A recent cross-cultural study with a large sample size has found… or, rather, re-found… that men and women have radically different mate-preference psychologies, and that these differences are even larger than previously thought. (Parenthetically, the study also found that feminists are still idiots.)
Men’s and women’s ideas of the perfect mate differ significantly due to evolutionary pressures, according to a cross-cultural study on multiple mate preferences by psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin.
The study of 4,764 men and 5,389 women in 33 countries and 37 cultures showed that sex differences in mate preferences are much larger than previously appreciated and stable across cultures.
The sharp reader may ask, “Ah, but does this study suffer from a WEIRD bias?” The answer:
“Many want to believe that women and men are identical in their underlying psychology, but the genders differ strikingly in their evolved mate preferences in some domains,” said co-author of the study and psychology professor David Buss. “The same holds true in highly sexually egalitarian cultures such as Sweden and Norway as in less egalitarian cultures such as Iran.”
No WEIRD bias.
The researchers suggest that these patterns of mate preferences are far more linked to gender than any individual mate preference examined separately would suggest.
Thus confirming the CH ugly truth that attractiveness standards for men and women are universal and sex-based, and that the hope of everyone being a special snowflake having equal sexual market value is a myth.
Researchers found that they could predict a person’s sex with 92.2 percent accuracy if they knew his or her mate preferences.
WOW. Think on that. The implications are far-reaching, and VERY discomfiting to believers in the sex-based blank slate.
According to the study, men favor mates who are younger and physically attractive. Women seek older mates with good financial prospects, higher status and ambition.
Amanda Marcotte’s id just emitted a death wail.
“Because women bear the cost of pregnancy and lactation, they often faced the adaptive problem of acquiring resources to produce and support offspring, while men faced adaptive problems of identifying fertile partners and sought cues to fertility and future reproductive value,” Conroy-Beam said.
These sex-based mate preferences are evolved over millennia and deeply embedded in our hindbrains, so even in a modern environment where women are coddled by the State and pregnancy is easily avoided or terminated by technology interventions, and where women are bloating up into disfigured pigbeasts hiding fertility cues under layers of blubber, we still find that the old evolved preferences continue to exert the primary influence over our desires and preferences.
But, it is possible that some powerful modern sexual market disturbances, such as the Pill, may alter certain preexisting mate preferences which are more flexible in nature, wired for adaptability to changing environmental pressures. Women in a state of nature prefer men with good financial prospects 3/4ths of the time and sexy PUAs during ovulation, but women in a manufactured state of existence where the Pill is widespread and cheap may more frequently, or more intensely, favor the layabout alpha cad over the dependable, resource-rich beta provider, because the cost of pregnancy has been obviated, (a change in their environmental reality which would register subconsciously in women).
Which mate preferences varied the most by sex?
Of the 19 mate preferences that researchers considered, five varied significantly based on gender: good financial prospects, physical attractiveness, chastity, ambition and age.
Chicks dig:
well-off men,
ambitious men,
older men.
Men dig:
beautiful women,
younger women,
and (this is my favorite anti-feminist ugly truth) chaste women who haven’t ridden the cock carousel until the gears fell off.
Four other preferences — pleasing disposition, sociability and shared religious and political views — were not sex-differentiated.
What men and women share in common can be just as interesting as where they diverge. While “pleasing disposition” is a bit vague to get a proper CH-ian handle on — many a charming jerkboy would be asserted by women to have a “pleasing disposition” — it’s not at all surprising that men and women prefer lovers who agree at least in part with their own values and religious views. Sex is great, and love better, but after a few years if you love Jesus and she loves Shiva, or you’re Team Trump and she’s Team Cuck, that’s gonna cause some friction. Unless you’re in the minority of people for whom a conventional value such as religious affiliation doesn’t serve as a personal identifier.
I’d like to know exactly what the study authors were measuring with “Sociability”. Does this mean extroverts, of either sex, tend to prefer extroverted lovers, and introverts likewise? I wonder about that. I could see an extroverted drama queen getting exasperated with an introverted man who hates drama, but I’ve also seen a lot of couples where that combination of extrovert-introvert seemed to produce a balancing force that kept each of their worst instincts in check. And left unspoken, they understood how that dynamic benefited them.
“Few decisions impact reproduction more than mate choice,” Conroy-Beam said. “Mate preferences will therefore be a central target and driver of biological evolution.”
The sexual market is the one market to rule them all.