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Previous research has explored the role of prosociality in mate choice, predominantly focusing on the role of altruism. Although there is ample evidence to suggest altruism has evolved via mate choice, little research has unpacked prosociality by exploring the role of heroism in mate choice. Limited studies have been conducted in this area, and no studies have explored men’s desirability towards heroic targets. The aim of this study was to replicate and extend the limited research on the role of heroism in mate choice. Participants (n=276, 101 men and 175 women) rated several scenarios varying in heroism, whereby they were asked to rate how desirable targets were for a short-term and long-term relationship. The findings show that both men and women found heroic targets to be more desirable than targets low in heroism, although the main effect of sex was stronger for women than men. Furthermore, high heroic targets were rated as more desirable for long-term compared to short-term relationships, thus replicating and extending previous research. The findings add support to the adaptive role of heroism in human mate choice by exploring the role of heroism in both male and female mate choice. Data, materials, and the preregistered hypotheses/protocol are available on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/qbzw7/?view_only=e66411df988844cfa39e63c51ed33131).

We investigated whether positive partner illusions (i.e., perceiving a romantic partner more positively then she/he actually is) and their beneficial interpersonal consequences already occur in initial romantic encounters. In a real-life speed-dating context, 398 heterosexual singles (aged: 18-28) indicated their perceptions of their dating partners directly after each speed-date. We obtained 2 kinds of reality benchmarks to compare these partner perceptions against: dating partners’ self-perceptions and consensus ratings about the dating partners. With 3 follow-ups in the 6 weeks following the speed-dating, we assessed interpersonal consequences between daters. Response surface analyses revealed no evidence of positive illusions or of beneficial interpersonal consequences of positive illusions in initial romantic encounters. These findings (a) suggest that positive illusions start to emerge at later stages of romantic acquaintance and (b) inform research on the psychological processes underlying positive illusions. We furthermore provide methodological recommendations for future longitudinal research investigating the time of onset of positive illusions and the formation of romantic relationships in general.

We provide a first systematic investigation of the most prominent hypotheses about the impact of mate value on interpersonal attraction in real-life early-stage romantic encounters. Using Response Surface Analysis, we simultaneously examined how (a) people’s perception of their own mate value, (b) their perception of a potential partner’s mate value, and (c) the interplay between the two mate values impact initial romantic attraction and selection as well as subsequent interpersonal outcomes after selection. Data came from the “Date me for Science” speed-dating study (n = 398), in which participants who mutually selected each other at the speed-dating event were followed up with 3 assessments in the 6 weeks after the event to assess subsequent outcomes. Participants’ romantic attraction, likelihood of selecting, and subsequent interpersonal outcomes with a dating partner almost exclusively depended on their perception of their dating partner’s mate value: the higher, the better. There was no evidence for the popular matching hypothesis, which states that people feel attracted to and select dating partners whom they perceive to have a mate value similar to their own. Implications of these findings for theory and research on the impact of mate value on romantic attraction and selection are discussed.

Spousal similarity and its consequences are widely studied, but methodologically challenging topics. We employed Response Surface Analysis to examine similarity along political attitudes, personal values, and personality traits. Opposite-sex couples (624 individuals) expecting a child were recruited. Spouses were highly similar regarding their political attitudes and moderately similar regarding trait Openness and the personal values Universalism and Tradition. Similarity for other traits and values was weak (e.g. Conscientiousness, Power values) or non-existent (e.g. Neuroticism, Benevolence values). Similarity in conservative vs. liberal attitudes was non-linear: a conservative-conservative union was most common. Women's relationship satisfaction was related to similarity in left-right and liberal-conservative political attitudes, and both partners' satisfaction was related to similarity in Self-Direction values. Similarity in personality traits was unrelated to relationship satisfaction.

The authors review past work on modeling human mate selection, and suggest, using illustrations from existing literature on the impact of alcoholism on relationship formation and dissolution and reproduction, that the challenges of adequately characterizing human mate selection have not yet been overcome. Some paths forwards are suggested.

