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Beauty may only be skin deep, but when
it comes to picking a mate men like their women pretty. And guys won't be
surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they
are.(File Photo)
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BEIJING, Sept. 5 (Xinuanet) -- Beauty may only be skin deep, but when it comes
to picking a mate men like their women pretty. 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," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive
science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone
interview.
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 males, even if humans say something
different."
Their study involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich,
Germany.
Participants ranged in age from 26 to their early 40s
and took part in "speed dating," short meetings of three to seven minutes in
which people chat, then move on to meet another dater. Afterward, participants
check off the people they'd like to meet again, and dates can be arranged
between pairs who select one another.
In the study, participants were asked before the
session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate,
listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical
appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.
After the session, the researchers compared what the
participants said they were looking for with the people they actually 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.
The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men
tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness
threshold, Todd said.
Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect
their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the
researchers found.
The scientists said women were aware of the
importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations
to select the more desirable guys.
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities
that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't
greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal
for women is to choose men who would stay with them."
But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what
they could get and aimed for that level."
(Agencies)
