Chinese and UK participants' preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates

Lingshan Zhang; Hongyi Wang; Anthony J. Lee; Lisa M. DeBruine; Benedict C. Jones

doi:10.1098/rsos.181243

Chinese and UK participants' preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates

Lingshan Zhang, Hongyi Wang, Anthony J. Lee, Lisa M. DeBruine, Benedict C. Jones^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

17 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Men are hypothesized to show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness in potential mates than women are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for short-term relationships. By contrast, women are thought to show stronger preferences for social status in potential mates than men are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for long-term relationships. These mate-preference sex differences are often claimed to be ‘universal’ (i.e. stable across cultures). Consequently, we used an established ‘budget-allocation’ task to investigate Chinese and UK participants’ preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates. Confirmatory analyses replicated these sex differences in both samples, consistent with the suggestion that they occur in diverse cultures. However, confirmatory analyses also showed that Chinese women had stronger preferences for social status than UK women did, suggesting cultural differences in the magnitude of mate-preference sex differences can also occur.

Original language	English
Article number	181243
Number of pages	10
Journal	Royal Society Open Science
Volume	6
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181243
Publication status	Published - 20 Nov 2019

Funding

Ethics. All procedures were approved by the University of Glasgow, School of Psychology, Ethics Committee and all participants provided informed consent. Data accessibility. Data and analysis code are archived at https://osf.io/rkstx/. Authors’ contributions. All authors contributed to designing the study. L.Z. and H.W. collected the data. L.Z., A.J.L. and L.M.D. wrote an analysis code and carried out statistical analyses. L.Z. and B.C.J. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. L.M.D. designed testing interfaces. All authors revised and approved the manuscript. Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests. Funding. This research was funded by an ERC grant (KINSHIP) awarded to L.M.D. Acknowledgement. The authors thank Julia Stern and Alex Jones for constructive comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

Keywords

attractiveness
culture
mate preferences
social status

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10.1098/rsos.181243Licence: CC BY 4.0

Zhang-etal-RSOS-2019-preferences-for-physical-attractiveness-and-social-status-in-potential-matesFinal published version, 547 KBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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title = "Chinese and UK participants' preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates",

abstract = "Men are hypothesized to show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness in potential mates than women are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for short-term relationships. By contrast, women are thought to show stronger preferences for social status in potential mates than men are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for long-term relationships. These mate-preference sex differences are often claimed to be {\textquoteleft}universal{\textquoteright} (i.e. stable across cultures). Consequently, we used an established {\textquoteleft}budget-allocation{\textquoteright} task to investigate Chinese and UK participants{\textquoteright} preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates. Confirmatory analyses replicated these sex differences in both samples, consistent with the suggestion that they occur in diverse cultures. However, confirmatory analyses also showed that Chinese women had stronger preferences for social status than UK women did, suggesting cultural differences in the magnitude of mate-preference sex differences can also occur.",

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AU - Jones, Benedict C.

PY - 2019/11/20

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Chinese and UK participants' preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates

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Keywords

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