Mate availability has been shown to influence intrasexual competition and mate- guarding behavior across a variety of species. Nevertheless, little is known about how perceived mate scarcity affects such behavior in humans. The purpose of this study was to examine the ef- fects of experimentally induced perceptions of mate availability upon intrasexual competition, jealousy and aggressive mate guarding behavior. Heterosexual undergraduate students (N = 124, 60 women, 64 men) were primed with perceptions of either mate scarcity or mate abundance and subsequently completed measures of intrasexually competitive attitude, jealousy and willingness to aggress against a mate-poacher (either directly or indirectly). For both men and women, results showed that individuals who were exposed to the mate scarcity condition reported significantly more intrasexual competition, jealousy and willingness to aggress indirectly against a mate- poacher compared to those exposed to the mate abundance condition. Results provide evidence of an attitudinal and behavioral shift toward sexual conflict when individuals perceive mates to be a scarce resource.

The evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller has argued that various features of human psychology have been sculpted, at least in part, by the evolutionary process of sexual selection via mate cho...

Sex and mating are central to evolutionary processes. Understanding the factors, including the evolved mechanisms, affecting men's and women's sexual decision making, is of interest to scientists, ...

SummaryHumans in many societies are known to mate, or marry, assortatively for a number of characters such as eye colour, height, IQ and place of birth. In this assortment an element of active choice may be involved. It is not known whether this choice is genetic. Two models of human mate choice are examined in which both males and females can express a mating preference. In the first, ‘sexual’ preferences can be expressed for any phenotype not necessarily one's own; in the second, preferences are only expressed for an individual's own phenotype. The results of the examination indicate how much active choice would be needed to account for the observed correlations between human mates, and suggest whether human mating preferences are more likely to be sexual or assorting.

Altruism plays a role in mate choice, particularly in women’s preferences, and particularly for long-term relationships. The current study analyzed how these preferences interacted with another important mate choice variable, physical attractiveness. Here, female participants were presented with photographs of men of varying levels of physical attractiveness, alongside descriptions of them behaving either altruistically or not in different scenarios. The results showed women preferred altruistic men, particularly in long-term relationships, and that this interacted with physical attractiveness such that being both attractive and altruistic made a man more desirable than just the sum of the two desirable parts. Also, being altruistic made low attractive men more desirable, but only for long-term relationships. Finally, men who were just altruistic were rated more desirable than men who were just attractive, especially for long-term relationships. Overall these findings are discussed in terms of the role of altruism in mate choice, particularly in long-term relationships and directions of future research.

Waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) has been shown to negatively correlate with attractiveness, health, youthfulness, and the reproductive potential of females, which arguably explains why men tend to perceive women with lower WHRs as more attractive. Additionally, it has recently been hypothesized that men are attracted to feminine ranges of WHR even when the actual sex of the target is ambiguous. The current study tests the hypothesis that lower WHRs are reliably associated with women and higher WHRs with men, thus serving as a proximate mechanism by which men find lower WHRs more attractive. An online survey was developed in which line drawings of human waists and hips, with WHRs ranging from 0.65 to 0.95 and no cues for sex identification, were presented to participants who were then asked to infer the sex of the drawings. Results from 72 men and 49 women indicate an increasing frequency of “female” identifications as WHR decreases. Both men and women exhibit high inter-rater reliability in associating low WHRs with women and high WHRs with men. The implications of these findings are discussed, and directions for future research are highlighted.

We test a romantic couple’s shared Life History Strategy (LHS) as a primary predictor of romantic relationship satisfaction against competing theories. First, we demonstrated that, when compared against the couples’ shared level of supportive communication and the geographical distance separating the partners, the pure shared-partner LHS variance, rather than unique partner-specific variance, is the strongest predictor of relationship satisfaction. Then, we revised the measurement model and demonstrated that, when compared against the couple’s disassortative mating on LHS, a couple’s mean LHS was the sole predictor of relationship satisfaction, and also a strong predictor of the couple’s assortative mating on indicators of LHS. Thus, shared LHS seems to be the most critical predictor of relationship satisfaction when compared to supportive communication, geographical distance separating the partners, and the couple’s assortative mating on indicators of LHS.

Why do some women pursue relationships with men who are attractive, dominant, and charming but who do not want to be in relationships--the prototypical sexy cad? Previous research shows that women have an increased desire for such men when they are ovulating, but it is unclear why ovulating women would think it is wise to pursue men who may be unfaithful and could desert them. Using both college-age and community-based samples, in 3 studies we show that ovulating women perceive charismatic and physically attractive men, but not reliable and nice men, as more committed partners and more devoted future fathers. Ovulating women perceive that sexy cads would be good fathers to their own children but not to the children of other women. This ovulatory-induced perceptual shift is driven by women who experienced early onset of puberty. Taken together, the current research identifies a novel proximate reason why ovulating women pursue relationships with sexy cads, complementing existing research that identifies the ultimate, evolutionary reasons for this behavior.

