reproductive capacity ”(D. M. Buss, 1991, p. 2). Not coincidentally, these
physical attributes are the ones our society associates with beauty.
Evolutionary personality psychologists thus predict that men prefer partners
who are physically attractive and probably younger than they are. But can the
same reasoning be applied to women? Probably not. If anything, a young man is
probably less likely than an older man to provide a woman and her offspring
with the kinds of material resources she seeks from a partner. As a result, we
would expect most couples to consist of an older husband and a younger wife.
Research tends to support these speculations. A national survey of un-
married American adults found that men preferred younger women as poten-tial marriage partners, whereas women expressed a preference for older men(Sprecher, Sullivan, & Hatfield, 1994). Married couples in one study were
asked about the importance they placed on various characteristics when
choosing their spouse (Buss & Barnes, 1986). As expected, husbands weremore likely than their wives to rate physically attractive and good looking as
features they sought in a marriage partner. Another study found the more at-
tractive their partner, the more efforts men make to retain their relationshipwith that woman (Buss & Shackelford, 1997). Men also are more likely to
be upset if their partner becomes less attractive (Cramer, Manning-Ryan,
Johnson, & Barbo, 2000).
The importance of a woman ’s physical attractiveness can also be seen in
the tactics women use to gain a man ’s attention (Buss, 1988). In evolutionary
personality theory, this is known as intrasexual selection— the competition
among members of one gender for mating access to the best members of the
other gender. If men select partners who are youthful and beautiful, a woman
can improve her chances of pairing up with the most desirable partner by em-
phasizing these attributes.
To test this possibility, newlyweds in one study were asked to describe
what they did to attract their spouse when they first began dating (Buss,1988). As predicted, the women tended to report that they altered their ap-
pearance with makeup and jewelry, wore stylish clothes, wore sexy clothes,
and kept themselves clean and groomed. In another study, investigatorsscheduled undergraduate women to attend experimental sessions on two sep-
arate occasions (Durante, Li, & Haselton, 2008). Although the women did
not know it, the sessions were scheduled for different times in their ovulatorycycle. Hormone tests verified that one of the visits was on a high-fertility day
and the other on a low-fertility day. The women also did not know that the
researchers were primarily interested in what they would wear to the session.Consistent with the intrasexual selection notion, the women wore clothes
judges rated as more revealing and more sexy on high-fertility days. These
were the days in which the women presumably were more interested in cap-turing the attention of a potential partner.
In short, there is abundant evidence that men are more likely than
women to look at physical attractiveness when selecting a dating or marriagepartner (Feingold, 1990). However, it is important to keep in mind that it is
fertility men are said to be seeking in younger women, not necessarily youth-
fulness. When one team of investigators interviewed teenage boys, they founda preference for slightly older women (Ken rick, Keefe, Gabrielidis, & Cornelius,266 CHAPTER 10 The Biological Approach