contingent on the seriousness of the relationships, with same-sex attraction to be preferred more in short-term than in a long-term partner. These findings were employed in understanding the evolutionary origins of same-sex attraction in women.

People do not always look for mates, and frequently choose to stay single, at least for some time. This study puts forward an evolutionary framework in which people prefer to stay single because doing so either increases their future mating success or because they have traits which prevent them from being able to attract a mate. The study aims further to identify the specific reasons that drive people to stay single, to classify them in broader reason categories and to investigate their contingencies. Accordingly, by using a combination of qualitative research methods, Study 1 finds 76 different reasons. By using a sample of 1096 participants, Study 2 applied first order principal components analysis and classified these reasons to 16 reason factors. By using second order principal components analysis, it classified these 16 reason factors to three reason domains. Finally, it was found that sex, age and personality significantly predict the reasons that drive individuals to stay single.

Personality features are associated with several relationship outcomes. We examined whether specific personality features differed in their associations with ''mate retention'' strategies. We examined the unique associations that personality features had with mate retention strategies reported by 179 community members in romantic relationships for at least 6 months. Personality features were associated with each of the mate retention strategies such that positive personality features (e.g., high levels of honesty-humility) were associated with less reliance on mate retention strategies that involved manipulating, deceiving, or exploiting romantic partners. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding the connection between personality features and behaviors intended to preserve and maintain romantic relationships.

Previous research indicates that men may have evolved psychological mechanisms that motivate behaviors designed to retain a long-term partner. Some of these behaviors function by inflicting (or threatening to inflict) costs on a partner who might be tempted to be unfaithful or to terminate the relationship, whereas others function by bestowing benefits on a partner to encourage her fidelity and commitment. Previous research indicates that men of higher mate value are more likely than men of lower mate value to engage in benefit-provisioning mate retention behaviors, whereas lower mate value men are more likely than higher mate value men to engage in cost-inflicting mate retention behaviors. Existing evidence, however, rests on women’s self-reports of their own and their partner’s mate value as well as their partner’s mate retention behaviors. The current study investigates the extent to which the relationships between mate value and mate retention exist when men report on their own and their partner’s mate value and their own retention behaviors. Results suggest that men’s reports are sensitive to the relationship between women’s mate value and men’s mate retention, but not men’s mate value and men’s mate retention.

We tested the hypothesis that men are particularly sensitive to individual differences in the attractiveness of women of the same mate value as themselves and less sensitive to variation among women of lower or higher mate value. We first assessed sensitivity to variation in women's attractiveness by asking men ( n =148) to choose the more attractive of two photographs of the same target woman ( n =116), photographed once at ovulation, when estrogen—a hormone that has been found to increase women's attractiveness—is known to be high, and once during a nonfertile phase of the cycle. Across all women, men did not rate the picture of the ovulating woman as more attractive ( p >.10), but they did rate this picture as more attractive for women of similar mate value to themselves. When we increased the implicit costs of mate pursuit by presenting a photograph of a boyfriend before presenting the woman's photographs, men showed higher sensitivity to variation in the attractiveness of women of equal and lower mate value, and less sensitivity or preference for the nonovulating photograph for women of higher mate value. Furthermore, experimentally increasing men's self-perceived mate value by providing false "datability" feedback shifted their sensitivity to variation in the attractiveness of women of higher mate value than the men's baseline. The results suggest that men's mate searching is calibrated to the relative mate value of themselves and prospective mates and varies dynamically with the cost–benefit tradeoffs of pursuing such a relationship.

Women's mate selection criteria can be expected to include a preference for men who can protect them and their offspring. However, aggressive dominance and physical formidability are not an unalloyed good in a partner; as such, men are likely to be coercive toward their mates. Accordingly, because of the potential costs of living with an aggressively dominant and physically formidable mate, a woman's preferences in this regard can be expected to vary as a function of the appraisal of her vulnerability to aggression — the more that a woman sees herself as potentially benefiting from protection, the more that she can be expected to favor aggressive dominance and physical formidability in a mate. Across three Internet-based studies of US women, we found evidence consistent with this perspective, such that women's fear of crime predicted her preference for long-term mates who are aggressively dominant and physically formidable.

