Mate Preferences

Social Context Theories: The World That Is

Social context frameworks focus on proximal mechanisms—that is, forces located in the contemporary social, cultural, and historical milieu—that influence mate preferences and mate selection.

Social exchange or equity models of mate selection represent one such framework (e.g., Blau, 1964; Murstein, 1970, 1976; Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978; for a review of social exchange models relevant to mating, see Sprecher, 1998). According to these models, the process of mate selection resembles a marketplace in which people attempt to maximize their rewards and make social interaction as profitable as possible by exchanging their own assets—beauty, health, intelligence, a sense of humor, kindness, wealth, status, and so on—for desirable attributes in a partner. A person's own “value” as a potential partner is presumed to influence the extent to which he or she is able to attract and retain a high-value partner. Since people seek the best possible value in a potential mate, but are constrained by their own assets, this process is assumed to result in the pairing of individuals of roughly equal value. That is, “wealthy” individuals who possess a great many desirable characteristics, or who have high amounts of a few particularly valuable attributes, will be able to attract and pair with others of equally high value. “Poorer” persons, or those who have fewer assets to offer a potential mate, inevitably will form liaisons with less valuable and less “expensive” others.

Exchange theorists argue that mating mistakes are costly. For example, in his discussion of the early stages of mate selection, theorist Bernard Murstein (1970) noted that although an individual may run less risk of rejection if he or she seeks a less desirable partner (low cost), the rewards of such a conquest are correspondingly meager (low profit); at the same time, the increased likelihood of rejection (high cost) associated with seeking a partner who is substantially more desirable than oneself (high profit) renders this enterprise equally risky. Consequently, an accurate perception of one's own qualities and what one has to [Page 5]contribute or offer to a relationship is believed to be extremely important. In sum, based on a consideration of the basic principles of social exchange models of mate selection, we might expect people to prefer potential partners who possess a host of socially desirable characteristics, to moderate these preferences by taking into account their own attributes, and to ultimately pair with similar others.

...