Other studies find that women prefer dominant men over relatively meek
men (Sadalla, Kenrick, & Vershure, 1987). This preference for a dominant man
is even stronger when women have first been made to think about objects related
to being a parent (Miller & Ostlund, 2006). According to evolutionary personal-
ity theorists, a dominant man is better able to provide needed resources for his
family than a man at the bottom of the pecking order. But do these findings
mean that, given a choice, women prefer loud and brutish men? In other words,
in the game of love, do nice guys finish last? Additional studies indicate that thisis not necessarily the case (Burger & Cosby, 1999; Graziano, Jensen-Campbell,
Todd, & Finch, 1997). Mating with a dominant man may have its advantages,
but not if he is unwilling to share resources or invest in the welfare of hischildren. In other words, dominance alone may not be a very attractive trait. In
support of this reasoning, when undergraduate women observed and evaluated
interactions between men, they reported that helpful and generous men were farmore appealing for both short- and long-term relationships than men who were
simply dominant (Jensen-Campbell, Graziano, & West, 1995).
In summary, research finds patterns of attraction that support evolution-
ary theory ’s predictions about what women find attractive in men. But once
again, we need to ask if the findings are limited to American samples. Data
from the 37-culture study described earlier indicate that women around the
world report similar preferences (Buss, 1989). As shown in Table 10.6, women
in each culture were more likely than men to prefer a spouse who had good
financial prospects. Only in Spain did this difference fail to reach statistical
significance. Similar patterns were found when the men and women rated the
importance of such characteristics as ambition and industriousness in a part-
ner. In short, there is a nearly universal tendency for women to prefer men
who can provide financial resources.
Conclusions and Limitations
Research findings on what men and women look for in romantic partners
tend to be consistent with the predictions from evolutionary personality psy-
chology. Men around the world prefer younger and physically attractive women,
whereas women look for a man who can provide the material resources they
need to raise their children. However, as intuitive and consistent as these
findings may be, there are reasons to take them with at least a grain of salt.
As described in the previous chapter, researchers testing these hypotheses
are necessarily limited in their ability to make strong tests of causal relation-ships. Because they cannot manipulate variables like gender and physicalattractiveness, investigators are unable to rule out many alternative explana-
tions for their findings (Wood & Eagly, 2002). For example, differences in
the ages men and women marry may simply have to do with differences inmaturity level, with women becoming physically and perhaps emotionally
mature more quickly than men.
Moreover, investigations do not always produce findings consistent
with evolutionary personality theory ’s predictions (Costa, Terracciano, &
McCrae, 2001; Eastwick & Finkel, 2008). For example, evolutionary person-
ality psychologists argue that men should be more upset when discovering
their spouse’ s sexual infidelity, but women will be more concerned about270 CHAPTER 10 The Biological Approach