Study On Evolutionary Mechanism Of Human Mate Preference

Mate choice has been a hot topic in various fields of subjects such as Human Behavioural Ecology and Evolutionary Psychology since 1970 s.The first part of this paper introduces the basic concepts of mate preference,adaptation,mating system(monogamy,polygamy and polyandry),characteristic of human mate choice strategies and the methods which were used to analyze the data.The basic theories explaining the evolution of human mate choice including parental investment theory,sexual selection,exchange theory and conditional strategy and so on.The second part of the paper shows our study on the conditional mating strategy when females could control their resources with consideration of the culture and economy in China(e.g.housing plays an important role in marriage strategy both in traditional and modern China).Using SPSS statistical analysis software,we analyzed three databases of Baihe online dating system.The main six results are the following:(1)When females control resources(e.g.income,housing),they are not becoming less demanding on their mates' resource,but having higher expectation on corresponding characteristics of males(e.g.income,housing);when females have indirect ability(i.e.education level on master and above)access to resources,their education level is associated with the preference of mates' education level but not earning ability or resources(i.e.housing and income per month);(2)Females still have a very high social recognition of the traditional gender roles,and believe that males should be always better than females in terms of the cues associated with resources;(3)With the comprehensive factors of income and education level,male or female who own a house received more responding letters from visitors on the website;(4)Female/Male who own a house are found to have more requirements for their mates,among which females' are mainly reflected in characteristics relative to resource(i.e.owning a house and high education level),while males' are associated with physical attractiveness(i.e.younger age);(5)Comparing to those living in higher price-to-income area,females who live in lower price-to-income area demand mates with house,but require less education level and income;(6)Successful couples from Baihe online dating system have a high matching of their education,income and housing characteristics,hence the results improved that criteria of mate preference in online dating system reflecting real intention of users.All of the results are consistent with the hypothesis of character-specific assortment,which reflects females prefer to choose potential mates with similar characteristics as themselves.