Mate Preferences

Valued Characteristics in Mates

Mate preference researchers have found distinct patterns in the characteristics that people desire for short- and long-term relationships. To begin with, many characteristics are important to both men and women for both types of relationships, including kindness, intelligence, physical attractiveness, creativity, an exciting personality, sense of humor, and social status. For short-term mates such as one-night stands, casual sex partners, and affair partners, both sexes place particularly high value on physical attractiveness. Specifically, both men and women consider it necessary for short-term partners to have a minimum level of physical attractiveness. Indeed, when given the opportunity to obtain information on a potential short-term partner, people inquire first about the potential mate's physical attractiveness.

For long-term mates such as marriage partners, mutual attraction and love, dependable character, emotional stability and maturity, pleasing disposition, and education and intelligence were identified as the top five most desired characteristics across three major regions in the United States. Many traits, such as those related to kindness and intelligence, tend to be equally valued by men and women and may be important in demonstrating parenting skills, fidelity, trustworthiness, generosity, and ability to maintain a relationship. Such characteristics tend to be equally valued across cultures and generations. However, some preferences are more prevalent in certain cultures. For instance, when David Buss and colleagues compared 29 cultures from different parts of the world, they found that physical attractiveness was more highly valued in cultures with higher levels of parasites. In addition, some characteristics change over time. For example, in an analysis of more than 50 years of studies on mate preferences in the United States, researchers observed an increase in the importance of love and mutual attraction.

The sexes tend to differ on their preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in a longterm mate. Specifically, men value physical attractiveness more than women do and women value social status (and earning potential) more than men do. These sex differences in preference for social status and physical attractiveness have been studied extensively and have been found across age groups and ethnicities in the United States, across several decades, and across numerous countries around the world.

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