Social Psychology Commons^™

The Validity Of Sex-Differentiated Mate Preferences: Reconciling The Seemingly Conflicting Evidence, Norman P. Li, Andrea L. Meltzer

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Across decades and cultures, researchers have found that men prefer physical attractiveness in their romantic partners more than women do, whereas women prefer social status and resources in their partners more than men do. From an evolutionary perspective, these sex differences are important as they reflect hypothesized psychological mechanisms that evolved in response to different adaptive challenges faced by ancestral men and women. Social psychologists, however, have recently challenged the validity of mate preferences and thus, this evolutionary perspective. Indeed, recent speed-dating studies (e.g., Eastwick and Finkel, 2008) and a meta-analysis (Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, and Hunt, 2014) demonstrate that the …