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Mate choice—the decision about whom to mate with—is a type of natural selection, since animals must reproduce to pass down their genes. Mate choice is also called intersexual selection because the behavior occurs between the sexes.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 10, 2026

Using the FishSim Animation Toolchain to Investigate Fish Behavior: A Case Study on Mate-Choice Copying In Sailfin Mollies
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How Sexually Dimorphic Are Human Mate Preferences?

Daniel Conroy-Beam1, David M Buss2, Michael N Pham3

  • 1University of Texas at Austin, USA dconroybeam@utexas.edu.

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
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Summary

Men and women show large, distinct mate preferences across 37 cultures. Multivariate analysis reveals these differences are robust, impacting partner selection significantly.

Keywords:
cross-cultural analysismate selectionmultivariate analysissex differences

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Human Mating Behavior
  • Cross-Cultural Psychology

Background:

  • Previous research on sex differences in mate preferences often used limited univariate analyses.
  • Mate selection is a complex, multidimensional process requiring multivariate approaches for accurate measurement.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate sex differences in mate preferences using a multivariate approach.
  • To assess the magnitude and cross-cultural robustness of these differences.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized Mahalanobis distance (D) and logistic regression for analysis.
  • Analyzed data from 10,153 participants across 37 diverse cultures.

Main Results:

  • Found large multivariate sex differences in mate preferences (D = 2.41), with only 22.8% overlap between sexes.
  • Mate preferences alone accurately predicted sex with 92.2% accuracy.
  • Observed a negative correlation between pattern-wise sex differences and cultural gender equality, yet differences remained robust.

Conclusions:

  • Multivariate analysis highlights substantial and cross-culturally consistent sex differences in human mate preferences.
  • These findings have significant implications for understanding the evolution and expression of mating strategies.
  • The robustness of these differences across varying levels of gender equality warrants further investigation.