Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.
And guys won’t be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.
“Just because people say they’re looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn’t mean that is what they’ll end up choosing,” said Peter Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Researchers led by Todd report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found humans were similar to most other mammals, “following Darwin’s principle of choosy females and competitive male.”
Their study involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich, Germany.
In the study, participants were asked before a speed dating session to fill out a form about what they were looking for in a mate. After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they chose to ask for another date.
Men’s choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women’s physical attractiveness.
Women, however, “made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women’s self-rated attractiveness,” Todd said. “They didn’t greatly overshoot their attractiveness.”