The function of mate retention tactics is to prevent a long-term partner from defecting from the relationship and to ward off potential mate poachers. These tactics include Concealment of Mate, Appearance Enhancement, and Violence against Rivals. The current research is the first to investigate the performance of husband’s and wife’s mate retention tactics over time. We assessed 49 husbands and 65 wives on their performance of 19 mate retention tactics once as newlyweds and again four years into the marriage. With this unique dataset, we investigated (1) the cross-time stability of husbands’ and wives’ performance reports of mate retention tactics and (2) sex differences in performance reports of mate retention tactics over time. The results indicated that (1) husbands’ and wives’ performance reports of mate retention tactics as newlyweds correlate positively with their performance reports of mate retention tactics three years later, (2) husbands’ and wives’ performance reports of mate retention tactics decreases after three years of marriage, and (3) sex differences in performance reports of mate retention tactics persist over time. Discussion offers speculations on the stability and change found in mate retention performance, suggests potential correlates of mate retention performance, and addresses limitations of this research.

Are women more interested in men who are already in a relationship? Female and male participants who were single or in a relationship viewed information about an opposite-sex other and indicated their interest in pursuing this target. Half of the participants were told that the target was single and half read that the target was currently in a relationship. The results showed that only single women were more interested in pursuing an attached target rather than a single target. We discuss how these results add to what is already known about mate poaching.

Evolutionary theorists suggest that men engage in risk-taking more than women do in part because, throughout human evolutionary history, men have faced greater sexual selection pressures. We build on this idea by testing the hypothesis that risk-taking reflects a male mating strategy that is sensitive to characteristics of a potential mate. Consistent with this hypothesis, the current experiment demonstrated a positive relationship between mating motivation and risk-taking, but only in men who had been exposed to images of highly attractive females. Moreover, risk-taking in men was associated with enhanced memory for attractive female faces, indicating enhanced processing of their attractive facial characteristics. No relationship between mating motivation and risk-taking was observed in men exposed to images of unattractive women, nor was any such relationship observed in women. This experiment provides evidence that psychological states associated with mating may promote risk-taking, and that these effects are sex specific and are sensitive to situational context.

A large body of research has examined sex differences in mate preferences, but very little of such work has been conducted in small-scale societies. Study 1 explored women's and men's mate preferences within a modern hunter-horticulturalist population in Amazonian Ecuador. In contrast to patterns documented in much of the existing literature, women and men from three Shuar villages were nearly identical in their stated preferences for physical attractiveness and resource-related traits, and physical attractiveness was ranked at the bottom among 19 traits. Study 2 examined the relationship between unmarried Shuar participants' assessments of the personal characteristics of known peers and their assessments of those peers as desirable long-term partners. When assessed using this method, physical attractiveness appeared to weigh much more heavily into Shuar evaluations of partner desirability, and a sex difference emerged in the preference for resource-related traits. Overall, there were substantial differences between individuals' stated preferences and their preferences as revealed in peer ratings. Across both measurement techniques, however, Shuar women and men were very similar in their preferences for physical attractiveness. These results raise questions about the universality of sex differences in mate preferences documented in the existing literature.

It has been shown that height is one of the morphological traits that influence a person's attractiveness. To date, few studies have addressed the relationship between different components of height and physical attractiveness. Here, we study how leg length influences attractiveness in men and women. Stimuli consisted of seven different pictures of a man and seven pictures of a woman in which the ratio between leg length and height was varied from the average phenotype by elongating and shortening the legs. One hundred men and 118 women were asked to assess the attractiveness of the silhouettes using a seven-point scale. We found that male and female pictures with shorter than average legs were perceived as less attractive by both sexes. Although longer legs appeared to be more attractive, this was true only for the slight (5%) leg length increase; excessively long legs decreased body attractiveness for both sexes. Because leg length conveys biological quality, we hypothesize that such preferences reflect the workings of evolved mate-selection mechanisms. Short and/or excessively long legs might indicate maladaptive biological conditions such as genetic diseases, health problems, or weak immune responses to adverse environmental factors acting during childhood and adolescence.

In contemporary Western populations, some physical characteristics are sexually dimorphic, and it is known that these traits also affect human mate preferences. Height is one such characteristic, and evidence suggests that females prefer taller over shorter males, indeed, taller males have been found to have greater reproductive success. However, relative height is also important with 'Sexual Dimorphism in Stature' (SDS) calculated as male height/female height. Pawlowski (2003) showed that people adjust their preferences for SDS in relation to their own height in order to increase their potential pool of partners. The aim of the present study was to replicate Pawlowski's study on a larger sample of participants, and to investigate the universality of the reported preference adjustment within European societies. We present data of 1102 men and women from three countries (Germany, Austria, and the UK) that confirm Pawlowski's original data on a Polish sample. Moreover, the mechanism of an adjustment of SDS preferences in relation to own height was found in all three countries, suggesting that height dependent partner preference is a genuine feature in Western societies.