A study among 66 couples from Santiago, Chile examined the association between objectively assessed height and self-reports of mate value and attractiveness. In addition, assortative mating for these variables was assessed. There was some evidence for assortative mating: Although there was no correlation between the height of both partners, there were significant correlations for attractiveness and mate value. Men were taller than women, but there was no evidence for the male-taller norm. Among women, mate value and especially attractiveness were higher as they were taller, with a slight dip in mate value among women of medium height. Among men, only attractiveness was higher as they were taller. Discrepancies and similarities with previous research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Previously, we examined the frequency with which words appear in Harlequin romance novel titles to explore women’s evolved mating interests. To complement that study, we now perform an exploratory study in which we compare hero and heroine development, with the goal of understanding what women seek in potential mates, and how they ideally conceptualize men. Heroes are always described in considerable detail (e.g., appearance, resources, and career status), while heroines are rarely described in these terms, or in this depth. These descriptions of men are congruent with the evolutionary psychology literature on women’s mate preferences. We found that heroes undergo noteworthy changes within the books, such that they often start as ‘cads’ who are often rude, independent, and aggressive, but by the end of the book they are loyal, devoted men who are in love with the heroine. In contrast, the heroine undergoes only minimal transformation. This desire for a mate who encompasses both a ‘cad’ and a ‘dad’ mating strategy is beneficial to women, evolutionarily speaking, because cads may have high gene quality and dads may provide high paternal investment.

This paper focuses on preferences for specific characteristics in a potential partner using data from 1993 to 1999 provided by a French marriage bureau. We perform an econometric analysis of the various traits either sought or rejected in a potential partner, respectively by men and women. Our results are consistent with investment in marriage. On the one hand, men tend to reject vulgar and unfaithful women, meaning that they are likely to suffer serious fitness costs from infidelity. On the other hand, women dread meeting potential partners who are alcoholic, selfish or violent.

Parents and offspring have conflicting interests over mating and have evolved asymmetrical preferences with respect to what they consider desirable in an in-law and a spouse. In order to maximise their fitness, each party attempts to impose its own preferences to the other exercising thus evolutionary pressure on each other’s behaviour. This paper examines the effects of this co-evolutionary process over parental and mating behaviour by testing two hypotheses. First, it is hypothesised that parents and offspring have evolved to prefer as in-laws and spouses, respectively, individuals who are overall acceptable by each other. Second, it is hypothesised that women have evolved to be more sensitive than men to their parents’ approval of their spouses. Evidence from four independent studies provides support for both hypotheses.

Previous research on deception detection has indicated that a number of factors influence accuracy. It has been hypothesized that deception and the detection of deception is highly influenced by mating context. The current study investigated sex differences in the detection of deception used in typical human mating situations. Sixty-eight females were tested for deception detection using a video paradigm in which the actors either lied or told the truth. An accompanying survey was given that evaluated common deception tactics. Contrary to previous findings, female deception detection was not significantly above chance. However, knowledge of opposite gender tactics increased deception detection such that those females that were aware of common male tactics were superior at detecting deception. The results, which are preliminary, suggest that the evolutionary advantage females have over males may have a top-down cognitive origin such that knowledge of tactics may influence perceptual abilities.

The ability to judge another individual's romantic interest level—both toward oneself and toward others—is an adaptively important skill when choosing a suitable mate to pursue. We tested this ability using videos of individuals on speed dates as stimuli. Male and female observers were equally good at predicting interest levels, but they were more accurate when predicting male interest: Predictions of female interest were just above chance. Observers predicted interest successfully using stimuli as short as 10 s, and they performed best when watching clips of the middle or end of the speed date. There was considerable variability between daters, with some being very easy to read and others apparently masking their true intentions. Variability between observers was also found. The results suggest that the ability to read nonverbal behavior quickly in mate choice is present not only for individuals in the interaction, but also for third-party observers.

