CHAPTER 5: MEN’S LONG-TERM MATING STRATEGIES
Chapter Summary
There were many potential benefits to ancestral men who married. They would have increased their
chances of attracting a mate, especially a more desirable mate. By marrying, men would have increased
their certainty in paternity because they gained continuous or exclusive or predominant sexual access to
the woman. In the currency of fitness, men also would have benefited through the increased survival and
reproductive success of their children, accrued through paternal protection and investment.
Two adaptive problems loom large in men’s long-term mate selection decisions. The first is identifying
women of high fertility or reproductive value—women capable of successfully bearing children. A large
body of evidence suggests that men have evolved standards of attractiveness that embody cues to a
woman’s reproductive capacity. Signals of youth and health are central among these cues—clear skin, full
lips, small
lower jaw, symmetrical features, white teeth, absence of sores and lesions, facial femininity, facial
symmetry, facial averageness, and a small ratio of waist to hips. Standards of beauty linked to youth,
health, and fertility are consistent across cultures. Preferences for amount of body fat and WHR vary
predictably across cultures depending on relative food scarcity as well as the actual WHR distributions in
the local culture.
Male homosexual orientation has been called an evolutionary paradox because homosexuality is known to
be linked to dramatically reduced reproductive success. Of the leading evolutionary theories, the kin
altruism hypothesis has received mixed empirical support, whereas the female fertility hypothesis has
received the strongest empirical support.
Many contexts affect men’s long-term mating strategies. First, men who have what most women want,
such as power, status, and resources, are most able to successfully attract women that most men prefer.
Second, viewing attractive images of other women appears to lower men’s commitment to their regular
partner. Third, getting into a committed mating relationship causes a reduction in T levels in men, but
only if they are monogamously oriented and do not desire extra-pair sex. Fourth, interacting with
attractive women, and even their mere presence, increases men’s T levels as well as their behavioral risk
taking. Fifth, men’s mate preferences shift as a function of their “mating budget.” On limited mating
budgets, men place exceptional importance on the “necessities” such as an adequate level of physical
attractiveness. After these necessities are met, men pay more attention to “luxuries” such as creativity and
personality traits.
when instructed to do so. Fifth, men interacting with attractive women lower their vocal pitch into a more
masculine range that appeals to women. Sixth, attractive waitresses, particularly those who are young,
have larger breasts and blonde hair, receive more tips from men. Seventh, men spend more money on
Suggested Readings
Bryant, G. A., & Haselton, M. G. (2009). Vocal cues of ovulation in human females. Biology Letters, 5,
12–15.
Cornelissen, P. L., Hancock, P. J. B., Kiviniemi, V., George, H. R., & Tovee, V. (2009). Patterns of eye
movements when male and female observers judge female attractiveness, body fat, and waist-to–
hip ratio. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30, 417–428.
Cronk, L., & Dunham, B. (2007). Amounts spent on engagement rings reflect aspects of male and female
mate quality. Human Nature, 18, 329–333.
Dixon, B. J., Grimshaw, G. M., Linklater,W. L., & Dixon, A. F. (2010). Eye tracking of men’s
preferences for waist-to-hip ratio and breast size of women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, DOI
10.1007/s10508- 009-9523-5.
Hill, S. E., Rodeheffer, C. D., Grislevocois. V., Durante, K., & White, A. E. (2012). Boosting beauty
in an economic decline: Mating, spending, and the lipstick effect. Journal of Personality and
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which of the following is an adaptive benefit that would NOT have accrued to ancestral men willing to
(a) increasing the quality of the long-term mate he is able to attract
(b) increasing paternity uncertainty
(c) increasing his pool of social allies
(d) increasing the chances his children will survive to reproductive age
(a) greater numbers of children
(b) greater investment from paternal kin
(c) greater similarity to children
(d) greater sexual access to a partner
3. Hill and Hurtado found that Ache children whose fathers died suffer a _________ death rate than
(a) higher
(b) lower
(c) less steep
(d) more predictable
(a) the number of children a person has
(b) the number of children a person is likely to have in the future
(c) the number of children that a person has in combination with his or her kin
(d) the number of children a person is capable of having in the next five years
(a) determine how receptive women were to sexual intercourse
(b) determine women’s age from visual cues
(c) determine which women were likely capable of conceiving children
(d) determine the reproductive value of a woman
(a) teens
(b) twenties
(c) thirties
(d) forties
(a) teens
(b) twenties
(c) thirties
(d) forties
8. Men’s mate preferences, relative to women’s mate preferences, should be more attuned to a prospective
(a) body symmetry
(b) facial symmetry
(c) reproductive value
(d) resource holdings
9. The male preference for youth in a long-term mate is critical because a woman’s _________ declines
(a) reproductive value
(b) status
(c) attractiveness
(d) symmetry
(a) do not have age preferences for dates
(b) prefer dates with women their own age
(c) prefer dates with slightly younger women
(d) prefer dates with slightly older women
11. Men in their fifties who are looking for a long-term mate prefer women in their thirties. Men’s
preferences for short-term mates, however, remain for women at the age of peak fertility. Why might this
(b) Older men are less interested in mates who are similar or compatible.
