CA

Chapter 1-7 Key Concepts Flashcards

Overview: Evolutionary context for mate preferences

  • Offspring survival is limited; factors affecting mate choice relate to resources and status.
  • Core idea: mate preferences reflect signaling of potential for resources, protection, and offspring success.
  • Two broad themes recur: universal human biases (kindness, intelligence) and sex-differentiated emphasis on resources vs. beauty.

Cross-cultural evidence on mate preferences

  • Buss et al. (1989): cultural comparison across 37 cultures with 10{,}000 individuals
    • Both sexes rank kindness and intelligence as the most important qualities in a mate (found in 36/37 cultures).
    • Women consistently rate good financial prospects as more important than men (in 36/37 cultures).
    • Men rate good looks as more important than women in 34/37 cultures.
    • Women prefer an older spouse; men prefer a younger spouse.
  • Walter et al. (2020): replication across 45 countries with >14{,}000 individuals
    • Replication strengthens robustness of Buss-like patterns across diverse samples.
    • Graphical summary:
    • Traits at top (health, kindness, intelligence) are valued similarly by both sexes.
    • Women show higher preference for good financial prospects; men show higher preference for good looks.
    • Age-gap preferences align with sex-differentiated reproductive strategies (women favor men about ~5 years older).
  • Age-gap patterns (relevant to sex-differentiated mating strategies): Kenrick & Keefe (1992)
    • Women tend to marry partners older than themselves.
    • Men tend to marry partners younger than themselves.

Age gaps and real-world patterns

  • 2020 Walter et al. graph: female preferences for older partners remain relatively stable across age; men’s preferences show a widening gap as they age.
  • Hollywood examples: large age gaps often feature very young, beautiful, fertile-looking women with high-status, wealthy men.
  • Reflection on social change: possible shifts in age/wealth dynamics; some data suggest more older women in marriages in places like Australia, suggesting a potential change in traditional patterns.
  • Evolutionary interpretation (reproductive success):
    • Women’s preference for older, potentially resourceful men aligns with signals of protection and provisioning.
    • Men’s preference for younger, fertile partners aligns with signals of reproductive potential.

Why is status important in mate choice?

  • Evolutionary perspective: ancestral small groups identified an alpha male with high status who received more resources, protection, and mating opportunities.
  • Status signals resources and protective capability; selecting such partners could increase offspring survival.
  • Personality cues signaling status (and their implications)
    • Confidence: signals that the man has valuable resources or abilities; sometimes miscalibrated, but generally interpreted as a sign of merit.
    • Ambition and industriousness: future earning potential; not just current resources but trajectory toward high status.
    • Education/ongoing goals as indicators of future status and income potential (e.g., pursuing advanced degrees or career goals).
  • Bad boys (high confidence, risk-taking) attract many for sexual access; possible explanations:
    • Signaling of confidence, bravery, physical power, and status; potential to provide high mate value.
    • Fisher’s sexy-sons hypothesis (1930s): mating with a “bad boy” could confer desirable genes to sons, increasing future reproductive success via high mate attraction of sons.
    • Alternative view: arousal mechanism — high arousal or excitement from risk-taking can transfer to sexual arousal.
    • Caveat: this can apply across sexes and orientations; some effects may reflect physiological arousal rather than genetic wetting of offspring strategy.
  • Dependability and stability: universally valued for long-term relationships; reliability as a proxy for provisioning and parenting, applicable across orientations.

Non-heterosexual patterns (women)

  • Do lesbian women follow the same evolutionary cues as heterosexual women?
    • Across some studies, the emphasis on attractiveness appears lower in women than in men, regardless of orientation.
    • Lesbian women generally prefer feminine bodies in women and prefer partners similar in age to themselves.
    • Facial preferences: lesbian women tend to prefer feminized faces.
    • Some findings suggest heterosexual women attracted to men prefer more masculine male faces; those attracted to women (bisexual-identified or openly attracted to women) prefer more feminine male faces.
  • Tentative conclusions: the qualitative features of the assessors (the person making the judgment) may remain the same irrespective of the assessor’s sexual orientation, though there are nuanced differences in target preferences (e.g., body type, facial masculinity/femininity).

Context effects on women's sexual attraction

  • Affective state (mood) strongly influences sexual attraction.
    • Two pathways:
      1) Mood congruence: a person who makes you feel good increases your liking for them (positive interactions, jokes, compliments).
      2) Mood transfer: your own mood state can be paired with a person and misattributed to them; context can color attraction regardless of the interaction.
  • Mood induction experiments (music as mood manipulator):
    • Positive music increases perceived attractiveness of anonymous faces; negative/depressing music decreases it.
    • This demonstrates context effects beyond the person’s behavior.
  • Excitation transfer theory (Zillmann, 1971): residual arousal from a prior arousing stimulus can be transferred to a later emotional state (e.g., sexual arousal).
  • Classic bridge study (Dutton & Aron, 1974): suspension-bridge fear/arousal increases sexual content in men’s responses to a female experimenter and leads to more follow-up contact.
    • Method: fearful/scary bridge vs. safe bridge; heterosexual men approached on both bridges, given a questionnaire, then provided the experimenter’s number.
    • Findings: more sexual content in responses and more phone calls after fear-evoking bridge.
    • Real-life demonstration: debriefing and follow-up phone calls were higher among those approached on the fear bridge.
  • Replication and extension (Aron & colleagues) by Sarah (the presenter): replicate the bridge effect with a roller-coaster scenario to test arousal transfer in both men and women.
    • Setup: participants on roller coaster (aroused) vs waiting in line (control); rating attractiveness of an average opposite-sex photo and rating attractiveness of their roller-coaster seatmate.
    • Hypotheses:
    • Roller coaster arousal increases attractiveness ratings of anonymous opposite-sex targets for those riding alone or with non-romantic seatmates.
    • Roller coaster arousal increases ratings of attractiveness of one’s partner if riding with a romantic partner (for real-life partner attraction).
    • Findings:
    • Hypothesis 1: confirmed; arousal increased attractiveness ratings of anonymous opposite-sex targets for both men and women.
    • Hypothesis 2: not supported; no increase in ratings of partner attractiveness post-roller coaster.
    • Interpretation: love-as-arousal transfer can affect attraction to strangers or acquaintances, but not reliably increase ratings of one’s actual partner due to response biases (e.g., honeymoon-phase perception, partner rating bias).
  • Physiological arousal and the nervous system
    • Two branches: sympathetic vs. parasympathetic.
    • Sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight) tends to elevate heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, etc., and can facilitate earlier and stronger sexual responses in women when aroused.
    • Parallels between arousal and sexual responsiveness; exercise or sympathetic arousal can enhance sexual arousal in women.
  • Real-world implications
    • The roller-coaster and bridge studies illustrate how contextual arousal can heighten sexual attraction to others in the moment, consistent with excitation transfer theory.
    • Limitations exist: not all arousal transfers to real-life partner attraction; rating biases can influence measurements.

