Originally published 11 July 1994
Stop the presses! Scientist makes astounding discovery!
Based on surveys of thousands of people in 37 countries, psychologist David Buss of the University of Michigan confirms the following facts about our mating habits: Men prefer women who are young and good-looking. Women are attracted to wealthy and powerful men.
You knew that already? Well, at least it’s nice to have our intuitions scientifically confirmed.
Buss presents these conclusions, and others, in an article in the May-June [1994] issue of American Scientist. The research is reported in greater detail in his recent book, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating.
In general, Buss concludes that human mating is inherently strategic, and that strategies are often constant across cultures. Men and women have evolved different mating strategies, and men and women behave differently depending on whether a situation presents itself as a short- or long-term mating prospect.
Buss has an engagingly simple notion of scientific method: theory, hypothesis, prediction, testing. It is not clear to me that his research does much more than catalog the obvious.
His classically Darwinian theory is this: Strategies in human mating have evolved because they enabled our ancestors to survive and produce offspring.
In other words: When an old guy comes on to a young gal, he is not simply a dirty old man; he is acting out a species-specific strategy shaped by millions of years of sexual selection.
Or perhaps we should say that somewhere among his chromosomes there exists a dirty-old-man gene. Presumably, he gets a response from the younger woman because a gold-digger gene lurks among her chromosomes.
Anyway, that’s the theory.
From the theory, Buss draws certain hypotheses. For example, Hypothesis 1: Short-term mating is more important for the reproductive success of men than of women.
Men are able to produce offspring with a minimum investment of time and responsibility; women inevitably invest months or years of gestation and lactation. One-night stands are to his advantage; she will want something more enduring.
The hypothesis suggests certain predictions: 1) Men will express a greater interest in seeking a short-term mate than will women; 2) men will desire a greater number of mates; and 3) men will be more willing to engage in sexual intercourse within a shorter time after meeting a potential partner.
Buss tests the hypothesis by seeing if the predictions are confirmed.
As is often the case in psychological research, college students were the guinea pigs. Anyone familiar with the contemporary college scene will have no difficulty guessing the outcomes.
Buss mentions favorably a novel test of Prediction No. 3 — that men will engage in sex after a shorter period of time — contrived by two researchers at the University of Hawaii. In this study, college students were approached by an attractive member of the opposite sex and, after a brief introduction, asked one of the following questions: “Would you go out on a date with me tonight?” “Would you go back to my apartment with me tonight?” or “Would you have sex with me tonight?”
Of the women who were approached, 50 percent agreed to the date, 6 percent to the apartment visit, and none agreed to have sex. Many of the female subjects found the sexual proposition from a virtual stranger to be “odd or insulting.”
The response of guys was rather different: 50 percent agreed to the date, 69 percent agreed to go to the woman’s apartment, and 75 percent agreed to have sex. The male subjects found the sexual request flattering. The few men who declined the proposition were apologetic, “citing a fiancée or an unavoidable obligation that particular evening.”
One wonders how the guys felt when they discovered that the unexpected come-on was part of a psychology research project. This is the stuff of a Bill Murray comedy.
Professor Buss lists eight more hypotheses, and makes predictions on the basis of each. For example, Hypothesis 6: A man seeking a long-term mate will solve the problem of paternity confidence; that is, he will want to make sure the kids are his own.
To test this hypothesis, Buss and colleagues hooked up college students to electrodes that measured the wrinkling of brows (frowning), skin conductance (sweating), and heart rate. They then asked each subject to imagine that his or her partner was having sex with someone else, or that his or her partner was falling in love with someone else.
Judged by their physiological responses, women were more concerned about emotional, rather than sexual, infidelity.
And the men? Buss writes: “In response to the thought of sexual infidelity, their skin conductances increased by an average of about 1.5 microSiemens, the frowning muscles showed 7.75 microvolt units of contraction and their hearts increased by about five beats per minute. In response to the thought of emotional infidelity, the men’s skin conductance showed little change from baseline, their frowning increased by only 1.16 units, and their heart rates did not increase.”
Science marches on.
