Mate Preference Necessities in Long- and Short-Term Mating: People Prioritize in Themselves What Their Mates Prioritize in Them
Year: 2007
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: People were given highly constrained low budgets of mate dollars to allocate across various characteristics pertaining to their ideal partners and to their ideal selves for long- and short-term mating. First, results replicated findings from Li et al. (2002) and Li & Kenrick (2006). For ideal long-term mates, men prioritized physical attractiveness and women prioritized social status. For ideal short-term mates, both sexes prioritized physical attractiveness. Second, people’s design of their ideal selves mirrored what the opposite sex ideally desired in their mates. For a long-term mating context, men prioritized social status in themselves and women prioritized physical attractiveness in themselves. For ideal short-term selves, both sexes prioritized physical attractiveness. Findings were consistent with a domain-specific view of psychological mechanisms, in that processes for valuing potential mates and processes for valuing one’s own mate value may be specialized mechanisms.
Author: Norman P. Li
Institution: The University of Texas at Austin
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2096105143