Snyder, J. K., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2002, June). Opposite
Sex Mating Preferences: The Roles of Dominance and Prestige.
Poster to be presented at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and
Evolution Society, New Brunswick, NJ.
Abstract
Previous research has indicated that women preferentially select males
who are high in dominance, presumably because dominance may imply social
status, good financial prospects, and ambition. However, if dominance is
marked by aggressiveness, authoritarianism, oppression, and domineering
behaviors, dominant mates may also pose adaptive problems for females and
their offspring. Prestige, like dominance, directly implies social status,
good access to resources, and ambition, but also implies additional qualities
such as kindness, willingness to help, and generosity, which are related
to the ability to invest, willingness to invest and good parenting skills
in ways in which dominance is not. Because prestige has the potential to
solve similar adaptive problems for females as dominance, with less potential
cost, we predicted that females would prefer high prestigious males to
dominant males as potential mates. Study 1, in which participants compared
high-dominant targets to high-prestige targets relative to each other,
confirmed this prediction with respect to target desirability as a relationship
partner (in both sexes), but women preferred dominant to prestigious men
with respect to attractiveness. Study 2, which manipulated dominance and
prestige independently of one another, suggested that dominance and prestige
separately and additively increased women's perceptions of male attractiveness,
whereas only dominance affected long-term preferences. The latter result
may be moderated by perceptions of promiscuity.
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