Sex differences in aesthetics, resources, and personality sexual attractiveness by age
Because sexual attractiveness is an important driver of human mate selection and reproduction, we descriptively assess relative sex differences in the level of attractiveness individuals expect in the aesthetic, resource, and personality characteristics of potential spouses. As a novelty, we use a dataset containing online survey data from over 7,000 respondents across a wide age distribution, from 18 to 65 years old, to investigate how male and female sexual attraction preferences change with age. In general, we find that both men and women show similar distribution patterns in their preference responses, with statistically significant gender differences within most characteristics. On average, women rate age, education, intelligence, income, trust, and emotional connection about 9 to 14 points higher than men on a scale range of 0 to 100. attractiveness and physical stature compared to women in comparison to all other characteristics. Using multiple regression analysis, we find a consistent statistical sex difference (men relative to women) that decreases linearly with age for aesthetics, but the opposite is true for resources and personality, with women showing a stronger relative preference, especially in the younger age cohorts. Investigating the non-linearity of sex differences in intelligence and attractiveness contour plots across age (mediated by age) shows that sex differences in attractiveness preferences are caused by the male cohort of those who care about the importance of age (especially 30-40 year olds), intelligence is very important to driven by women who place relatively more importance on the intelligence of those who view age as very important (age cohort 40-55). Overall, many of our results show clear gender changes at key life stages, consistent with theories of selection pressure.
Whyte S, Brooks RC, Chan HF, Torgler B (2021) Sex differences in sexual attraction to aesthetics, resources, and personality.PLoS ONE 16(5): e0250151. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0250151
Commentary
Men and women's decisions about preference and attractiveness are based on three factors: appearance, personal characteristics and qualities, and potential suitors. As this study has shown, individual differences in preferences for these traits vary between women and men and by age. However, even with significant sex differences, men and women gave roughly similar preference to the measured preferences, consistent with models of reciprocal mate choice and the broad gender similarity hypothesis.
As for preference characteristics, women rated age, education, intelligence, income, trust, and emotional connection about 9-14 points higher than men on a scale range of 0-100, suggesting that women care more about these characteristics when considering the attractiveness of a potential spouse compared to men.
In addition to these preferences, the study also showed that attractiveness and physical stature were high on men's list of priorities. In summary, the results suggest that men place more importance on physical features, while women place more importance on physical features, but prefer more of the above characteristics.
Finally, the results of the principal component regression show an interesting association between individual differences in personality traits and measures of preference, with clear relative gender differences in preference for a single male resource compared to females. More highly educated women show a higher relative preference for aesthetics, and more attractive women show a higher relative preference for personality. And while there is an absolute difference for women who have offspring that value personality, men who have offspring report less importance of this trait.
