What traits attract a woman? Psychological studies have found that women have the following nine preferences when choosing a mate for a long time.
1. Preference for good economic prospects
Evidence from dozens of studies shows that contemporary women do value economic resources more than men when choosing a mate. Taking a 1939 study in the United States as an example, male and female subjects need to grade 18 personal characteristics, ranging from "irrelevant" to "essential", to measure the importance of each characteristic for mate selection.
What traits attract a woman? The study showed that women pay twice as much attention to economic conditions as men, a result that was repeated at research centers in 1956 and 1967. In the mid-1980s, some people repeated the research of decades ago, and used the same questionnaire to survey 1491 Americans. As decades ago, women still pay twice as much attention to economic conditions as men when choosing a mate.
Women's preference for economic resources does not only occur in western society, but also in a large-scale cross-cultural study involving six continents and five islands, with a total of 10047 respondents from 37 different cultural backgrounds.
Research shows that women from different continents, political systems, races and religions value each other's economic prospects more than men from the same environment. A large number of studies have confirmed that in long-term relationships, women have evolved a strong preference for resources and economic conditions.
Modern women are the offspring of ancient women. In the evolutionary history, only women with the above preference for mate can successfully reproduce.
2. Preference for high social status
A cross-cultural study investigated mate selection behavior in 37 cultures. The results show that women value social status more than men in capitalist countries, socialist countries, Africans, Asians, tropical regions in the South and cold regions in the north, such as Taiwan, China, Women scored 63% higher than men in social status, 30% higher than men in Zambia, 38% higher than men in Germany, and 40% higher than men in Brazil.
What traits attract a woman? Status is a common feature of all human societies, and resources are usually concentrated in the hands of those with higher social status. The reason why women prefer men with higher social status is that social status is a common clue to judge the number of resources. A person with high social status often has better food, more land and better health care conditions. Men with high social status often provide more social opportunities for their children.
3. Preference for older men
Similarly, in the international study of mate selection involving 37 cultures, all women preferred older men. On average, women want men to be about three and a half years older than themselves. However, there are also some cultural differences.
For example, women in Canada want their husbands to be older than themselves, but the gap is best within two years old, while women in Iran want the gap to be more than five years old. To understand why women prefer older men, we have to look at things that change with age. One of the most stable changes is the growth of resources. In modern society, people's income generally increases with age.
4. A preference for ambition and diligence
Although resources are very important, it is not enough to have them. Women also hope that men can have some stable traits to help them get more and more resources. Ambition is one of the characteristics. In the 1950s, researchers asked 5000 college students to list their requirements for future spouses.
The results show that women value their future spouse more than men, such as love of work, career planning, diligence and self-motivated. In another international mate selection study, 852 single women and 100 married women consistently rated motivation and diligence as important or essential qualities.
In the long-term and short-term mate selection, women think that men who are lack of self-improvement are the least attractive. When a man is unemployed, lack of goals, or lazy, women in every country may terminate the long-term relationship with him.
5. Preference for reliability and stability
In the cross-border study of 37 cultures, respondents were asked to rate 18 personal characteristics of their future spouses. The results showed that love ranked first, followed by reliable personality, emotional stability or maturity.
On average, among the 37 cultures, women rated reliability as 2.69, three of which were "essential.". Why is reliability and stability so important to women all over the world? There may be two reasons.
First, these qualities indicate whether men are willing to provide resources continuously.
Second, the lack of trust and emotional instability of men from time to time to cause serious emotional burden on their spouses, may also bring other problems.
6. Preference for height and athletic ability
There is evidence that short men are rated "unattractive" in both short-term and long-term relationships. In contrast, tall, strong, athletic men are considered "very attractive" to marry.
According to a survey of British and Sri Lankan women, the most popular men are muscular and slightly skinny. A follow-up analysis of 1168 marriage advertisements in Poland shows that a man's height is one of the four main indicators to predict how many responses he will receive, and the other three are education background, age and resources.
Tall men are generally considered more dominant and have more opportunities to date. Throughout the animal kingdom, females attach great importance to the physical characteristics of males. For humans, one of the benefits of a long-term partnership is that men can provide physical protection.
And a man's body shape, strength, physical fitness and athletic ability are clues to judge whether he can provide protection.
7. Love and commitment
Although women can identify the resources that men have, it is difficult to be sure of their commitment. In order to judge the reliability of commitment, women need to look for clues that indicate men's future loyalty. Love may be one of the important clues to commitment.
In order to determine "what is love" and the relationship between love and commitment, some researchers investigated the behavior of love. For both men and women, commitment is seen as the core of love. The related behaviors usually include: giving up the emotional entanglement with others, willing to talk about marriage, hoping to get married and have children with each other.
If a man shows these loving behaviors, it means that he is willing to make a commitment to provide resources for her and her children in the future.
8. Preference for similarity
Successful long-term partnership usually requires long-term and stable cooperation alliance. The similarity between partners can make both sides form a strong emotional bond, promote communication and cooperation, bring sexual pleasure, reduce the risk of breaking up and increase the survival probability of future generations.
Both men and women have the same requirements for similarity. They want each other to have similar values, world outlook and knowledge level as themselves. They also want their personality characteristics to be closer. All in all, people are always willing to date and marry people who are more similar.
9. Preference for looks
The results show that in the long-term mate selection, women generally prefer masculine male faces. Why do women find masculine men more attractive? Psychologists believe that masculinity is a sign of good health.
In the process of men's physical development, only very healthy people can "afford" high levels of testosterone. Men who are not healthy enough have to suppress the production of testosterone in order not to threaten the already fragile immune system. Healthy men secrete more testosterone, resulting in a more masculine face.
Therefore, women's preference for masculine faces, in essence, is a preference for physical health. The health of spouses can bring more benefits to women, including environmental and genetic benefits, such as longer life expectancy, more reliable material supply, lower prevalence and better genetic.
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