Mate Selection

East Carolina University
Department of Psychology

Social psychologists and sociobiologists have studied mate selection in humans. What are the attributes that we find desirable in potential mates? David Buss (1989) found that women seek men with characteristics that indicate that they have the resources necessary for reproductive success – emotional maturity, older age, a good work ethic, ambition, and good financial prospects. Men, on the other hand, place a greater value on physical characteristics – youth, symmetry of body and face, smooth skin, silky hair, an hourglass body shape (especially due to wide hips and thin waistline), facial features collectively known as the “baby face,” and so on. It can be argued that the preferences of both men and women have been naturally selected because choosing mates with the preferred characteristics enhances one’s reproductive success. Genes that dispose a woman to prefer to mate with a man who can provide her with the material resources necessary for raising children should be genes that are good at reproducing themselves. So, what reproductive benefit is there to genes that dispose a man to prefer to mate with a women who has features associated with “female physical attractiveness?” The features associated with female physical attractiveness seem all to be signals of fecundity. Fecundity is the ability to bear children. Being young, wide in the hip, and healthy (clear skin and silky hair) have all been shown to be positively associated with perceptions of fecundity. Accordingly, genes that dispose men to prefer to mate with physically attractive women were naturally selected because mating with such women results in greater propagation of the man’s genes.

Of course, physical attractiveness can provide important reproductive cues to the woman who is seeking a mate, but it has been argued that the most important male characteristics (ability to gather important resources and use them for child rearing) are characteristics that are not well predicted from physical attractiveness. The second part of this argument is that the most important female characteristics that are predictive of reproductive success are well predicted by physical characteristics.