The Red Queen_ Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley [133]
This may seem a startlingly obvious thing to say. As Nancy Thornhill put it, ‘Surely no one has ever seriously doubted that men desire young, beautiful women and that women desire wealthy, high-status men?’30 The answer to her question is that sociologists do doubt it. Judging by their reaction to a recent study, only the most rigorous evidence will convince them. The study was done by David Buss, of the University of Michigan, who asked a large sample of American students to rank the qualities they most preferred in a mate. He found that men preferred kindness, intelligence, beauty and youth, while women preferred kindness, intelligence, wealth and status. He was told that this may be the case in America, but it is not a universal facet of human nature.
So he repeated the study in thirty-seven different samples from thirty-three countries, asking over one thousand people, and found exactly the same result. Men pay more attention to youth and beauty, women to wealth and status. To which came this answer: of course, women pay more attention to wealth, because men control it. If women controlled wealth they would not seek it in their spouses. Buss looked again and found that American women who make more money than average pay more attention than average to the wealth of potential spouses, not less.31 Professional women value the earning capacity of their husbands more, not less, than low-earning women. Even a survey of fifteen powerful leaders of the feminist movement revealed that they wanted still more powerful men. As Buss’s colleague Bruce Ellis put it, ‘Women’s sexual tastes become more, rather than less, discriminatory as their wealth, power and social status increases.’32
Many of Buss’s critics argue that he has ignored context altogether. In different cultures and at different times different criteria of mate preference will develop. To this Buss replies with a simple analogy. The amount of muscle on the average man is highly context-dependent: in the United States, young men tend to be beefier about the shoulders than in Britain, partly, perhaps, because they eat better food, and partly, perhaps, because their sports emphasize throwing strength rather than agility. Yet this does not negate the generalization, ‘men have more muscle on their shoulders than women’. So, too, the fact that women may pay more attention to men’s wealth in one place than another does not negate the generalization that women pay more attention to the wealth of potential mates than men do.33
The main difficulty with Buss’s study is that it fails to distinguish between a partner chosen as a spouse and a partner chosen for a fling. Douglas Kenrick of Arizona State University asked a group of students to rank various attributes of potential mates according to four levels of intimacy. When seeking a marriage partner, intelligence is important to both sexes. When seeking a sexual partner for a one-night stand, intelligence matters much less, especially to men. There is little doubt that people of both sexes are sensible enough to value kindness, compatibility and wit in those with whom they may spend the rest of their lives.34
The difficulty with measuring sexual preferences is that they are compromises. An ageing, ugly man does not mate with several young and beautiful women (unless he is very rich indeed). He settles for a faithful wife of the same age. A young woman does not mate faithfully with a wealthy tycoon. She chooses whatever is available, probably a man slightly older than her with no more money, but a steady job. People lower their expectations according to their age, looks and wealth. To discover just how different the sexual mentalities of men and women are it is necessary