need a reading response. ( two pages, in 5 hours)

10/18/2017 Yuzu: Psychology of Gender: Fourth Edition

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TABLE 9.2

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Given the choice between status and warmth, both women and men chose warmth in short-term and long-term relationships. Another study examined the trade-off issue by giving men and women varying “budgets” for mate selection (Li & Kenrick, 2006). That is, participants were asked to design the ideal mate and given various amounts of “mate dollars” to purchase these characteristics. With a small budget, the typical sex differences prevailed, with women emphasizing a mate’s resources and men emphasizing a mate’s physical attractiveness. With a larger budget, women’s and men’s preferences became more similar—especially in long-term relationships.

In conclusion, it appears that women and men agree on the most important characteristics a partner should possess, especially for serious long-term relationships. Physical attractiveness and earning potential are less important characteristics in a mate but ones that heterosexual men and women emphasize differentially— especially in the context of short-term relationships. Explanations. What is the explanation for men’s preference for physically attractive women and women’s preference for financially secure men? Here I review three explanations; the central components of each are highlighted in Table 9.2.

One explanation comes from evolutionary theory, which states that women and men behave in ways that will maximize the survival of their genes. Men value physical attractiveness and youth in their mates because these are indicators of fertility. The fact that people are better able to recall attractive than unattractive female faces has been considered evidence that physical attractiveness has evolved as a cue to fertility in women (Becker et al., 2005). There is no difference in the recall of attractive and unattractive male faces. Women prefer mates who have a high occupational status because financial resources will help ensure the survival of their offspring. These ideas are based on the parental investment model, which states that women will invest more in their offspring than will men because they have less opportunity than men to reproduce.

If evolutionary theory can account for sex differences in mate preferences, women who are physically attractive should be more likely than women who are physically unattractive to be paired with mates who are financially stable. Because women’s reproductive resources diminish with age, and men’s financial resources generally increase with age, evolutionary theory also would predict that younger women would be paired with older men. Indeed, there are vivid instances of young attractive women paired with wealthy older men; Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump are examples of wealthy men who have attracted numerous younger and attractive women. Anna Nicole Smith is an example of an attractive woman who at age 26 married a 90-year-old wealthy oil tycoon, J. Howard Marshall. However, the young beautiful woman coupled with the older wealthy man is the exception rather than the rule. The idea that attractive women will be linked to wealthy, high-status men is known as the “potentials-attract hypothesis.” This hypothesis was refuted in a study of young adults who rated themselves on 10 attributes and then rated how much they desired those attributes in a mate (Buston & Emlen, 2003). There was no correspondence between attractiveness in women and desire for status in men or between status in men and desire for attractiveness in women. Instead, the similarity hypothesis prevailed. The higher respondents rated themselves on an attribute, the greater their desire for that attribute in a mate. When examining who people actually end up with as mates, there also does not appear to be any support for the potentials-attract hypothesis. A study of 129 newlywed couples showed no evidence that physically attractive women were more likely than physically unattractive women to be paired with a financially well-off mate (Stevens, Owens, & Schaefer, 1990). Instead, there was strong support that mates matched on physical attractiveness and education.

EXPLANATIONS FOR SEX DIFFERENCES IN MATE PREFERENCES Supporting Evidence Counter-Evidence

Evolutionary Theory cross-cultural evidence men rate attractiveness as more important than women

attractive women are not paired with high status men

cross-cultural evidence women rate status as more important than men

cross-cultural evidence that men rate domestic skills as more important than women

men’s preference for physical attractiveness in a mate is not affected by the gender traditionality of the culture or by time

10/18/2017 Yuzu: Psychology of Gender: Fourth Edition

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Social Role Theory cross-cultural evidence that women rate status as more important than men

cross-cultural evidence men rate attractiveness as more important than women

cross-cultural evidence that men rate domestic skills as more important than women greater sex differences in mate preferences in cultures with distinct female and male roles sex differences in mate preferences reduced when men and women have less traditional gender-role attitudes sex differences in mate preferences reduced over time as women’s and men’s roles have become more similar

Social Construction Theory

cultural differences in mate preferences

greater sex differences in mate preferences in cultures with distinct male and female roles

Eagly and Wood (1999) have argued that social role theory provides a better explanation than evolutionary theory for sex differences in mate selection. They suggest that a society’s emphasis on a distinct division of labor between the sexes will be directly linked to sex differences in mate selection. In other words, females will value a mate with high earning capacity and males will value a mate with domestic skills in societies where men’s role is to work outside the home and women’s role is to work inside the home. Eagly and Wood tested this hypothesis by linking the gender equality of a culture to the size of the sex difference in mate preferences. They reanalyzed the data that Buss and colleagues (1990) had collected on mate selection preferences from 37 cultures around the world. First, they confirmed Buss and colleagues’ finding that women were more likely than men to value