Matching and assortative mating (similarity vs. complementarity)

  • Matching hypothesis: do similar others pair with similar others, or do opposites attract?
  • Laumann et al. (1994): large, in-depth, face-to-face survey of American men and women across relationship stages (short-term to marriage) with random probability sampling.
    • Across levels of commitment, there is remarkable similarity across multiple dimensions:
    • Religion, education, age, and race/ethnicity show high similarity.
    • Religion: strong similarity in dating and courting contexts; at marriage, there is notable dissimilarity in religion, likely due to religious norms requiring shared faith for marriage.
    • Other domains show similarity in mate-value and age across commitment levels (short-term through marriage).
    • Caveats: there are sex differences in preferences for religion, political orientation, intelligence, and personality; also, the MHC (major histocompatibility) complex contributes to dissimilarity in certain contexts.
  • Big Five personality traits and mate similarity
    • The Big Five dimensions (the OCEAN model):
    • Openness (O)
    • Conscientiousness (C)
    • Extraversion (E)
    • Agreeableness (A)
    • Neuroticism (N)
    • Similarity in these traits reduces conflict and increases compatibility in long-term relationships.
    • Dissimilarity in these traits tends to predict more conflict, especially when paired with mismatches in:
    • Conscientiousness (timeliness, reliability)
    • Extraversion (desire to go out vs. homebody preferences)
    • Overall conclusion: similarity across personality traits is common in long-term partnerships to minimize conflict; very large dissimilarity is unlikely to sustain a long-term relationship.
  • Familiarity and the mirror exposure effect
    • Familiarity generally increases liking (familiarity breeds liking).
    • Exposure effect in art and stimuli:
    • Repeated exposure to neutral abstract art or sounds increases perceived attractiveness of items (the mirror exposure effect).
    • In social contexts (Eastwick & Hunt, 2014): rating opposite-sex targets showed high initial agreement in attractiveness/warmth/potential success, but ratings diverged by end of semester as people got to know others better; familiarity often increases positive evaluations unless initial dislike is strong.
    • Gender differences: women viewing other women tend to rate them as more attractive with repetition; men viewing women may show a more complex pattern, possibly reflecting a drive for sexual variety.
  • Love maps (John Money)
    • Concept: individuals bring a personalized love map—preferences shaped by early experiences and history.
    • Positive early experiences with a person who has certain features (e.g., red hair, a beard, kind doctor) can bias future attractions toward those features.
    • Negative early experiences can produce aversions to similar features.
    • Implication: early relationships and experiences contribute significantly to adult attraction patterns, beyond universal evolutionary signals.

Additional conceptual notes and implications

  • Sex differences in mate preferences reflect both universal trade-offs and contextual variability: resource access and status signals for long-term mating, attractiveness cues for short-term mating.
  • Real-world cultural shifts may gradually alter traditional patterns (e.g., older women marrying younger men in some regions, changing norms around female financial independence and status).
  • Ethical, philosophical, and practical implications:
    • The emphasis on resources and status can reinforce gender-role stereotypes and contribute to inequality if misused as a social norm.
    • Recognizing context effects highlights the importance of separating situational arousal from stable partner quality in dating advice.
    • Awareness of love maps encourages sensitivity to how early experiences shape adult attraction, which can be relevant in therapy and relationship counseling.

Key terms and concepts to remember

  • Mating preferences: indicators of mate quality such as resource prospects, status signals, kindness, intelligence, physical attractiveness.
  • Excitation transfer theory: residual arousal from one stimulus can be misattributed to another stimulus, affecting attraction.
  • Dutton & Aron bridge/roller-coaster studies: classic demonstrations of arousal transfer affecting sexual attraction.
  • Matching hypothesis: tendency to pair with partners who are similar in various attributes, especially in long-term relationships.
  • Big Five personality traits (OCEAN): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.
  • Familiarity/mirror exposure effect: repeated exposure increases liking; initial judgments can shift with more information.
  • Love maps (John Money): individualized attraction templates shaped by early experiences.
  • MHC complex: genetic factors contributing to partner compatibility and dissimilarity in certain contexts.

Bonus context: ongoing questions and future directions

  • How do patterns differ for non-heterosexual orientations across various cultures and age groups?
  • To what extent do excited transfer effects occur in real-world dating scenarios versus experimental contexts?
  • How rapidly are traditional gender differences in mate preferences changing in contemporary societies?
  • What are the mechanisms by which love maps interact with cultural norms and changing social environments?