Self-perceived mate value is an important concept for evolutionary psychology, and yet there has been little investigation into how it should be measured. Past research has relied upon simple measures, such as self-perceived physical attractiveness, or on instruments where people rate the existence of certain traits. Using a sample of 150 individuals, we show that there are at least seven distinct components of self-perceived mate value. We compare these components with self-ratings of physical attractiveness, current income, as well as one existing measure, the Mate Value Inventory (Kirsner et al., 2003). Only some of these components correlate with these variables, and to varying extents for women and men, suggesting the need for a more comprehensive and sex-specific measure of selfperceived mate value. We discuss the context-dependent nature of mate value, and point to the need for future research to provide confirmatory support for our factors. This research represents an important first step into the accurate assessment of mate value.

This study explored the importance of religiosity in spouse selection and marital satisfaction among married Muslim men and women. A new instrument, the Assessment of Muslim Marital Satisfaction (AMMS), was constructed in both Arabic and English using culturally appropriate constructs and language. Both men and women reported that spousal religiosity was important in their decision to choose a mate. Ratings of the influence of spousal religiosity showed a weak correlation with subsequent marital satisfaction for women, and little or no relationship for men. Most participants expressed satisfaction with their marriages, with men reporting slightly higher levels of satisfaction in some areas. With additional psychometric research, the AMMS shows promise as a measure of marital satisfaction for Muslim couples.

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.

Cataloged from PDF version of article. An evolutionary task analysis predicts a connection between disgust and human mating, two important but currently disconnected areas of psychology. Because short-term mating strategies involve sex with multiple partners after brief temporal durations, such a strategy should be difficult to pursue in conjunction with high levels of sexual disgust. On this basis, we hypothesized that individuals with a stronger proclivity for short-term mating would exhibit dispositionally lower levels of sexual disgust. Two independent studies provided strong support for this hypothesis: among both men and women, an orientation toward short-term mating was associated with reduced levels of sexual disgust, but not with suppressed moral or pathogen disgust. Our discussion highlights an unexpected finding and suggests important questions for future research. © 2015 Elsevier Inc.

The literature on human mate preferences is vast but most data come from studies on college students in complex societies, who represent a thin slice of cultural variation in an evolutionarily novel environment. Here, I present data on the mate preferences of men and women in a society of hunter-gatherers, the Hadza of Tanzania. Hadza men value fertility in a mate more than women do, and women value intelligence more than men do. Women place great importance on men's foraging, and both sexes rate character as important. Unlike college students, Hadza men place considerable importance on women being hard-working, and Hadza women cite looks about as often as men do.

Have men and women evolved sex-distinct mating preferences for short-term and long-term mating, as postulated by some evolutionary theorists? Direct tests of assumptions, consideration of confounds with gender, and examination of the same variables for both sexes suggest men and women are remarkably similar. Furthermore, cross-species comparisons indicate that humans do not evidence mating mechanisms indicative of short-term mating (e.g., large female sexual skins, large testicles). Understanding human variability in mating preferences is apt to involve more detailed knowledge of the links between these preferences and biological and chemical mechanisms associated with sexual motivation, sexual arousal, and sexual functioning.

Prosocial behavior requires expenditure of personal resources for the benefit of others, a fact that creates a ‘problem’ when considering the evolution of prosociality. Models that address this problem have been developed, with emphasis typically placed on reciprocity. One model considers the advantages of being selective in terms of one’s allocation of prosocial behavior so as to improve the chance that one will be benefitted in return. In this review paper, we first summarize this partner choice model and then focus on prosocial development in the preschool years, where we make the case for selective partner choice in early instances of human prosocial behavior.

The qualities people believe are important in selecting a marriage partner afford one domain for assessing human values. We examined the cultural evolution of these values over more than half a century. Building on existing data on mate preferences collected in 1939 (N= 628), 1956 (N= 120), 1967 (N= 566), and 1977 (N= 316), we collected data using the same instrument in 1984/1985 (N= 1,496) and in 1996 (N= 607) at geographically diverse locations. Several changes in values were documented across the 57-year span. Both sexes increased the importance they attach to physical attractiveness in a mate. Both sexes, but especially men, increased the importance they attach to mates with good financial prospects. Domestic skills in a partner plummeted in importance for men. Mutual attraction and love climbed in importance for both sexes. The sexes converged in the ordering of the importance of different mate qualities, showing maximum similarity in 1996. Discussion speculates about causes of the cultural evolution of values.

