Older men want younger women, science shows
Fri, Dec 5, 2008
Post filled in: Anthropology, Research, Studies
Feeling the need for scientific research to back up the ‘dirty old men’ myth, Gothenburg University and Oxford University scientists performed a study on 400 lonely hearts ads to see how men and women choose their partners. What they wanted was to test some theories about how men and women pick their partners in general.
By examining these ads, they found out what any man in his right mind already knows (this applies to most, not everybody). Women search for solid resources and an established social status. As a result, men often include ‘large house’ and ‘economically independent’ in their ads.
Men search for younger women, only about 1 man in 100 searching for a woman of similar or older age. However, young women search for older men. Actually, almost all women under 60 search for older partners. After they hit that magic number, they start thinking about younger partners (yeah, really).
“When it comes to physical characteristics, it turned out that men and women were the same. Both used words like, ‘athletic,’ ‘beautiful,’ ‘pretty,’ ‘tall,’ ‘handsome,’ and ‘trim’ to the same extent, and this goes both for their descriptions of themselves and for the characteristics they were looking for in a partner,” says Jörgen Johnsson at the Department of Zoology, University of Gothenburg, one of the researchers behind the study.
“This might indicate that men have learned to respond to women’s interest in looks, therefore stressing to the same extent their attractiveness in the ads. The fact that both sexes focus on looks may also be influenced by our times, with the great fixation on appearance in the media.”
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Andrei is no scientist, but from an early age, he has been fascinated by science; that's why he went to college, and signed up for Geophysics. Feeling that there's a huge gap between science and average people, he rallied TP, started ZME Science, and gave it a green twist too.
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December 11th, 2008 at 6:21 am
This has been true for many decades. So either it has something to do with basic instincts or we’ve all been brain washed for hundreds if not thousands of years.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Dear Gothenburg and Oxford Universities,
Please fund the research for my theory that the Earth is round since we are going over things everyone knows its true.
- Christopher Columbus
December 12th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Buss has published many articles on Human Mating Strategies. It is really amazing…My favorite is — “Strategic Self-Promotion and Competitor Derogation: Sex and Context Effects on the Perceived Effectiveness of Mate Attraction Tactics” (Buss & Schmitt, 1996)
The biggest problem we face in understanding our (human) behavior, is that many do not want to acknowledge/accept that we are animals. We are not that different from all the other animals and people need to accept that….
December 13th, 2008 at 5:08 am
Andrea,
I totally agree on the amazing nature of all these strategies — how can people believe we’ve risen above? We have more complex, tuned behaviors then they do? Like that matters.
Haven’t found the full study yet, but here’s the abstract - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8667162
Main poinr -
“Showing resource potential was judged most effective for men seeking a long-term mate, whereas giving resources immediately was judged most effective for men seeking short-term mates, confirming the hypothesized importance of temporal context in mate attraction effectiveness.”
December 13th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Risen above animal behavior that is
December 17th, 2008 at 1:20 am
DUH!
December 17th, 2008 at 1:21 am
DUH!OK ITS A DUPLICATE!
December 18th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Rodney,
Buss has really done some amazing work… I don’t think that Humans are bound by biological outlines, however people don’t seem to want to give biology enough “credit”. As in, biology will cause a person to want to act a certian way [through instinct] but becuase we, as humans, have a much higher cognitive ability than other animals, we are able to think through things and make decisions. So just becuase we are programmed for specific behaviors, biologically speaking, does not mean than we can’t rise above.
I am fascinated by the study of Human behavior, especially from a evolutionary biology standpoint and while it may be a little of topic, I recently read an article that was published only a few months ago that shows that the gene, AVPR1a, governs a receptor that regulates the brain’s production of neuropeptide arginine vasopressin (AVP), a hormone that contributes to attachment behavior with mates and offspring in males…. Ultimately showing that there is likely a genetic link to a Man’s potential to be monogamous. This is incredibly interesting to learn, however kind of depressing to me (as a female) that a man with lacking this particular gene (AVPR1a) is more prone to infidelity than a man with 2 copies of the gene.
A link to the article of the study by Walum et al (in pdf format) is: http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~bios201/2008%20what%27s%20new/Sept%202008%20Pair-bonding%20gene%20in%20humans%20article.pdf
PS–if anyone wants an article but can not find access to one online (for free) then let me know because I have [almost] unlimited access to all the online databases through my University. I could download it and email you a copy.