(c) Older men are generally lower in status than young men.
(d) Modern long-term mating is different from ancestral long-term mating; it requires less
compatibility.
12. Male ancestors had access to which two types of observable evidence of a woman’s reproductive
(a) hair color and current fertility status
(b) current fertility status and body fat distribution
(c) physical appearance and behavior
(d) behavior and current fertility status
(a) short distance between mouth and jaw
(b) long distance between mouth and jaw
(c) lower cheekbones
(d) eyes set wider apart
14. Men rate composite faces, mathematical averages of multiple women’s faces as more attractive than
(a) averageness indicates reproductive value
(b) averageness indicates youth
(c) averageness could be a marker of phenotypic quality
(d) averageness is correlated with conformity and agreeableness
(a) asymmetrical faces than at symmetrical faces
(b) attractive faces than at unattractive faces
(c) unattractive dolls than at attractive dolls
(d) pairs of faces than at single faces
16. When asked to select the ideal figure for themselves, women selected one __________ than men
(a) thinner
(b) shorter
(c) plumper
(d) taller
17. Despite average changes in weight over the past thirty years, Singh found that __________ did not
(a) facial symmetry
(b) female preferences
(c) body fat distribution
(d) waist-to–hip ratio
(a) .60
(b) .70
(c) .80
(d) .90
19. Men who pursue a short-term sexual strategy prefer women with ________ waist-to-hip ratios relative
(a) lower
(b) higher
(c) the same
(d) the highest
(a) were rated less attractive than women with relatively smaller breasts and lower waist-to-hip
ratios
(b) have the highest levels of estradiol
(c) have the lowest levels of estradiol
(d) were rated less attractive than women with higher waist-to-hip ratios and large breasts
21. The size of the sex difference in the importance of attractiveness has __________ over the past fifty
(a) remained invariant
(b) increased slightly
(c) decreased marginally
(d) diminished altogether
22. Across cultures, male preferences for physical attractiveness __________ female preferences for
(a) are valued more than
(b) are equal to
(c) are half when compared to
(d) are valued less than
23. Which of the following benefits did NOT accrue to ancestral men who preferred ovulating women?
(b) avoided women who were not ovulating
(c) decreased parasite load
(d) Mated males could more efficiently guard their partners.
24. Which of the following lines of evidence does NOT point to an ability in men to detect when a
(a) lightening of the skin during ovulation
(b) vascularization of the skin during ovulation
(c) body odor changes during ovulation
(d) men’s sexual performance with ovulating women
(a) more attractive
(b) less attractive
(c) stronger
(d) weaker
(a) ensures greater paternity certainty for a long-term mate
(b) increased the quality of mate that women could attracted
(c) concealed her reproductive status
(d) increased the probability of attracting a mate
27. Marriage may have provided an adaptive solution to the following problems for ancestral men
(a) paternity uncertainty
(b) providing a social signal about who was mated to whom
(c) providing opportunities to learn about a mate’s personality, making it difficult for her to hide
signs of infidelity
(d) freeing a male to more successfully pursue short-term mating opportunities
28. The value that North American men place on virginity in a prospective long-term mate has
(a) increased
(b) decreased
(c) not changed
(d) doubled
(a) a partner’s extraversion
(b) commitment to a partner
(c) a partner’s conscientiousness
(d) premarital sexual permissiveness
(a) high in mate value
(b) low in mate value
(c) high in reproductive value
(d) sexually loyal
(a) are not yet explainable by any one theory
(b) are a set of adaptations designed to increase alliance formation
(c) free one from investing in offspring with a partner so that greater investment can be made in
relatives’ offspring
(d) are unique to Western cultures
33. Grammer found that a(n) ______________ in men’s income is associated with a(n) _____________
(a) decrease; decrease
(b) increase; increase
(c) increase; decrease
(d) change; increase
34. Men exposed to attractive women rate their current romantic partner as ______ attractive and rate
(a) more; more
(b) more; less
(c) less; less
(d) less; more
35. Which of the following is a hypothesis proposed by evolutionary psychologists about men’s
(a) Men’s testosterone levels should decrease after entering into a long-term committed
relationship.