Recent theoretical perspectives concerning the structure of variation in human mating have focused less on conceptualizations of alternate mating strategies and more on the evolution of a conditional strategy. Empirical evidence suggests that this conditional strategy may involve the simultaneous pursuit of long-term and short-term mating tactics. Despite these developments, empirical measurement has proceeded using the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI), which measures restricted and unrestricted mating orientations along a single bipolar continuum. To fully capture the pluralistic nature of human mating, we suggest that a multidimensional empirical measure is required. To test our hypothesis, we subjected an expanded version of the SOI, which included items measuring psychological orientation toward short-term mating and long-term mating, to principal components analysis. A three-factor structure representing short-term mating orientation, long-term mating orientation, and previous sexual behavior emerged. In subsequent analyses, we demonstrate that our newly developed long-term and short-term dimensions (a) are largely independent and (b) correlate differentially with other theoretically relevant variables.

Previous research has shown that males value a potential partner’s physical attractiveness more than females do, whereas females value a potential partner’s socioeconomic status (SES) more than males do. But are men really so unconcerned about a potential partner’s SES? Five studies revealed that men do integrate information about a woman’s SES into their decisions on whether to consider her as a romantic partner or not. Results consistently demonstrated that male participants preferred women with lower SES. Female participants, in contrast, preferred men with higher SES. These sex differences were more pronounced when a long-term romantic relationship rather than a one-night stand was being considered. In addition, men’s lower reported likelihood of romantic contact with a woman with high SES was due to her high educational level rather than her high income. Mediational analyses showed that men perceived a potential partner with high educational level as less likeable and less faithful, and thus reported less likelihood of romantic contact.

This study examined whether sensation seekers differ in the quantity and quality of information they seek about potential romantic partners. Young adults (N = 393) each evaluated nine written descriptions of potential partners. Partners were described with only attractive characteristics, with only risky characteristics, or with attractive and risky characteristics. Individuals higher in sensation seeking rated the potential partners as more attractive and gave higher likelihood ratings of going on a date and having sex, but lower likelihood ratings of becoming infected with an STD/HIV. Further, after exposure to the written partner descriptions, sensation seekers sought more additional information about the potential partners compared to lower sensation seekers, but were no more likely to specifically request information about partners’ risky characteristics.

Because ancestral women faced trade-offs in choosing mates, they may have evolved to pursue a dual-mating strategy in which they secured investment through one partner and obtained good genes through others. The dual-mating theory predicts that women will display greater interest in extra-pair sex near ovulation, especially if they are mated to a primary male partner who is low in sexual attractiveness. Forty-three normally ovulating women rated their partner’s sexual attractiveness and separately reported their own desires and their partner’s mate retention behaviors at high and low fertility (confirmed using luteinizing hormone tests). In the high-fertility session relative to the low, women who assessed their partners as being lower in sexual attractiveness reported greater extra-pair desires and more expressed love and attention from their male partners. Women’s desire for their own partners did not differ significantly between high and low-fertility sessions.

To investigate the choices that people make in dating partners, we analyzed data provided by HurryDate, a commercial dating service aimed at adult singles living in major metropolitan areas. Here, we report data from 10,526 participants in HurryDate sessions, in which roughly 25 men and 25 women interacted with each other for three minutes and subsequently indicated which of the people they met they would be interested in having contact with in the future. We had general survey information collected by HurryDate for all the participants and additional survey information for 2,650 participants. Our main findings are that (1) HurryDate interactions are driven primarily by generally agreed-upon mate values and less by niche-based or assortative patterns, (2) the agreed-upon mate values for both men and women derive almost exclusively from physically observable attributes like attractiveness, BMI, height, and age and are not substantially related to harder-to-observe attributes such as education, religion, sociosexuality, having children, or desiring future children, and (3) small positive assortative trends arise in the areas of race and height. Our results provide rare behavioral evidence regarding people’s preferences in dating partners.

Several hypotheses about attitudes toward risk takers, derived from costly signaling theory (CST), were tested. Male and female participants evaluated the attractiveness of risk takers compared with risk avoiders as potential mates, and as potential same-sex friends, in 21 different scenarios. Both females and males preferred heroic physical risk takers as mates, with the preference being stronger for females. Contrary to predictions, for nonheroic physical risks (such as risky sports), both males and females preferred risk avoiders over risk takers as mates. However, for same-sex friends, males significantly preferred nonheroic physical risk takers, whereas females preferred risk avoiders. It was concluded that insofar as nonheroic risk taking by males is a costly signal, the signal is directed more toward fellow males than toward females. Preferences for risk takers were positively correlated with reported self risk-taking tendencies, but the correlation was significantly higher for friends than for mates for both heroic and nonheroic physical risks. In a second study, both males and females accurately predicted the opposite sex's preferences for heroic risk takers as mates. However, males failed to predict females' preferences for nonheroic physical risk avoiders. Both males and females underestimated the opposite sex's preferences for drug risk avoiders.

