›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 681-687.

Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Impact of economic status on Female Mating Preferences from the Perspective of evolutionary psychology

Qian TIAN1, 2,Shijin Sun2   

  1. 1. Fudan University
    2.
  • Received:2018-11-17 Revised:2019-03-26 Online:2019-05-20 Published:2019-05-20
  • Contact: Qian TIAN

进化心理学视角下经济压力对女性择偶偏好影响研究

田芊1,张雷2,孙时进3   

  1. 1. 复旦大学
    2. 澳门大学心理系
    3. 复旦大学心理学系
  • 通讯作者: 田芊
  • 基金资助:
    上海市教育科学研究一般项目

Abstract: Abstract As a complex social, cultural and psychological phenomenon, Mating Preference has become a hot topic in sociology and psychology in recent years. The studies of mating preference, which first commenced in western countries, are in order to explore its internal significance and mechanism from the perspective of sociology and psychology. Theoretical frameworks of mating preference have been continuously improved after decades of development; as a new research perspective, evolutionary psychology has been widely welcomed in this field because its better cross-cultural explanatory power. Through the specific and rigorous measurement methods, foreign psychologists integrated different research paradigms to study human’s mating preference behavior sys-tematically. Since the late 1970s, Chinese scholars initiated the relevant studies of mating preference in China. However, their main research methods were content analysis of marriage personals and self-report questionnaires; and due to their underdeveloped theoretical frameworks, their empirical studies were lacking convincing theoretical support. Therefore, on the basis of the in-depth studies of the evolutionary psychology, the present study learns from the western research paradigms and measurement methods in order to conduct in-depth researches and discussions on the issue about Chinese female mating preference. Under the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology, there are three dimensional factor structure of female mating preference. They are Good-Genes, which refer to the good innate qualities of the male, such as good looking, strong body and clever mind; it represent male’s characteristics and clues of good genes. Good-Provider, which refer to the good socio-economic status of the male; it represent male’s capacity and resources to provide good parental investments to the future generations. Good-Father, which refer to the gentle and loyal personality traits of the male; it represent male’s good character bases and willingness to provide parental investments to the future generations. Few males can have all the three factors, so females need to balance during Good-Genes, Good-Provider and Good-Father. The mating preference of female can be influenced by their ages, ed-ucational statuses, relationship statuses, health statuses, household incomes, fertility willing, and so on. The present research starts from the theory of mating in the evolutionary psychology and conducts the research on the preference of females mating preference under the economic pressure. In order to further clarify the influential mechanism of the economic, the present study was carried out two experiments to ex-plore the influences of the states of economy. The result shows that (1) the females with lower economic status prefer the males with “Good-Provider”. (2) The experiment results also showed there are slight difference between above-threshold and sub-threshold. Females in explicit measurements often showed preference in males with “Good-Father”, but in implicit measurements, females of all groups attach more importance to the socio-economic status of males. The result of research shows that the mate selection of females focus more on the clues of resources in a general way, under the economic pressure, this kind of preference for mate selection is more obvious.

Key words: “Mating preference”, “Economic pressure”, “female mating”

摘要: 摘 要 择偶是婚姻过程中一个非常重要的环节,女性择偶是近年来研究的热门话题。本研究从进化心理学的择偶理论出发,研究女性在经济压力之下的择偶偏好。研究用实验的方法,结果表明(1)女性在经济压力之下,更青睐具有“好资源”的男性(2)对照组女性在外显测量的情况下往往表示更喜欢男性的“好爸爸”特质,而在阈下测量时,无论哪一组的女性都更重视男性的社会经济地位。研究结果表明,女性择偶时普遍更重视资源线索,在经济压力之下,这种择偶偏好更加明显。

关键词: 择偶偏好 经济压力 女性择偶