More Than Just a Pretty Face and a Hot Body: Multiple Cues in Mate-Choice

ABSTRACT

Matepreferences have been well studied in social and evolutionary psychology. In two studies (N = 490), using two different measurement techniques, we examined mate preferences for the body and the face in the context of other traits. Results replicated prior research on mate preferences across the sex of the participant and mating duration but clarified the nature of preferences for physical attractiveness. Generally, physical attractiveness was a necessity in short-term mating and for men and traits like kindness were a necessity in long-term mating and for women. Men wanted a short-term mate who had a good body, likely because that body advertises fertility whereas both sexes wanted a mate with a nice face for a long-term mate, which is likely because the face is a cue based on structural properties related to health. Sex and mating-duration differences on preferences for attractive faces and bodies were robust to differences in measurement technique.

Keywords:

• body
• budget-allocation
• face
• mate preferences
• sex differences

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jaime Confer for help preparing this manuscript.

Notes

1. See Holland and Rice (1998) for an alternative approach based on antagonistic co-evolution.

2. The complete sample was composed of 112 individuals. However, a number of them failed to complete the budget-allocation task properly and, therefore; we eliminated them, reducing our sample size by 22.