Females apparently are the choosier sex in courtship contexts, but there still is limited information about female selection criteria in real courtship settings. Given that a female knows little about a heretofore unacquainted male, upon what dimensions can (and do) females base their initial courtship decisions? Here, we report findings from observational studies that investigated male nonverbal behavior in a bar context. Study 1 documented the body movements of males prior to making contact with a female. It was found that males who successfully made "contact" courtship initiation with females exhibited different body language in this precontact phase than did males who did not make contact with females, including significantly more glancing behaviors, space-maximization movements, intrasexual touching, and less closed-body movements. The findings from a second within-subject study comparing the behavior of men in a bar when women were present or not present supported the initial study's findings and showed that males' emphasis on these behaviors increases in a mate-relevant context. We suggest that certain aspects of male nonverbal behavior in courtship contexts can serve as self-presentation and mate-value signals.

The present study argues that pressures associated with the threat of paternal uncertainty shaped a male mate-preference for relatively subordinate partners in the context of long- (high investment) but not short-term (low investment) relationships. Using a hypothetical scenario depicting a workplace setting, 120 male and 208 female undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions in which they were asked to judge a male or female target, described as either their supervisor (higher dominance), coworker (equal dominance), or their assistant (lower dominance). Participants exposed to an opposite-sex target rated their attraction to the target for varying types of investment (e.g., desire for a one-night stand, desire to affiliate, or desire for a long-term relationship), and participants exposed to a same-sex target rated their desire to affiliate with the target. Results supported predictions and indicated that males preferred the subordinate over the dominant target for affiliation and high-investment items, and females were unaffected by the target's dominance status. The results of same-sex ratings indicated that dominance status did not influence females' ratings of the female target, and that dominance did not influence males' ratings of the male target. These results are discussed in terms of the role of relational dominance in shaping male mate-preferences.

Although it is well established that the children of divorce are disproportionately likely to end their own marriages, relatively little is known about their marriage formation behavior. This paper uses data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the effects of parental family structure on spouse selection and marriage duration. People from divorced families often marry other children of divorce. This phenomenon, which I call family structure homogamy, persists across a variety of sociodemographic boundaries. In addition, I replicate earlier research by demonstrating that marriages between two children of divorce are especially likely to fail. These findings shed new light on the intergenerational transmission of divorce by showing that people from divorced families often marry under conditions that bode poorly for marital stability.

Research has shown that human partners are more similar than expected by chance on a variety of traits. Studies examining hair and eye colour show some evidence of positive assortment. Positive assortment may reflect attraction to self-similar characteristics but is also consistent with attraction to parental traits. Here, we examine self-reported partner hair and eye colour and the influence that own and parental colour characteristics have on these variables. Parental characteristics were found to correlate positively with actual partner characteristics for both men and women. Regression analysis predicting partner characteristics from maternal and paternal traits (which controls for own traits) revealed the greater importance of the opposite-sex parent over the same-sex parent in predicting both hair and eye colour of actual partners. The findings may reflect an influence of parental colour characteristics on human partner choice. Attraction to opposite-sex parental characteristics is seen in a wide variety of animals where it is usually attributed to imprinting processes in infancy. Although the mechanism is unclear and not necessarily confined to infancy, the data reported here are consistent with a somewhat analogous process to imprinting occurring in humans. D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

A survey study examining the relative importance of various social and physical traits in heterosexual attraction was conducted. Data from 198 male and female heterosexual college students revealed that women ranked body odor as more important for attraction than "looks" or any social factor except "pleasantness." Moreover, in contrast to response to fragrance use, liking someone's natural body odor was the most influential olfactory variable for sexual interest for both men and women. Men rated a woman's good looks as most desirable and as more important than any other factor except pleasantness. Sex differences in the relative ranking of several social factors were consistent with prior research.

Past research finds evidence that college women prefer a romantic partner who is dominant more than one who is not dominant. However, this research failed to include a control condition in which neither dominant nor nondominant behaviors are described. Study 1 and Study 2 included such a control condition and found that describing men as either dominant or nondominant decreased the desirability of hypothetical dating and romantic partners for undergraduate women. When asked to describe their ideal partner in Study 3, very few women identified dominant as a desirable trait. However, several traits associated with dominance, such as assertiveness and confidence, were selected. The findings suggest that a simple dominant–nondominant dimension may not be very useful when predicting women's mate preferences.

