She Always Steps in the Same River: Similarity Among Long-Term Partners in Their Demographic, Physical, and Personality Characteristics

Abstract

In mate choice, individuals consider a wide pool of potential partners. It has been found that people have certain preferences, but intraindividual stability of mate choice over time remains little explored. We tested individual consistency of mate choice with respect to a number of demographic, physical, and personality characteristics. Only mothers were recruited for this study, because we wanted to find out not only whether women choose long-term partners with certain characteristics but also whether the father of their child(ren) differs from their other long-term (ex-)partners. Women (N = 537) of 19–45 years of age indicated the demographic, physical (by using image stimuli), and personality characteristics of all of their long-term partners (partners per respondent: mean = 2.98, SD = 1.32). Then we compared the average difference between an individual’s long-term partners with the expected average difference using a permutation test. We also evaluated differences between partners who had children with the participants (fathers) and other long-term partners (non-fathers) using permutation tests and mixed-effect models. Our results revealed that women choose long-term partners consistently with respect to all types of characteristics. Although effect sizes for the individual characteristics were rather weak, maximal cumulative effect size for all characteristics together was high, which suggests that relatively low effect sizes were caused by high variability with low correlations between characteristics, and not by inconsistent mate choice. Furthermore, we found that despite some differences between partners, fathers of participants’ child(ren) do fit their ‘type’. These results suggest that mate choice may be guided by relatively stable but to some degree flexible preferences, which makes mate choice cognitively less demanding and less time-consuming. Further longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this conclusion.

Children's judgements of facial hair are influenced by biological development and experience

“…In summary, our findings indicate that although children associate beardedness with traits related to dominance and mate choice, these associations show distinct developmental patterns and develop throughout childhood. We also confirm past research that beards operate primarily as a badge of status and maturity rather than as an attractive ornament, enhancing judgements of masculinity, age, dominance and aggressiveness that secondarily influence women's mate preferences (Dixson et al, 2017b(Dixson et al, , 2019b potentially as long-term and paternally investing partners (Dixson et al, 2019a, Neave & Shields, 2008Štěrbová, Tureček, & Kleisner, 2019).…”

Consistency between individuals' past and current romantic partners' own reports of their personalities

“…Although the idea that there is both shared consensus and unique idiosyncrasy in what people want in a romantic partner is not new (7), our data show stability in distinctive partner personality through actual relationship formation and, importantly, using 2 different partners' own self-reports. This allows us to bypass retrospective biases that may be present in describing past partners (13). Further, our data suggest that the stability in partner personality evidenced in our data was something more than people meeting someone similar to themselves.…”

“…12). As such, relying on one person's self-reports, as in previous research (13), may not be a reliable way to get information about their partner. Rather, direct assessments of different partners people have actually dated and assessments from multiple sources (particularly the partners themselves) are required to adequately address the question of partner consistency.…”

Biological Bases of Beauty Revisited: The Effect of Symmetry, Averageness, and Sexual Dimorphism on Female Facial Attractiveness

“…Despite the success of evolutionary psychological approaches in understanding human mating, it is perhaps time to significantly broaden the scope of understanding beyond honest signalling approaches to different viewpoints, such as imprinting [124] or Fisherian runaway [125]. Recent evidence has indicated that mate choice decisions are consistent, that people seem to have a "type" of partner they prefer [126,127], and that optimising their preferred traits are what drives attractiveness perceptions. Focusing more closely on these approaches allows for a systematic exploration of the theoretical space of psychological and morphological traits of possible partners.…”