David Buss - Mate Preferences

Mate Preferences

Buss has conducted numerous studies comparing the mate preferences of individuals by factors such as gender, time, parents vs. offspring, and type of relationship; he has also conducted a large study investigating universal mate preferences. Using a sample from China, Chang, Wang, Shackelford, and Buss, discovered that men more than women tend to prefer traits related to fertility, such as youth and physical attractiveness. Men also desired traits that could be seen as feminine stereotypes, including good housekeeper. A similar study conducted in the U.S. by Perilloux, Fleischman, and Buss revealed the same with the addition of health, easygoing, and creative/artistic. Women, however, favor traits related to resources, such as good earning capacity, social status, education and intelligence, and ambition and industriousness. Woman also favor, more than men, the traits kind and understanding, sociability, dependability, emotional stability, and an exciting personality. Parents of sons similarly ranked physical attractiveness at higher importance than parents of daughters, and parents of daughters ranked good earning capacity and education at higher importance. Overall, these sex differences in mate preferences appear to reflect gender stereotypes as well as theories of evolutionary psychology, which state that men will prefer fertility to pass on their genes, while women will prefer resources to provide for a family.

Interestingly, even though both are motivated by the need to pass on their genes, parents often have different preferences in mates for their kids than the kids have for their own mates. Offspring tended to rank physically attractive and exciting personality higher than their parents, while parents found religious, kind and understanding, and good earning capacity to be more important factors. Parents and daughters in particular differed in that parents also ranked good housekeeper, healthy, and good heredity higher than their daughters. The authors speculated that health was more important to parents because concerns about health problems tend to increase later in life. Parents also consistently ranked religion at a higher priority than their children, reflecting the idea that parents want in-laws with similar values to them. Offspring, meanwhile, ranked religious very low, reflecting the lack of religiosity in younger generations.