Buss (1988a), using an evolutionary perspective, tested hypotheses about intrasexual competition within the context of behavior to attract mates. He found sex differences in intrasexual competition predicted by the goal of mate attraction. We used Buss's methodology while asking subjects about the acts they performed to compete with members of the same sex, rather than about acts for attracting potential mates. Competitive acts were nominated and placed into 26 tactics in Study 1. Study 2 obtained self-reports of male and female act performance frequency. Study 3 replicated Study 2 using observer-reports. Study 4 obtained act effectiveness judgments for men and women. We largely replicated Buss's results despite the focus on intrasexual competition instead of mate attraction. Thus, we provide strong evidence for the importance of mate attraction in intrasexual competition.

It is proposed here that mate-attraction strategies among females and among males vary facultatively with expectations about paternal investment. The following four hypotheses are argued and tested: 1. Females who expect to find investing mates will be more likely than other females to emphasize their need for investment by suppressing their resources and appearance of competence. 2. Females who expect to find investing mates will try to attract them by acting chaste and emphasizing their fidelity, while females who expect non-investing mates will flaunt their sexuality in order to get pre-reproductive investment from as many males as possible. 3. Males who think it is appropriate to invest heavily in offspring will be more likely than other males to attract mates by emphasizing their ability and willingness to invest. 4. Investing males will be more likely than non-investing males to emphasize chastity and fidelity, whereas non-investing males will flaunt their sexuality and sexual attractiveness to females. These hypotheses were evaluated among undergraduates by administering questionnaires measuring (a) attitudes toward paternal investment and (b) reported tactics used to attract mates. Hypotheses 2–4 were supported by the data, while hypothesis 1 received only partial support. The mixed results for hypothesis 1 indicate that self-deprecating acts and deferential acts may be signaling different things.

The act frequency approach (Buss 1988) was used to develop a taxonomy of deceptive mating acts and tactics and to investigate hypothesized sex differences in the use of these acts and tactics. The results indicate that males show differences in the types of deceptive acts and tactics used in intersexual versus intrasexual contexts. Intrasexually, males more frequently engage in deceptive acts and tactics related to the exaggeration of superiority and exaggeration of sexual promiscuity, intensity, and popularity. More frequent deceptive intersexual acts and tactics for males include feigned commitment, feigned sincerity, and feigned resource acquisition ability. Females more frequently engage in deceptive acts and tactics related to appearance alteration in both intersexual and intrasexual contexts. It was also found that males use deceptive intrasexual acts and tactics more frequently than females. These findings suggest that the dimensions of deception characteristic of male reproductive strategies are congruent with female mate selection criteria and the dimensions of deception characteristic of female reproductive strategies are congruent with male mate selection criteria. Results are interpreted in terms of current evolutionary psychological approaches to the understanding of sex differences in human mating strategies and the role of deception in intepersonal interaction.

Behavioral observation, economic, and genealogical data collected in a rural Trinidadian village indicate: (1) males courting the same females have higher rates of agonistic interactions (e.g., arguing, fighting) with each other than they do with other males; (2) females courting the same males do not have higher rates of agonistic interactions with each other than they do with other females; (3) exclusive (monogamous) mating relationships have lower rates of agonistic interactions than nonexclusive (polygamous) mating relationships; (4) coresident mates interact more frequently when the female is fecund; (5) coresident mates have higher rates of agonistic interactions when the female is fecund; (6) males with fecund mates have higher rates of agonistic interactions with other unrelated males than do males with infecund mates; (7) fecund females do not have higher rates of agonistic interactions with other females than do infecund females; and (8) females do not guard prosperous males (those from households with 6 or more acres of land) more intensely than poorer males. These results suggest that mate guarding is an important aspect of reproductive competition, and that there are significant male/female differences in mate guarding strategies in this human population.

Open-ended questions were used to investigate mate selection criteria among male and female medical students ( n = 40). Striking sex differences emerged in this sample's preferences concerning spouses' relative earning power and occupational status, partners' physical attractiveness, and the marital division of labor. The results supported the hypotheses: Increasing socioeconomic status (SES) of women does not eliminate and may not even reduce traditional sex differences in mate selection criteria and marital goals. Increasing the SES of women tends to increase their socioeconomic standards for mates, thereby reducing their pool of acceptable partners; increasing men's SES tends to enlarge their pool of available acceptable partners. Based on these interviews and pertinent literature, closed-ended questions were developed and administered to female ( n = 212) and male ( n = 170) undergraduates. Highly significant sex differences emerged in this sample; these sex differences mirrored those found among the medical students. The methodological implications of these results are discussed.