(b) Men’s testosterone levels should increase after entering into a long-term committed
relationship.
(c) Men’s testosterone levels should increase after their partner gives birth to a son.
(d) Men’s testosterone levels should increase after their partner gives birth to a daughter.
36. Men in the later stages of a relationship have __________ testosterone than men in the early stages of
(a) higher; spike
(b) lower; drop
(c) lower; spike
(d) higher; drop
37. Men who are in relationships and willing to have an affair tend to have _________ testosterone than
men unwilling to have an affair, which supports the idea that testosterone is associated with ___________
(a) lower; fertility
(b) higher; fertility
(c) lower; mating effort
(d) higher; mating effort
38. Budget allocation was employed to examine men’s and women’s mate preferences in terms of
necessities and luxuries. The researchers found that men considered __________ a necessity in a mate,
(a) kindness; physical attractiveness
(b) lively personality; kindness
(c) physical attractiveness; kindness
(d) kindness; physical attractiveness
(a) more
(b) fewer
(c) an equal number of
(d) the same number of
40. Women’s use of appearance enhancement was judged to be _________________ effective in
(a) slightly less
(b) slightly more
(c) significantly less
(d) significantly more
41. Women tend to derogate other women’s ___________, especially during the _________ phase of
(a) status; fertile
(b) physical appearance; fertile
(c) status; infertile
(d) physical appearance; infertile
(a) The prevalence of eating disorders is highest among women engaged in intrasexual
competition for mates.
(b) Men tend to have more eating disorders than women but are more likely to keep them a secret.
(c) Bulimia occurs more frequently among girls who are prepubescent.
(d) Anorexia occurs more frequently among girls who are prepubescent.
(a) young men’s faces
(b) young women’s faces
(c) older men’s faces
(d) older women’s faces
44. Evidence from a study in which silhouette images of the female body were rated revealed that the
(a) 1
(b) 5
(c) 8
(d) 10
45. Which of the following indicates that men’s preference for low waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) in women is
(a) Men who are blind from birth prefer the feel of low WHR mannequins.
(b) Women also find low WHR to be attractive in other women.
(c) The average WHR of prostitutes varies from culture to culture.
(d) The WHRs of females depicted in artwork are consistently low.
46. There is much controversy over whether waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) or body mass index (BMI) is a
better predictor of a woman’s perceived attractiveness. Which of the following is the best evidence that
(a) Childhood obesity is more predictive of infertility than adulthood obesity.
(b) Offspring of women with larger hips show higher cognitive development during elementary
school.
(c) An eye-tracking study documented that men spend focus more on women’s breasts and waist area
than the hip area.
(d) Women tend to derogate other women for being fat.
(a) WHR
(b) tips made by professional lap dancers
(c) facial attractiveness
(d) self-perceived attractiveness
47. Which of the following hypotheses would be supported if there was evidence that sisters of
(a) kin altruism hypothesis
(b) female fertility hypothesis
(c) alliance formation hypothesis
(d) female obligatory investment hypothesis
(a) attractive
(b) acting warmly
(c) smiling
(d) all of the above
49. Which of the following indicates a hypothesized mate preference that appears to be adaptive in the
(a) When wives are six years younger than their husbands, they have fewer children than wives who
are six years older than their husbands.
(b) When the man is higher than the woman on attractiveness, the couple produces more offspring.
(c) Women whose high school photographs were rated as more attractive produced more children
than women whose high school photographs were rated less attractive.
(d) all of the above
50. Men exhibit “attentional adhesion” to photographs of attractive women. This means that __________.
afford to be choosier
(b) men’s attentional systems are biased toward attractive women and have a difficult time switching
from an attractive woman to a different target
(c) men have adaptations for viewing photographic images of fertile women
(d) men have learned to pay more attention to attractive women because they are of higher status
(a) he is oriented toward short-term mating
(b) he did not grow up with female siblings
(c) he has not been influenced by Western media
(d) he has lower social status
52. Which of the following is an empirically documented result that indicates that men adjust their
(a) Men tip waitresses most if they are taller and brunette.
(b) Men’s skin conductance fluctuates less from baseline when speaking with an attractive woman.
(c) Men increase the pitch of their voice when talking to an attractive woman.
(d) The younger the woman, the more money the man spends on his engagement ring for her.