On the proper functions of human mate preference adaptations: comment on Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, and Hunt (2014)

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that humans possess sex-differentiated mate preference adaptations. In the context of long-term mating, men are hypothesized to more strongly prefer cues to youth and fecundity, whereas women are hypothesized to more strongly prefer cues to status-related attributes. Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, and Hunt (2014) recently asserted that if men and women evolved sex-differentiated desires, they should exhibit similarly sex-differentiated relational outcomes such as marital satisfaction in response to whether a partner fulfills those desires. This seemingly reasonable extrapolation from sex differences in mate preferences to sex differences in relationship outcomes is, from an evolutionary perspective, problematic and warrants careful conceptual analysis. Evolutionary psychologists have not predicted that selecting a mate with sex-differentiated desirable qualities always translates to more satisfying, trusting, and passionate relational outcomes. Indeed, in some cases obtaining an ideal partner is expected to lead to negative outcomes, such as incurring the costs of heightened courtship effort, mate retention exertion, and the painful experience of jealousy. There are 4 additional concerns with the Eastwick et al. analysis: (a) heterogeneous operationalizations of predictor and criterion variables, (b) inadequate treatment of individual differences in the expression of evolved mate preferences, (c) an overlooking of physical appearance cues central to women's long-term mate preferences, and (d) the impact of nonrandom mateship formation on sex-linked variances in preferred attributes (e.g., low status men and unattractive women may be underrepresented in studies of established couples). As conducted, the Eastwick et al. analyses, while valuable, did not adequately test function-related hypotheses derived from the evolutionary psychology of mate preferences.