The present paper examines the nature of the similarities and differences in the desired physical and psychological characteristics of lover and cross-sex friend among college students. Fourteen physical and twenty five psychological traits were presented to 160 Bengali Hindu college students who rated them in terms of their desirability in either a date or a cross sex friend. Results indicated that women put greater emphasis on psychological characteristics, while men emphasized physical traits to a greater extent. However considerable overlap across sex and target was also observed. Differences and similarities with Western studies have been highlighted. The findings seem to partially support both the evolutionary hypothesis and the social learning model.

Females' preference for resource-acquisition characteristics in mates has been explained as an evolved psychological mechanism that conveyed reproductive advantage to human ancestors. To explore the hypothesis that females express this preference more strongly when their educational opportunities and reproductive freedom are limited, we reanalyzed mate-preference data collected from 37 cultures by Buss et al. (1990). The results demonstrate that females (but not males) strongly prefer resource-acquisition characteristics in mates when they live in cultures low in both female reproductive freedom and educational equality between the sexes. Discussion focuses on how evolutionary, interactionist, and social-role theories might explain these results.

In sexually reproducing organisms, no domain is more closely linked with the engine of the evolutionary process than sexuality. Men and women over human evolutionary history have confronted differe...

Parental investment theory and sexual strategies theory predict that women and men should differ on many of the criteria by which they choose mates. These theories posit a gender selectivity effect, such that women should be more selective than men in their mating choices. The theories also posit an age differential effect, such that women should seek older mates, and men should seek younger mates. These two hypotheses have been supported by self-report surveys, speed-dating studies, analysis of on-line and newspaper personal ads, and laboratory analog studies. However, each of these data sources has limitations. Therefore, a new source of data may provide a valuable additional test of the robustness of these effects. The current study examined two independent sources of data involving blind dates arranged and paid for by newspapers. Consistent with the first hypothesis, we found women to be more selective than men. We also found that matchmakers tended to pair older men with younger women, consistent with the second hypothesis. However, contrary to the second hypothesis, we found no evidence that the age differential between members of a couple influenced their ratings of the date. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Female escorts represent an occupational group that charges a fee for sex, which can be regarded as an extreme form of short-term mating. The present study examined if the fees charged by escorts are related to traits typically associated with female short-term mate value. A total of 2,925 advertisements for female escorts offering sexual services in the United States were examined, as a customized software program was used to download all the advertisements from an online escort directory. The advertisement content was coded, and relationships between advertised physical characteristics and the hourly rate charged by female escorts were examined. The analyses showed that higher fees were associated with female escorts who advertised a waist-to-hip ratio near 0.7, lower weight and body mass index, younger age, and photographic displays of breast and buttocks nudity. The findings provide evidence that evolutionarily relevant traits associated with female short-term mate value are systematically related to fees charged for sexual services.

Knowing one’s mate value (mate-value accuracy) is an important element in reproductive success. We investigated within- and between-sex differences in this ability in a real-life speed-dating event. A total of 190 men and 192 women filled out a personality questionnaire and participated in speed-dating sessions. Immediately after each date, participants recorded who they would choose as mates and who they expected would choose them. In line with evolutionarily informed hypotheses, results indicated that sociosexually unrestricted men and more agreeable women showed greater mate-value accuracy than sociosexually restricted men and less agreeable women, respectively. These results have important implications for understanding mating behavior and perhaps the origin of sex differences in personality.

Two studies (Ns = 80 and 108) tested hypotheses derived from Kirkpatrick and Ellis's (2001) extension and application of sociometer theory to mating aspirations. Experiences of social rejection-acceptance by attractive opposite-sex confederates were experimentally manipulated, and the impact of these manipulations on self-esteem, mating aspirations, and friendship aspirations was assessed. Results indicated that social rejection-acceptance by members of the opposite sex altered mating aspirations; that the causal link between social rejection-acceptance and mating aspirations was mediated by changes in state self-esteem; and that the impact of social rejection-acceptance by members of opposite sex was specific to mating aspirations and did not generalize to levels of aspiration in approaching potential same-sex friendships. This research supports a conceptualization of a domain-specific mating sociometer, which functions to calibrate mating aspirations in response to experiences of romantic rejection and acceptance.