Study: Beautiful Women Want It All

March 26, 2008 — -- A new study out of the University of Texas argues that beautiful women want it all when it comes to picking a mate.

In fact, the more beautiful a woman is, the higher her standards.

But, perhaps surprisingly, the study did not find that to be the case when it comes to men. It takes more than being a hunk for a man to want everything. He must also have status and the potential to be a good provider before he is likely to demand the best.

On the surface it sounds like just another study showing that men are different from women, as if we didn't already know that. But this is a serious effort to delve into an area that has been largely ignored by scientists: How a woman's own attractiveness influences her preferences when she picks a mate.

The broad hypothesis "that high mate-value women want it all has never been comprehensively tested," the study claims.

What it boils down to is that a woman who has it all, wants it all, said psychologist David Buss, lead author of the study in the current issue of Evolutionary Psychology. Buss and psychologist Todd Shackelford of Florida Atlantic University studied 107 couples who had been married less than a year to learn what both the men and the women wanted most in a mate.

Psychologists call it "mate value," and it's different for men and for women, which may explain why the study produced different results for the two genders.

"Physical attractiveness is a more important component of women's mate value than of men's," Buss said in an e-mail. "Status, economic prospects, and other attributes linked with resource acquisition are more important components of men's than of women's mate value. So this leads to the prediction that men high in status and resources will elevate their standards, just as physically attractive women elevate their standards."

There is an evolutionary basis for these differences, the researchers contend. Humans, like all other animals, are most concerned about reproduction and passing their genes on to their children. Physical beauty gives a woman more leverage — or mate value — when it comes to picking a man. And men have more appeal if they are likely to be good providers.