Cross-Cultural Variation in Mate Preferences for Averageness, Symmetry, Body Size, and Masculinity
Abstract
Sexual selection has greatly influenced the evolved biology, psychology, and culture of humans and favors individuals who choose healthy and fertile mates. Physical traits that cue quality are generally preferred and perceived as attractive. However, because such traits often involve cost-benefit trade-offs, mate preferences are expected to vary among cultures as a function of local ecology and social environment and among individuals as a function of one’s personal experiences and life history. As such, it is essential to understand how ontogenetic and environmental factors influence mate preferences that may be locally adaptive and context specific. Here the authors review a growing body of comparative research, demonstrating predictable patterns in men’s and women’s preferences for facial averageness, facial symmetry, stature, body mass, and facial and vocal masculinity or femininity both between and within cultures. The authors consider potential factors influencing variation in preferences that include resource availability, disease prevalence, paternal investment, visual experience, and cultural norms.
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Biographies
Katarzyna Pisanski obtained a master of science from the University of Lethbridge in 2010 and is currently a doctorate candidate in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour at McMaster University, Canada. Her research integrates bioacoustics and evolutionary psychology in the study of human voice and mate preferences.
David R. Feinberg is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, & Behaviour at McMaster University, Canada. He published the first cross-cultural studies on human voice preferences and reproductive success. His research on human mating behavior is widely cited by anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, medical doctors, and biologists.
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Article first published online: January 11, 2013
Issue published: May 2013
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